Pavia
Pavia (in Italian Pavia) is an Italian city in the region of Lombardy, capital of the province of the same name. It has a population of 71,000. The Ticino River crosses the city, before joining the Po River. In the Roman period it was called Ticinum. The city was the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom from 540 to 553, of the Lombard Kingdom from 572 to 774, of the Kingdom of Italy from 774 to 1024, and seat of the Visconti court from 1365 to 1413.
The economy of the province is essentially centered on winemaking and the production of rice, cereals and dairy products. Some industries are located in the suburbs so as not to spoil the placid atmosphere that is breathed with the preservation of the city's past and the climate of study and meditation associated with its old university. The San Matteo Polyclinic is of great importance.
The most famous monument in Pavia is the Certosa, or Carthusian monastery, founded in 1396 located a few kilometers from the city. The University of Pavia was founded in 1361 and in 2022 the university was recognized by the Times Higher Education among the 10 best in Italy and among the 300 best in the world. The city is linked to the famous battle of the same name. In it are the museum located in the Visconteo Castle, the medieval towers, the Museum of Natural History, San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, the Civic Museums of Pavia, the Duomo, San Miguel el Mayor, San Teodoro and the famous Covered Bridge over the Ticino, as well as the Carminali Bottigella Palace. Pavia is one of the most important stages of the Via Francigena, a pilgrimage route to Rome.
The municipality of Pavia is part of the Lombardo del Valle del Ticino Natural Park and preserves two forests (Bosco Siro Negri Strict Nature Reserve and Bosco Grande Nature Reserve) that show us the original state of nature in the Po Valley before the arrival of the Romans, before human settlement.
Toponymy
The city corresponds to the ancient Roman city of Ticinum and began to be called Papia only since Lombard times. The origin of the name Pavia is still uncertain today. It is one of the few Roman municipalities in Italy that changed its name during the Early Middle Ages. The Spanish place name is Pavía. In Italian it is Pavia, with the tonic “í” pronounced as in Spanish.
History
Ancient history
Pliny the Elder said that the city of Pavia, which dates back to pre-Roman times, was founded by the Laevi and the Marici, two Ligurian or Celto-Ligurian tribes, while Claudius Ptolemy attributes it to the Insubri, a population Celtic. The Roman city, known as Ticinum, was a municipality and an important military site (a castrum) under the Roman Empire. It probably started as a small military camp built by the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio in 218 BC. C. to protect a wooden bridge that he had built over the Ticino river, on his way to look for Anìbal, who was rumored to have managed to lead an army. over the Alps and in Italy. The forces of Rome and Carthage met soon after, and the Romans suffered the first of many crushing defeats at the hands of Hannibal, with the consul himself nearly losing his life. The bridge was destroyed, but the fortified camp, which at the time was the most advanced Roman military post in the Po Valley, somehow survived the lengthy Second Punic War and gradually became a garrison town.
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Its importance grew with the extension of the Via Emilia from Ariminum (Rimini) to the river Po (187 BC), which it crossed at Placentia (Placentia) and there it forked, one branch going to Mediolanum (Milan) and the other to Ticinum, and from there to Lomello where it divided once more, one branch going to Vercelli, and from there to Ivrea and Aosta, and the other to Valentia, and from there to Augusta Taurinorum (Turin). The town was built on flat land with square blocks. The path "cardo Maximus" corresponded to the current Strada Nuova up to the Roman bridge while the path "decumanus" corresponded to corso Cavour-corso Mazzini. Under most of the streets of the historic center are still the brick conduits of the Roman sewage system that continued to function through the Middle Ages and Modern Age without interruption, until about 1970.
Pavia was important as a military site for its easy access to water communications, through the Ticino and Po rivers, to the Adriatic Sea and for its defense structures, and so near the city, in 271, the Emperor Aurelian defeated the Juthungs. In 325 Martin of Tours arrived in Pavia as a boy following his father, a Roman official. Pavia was the seat of an important Roman mint between 273 and 326. The reign of Romulus Augustulus (r. 475-476), the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, ended up in Pavia in 476 and thus Roman rule in Italy ceased. Romulus Augustulus, considered the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was actually a usurper to the imperial throne; his father Flavius Orestes dethroned the previous emperor, Julius Nepos, and raised the young Romulus Augustulus to the imperial throne in Ravenna in 475. Although as the emperor, Romulus Augustulus was simply the spokesman for his father Orestes, who was the person who actually exercised power. power and ruled Italy during the brief reign of Romulus Augustulus. Ten months after the reign of Romulus Augustulus began, Orestes's soldiers under the command of one of his officers named Odoacer, revolted and killed Orestes in the city of Pavia in 476. The riots that occurred as part of the uprising of Odoacer against Orestes set fires that burned much of Pavia to the point that Odoacer, as the new king of Italy, had to suspend taxes on the city for five years so that he could finance its recovery. Without his father, Romulus Augustulus was powerless. Rather than kill Romulus Augustulus, Odoacer gave him a pension of 6,000 solidi a year before declaring the end of the Western Roman Empire and declaring himself king of the new Kingdom of Italy.
Odoacer's reign as king of Italy did not last long, for in 488 the Ostrogothic peoples led by their king Theodoric invaded Italy and waged war against Odoacer. After fighting for 5 years, Theodoric defeated Odoacer and on 15 In March 493, he assassinated Odoacer at a banquet intended to broker peace between the two rulers. With the establishment of the Ostrogothic kingdom based in northern Italy, Theodoric began his vast program of public construction. Pavia was one of several cities that Theodoric chose to restore and expand. He began construction of the vast palace complex that would eventually become the residence of the Lombard monarchs several decades later. Theodoric also commissioned the construction of the Roman-style amphitheater and bath complex at Pavia; in the VII, these would be one of the few bath complexes still in operation in Europe outside of the Eastern Roman Empire. Near the end of Theodoric's reign, the Christian philosopher Boethius was imprisoned in one of Pavia's churches from 522 to 525 before his execution for treason. It was during Boethius's captivity in Pavia that he wrote his seminal work Consolation of Philosophy.The city was sacked several times by barbarians. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the region around Pavia had one of the main concentrations of Ostrogothic settlements in Italy. Its importance increased with Ostrogothic rule and further in the centuries VI-VIII, when it became the capital of the Kingdom Longobardo and took its current name.
