The Lombroso wing, one of the symbolic buildings of the San Lazzaro Psychiatric Hospital complex - which also hosted the painter Antonio Ligabue - was transformed into the Museum of the History of Psychiatry and opened to the public on September 30, 2012. For almost a century a place of pain and constraint, the museum now allows us to evoke the particular atmosphere that has characterized it. The original spaces, the materials, the colors and the traces of the degradation that have marked its existence have been respected.
The collection was established by director Carlo Livi in 1875 to show the progress, discoveries and applications that were a source of pride for psychiatric science and its institution, and it was expanded by the subsequent directors.
The ground floor houses a selection of the most significant objects of containment, the machines used for therapeutic purposes, and some cells dedicated to the themes of overcoming the psychiatric hospital, to the promotion of mental health and to fight against stigma.                                                                                                         
The upper floor houses objects from the historic heritage of the former San Lazzaro, such as the artistic artefacts of the patients and the scientific instruments of the laboratories.