Portrait & Documentary
Photographer
© Maurizio Milesi 2024
2014
It was 1999 when the former asylum in Limbiate, also known as the Antonini Psychiatric Hospital, closed for good. A story that began more than a century earlier. What happens now?
Mombello, G.Antonini former psychiatric hospital, Limbiate (Milano). This is a place of pain and suffering, that became after its abandonment in 1978, prey to writers, vandals and junkies, as well as the merely curious, photographers and even filmmakers looking for evocative film sets.
The 30-year neglected condition in which the health facility’s more than 40,000 square meters of rooms, cells and hallways are located is perceptible as soon as one crosses the entrance threshold.
The asylum’s construction dates back to 1872, next to the 18th-century Villa Crivelli-Pusterla, the estate chosen by Napoleon to proclaim the Cisalpine Republic, and both are part of a million-square-foot lot of fields, sheds and pavilions north of Limbiate.
The Mombello Village, regarded as one of the ten most frightening places in the world. At maximum capacity, it came to house more than 3,000 patients, including Mussolini’s illegitimate son Benito Albino, who died interned in 1942.
Separating the asylum from the rest of the world was a two-meter-high, three-kilometer-long wall that has become part of the local imagination. “If you don’t behave, I’ll take you de la del mur,” grandparents used to tell their restless grandchildren. Occasionally some patient would climb over it to escape. Today, however, they climb over it to get in.
Villa Montebello also hosted in its history some of the greats of the time such as Ferdinand IV visiting Milan and was the estate chosen by Napoleon to proclaim the Cisalpine Republic.
But with the arrival of the Austrians and, above all, with the unification of Italy, things changed radically.
On the estate of the now-defunct 18th-century Villa Crivelli-Pusteria, the largest asylum in Italy was born. With 40,000 square meters of rooms, cells and corridors, the health facility is part of an approximately one million-square-meter lot of fields, warehouses and pavilions north of Limbiate.
The Mombello Village came to be regarded as one of the most frightening in the world, according to rumors of the time. Although it had a capacity of 600, it came to house more than 3,000 patients, including Mussolini’s illegitimate son Benito Albino, who died as an inmate in 1942.
Ordered to cease in 1978 by the Basaglia Law, like other Italian asylums, it was converted briefly into a psychiatric hospital before being finally closed in 1999.
After it was abandoned for closure, it became prey for writers, vandals and junkies, as well as filmmakers looking for evocative film sets, given its spooky appearance.
In fact, Genoese director Luciani Silighini chose it to shoot “7 days, 7 girls” in 2017 among the devastated walls of the old pavilions, with Johnny Deep appearing in a cameo.
What the future holds is not known. It was visible in 2014 already, that nature is reclaiming its space.