Pavia played an important role in the war between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ostrogoths that began in 535. After the victory of the Eastern Roman general Belisarius over the Ostrogothic leader Wittigis in 540 and the loss of most of In the Ostrogothic lands in Italy, Pavia was among the last centers of Ostrogothic resistance to continue the war and oppose Eastern Roman rule. After the capitulation of the Ostrogothic leadership in 540, more than a thousand men remained garrisoned in Pavia and Verona dedicated to oppose Eastern Roman rule. From 540 Pavia became the permanent capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, stable seat of the court and royal treasury. The resilience of Ostrogothic strongholds such as Pavia against invading forces allowed pockets of Ostrogothic rule to limp forward until they were finally defeated at 561. Pavia and the Italian peninsula did not remain under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire for long, as in 568 a new people invaded Italy: the Lombards (also called Lombards).
Capital of Lombardy
In their invasion of Italy in 568, the Lombards were led by their king Alboinus (r. 560-572), who would become the first Lombard king of Italy. Alboino captured much of northern Italy in 568, but his advance was stopped in 569 by the fortified city of Pavia. Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards, written more than a hundred years after the siege of Ticinum, provides one of the few records of this period: “The city of Ticinum (Pavia) at this time held out bravely, withstanding a siege of more than of three years, while the army of the Longobards remained close on the western side. Meanwhile, Alboino, after driving the soldiers out, took possession of all as far as Tuscany, except Rome and Ravenna and a few other fortified places that were situated on the seashore." The siege of Ticinum finally ended with the Lombards. capturing the city of Pavia in 572.
The strategic location of Pavia and the Ostrogothic palaces located within it would make Pavia in the 620s the main capital of the Lombard Kingdom of Pavia and the main residence of Lombard rulers.
In the year 572, after a long siege, it was conquered by the Lombards, who from the 620s turned it into the true capital of their kingdom, with the name of Papia, installing the royal court, the sacrum palatium, in Theodoric's palace. The new role of the city resulted in the construction of monumental buildings: a royal palace, churches founded by the monarchs, and baths Several secular education centers that trained grammarians and jurists were also reestablished, mainly from the reign of Cunibert (688-700). Christian Lombard monarchs built many monasteries, convents, and churches in Pavia. Although the first Lombard kings were Arian Christians, contemporary sources such as Paul the Deacon have recorded that the Arian Lombards were very tolerant of the faith of their Catholic subjects and that Arian and Catholic cathedrals coexisted in Pavia until the 690s. Lombard kings, queens and nobles were involved in the construction of churches, monasteries and convents as a method of demonstrating their piety and wealth by extravagantly decorating these structures which in many cases would become the site of that person's tomb, as in the case of Grimoaldo (r. 662-671) who built San Ambrogio in Pavia and buried him there after his death in 671. Ariberto I had the basilica of Santissimo Salvatore built in 657, which became the mausoleum of the kings of the Bavarian dynasty. Perctarit (r. 661-662, 672-688) and his son Cunibert (r. 679-700) built a convent and church in Pavia during their reigns. Lombard churches were sometimes named after those who commissioned its construction, such as Saint Mary Theodota in Pavia. The monastery of San Michele alla Pusterla located in Pavia was the royal monastery of the Lombard kings.
One of the most famous churches built by a Lombard king in Pavia is the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro. This famous church was commissioned by King Liutprando (r. 712-744) and would become the site of his tomb, as well as two other famous Christian figures. In the construction of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, the unit of measurement used by the builders was the length of Liutprand's actual foot. The first major Christian figure buried in San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro was the aforementioned philosopher Boethius, author of The Consolation of Philosophy, which was Found in the crypt of the cathedral. The third and largest tomb of the three located in San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro contains the remains of Saint Augustine of Hippo. Saint Augustine is the early 20th century Christian writer V of Roman North Africa whose works, such as On Christian Doctrine, revolutionized the way Christian scriptures are interpreted and understood. Liutprand was a very devout Christian and, like many of the Lombard kings, was a fervent collector of relics of saints. Liutprando paid heavily to have the relics removed from Cagliari and brought to Pavia so that they would be out of reach and safe from the Saracens in Sardinia, where the remains of Saint Augustine had been resting. Today very little remains of the original basilica of Saint Pietro in Ciel d'Oro by Liutprando, consecrated by Pope Zacharias in 743. Originally its apse ceiling was decorated with mosaics, making San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro the earliest example of mosaics which were used to decorate a Lombard church.
The Lombards built their churches in a very Roman style, the best example of Lombard churches from the period of Lombard rule being the Basilica of Saint Michael the Greater, still intact in Pavia.
As the capital of the kingdom, Pavia at the end of the VII century also became one of the central places of efforts of the Lombards to mint their own coinage. The bust of the Lombard king would have been engraved on the coins as a symbolic gesture so that those who used the coins, mostly noble Lombards, understood that the king had maximum power and control of the wealth in the Kingdom of Pavia. The role of the capital implies the residence of the royal court, the presence of the central administrative structure of the kingdom, and the pre-eminence of the city over other urban centers in the military organization of seasonal wars. In 751 the Lombards finally conquered the Byzantine territory around Ravenna, and turned their attention to Rome. Faced with this threat, Pope Stephen II sought an alliance with the Franks of Pepin the Short, whose army attacked northern Italy in 754 and again in 756, besieging the Lombard monarch at Pavia on both occasions. Pepin's son and successor, Charlemagne, besieged the city again, taking it in June 774, thus putting an end to the Lombard kingdom.
