Pavia
Pavia is a town and comune of south-western Lombardy, in Northern Italy, south of Milan on the lower Ticino near its confluence with the Po. It has a population of c. 73,086.
The city was a major political centre in the medieval period, being the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom from 540 to 553, of the Kingdom of the Lombards from 572 to 774, of the Kingdom of Italy from 774 to 1024 and seat of the Visconti court from 1365 to 1413.
Pavia is the capital of the fertile province of Pavia, which is known for a variety of agricultural products, including wine, rice, cereals, and dairy products. Although there are a number of industries located in the suburbs, these tend not to disturb the peaceful atmosphere of the town. It is home to the ancient University of Pavia, which together with the IUSS, Ghislieri College, Borromeo College, Nuovo College, Santa Caterina College, and the Istituto per il Diritto allo Studio, belongs to the Pavia Study System. The 15th-century Policlinico San Matteo is one of the most important hospitals in Italy. Pavia is the episcopal seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Pavia. In the area there are many artistic and cultural treasures, including several important churches and museums, such as the well known Certosa di Pavia. The municipality of Pavia is part of the Parco naturale lombardo della Valle del Ticino and preserves two forests.
Toponymy
In Roman times, Pavia was called Ticinum. It began to be called Papia, whence Pavia, only since Lombard times, one of the very few Roman municipia in Italy that changed their names during the early Middle Ages. The origin of the modern name is uncertain.History
Early history
Dating back to pre-Roman times, the town of Pavia was said by Pliny the Elder to have been founded by the Laevi and Marici, two Ligurian, or Celto-Ligurian, tribes, while Ptolemy attributes it to the Insubres, a Celtic population. The Roman city, known as Ticinum, was a municipality and an important military site under the Roman Empire. It most likely began as a small military camp built by the consul Publius Cornelius Scipio in 218 BCE to guard a wooden bridge he had built over the river Ticinum, on his way to search for Hannibal, who was rumoured to have managed to lead an army over the Alps and into Italy. The forces of Rome and Carthage ran into each other soon thereafter, and the Romans suffered the first of many crushing defeats at the hands of Hannibal, with the consul himself almost losing his life. The bridge was destroyed, but the fortified camp, which at the time was the most forward Roman military outpost in the Po Valley, somehow survived the long Second Punic War, and gradually evolved into a garrison town.Its importance grew with the extension of the Via Aemilia from Ariminum to the river Po, which it crossed at Placentia and there forked, one branch going to Mediolanum and the other to Ticinum, and thence to Laumellum where it divided once more, one branch going to Vercellae – and thence to Eporedia and Augusta Praetoria – and the other to Valentia – and thence to Augusta Taurinorum.
The town was built on levelled ground with square blocks. The "cardo Maximus" road corresponded to the current Strada Nuova up to the Roman bridge while the "decumanus" road corresponded to corso Cavour-corso Mazzini. Under most of the streets of the historic center there are still the brick ducts of the Roman sewer system which continued to function throughout the Middle Ages and the modern age without interruption, until about 1970. Pavia was important as a Military site because of the easy access to water communications up to the Adriatic Sea and because of its defence structures.
In 325 Martin of Tours came to Pavia as a child following his father, a Roman officer. Pavia was the seat of an important Roman mint between 273 and 326.
The reign of Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire ended at Pavia in 476 CE, and Roman rule thereby ceased in Italy. Romulus Augustulus, while considered the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was actually a usurper of the imperial throne; his father Flavius Orestes dethroned the previous emperor, Julius Nepos, and raised the young Romulus Augustulus to the imperial throne at Ravenna in 475. Though being the emperor, Romulus Augustulus was simply the mouthpiece for his father Orestes, who was the person who actually exercised power and governed Italy during Romulus Augustulus' short reign. Ten months after Romulus Augustulus's reign began, Orestes's soldiers under the command of one of his officers named Odoacer, rebelled and killed Orestes in the city of Pavia in 476. The rioting that took place as part of Odoacer's uprising against Orestes sparked fires that burnt much of Pavia to the point that Odoacer, as the new king of Italy, had to suspend the taxes for the city for five years so that it could finance its recovery. Without his father, Romulus Augustulus was powerless. Instead of killing Romulus Augustulus, Odoacer pensioned him off at 6,000 solidi a year before declaring the end of the Western Roman Empire and himself king of the new Kingdom of Italy.
Odoacer's reign as king of Italy did not last long, because in 488 the Ostrogothic peoples led by their king Theoderic invaded Italy and waged war against Odoacer. After fighting for 5 years, Theoderic defeated Odoacer and on 15 March 493, assassinated Odoacer at a banquet meant to negotiate a peace between the two rulers. With the establishment of the Ostrogoth kingdom based in northern Italy, Theoderic began his vast program of public building. Pavia was among several cities that Theodoric chose to restore and expand. He began the construction of the vast palace complex that would eventually become the residence of Lombard monarchs several decades later. Theoderic also commissioned the building of the Roman-styled amphitheatre and bath complex in Pavia; in the seventh century these would be among the few still functioning bath complexes in Europe outside of the Eastern Roman Empire. Near the end of Theoderic'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 the Consolation of Philosophy.
