The complex's location, on the edge of town and near the road leading east from Milan, seems to support the hypothesis that San Francesco di Pozzuolo was a pilgrimage destination, albeit one of exclusively local importance. The Franciscan community's settlement in this area likely predated 1295, the year in which Cardinal Pietro Peregrosso ordered in his will that the church originally dedicated to Santa Maria, evidently already under construction, be completed and that a series of buildings needed for the life of the monastic community (from the refectory to the chapter house) and, more generally, for the local and transient population (the school, the workshops, the hospice for pilgrims) be annexed. From the mid-15th century, the convent began a slow decline. In the 17th century, extensive renovations gave the 14th-century complex a Baroque appearance; in 1769, the convent was suppressed, while the church retained its role as a parish church. Despite the numerous alterations that changed the appearance of the buildings, especially the civil ones, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the convent complex has maintained a certain homogeneity, thanks to the recovery and restoration interventions that have taken place from the 1960s to the present day.