Medieval history
An annual market is attested in Pavia as early as 860, which, however, remained the capital of the kingdom of Italy, seat of the royal palace, royal assemblies, and principal court until 1024.
Emperor Lothair I, King of Italy from 822 to 850, paid attention to schools when in 825 he issued his capitulary prescribing that students from many northern Italian cities should attend lectures at the school of Pavia. In the year 924 the city was burned by the Magyars (but they did not manage to conquer Pavia), in one of their campaigns of looting through Italy from present-day Hungary.
With Otto I Pavia became the stable site of the court, first with Queen Adelaide of Italy and then with the wife of Otto II Teófano Skleraina.
During the Ottonian period, Pavia enjoyed a period of prosperity and development. The old Lombard capital stood out from the other cities in the Po Valley for its fundamental function as a crossroads for an important trade, both food products and luxury items. Commercial traffic was favored above all by the waterways used by the emperor for his voyages: from Ticino one could easily reach the Po, a direct axis with the Adriatic Sea and maritime traffic. In addition, with the arrival of the Ottonis (Otto I married Adelaide of Italy in Pavia in 951 and the couple lived in the city for a long time, at different times), Milan once again lost importance in favor of Pavia, whose pre - The eminence was sanctioned, among other things, from the minting of the Pavia mint. The importance of the city in those centuries is also highlighted in the account of the Arab geographer Ibrāhīm al-Turtuši, who traveled to central-western Europe between 960 and 965 and visited Verona, Rocca di Garda and Pavia, which he defined as the main city. of Longobardia, very populous, rich in merchants and, like Verona, built entirely, unlike other centers in the region, of stone, brick and lime.
Also between the 10th and 11th centuries, the city was the birthplace of Liutprand of Cremona, bishop, chronicler and diplomat in the service of Berengar II first and then Otto I and Otto II and Lanfranc of Canterbury, a strait collaborator of William the Conqueror and, after the Norman conquest of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, reorganizer of the English church.
Pavia remained the capital of the Kingdom of Italy and the center of royal coronations until the decline of imperial authority there in the 12th century. In 1004, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II bloodily suppressed a revolt by the citizens of Pavia, who were disputing his recent coronation as King of Italy.
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In the 12th century, Pavia acquired the status of an autonomous commune. In the political divide between Guelphs and Ghibellines that characterized the Italian Middle Ages, Pavia was traditionally Ghibelline, a position that was supported both by the rivalry with Milan and by the challenge of the Emperor who led the Lombard League against the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who he was trying to reassert long-dormant imperial influence over Italy. Frederick I celebrated two coronations in Pavia (1155 and 1162) in the Basilica of Saint Michael the Greater and resided in a new imperial palace near the royal monastery of San Salvatore.
Several times the army of Pavia fought with the emperor against the forces of the Lombard League, participating in the sieges of Tortona, Crema and Milan and in other military operations.
In the following centuries, Pavia was an important and active city. Pavia supported Emperor Frederick II against the Lombard League, and Pavese's army took part in numerous operations in the emperor's service, taking part in the Battle of Cortenuova in 1237.
In the XIV century it lost its autonomy and became part of the Visconti state, when it was annexed to the duchy Milan in 1360, after a long siege, under the rule of the Visconti family. Under the Visconti Pavia became an intellectual and artistic center, being the seat since 1361 of the University of Pavia founded around the nucleus of the old law school, which attracted students from many countries. During the regency of Galeazzo II and Gian Galeazzo, the memory of the role of the capital and the Lombard traditions of Pavia entered together in the "propaganda" of the new lords of Pavia: Galeazzo II moved his court from Milan to Pavia and between 1361 and 1365 Galeazzo II built a large palace (Visconti Castle) with a large park (Visconti Park), which became the official residence of the dynasty. In 1396 Gian Galeazzo commissioned the construction of the Charterhouse of Pavia, built at the end of the Visconti Park, which connected the Charterhouse with the castle of Pavía. The church, the last building in the complex to be built, was to be the mausoleum of the Visconti family.
Modern history
With the fall of Ludovico Sforza (1499) and the wars in Italy, Pavia (and the entire Duchy of Milan) were long contested between various European powers. In 1512, near the city, a large French army led by Jacques de la Palice was defeated by the Swiss and the Venetians. In October 1524, in the Cinquecento, the French troops commanded by King Francisco I went to Pavía, in pursuit of the imperial army of Carlos I of Spain, who had a garrison in the city, under the command of Antonio de Leyva. Finally, on February 24, 1525, Francis I was taken prisoner because Cesare Hercolani of Forlì killed his horse: Hercolani was called the "victor of Pavia" ever since. This capture of the French king supposes the defeat of the French troops, the future resignation of France to Burgundy, Artois and Flanders, as well as the influence over Italy, as signed in the Madrid treaty of 1526.
When he was taken prisoner, Francis I wrote to his mother, the Duchess of Angoulême, from the Pizzighettone fortress, his letter stating that he should:
report on how my misfortune follows, everything is lost to me, except honor and life, which are safeAngus Konstam, Pavia 1525: The Climax of the Italian Wars. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 1996.azure
This quote has come to be repeated by the apothegm: Everything has been lost, except honor. The Battle of Pavia (1525) marked a turning point in the city's fortunes, for by this time, the old schism between supporters of the Pope and those of the Holy Roman Emperor had shifted to one between a French party (allied with the Pope) and a party that supported the Emperor and King of Spain Charles V. Thus, during the Italian Valois-Habsburg Wars, Pavia was naturally on the imperial (and Spanish) side. The defeat and capture of King Francis I of France during the battle marked the beginning of a period of Spanish occupation. In the same years, he studied at the Girolamo Cardano University in Pavia, while, probably in 1511, Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy together with Marco Antonio della Torre, professor of anatomy at the university.