File:Musei civici6.jpg|thumb|left|Ostrogothic belt buckle, Civic Museums
Pavia played an important role in the war between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ostrogoths that began in 535. After the Eastern Roman general Belisarius's victory over the Ostrogothic leader Wittigis in 540 and the loss of most of the Ostrogoth lands in Italy, Pavia was among the last centres of Ostrogothic resistance that continued the war and opposed 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 opposing Eastern Roman rule. Since 540 Pavia became the permanent capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, stable site of the court and the royal treasury. The resilience of Ostrogoth strongholds like Pavia against invading forces allowed pockets of Ostrogothic rule to limp along until finally being defeated in 561.
Pavia and the peninsula of Italy did not remain long under the rule of the Eastern Roman Empire, for in 568 CE a new people invaded Italy: the Lombards. In their invasion of Italy in 568, the Lombards were led by their king Alboin, who would become the first Lombard king of Italy. Alboin captured much of northern Italy in 568 but his progress was halted 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 at this time held out bravely, withstanding a siege more than three years, while the army of the Langobards remained close at hand on the western side. Meanwhile, Alboin, after driving out the soldiers, took possession of everything as far as Tuscany except Rome and Ravenna and some other fortified places which were situated on the shore of the sea." The Siege of Ticinum finally ended with the Lombards capturing the city of Pavia in 572. Pavia's strategic location and the Ostrogoth palaces located within it would make Pavia by the 620s the main capital of the Lombards' Kingdom of Pavia and the main residence for the Lombard rulers.
Lombard capital
Under Lombard rule many monasteries, nunneries, and churches were built at Pavia by the devout Christian Lombard monarchs. Even though the first Lombard kings were Arian Christians, sources from the period such as Paul the Deacon have recorded that the Arian Lombards were very tolerant of their Catholic subjects' faith and that up to the 690s Arian and Catholic cathedrals coexisted in Pavia. Lombard kings, queens, and nobles would engage in building churches, monasteries, and nunneries as a method to demonstrate their piety and their wealth by extravagantly decorating these structures which in many cases would become the site of that person's tomb, as in the case of Grimoald who built San Ambrogio in Pavia and buried there after his death in 671. File:Cunip.jpg|left|thumb|Tombstones of King Cunipert, Civic Museums Aripert I had the basilica of Santissimo Salvatore built in 657, which became the mausoleum of the kings of the Bavarian dynasty. Perctarit and his son Cunicpert built a nunnery and a church at Pavia during their reigns. Lombard churches were sometimes named after those who commissioned their construction, such as San Maria Theodota in Pavia. The monastery of San Michele alla Pusterla located at Pavia was the royal monastery of the Lombard kings.church San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro was commissioned by a Lombard king in Pavia, Liutprand and it would become the site of his tomb as well as two other Christian figures. In building San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro the unit of measurement used by the builders was the length of Liutprand's royal foot. The first important Christian figure interred at San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro was the previously mentioned philosopher Boethius, author of The Consolation of Philosophy, who is located in the cathedral's crypt. The third and largest tomb of the three located in San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro contains the remains of St. Augustine of Hippo. St. Augustine is the early fifth-century Christian writer from Roman North Africa whose works such as On Christian Doctrine revolutionized the way in which the Christian scripture is interpreted and understood. On 1 October 1695, artisans working in San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro rediscovered St. Augustine's remains after lifting up some of the paving stones that compose the cathedral's floor. Liutprand was a very devout Christian and like many of the Lombard kings was zealous about collecting relics of saints. Liutprand paid a great deal to have the relics removed from Cagliari and brought to Pavia so that they would be out of the reach and safe from the Saracens on Sardinia where St. Augustine's remains had been resting. Very little of Liutprand's original church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro consecrated by Pope Zacharias in 743 remains today. Originally the roof of its apse was decorated with mosaics, making San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro the first instance of mosaics being used to decorate a Lombard church. It is now a modern church with the only significant link to its antiquity being its round apse. The Lombards built their churches in a very Romanesque style, with the best example of Lombard churches from the period of Lombardic rule being the Basilica of San Michele still intact at Pavia.
As the kingdom's capital, Pavia in the late seventh century also became one of the central locations of the Lombards' efforts to mint their own coinage. The bust of the Lombard king would have been etched on the coins as a symbolic gesture so that those who used the coins, mostly Lombard nobles, would understand that king had the ultimate power and control of 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 city's pre-eminence over the other urban centres in the military organization of the seasonal wars. The city of Pavia played a key role in the war between the Lombard Kingdom of Pavia and the Franks led by Charlemagne. In 773, Charlemagne king of the Franks declared war and invaded across the Alps into northern Italy defeating the Lombard army commanded by king Desiderius. Between the autumn of 773 and June of 774 Charlemagne laid siege to Pavia first and then Verona, capturing the seat of Lombard power and quickly crushing any resistance from the northern Lombard fortified cities. Pavia had been the official capital of the Lombards since the 620s, but it was also the place upon where the Lombard Kingdom in Italy ended. Upon entering Pavia in triumph, Charlemagne crowned himself king of the lands of the former Kingdom of Pavia. The Lombard kingdom and its northern territories from then onwards were a sub-kingdom of the Frankish Empire, while the Lombard southern duchy of Benevento persisted for several centuries longer with relative independence and autonomy.
There is little information, but, again in the eighth century, a Jewish community was also present in Pavia: Alcuin of York recalls a religious disputation that took place in the city between 750 and 766 between the Jew Julius of Pavia and the Christian Peter of Pisa.