Cesare Castiglioni, the expert and director of Senavra, with Andrea Verga and Serafino Biffi from the "Psychiatric School of Milan", planned Mombello as an agricultural institution for peaceful patients and people who didn't need any special care.

Following the decision of the province of Milan to convert Mombello into a provincial asylum,[2] development and enlargement works were completed between 1873 and 1878 (the official opening year).

[3] At the end of the 19th century, after the designation of Edoardo Gonzales as the new director, theatrical performances and dances were introduced to highlight the significance of "moral education" in mental hospital care.

In the early 20th century, Gonzales, who stayed in the position of director for eleven years, built an aqueduct that provided water to the asylum as well as to the town of Limbiate.

At this time, two pavilions were equipped as military hospitals with care, research, and observation of troops from the front impacted by conflict-related psychological traumas.

There was an extraordinary journalistic research in this period: the historian, dialect poet, and painter Antonio Curti, who was friends with Tranquillo Cremona and with Giuseppe Antonini, visited Mombello on the eve of Italy's entrance to the war to see what internees thought about the conflict.

It was decided to open a few branches in Busto Arsizio, like the Villa Litta Modignani (1919), later in Contegno (1928) and in Parabiago with the "Leonardo Bianchi" women's section (1935).

Following the World War II, Mombello's fall begun, when the Province of Milan decided to benefit the new department in Affori, which in 1945 was named after Paolo Pini, a psychiatrist who died in the same year.

The newspaper highlighted the movement of admitted people inside the asylum during the period of a year: from January to December, there were registered the incoming, the outcoming and the deaths of the patients.

In 1887 the Gazzetta reported on Mombello's presence at the International Exhibition of Equipment (for grinding, baking, and other associated industries) which was held in Milan in that year.

The hospital's attendance at the event underlined and emphasized the connection between psychiatry and hygiene, along with psychiatrists' engagement with the education of the population about socially important health issues, such as Pellagra.

In the hygiene room at the Exposition, several pictures drawn by a patient of the hospital regarding the different phases of the skin disease pellagrous Erythema, were shown.

About 400 free copies of the book Dialoghi written by the writers Edoardo Gonzales and Giovanni Battista Verga (Andrea's nephew) were given to visitors, in order to promote new ways of preventing the Pellagra disease.

The "Gazzetta" was also used to report the internal situation, mental issues and deaths that occurred over a specific time, other than general problems faced by the doctors, the directors, and the psychiatrists of the hospital itself.

The asylum was built according to the ideas of Philippe Pinel and his son Scipion Plein in which he supposed that psychiatric hospitals should be located in small villages in order to achieve better results with the patients.

Because of the overcrowding, the hospital was modified again in 1890, with the addition of two more floors to the two existing towers that conferred to the building the semblance of a real castle; some years later a new lighting system was created and installed.

Antonini was also involved in the restructuring of all the departments, as well as the restrooms and other essential changes, and he developed the so-called “psychiatric dispensation”, that were structures that helped to accelerate the discharge of the patients in order to avoid overcrowding.

Chemical residuals, that helped to preserve the actual structure of the tissues, were found in twelve bodies, 50 brains, limbs and heads recovered in the hospital.

The aim of the project was the re-appropriation of the abandoned architectural heritage, using an innovative design, in order to make the structure valuable in terms of Historical and Social aspects.

In 2017, with the aim of celebrating heritage, the Comune of Limbiate was able to save three buildings to create a training school for nurses and doctors, a new senior center and an area for clubs and associations.

During my journey inside the area, I was reminded of a song by Roberto Vecchioni "I pazzi sono fuori" and this phrase was part of the luggage I took around that day with the camera and the optics.