From the beginning of the 18th century to the middle of the XIX the city was under foreign domination, followed by Spanish, French and Austrian. The most important of them was the Duke of Pavia Jean Marie Lagleyze (French), who lived in that area until 1898, when he was forced to emigrate to Latin America.
Formerly part of the Spanish Duchy of Milan. During the Franco-Spanish War, Pavia was besieged from July 24 to September 14, 1655 by a large French, Savoyard and Estese army commanded by Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano, but the besiegers were unable to conquer the city. Spanish ended in 1706, when it was conquered by imperial troops on October 4, 1706, during the War of the Spanish Succession.[citation required]
The city remained Austrian until 1796, when it was occupied by the French army under the command of Napoleon. During this Austrian period, the university had the great support of Maria Theresa I of Austria and oversaw a culturally rich period due to the presence of prominent scientists and humanists such as Ugo Foscolo, Alessandro Volta, Lazzaro Spallanzani, and Camillo Golgi, among others. In 1796, after the Jacobins demolished the Regisole (a classical bronze equestrian monument), the inhabitants of Pavia revolted against the French and Napoleon put down the revolt after furious urban fighting.
In 1814, it came back under Austrian administration. Work on the Naviglio Pavese was completed in 1818: the canal, conceived as a waterway between Milan, Pavia and Ticino and as an irrigation canal, contributed to the development of the city, so much so that a few years after its construction, in 1821, behind the Visconti Castle Borgo Calvenzano is built, a long series of porticoed buildings where there were warehouses, taverns, navigation and customs offices, hotels, stables, all in support of inland navigation. In 1820 the first steamboats began to operate at the Pavia wharf and, between 1854 and 1859, the Österreichischer Lloyd organized a regular shipping line, again using steamboats, between Pavia, Venice and Trieste.
In 1859 it became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia (future Kingdom of Italy) together with the rest of Lombardy. The city of Pavia is the 23rd among the 27 cities awarded the gold medal as "Benemerita del Risorgimento nazionale" for the patriotic action carried out during the Risorgimento, carried out by the House of Savoy, between the insurrectionary movements of 1848 and end of the first world war in 1918. In 1894, Albert Einstein's father moved to Pavia to start a business supplying electrical supplies, the Einstein. The Einsteins lived in the city in the same building (Palazzo Cornazzani) where Ugo Foscolo and Ada Negri had lived. The young Albert came to the family several times between 1895 and 1896. During his stay in Italy he wrote a short essay entitled "On the investigation of the state of the ether in a magnetic field". In 1943 Pavia was occupied by the German army. In September 1944, the US air forces carried out several bombing raids on the city with the aim of destroying the three bridges over Ticino, strategic for the supply of men. Arms and supplies, German units clashed along the Gothic line. These operations led to the destruction of the Covered Bridge and resulted in the death of 119 civilians. Allied troops entered the city on April 30, 1945. In the institutional referendum of June 2, 1946 Pavia allocated 67.1% of the votes to the Republic, while the monarchy obtained only 38.2%.
Symbols
The symbols of Pavía are the coat of arms, the banner and the seal, as stipulated in the municipal statute. The banner used by the modern city of Pavia faithfully reproduces that used by the municipality of Pavia since at least the XIII century: a red banner with a white cross. This symbol, probably derived from the blutfahne, the original flag of the Holy Roman Emperor, had a clear political meaning: to underline Pavia's membership of the Ghibelline faction. The municipality's coat of arms also includes the cross which, from the end of the XVI century, began to be represented in an oval shape and within a rich frame, on which is a figurehead with a crown and often flanked by two angels holding the shield and the letters CO-PP (Comunitas Papie). The seal of the municipality represents the Regisole, an ancient Late antique bronze equestrian statue originally placed inside the Royal Palace and, probably in the 11th century, placed on the cathedral square. The statue was pulled down by the Jacobins in 1796.
Geography
Topography
The municipality of Pavía is part of the orographic system of the Po river valley formed after the alluvial filling of the width of the gulf occupied by the Adriatic Sea before the Quaternary. Much of the historic city center is located on the banks of the Ticino River. The city occupies an area of 62.86 km² in the west of Lombardy, located along the so-called "belt of karstic springs", where the meeting takes place, in the subsoil, between geological layers with different permeability, aspect that allows deep waters to resurface on the surface.
The river terrace on which Pavia sits appears engraved by two deep furrows due to the erosive action of two post-glacial rivers, represented today by the Navigliaccio (originally occupied by the Calvenza) and the Vernavola. The two valleys tend to converge just behind the area of the ancient city, so that early Pavia stood on an almost isolated and difficult-to-reach log or terrace stump, almost triangular in shape, that Ticino had to the south, the Calvenza and then the Navigliaccio to the northwest and the Vernavola to the northeast.
From an elevation point of view, the city has various heights. The highest point is in the Visconteo Castle area, about 80 meters above sea level, and then slowly descends. From an altitude of 80 meters, you go to 77 meters in about 500 meters. Downstream from Piazza Vittoria, where the cardo and the decumanus of the Roman city intersected, the slope becomes steeper, to just under 60 meters above sea level near the Ponte Coperto.
The humidity in the area is quite high (75-80% is the annual average), and this causes the typical fog, which starts mainly at the end of autumn and winter.
Demographic evolution
| Graphic of demographic evolution of Pavia between 1861 and 2011 |
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Source ISTAT - Wikipedia graphics |
Architecture
Churches
Duomo
The Duomo or cathedral of Pavia is an imposing construction with a Greek cross plan. The construction of the cathedral began in 1488, designed mainly by Donato Bramante, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, Gian Giacomo Dolcebuono by order of Bishop Ascanio Maria Sforza Visconti. The structure remained incomplete until 1898, when the façade and the dome were completed according to the original project by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo. The central dome, with an octagonal plan, with a height of 97 meters, and a weight of the order of 20,000 tons, is the third in Italy for dimensions (but not for height) only surpassed by that of San Pedro and that of Florence.. Next to the Duomo was the Civic Tower, which has been mentioned since 1330, later built in 1583 by Pellegrino Tibaldi and collapsed on March 17, 1989.
