[3][4] Brugherio borders the following municipalities: Monza, Agrate Brianza, Carugate, Sesto San Giovanni, Cologno Monzese, Cernusco sul Naviglio.

[6] The first written memory of Brugherio dates back to the Roman Empire when Noxiate, Sanctus Damianus, Baragia and Octavum were designated as the first settlements in the territory.

Noxiate corresponded to the current town centre (where the parish church of Saint Bartholomew is now located), then split, during the Carolingian period, between Monza and Cologno Monzese.

[7] Despite the years of decline, it was in 1578 that Brugherio found its first communal identity, when Saint Charles Borromeo established the parish of St. Bartholomew, unifying beneath the church the territories that were politically divided.

[13] The eighteenth century brought big political changes in Lombardy: in 1714, at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1714), the Italian territories, belonging to Spain, went to the Austrian Habsburgs, who took back order in administration and wise economic measures.

[7] It was precisely in the Villa Sormani where one of the most important events of the century took place: Count Paolo Andreani demonstrated the first public balloon flight on Italian soil, in 1784.

[14] After the brief Napoleonic season in Italy, the coalition forces of Austria, Prussia, Russia and Great Britain succeeded to overthrow the Emperor of the French and to begin, following the Congress of Vienna, the period of Restoration.

In 1816, landowners of Brugherio tried to merge their own territories into a single municipality, but the project failed due to the resistance of the Austrian bureaucrats of Milan, who did not want to waste time in unifying such a fragmented land.

The pieces travelled over ten kilometers through the Naviglio Martesana arriving at the river port of Mattalino Bridge, where they were unloaded near Count Andreani's property.

In fact the countryside, strongly linked to religion, was hostile to the socialist revendications and approached the Catholic-inspired unions, causing a change of relationship between farmers and landowners.

The years of World War I were administered by mayor Giovanni Santini[20] and Brugherio was always stocked with food supplies, while in the period of the so-called Biennio Rosso (1919-1920) took place violence between the Socialists and the Popular Catholics.

The latter lost their absolute majority, due to the loosening of their trade union activities, and the last mayor elected at the polls, Marcello Gatti, had to manage the difficult transition from Liberalism to Fascism.

Under the governments of Pollastri, Meli and Giltri,[23] Brugherio radically changed the features of its territory: new industrial villages were edified by Falck and Pirelli; social housing and new schools were built; the public library was founded in 1960[24] and it was placed within Palazzo Ghirlanda-Silva; sewerage, electricity and natural gas were extended on the whole area.

In those years Brugherio turned into an industrial town (the presence of the Candy company was very important) and it was crowned with the title of city on 27 January 1967,[5] by President of the Republic Giuseppe Saragat.

[16] Farmhouses of Brugherio were agricultural structures typical of the Po-Valley in Lombardy, which gave its name to the surrounding areas as well, roughly corresponding to fractional towns.