What to See in Limbiate: Attractions & Sights

More places of interest

Chiesa parrocchiale di San Giorgio Martire

The church of San Giorgio Martire is the parish church of Limbiate, in the archdiocese of Milan, and belongs to the deanery of Paderno Dugnano. A church «Sancti Giorgii de Lemiate» is first mentioned in 1243; the parish was established in 1564, and in 1581 it received the visit of Archbishop Charles Borromeo. Between 1802 and 1804 a neoclassical church was built, designed by Pietro Gilardoni, which by the end of the century was no longer enough for the faithful. The first stone of a larger parish church was laid in 1928, but the site was suspended because the ground was unstable. Archbishop Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster then pointed out a more suitable area: today's church, designed by Spirito Maria Chiappetta, was completed in 1935 and consecrated on 1 June.
What to see
The stepped façade faces south-east and is divided by buttresses into three sections: each has a portal with a lunette, a large window and a series of hanging arches, and at the centre there is also a row of small loggias. Behind the church rises the bell tower, erected between 1949 and 1950 to a design by the engineer Giovanni Maggi: the belfry has a single-light window on each side and ends in a pyramidal spire.
The interior has a nave and two aisles, separated by pointed arches on columns; above the capitals spring the ribs of the cross vaults. At the end, the presbytery is raised by three steps and closed by a polygonal apse. Among the works are an altarpiece of St George the Martyr, painted by Maria Locatelli in the forties of the twentieth century, and the Stations of the Cross by Alfredo Sassi.
Visiting
Opening and Mass times should be checked with the parish.
Our editors' tip
Two things are older than the church that holds them: the organ, built in 1893, and an eighteenth-century canvas of the Madonna and Child with the infant St John, St Andrew and St Anthony Abbot.
Villa Mella

Villa Mella, in full Villa Bazzero Mattei Arborio Mella, stands in the built-up centre of Limbiate and is the seat of the municipal library. It was born in 1720 as a «casa da massero», a farmstead for work in the fields. In 1841 it was bought by Countess Beatrice Castiglioni Rasini, who after a few months sold it on to the Bazzero, a family originally from the Como area. Ercole Bazzero, an engineer and the first mayor of Limbiate after the unification of Italy, began in 1842 the rebuilding works, which by 1892 had turned the rural building into a villa, with a large English-style park beside it. In 1979 the villa was bought by the town council, which restored its interiors, put the façades and the courtyard in order, moved the library there and opened the park to the public.
What to see
The building has a closed courtyard, rectangular, on two floors, all of brick with wooden floors. The façades on the street are plain, without decoration. From the central entrance hall you enter the courtyard, divided by a wall adorned with statues and decorated with a mosaic of polychrome pebbles and niches; at the centre is a well, set off by the design of the paving.
To the north stretches the English-style garden: a first level area, of lawn with clumps of tall trees, which then rises quickly onto the hill, at the boundary with the park of Villa Medolago-Attanasio. In the park some statues are placed and there is a small pool.
Visiting
The villa can be visited during the opening hours of the municipal library, which should be checked with the town council of Limbiate; the same goes for the opening of the park.
Our editors' tip
Inside, look up. The interiors are as plain as the façades, but some rooms have coffered ceilings painted with floral motifs and false perspectives.
Villa Pusterla - Crivelli

Villa Pusterla-Crivelli stands at Mombello, a hamlet of Limbiate, close against a hill, and is the most important villa in the municipality. It was built in the fourteenth century by the Pusterla, as a suburban residence; in the sixteenth century it passed to the Carcano and then, after a very long lawsuit, to the Arconati, who transformed it: Anna Visconti Arconati entrusted the design to the architect Martino Bassi and made it a residence for the whole year, no longer only for summer. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the villa went to the Crivelli, who partly rebuilt it in Baroque style; the present structure, the work of the architect Francesco Croce, probably dates from 1754.
What to see
The building has a U-shaped plan, with a portico that joined the ends of the two wings to form a small courtyard, and the façade, adorned with two half-towers, turned to the east. On the downhill side a stepped balcony went down to the Italian garden, rich in fountains and water features, where Abbot Crivelli laid out a botanical garden that was then among the largest in Europe. Linked to the villa is the oratory of San Francesco, turned into a private Baroque chapel.
In 1797 Napoleon Bonaparte set up his headquarters here, preferring it to the Royal Palace of Monza: here he worked on the creation of the Cisalpine Republic and on the Treaty of Campo Formio. His mother and sisters lived in the villa with him; Pauline married General Leclerc in the oratory itself. The painter Antoine-Jean Gros was also a guest, and painted here the first great portrait of Napoleon.
Visiting
In 1819 the Crivelli sold the villa. In 1863 it was bought by the Province of Milan, which installed a psychiatric hospital there, the asylum of Mombello, which stayed in operation until the Basaglia law of 1978. Since then much of the complex has fallen into abandonment; one part houses the Luigi Castiglioni agricultural technical institute. It is not a place open to visits: any openings should be checked with the town council of Limbiate.
Our editors' tip
The agricultural institute bears the name of Luigi Castiglioni, an Enlightenment figure who lived in the villa for a short period in the second half of the eighteenth century and used the park for his botanical studies, for which he was rewarded by Napoleon.