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Basilica of Saint Michael the Greater
The Basilica of Saint Michael the Greater (in Italian San Michele Maggiore) is the most famous and important medieval religious monument in the city. A masterpiece of Lombard Romanesque, the church contains numerous testimonies from the period in which Pavia was the capital of the Italian kingdom. A first church dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel was built, at the wish of King Grimoaldo between 662 and 671, on the site of the chapel of the Lombard Palace, but it was destroyed by fire in 1004; the current construction began in the first quarter of the XII century, to which were added the crypt, choir and transepts and was probably completed around 1130. The Basilica of St. Michael is considered the project of the many medieval churches of Pavia: however, it differs from the other churches in the city due to its extensive use, both in terms of structure and decoration, of fragile sandstone rather than terracotta, and also for its particular and complex architecture, which includes a Latin cross plan, three galleried naves and a specially developed transept, with its own autonomous façade on the north side. Over the centuries, the basilica hosted sumptuous ceremonies and coronations, including the coronations of Berengar I (888), Guy III (889), Louis III (900), Rudolf II (922), Hugh of Arles (926), Berengar II and his son Adalberto II (950), Arduino (1002), Enrique II (1004) and Federico Barbarossa (1155).
Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro
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Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, whose origins date back to the early 8th century century, was, according to tradition, founded by the Lombard king Liutprando and rebuilt from the XI century. The present church was consecrated in 1132. The façade, dome and mosaic floor are similar to St. Michael the Greater, but are distinguished from this by the heavy use of terracotta rather than sandstone. The façade is asymmetrical and has a single portal.
Inside, next to the last pillar of the right nave, is the tomb of King Liutprando. The church also houses the relics of Saint Augustine, brought here by Liutprando from Sardinia, which are kept in the famous Ark of Saint Augustine. The marble Ark was built by the Campionese Masters in 1362 and is adorned with at least 150 statues and bas-reliefs. The church is also named after Dante Alighieri, who, in canto X of the Divine Comedy, of Paradise, vv. 127-129, referring to the soul of Severino Boethius, philosopher and adviser to the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, executed by them on charges of treason, whose body is kept in the crypt.
Church of Santa Maria del Carmen
The Church of Santa Maria del Carmo is one of the best-known examples of brick Gothic architecture in northern Italy. The construction of the grandiose building began between 1370 and 1390, to be completed, with the façade, after approximately a century. After the Cathedral, it is the largest church in the city, with a rectangular perimeter of 80 x 40 meters, the façade is characteristic for the large rose window and the seven towers. The interior is a Latin cross with three naves flanked by chapels.
The elegant bell tower, over seventy meters high, is considered the largest and most beautiful in the city. It was restored between 2006 and 2010.
Church of Santa Maria de Canepanova
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The Church of Santa Maria de Canepanova is an authentic architectural jewel of the Renaissance. It was perhaps designed by Bramante and certainly built by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo between 1500 and 1507. The church was built to celebrate a miraculous fresco from the 15th century that represents the Virgin of the Milk that was located on the facade of a house of the Canepanova family, of which by the name of the church itself. With a square plan, the interior decoration was carried out at the beginning of the XVII century by important painters of the Baroque school.
Church of San Teodoro
Church of San Teodoro, is a Romanesque church in Lombard terracotta located in the historic center of Pavia. It dates from the 12th century. It has a basilica plan with three apses, of which the central one is deeper, divided into three naves of three sections each, with the cruise just mentioned. The original appearance was restored with restorations carried out in the 20th century. It houses cycles of frescoes depicting the Stories of Saint Agnes and Saint Theodore (1514) and two important frescoes attributed to Bernardino Lanzani with views of Pavia from the XVI.
Church of Saint Francis of Assisi
Church of Saint Francis of Assisi: built in the Gothic style between 1228 and 1298, it preserves works of great importance, such as the altarpiece with Saint Matthew by Vincenzo Campi and was used by the Visconti to house the tombs of relatives or important personalities; In fact, Elizabeth of France, Carlo and Azzone (son of Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Elizabeth of France), the Marquis Manfred V of Saluzzo, Baldo degli Ubaldi and, later, Facino Cane were buried there.
Crypt of Sant'Eusebio
The church of Sant'Eusebius was founded by the Rotarian king in the VIIth century as an Arian cathedral of the city. The church was demolished in 1923, but the crypt was preserved. The building, rebuilt in the XI century, preserves parts of the previous Lombard church, such as the capitals, far removed from classical art.
Church of San Giovanni Domnarum
The church of San Giovanni Domnarum was founded by Queen Gundeperga, wife of Rotario, who was possibly buried in the church. The building, built on Roman baths, was almost completely rebuilt in the 17th century. The crypt remains of the oldest church, which incorporates Roman and Lombard remains, and the bell tower.
Church of Santa Maria in Betlem
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The church of Santa Maria in Betlem was rebuilt in 1130 and was built on top of a previous oratory from the Carolingian period, remains of which remain under the floor of the current church. The church, near which there was a hospital for the care of pilgrims and the sick, depended on the Bishop of Bethlehem and has Romanesque forms.
Basilica of the Most Holy Salvadore
Basilica of Santissimo Salvatore: it was founded in 657 by the Lombard king Ariberto I as a mausoleum for the kings of the Bavarian dynasty. Ariberto I, Pertarito, Cuniberto, Liutperto and Ariberto II were buried there. By the will of Adelaide of Italy, Mayolo of Cluny created a monastery near the church in 971. It was rebuilt between 1453 and 1511 by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo in the Renaissance style.
Church of San Lanfranco
Church of San Lanfranco: founded in the XI century, it was rebuilt in the first decades of the XIII in Romanesque style, it preserves inside the marble chest created by Giovanni Antonio Amadeo in 1489 to contain the relics of San Lanfranco Beccari.
Monastery of San Felice
The Monastery of San Felice was founded by the Lombard king Desiderius in 760. It was suppressed in 1785 and now houses some departments of the University of Pavia. It preserves frescoed tombs from the Lombard period, an early medieval crypt with marble sarcophagi from the X century and Renaissance structures, such as the great cloister rebuilt between 1493 and 1500.
Monastery of Santa Maria Teodote
The Monastery of Santa Maria Teodote, also known as Santa Maria della Pusterla, was one of the oldest and most important female monasteries in Pavia. Founded between 679 and 700 by the Lombard king Cunibert, it was suppressed in 1799 and has housed the diocesan seminary since 1868. The complex preserves the remains of a tower from the Lombard period, while the cloister and the chapel of San Salvatore were rebuilt at the end of the 15th century in Renaissance style.
Civil architecture
Covered Bridge
The Covered Bridge, also called the Old Bridge, connects the old town, located on the left bank of the Ticino River, with Borgo Ticino, a neighborhood that was originally outside the city walls. It was built in 1351-1354 and damaged during World War II by Allied bombing and sadly demolished after the war. The current one, inaugurated in 1951, is a copy of the old bridge, not entirely faithful to the original; it is larger and is 30 meters downstream from the original. In periods of lower river flow, the foundations of the original pillars can be seen.
Pavian Broletto
The Broletto of Pavia was built between the 12th and 13th centuries, it was the seat of the Pavia town hall until 1875 and now houses the IUSS School of Advanced Studies of the University of Pavia and is also used as a venue for temporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.
Eustachi House
Casa degli Eustachi is a small Gothic-style brick building built in the first decades of the 15th century by Pasino Eustachi, captain of the fleet of Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Filippo Maria Visconti.
Carminali Bottigella Palace
Carminali Bottigella Palace is a noble palace built by the ancient Beccaria family of Pavia. The original Sforza-era structure was built between 1490 and 1499. The façade, which preserves the original terracotta decorations, is one of the main examples of Renaissance civil construction in Pavia.
Palazzo Cornazzani
Palazzo Cornazzani: this is a building dating from the XV century, which was inhabited, at different times, by Antonio de Zúñiga y Sotomayor, Michele Bonelli, Ugo Foscolo, Ada Negri and, between 1895 and 1896, Albert Einstein.
Almo Collegio Borromeo
The Almo Collegio Borromeo was founded by Saint Charles Borromeo in 1561 and is one of the oldest colleges in Pavia. The palace was built by Pellegrino Tibaldi in the Mannerist style and preserves, in addition to the rooms with frescoes by Cesare Nebbia and Federico Zuccari, also two large gardens: one in the Italian style and the other in the English style.
Ghislieri College
Ghislieri College was founded by Pope Pius V in 1567, the building was built by Pellegrino Tibaldi in Mannerist style and preserves numerous reception rooms, most of them decorated during the 17th century XVII.
Castiglioni Brugnatelli College
The Castiglioni Brugnatelli College was founded by Cardinal Branda Castiglioni in 1429. The Gothic-style building preserves a chapel frescoed by Bonifacio Bembo in 1475.
Palazzo Mezzabarba
Palazzo Mezzabarba was built in the Rococo style by the aristocratic Mezzabarba family of Pavia between 1726 and 1732, demolishing the previous Renaissance-style family palace. In 1875 it became the seat of the Pavia town hall.
Fraschini Theater
The Fraschini Theater was built by four noblemen: Count Francesco Gamberana Beccarla, Marquis Pio Bellisomi, Marquis Luigi Bellingeri Provera and Count Giuseppe de Giorgi Vistarino. That is why the original name was Theater of the Four Noble Knights (Teatro dei Quattro Nobili Cavalieri). The project is by Antonio Galli da Bibbiena, a member of an old and well-known family of set designers-architects. The works for the construction of the Theater began in 1771 and the theater inaugurated its first season in 1773, in the presence of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria. The theater was inaugurated on May 24, 1773 with the opera Il Demetrio, composed by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček on verses by Pietro Metastasio.
Within a century, however, the Society was in danger of going bankrupt and consequently closing the theatre. The municipality of Pavia then intervened and, in 1869, bought the theater, which was later named after the Pavese tenor Gaetano Fraschini.
Monuments
Statue of Minerva
The statue of Minerva, about 8 meters high, was made by Francesco Messina with the head and arms in bronze and the rest in porphyry. It was inaugurated on January 11, 1939 in the presence of the fascist Minister of National Education Giuseppe Bottai. There are some legends about the fact that the statue in a sign of contempt turns its back on its rival Milan or about the position of the spear that the goddess holds in her hand and that it is strangely oriented downwards instead of towards the sky although It's probably just a mounting error.
Military architecture
Viscoteo Castle
The castle Visconteo'''UNIQ--nowiki-000000EC-QINU`''70''UNIQ--nowiki-000000ED-QINU`' by Pavia (in Italian: castello Visconteo) was built between 1360-1366 by order of Galeazzo II Visconti—then Mister of Milan (r. 1349-1378) together with his brothers Matthew II and Barnabas—who moved his court there after the conquest of Pavia by the Milanes. Then the building was the seat of the court of both Gian Galeazzo (r. 1378-1402), the first Duke of Milan from 1395, and up to 1413, of his son Filippo Maria (r. 1412-1447). The Visconti also wanted to have a great hunting park (Visconti park), which originally extended a ten kilometers, to where today is the Pavia Cartuja; part of that hunting territory is preserved as a park of the Vernavola, but is no longer connected to the castle.
Like many other castles of the Visconti, Pavia has a square design (150 meters per side) with square corner towers and subdivision of the buildings in square sections. The northern part of the castle was destroyed by French artillery during the siege of 1527, and instead is now a section of the wall built by the Spaniards in the mid-16th century. Since the Second World War, the castle also houses the Civic Museums of Pavia. The exhibition spaces are divided according to the historical period linked to the exhibits. The museums housed in the castle are the « archaeological museum and lombard room», the «Romantic and Renaissance museum», the «Pinacoteca Malaspina», the «museum of the '600 del' 700», the «Panacoteca del '800» the «museo del Risorgimento» and the «museo de arte moderna y escayolas».
Entrance to Castello
Front of the Visconteo castle tower that housed the library.
The southeast truncated side; on the left, you see the remains of the Spanish walls where once the northeast side was destroyed in 1527.
The northwest side with the entrance to the Civic Museums of Pavia.
Mirabello Castle
The Mirabello Castle from the XIV century stands in the town of Mirabello. The castle was built on the ruins of a tower from the late XIII century by the Fiamberti family of Pavia between 1325 and 1341, after 1360 it became the property of the Visconti, who rebuilt it. The castle was part of the great Visconti park, which stretched from the Visconteo castle to the Pavia Charterhouse, and was the seat of the park captain.
Pavia Towers
Characteristic of the historic center of Pavia is the presence of noble medieval towers that survive in its urban fabric, despite having been more numerous, as evidenced by the representation of the city of the century XVI frescoed in the church of San Teodoro. They were mostly built between the 11th and 13th centuries, when the Ghibelline city was at the height of its Romanesque flourishing. The towers present in Pavia, according to the historical and iconographic documentation, must have been about 65, of which about 25 are preserved.
Culture
Museums
Pavia has a remarkable artistic treasure, a legacy of the city's prestigious past, divided into several museums. The Civic Museums of Pavia (located in the Visconti Castle) are divided into several sections: Archaeological, which preserves one of the richest collections of Roman glass in northern Italy and important artifacts and archaeological finds from the Lombard period, such as the pluteos of Theodote and the collection (the largest in Italy) of Lombard epigraphs, some of which belong to the tombs of kings or queens. Then there is the Romanesque and Renaissance section that exhibits sculpture, architecture, and mosaics. The Romanesque collection is very rich, one of the largest in northern Italy, which also preserves important oriental architectural plates from the Islamic and Byzantine East that adorned the facades of churches and buildings. Works by Jacopino da Tradate, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, Cristoforo and Antonio Mantegazza and Annibale Fontana are also on display. The Civic Museums also house the Risorgimento museum, which dedicates a special space to the social, economic and cultural life of Pavia between the 18th and 19th centuries, the collection of African objects collected by Luigi Robecchi Bricchetti during his explorations and the numismatic collection, which It houses more than 50,000 coins, most of them belonging to Camillo Brambilla, spanning a chronological period between classical Greek issues and modern coinage.
The Pinacoteca Malaspina (part of the Civic Museums of Pavia) established by the Marquis Luigi Malaspina di Sannazzaro (Pavia 1754-1834), houses works by important artists of the Italian and international scene, from the XIII to XX century, such as Gentile da Fabriano, Vincenzo Foppa, Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messina, Bernardino Luini, Correggio, Paolo Veronese, Guido Reni, Francesco Hayez, Giovanni Segantini and Renato Guttuso. The monumental wooden model of the Pavia Cathedral from 1497 is also on display inside the art gallery.
The network of museums of the university is very extensive, made up of the Museum of History of the University of Pavia, divided between the Section of Medicine, which also exhibits anatomical and pathological preparations, surgical instruments (the surgical paraphernalia of Giovanni Alessandro Brambilla) and life-size anatomical waxes, made by the Florentine ceroplast Clemente Susini and the Physics Section that houses Alessandro Volta's physics cabinet (where hundreds of scientific instruments from the 18th and 19th centuries are exhibited, some belonging to Alessandro Volta).
The University's Museum of Archeology was established by Pier Vittorio Aldini in 1819 and houses prehistoric, Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan (including a collection of clay ex-votos donated by Pope Pius XI) and Roman (some from Pompeii) objects The Pavia Natural History Museum (Kosmos), located inside the Botta Adorno Palace, is one of the oldest in Italy, in fact it was founded by Lazzaro Spallanzani in 1771 and preserves a natural heritage of high scientific value and historical, which includes nearly 400,000 finds spread across the zoology, comparative anatomy, and paleontology collections. Then there is the Golgi Museum, located in the same environments where both Camillo Golgi and his students worked, rooms and laboratories that preserve both the original furniture and the scientific instruments of the time, to allow the visitor to enter an interior of the century XIX. century research center XXI; while the Museum of Electrical Technology, built in 2007, illustrates the history of electrical technology in five sections. Then come the Museum of Chemistry, the Museum of Physics, and the Museum of Mineralogy, founded by Lazzaro Spallanzani. It is under construction. the Diocesan Museum, which will be located in the Romanesque crypt of Santa Maria del Popolo.
Kitchen
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Capital of a province in the shape of a bunch of grapes, as defined by Gianni Brera, there are many fruits that this land offers and which are the origin of various local dishes. The wealth of springs and watercourses have made Pavia and its territory one of the main Italian centers of rice production, so it is no coincidence that there are numerous recipes that allow you to discover the thousand faces of this cereal, such as risotto Carthusian, according to the legend created by the Carthusian monks, based on Norway lobster, carrots and onions, risotto with beans or sausage and bonarda and risotto with common hops (ürtis in Pavese dialect). Among the first courses, in addition to rice, the pavese soup also stands out, created, according to tradition, by a peasant woman with the few ingredients at her disposal (broth, eggs and cheese) to feed the King of France Francisco I after the disastrous defeat at the gates of the city.
Among the second courses we can mention the ragò alla pavese, a local variant of the more famous cassoeula, lighter because it is cooked only with pork ribs, the stew alla pavese, the büseca (beef tripe alla pavese), marrow with peas (os büš cum i erbion) and escaped birds (üslin scapà ) slices of beef stuffed with bacon and sage. According to local tradition, the meat, especially boiled, is served accompanied by two types of sauces: peverata (already mentioned by Opicinus de Canistris in the XIV) based on peppers, celery, anchovies and eggs, and the green bagnet, prepared with parsley, anchovies, garlic and capers. In addition to meat dishes, Pavia's cuisine is also characterized by numerous freshwater fish dishes, such as eel alla borghigiana (which takes its name from the old suburb of the city on the other side of Ticino, after Ponte Coperto), trout in white wine and omelette with bleak, not forgetting frogs, inserted into risotto or served in stew, and snails, cooked with porcini mushrooms.
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Among the desserts, in addition to the well-known paradise cake, the pumpkin pie (turtâ d'sücâ), the San Sirini, small round cakes made of sponge cake, abundantly soaked in rum and covered in dark chocolate, made in the weeks around December 9, the day of San Siro, and sfâsö, typical pancakes cooked in carnival. Clearly, each dish must be paired with wines from the nearby Oltrepò Pavese. Finally, despite being a typical Milanese dessert, the oldest and most reliable testimony of panettone is found in a record of expenses of the Borromeo College of Pavia in 1599: the 23 December of that year on the list of planned lunch courses Christmas Costs They also appear for 5 pounds of butter, 2 of raisins, and 3 ounces of spices given to the baker to make 13 "loaves" to be given to college students on Christmas Day.
Parks and gardens
The municipality of Pavia is part of the Ticino Valley Natural Park in Lombardy and preserves two forests (Bosco Siro Negri Strict Nature Reserve and Bosco Grande Nature Reserve) that show us the original state of nature in the Po Valley before the arrival of the Romans, before human settlement. To the north and east of the city, a small stream, born from the springs, the Vernavola, gives rise to a deep valley, escaped from urbanization, which houses the Vernavola Park, while to the west, the green ring around Pavia is closed by Parque Sora. 9% of the surface of the municipality of Pavía is occupied by natural spaces, parks or gardens (about 594 hectares, 1467 acres, of which 312 are covered with hardwood forests).
- Vernavola Park: large park, heir to Visconti Park, with an extension of 35 hectares located north of the city. In the park is waged the battle of Pavia of 1525.
- Parque natural lombardo del Valle del Ticino: regional park located on the banks of the river Tesino from Lake Mayor to the river Po. It forms a green belt around the city.
Vernavola Park. - Bosco Grande Nature Reserve: the Bosco Grande covers an area of about 22 hectares (corresponding to approximately 54,34 acres) southwest of Pavia, represents one of the last remnants of that lowland forest that in the past covered the valley of the Po and of which there is an important testimony in the Lombard Natural Park of the Valley of the Tesino.
- Strict nature reserve Bosco Siro Negri: the reserve is a small strip of the Po valley that was donated to the University of Pavia in 1967 by Giuseppe Negri, a wood merchant and a great lover of nature. The reservation is located near the Tesino, a few kilometres from the center of Pavia. The forests show us the original state of nature before the arrival of the Romans, before the human settlement. The reserve covers an area of 34 hectares, corresponding to approximately 84 acres.
- Sora Park: along the Ticino, northwest, near the church of San Lanfranco is the Sora Park, which spans about 40 hectares, within which there are several high environmental microenvirons.
Arnaldo Pomodoro, Triade1979, Horti Borromaici. - Horti Borromaici: The Horti are a vast urban park, with an area of about 3.5 hectares, located in the historical center of Pavia, between the Collegio Borromeo (which owns it) and Tesino, where the natural habitat is found with contemporary art, knowledge and social inclusion. The park includes a vast naturalist area, where more than 3000 native trees and shrubs have been planted, and an outdoor contemporary art exhibition area, featuring works by: Arnaldo Pomodoro, Nicola Carrino, Gianfranco Pardi, Luigi Mainolfi, Mauro Staccioli, Salvatore Cuschera, Marco Lodola, Ivan Tresoldi and David Tremlett
- Jardines de Malaspina: public gardens in the historical center of the city (Plaza Petrarca), created between 1838 and 1840, by the Marquis Luigi Malaspina as an English garden of his palace and place of concerts and cultural events and preserve a small temple and some neoclassical sculpture.
- Pavia Botanical Garden: established in 1773, covers an area of 2 hectares. It is organized mainly in living collections of plants such as rosaleda, teabed, orchid greenhouse, tropical greenhouse, greenhouse of utilitarian plants (designed in 1776 by Giuseppe Piermarini), arboreto, bananas, flower beds of native plants of the Lombard Plain, living collections of seeds and collections of drying.
Economy
Agriculture
63.3% of the surface of the municipality of Pavía (about 4,000 hectares) is devoted to agriculture and in particular to the cultivation of rice (about 2,400 hectares), which spread from the XIV, mainly in swampy terrain until becoming, especially from the XVIII, in the main crop. The large amounts of water required by rice have led to the design and construction of a very dense irrigation network over the centuries that still characterizes the landscape of the Pavia countryside today. It should also be noted that the city is the capital of the Italian province with the highest rice production in the country: more than 84,000 hectares of provincial land are used for rice paddies. The province of Pavía alone produces as much rice as the whole of Spain. The rest of the crops present in the municipal area are corn and wheat (1,376 hectares), groves (636 hectares), while very limited areas are devoted to pastures (158 hectares), orchards and orchards (29.30 hectares). Still within the territory of the municipality of Pavía, there are still around fifty farms dedicated to agricultural activity, 18 of which house cattle farms, where about 820 heads are raised.
Industry
The city experienced a strong industrial development from the 1880s, so much so that it also hosted establishments of national importance, such as Necchi or the first great Italian factory for artificial silk and synthetic fabrics, the Snia Viscosa, built in 1905. 1951 almost 27% of the workforce in Pavia was employed in the industrial sector. From the 1970s XX, the city experienced a sudden deindustrialization that caused the closure of many companies, especially in the chemical and mechanical sectors, while those related to the food sector, such as Riso Scotti, pharmaceuticals, and those related to packaging and packaging.