PAVIA, a city of Italy, the chief town of a province, and a bishop’s see, is situated at a height of 270 feet above the sea-level, 22⅛ miles by rail south of Milan, on the left bank of the Ticino, about 2 miles above its junction with the Po. The railway from Milan to Genoa, which is there joined by lines from Cremona, &c., crosses the river on a fine bridge constructed in 1865; and, farther down, the city is connected with the suburban village of Ticino by a remarkable brick-built covered bridge dating from the 14th century. Though it has lost its importance as a fortified town, and no longer deserves the designation of “City of the Hundred Towers,” Pavia is still for the most part surrounded by its ramparts, which in a circuit of about 3∣ miles enclose an area of 400 acres. Several of its buildings are of great architectural interest. The basilica of San Michele is one of the finest specimens extant of the Lombard style (cf. Architecture, vol. ii. p. 435), and as it was within its walls that the crown was placed on the head of the “kings of Italy,” from whom the house of Savoy claims to be descended, it has received the legal title of Basilica Reale (royal decree of 1863). A careful restoration has since been effected. The cathedral of San Stefano, of which the first stone was laid by Bishop Ascanio Sforza in 1488, is still unfinished, the original design by Cristoforo Rocchi, a pupil of Bramante, consisting of a central octagon from which four arms projected so as to form a cross. In the interior is the tomb of St Augustine, a remarkable specimen of 14th-century sculpture, which presents the saint life-size in pontifical robes, and is surrounded by a profusion of bas-reliefs and minor figures representing saints of his order, liberal arts, and cardinal ...virtues—in all, 420 heads. The relics which it enshrines are said to have been brought from Hippo to Sardinia by African refugees, purchased in 724 by Liutprand, and deposited in the now ruined church of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro, and thence transferred to the cathedral subsequent to their rediscovery in 1695. Beneath the high altar is the tomb of Boetius, whose remains were also brought from San Pietro; and from the roof of the building is suspended the lance of Roland (Orlando). Of secular edifices in Pavia the most noteworthy is the palace or castle of the Visconti, begun in 1360 for Galeazzo II. It is a vast quadrangle, presenting to the outside heavy fronts of massive masonry, but in the 15th and 16th centuries it was as remarkable for sumptuousness as for strength. Originally there was a square tower at each corner; two were destroyed by the French artillery in 1527. The university of Pavia (formally constituted in 1361 by the emperor Charles IV., but claiming to have its first origin in a school founded by Charlemagne) has faculties of law, medicine, and science. The professors number between forty and fifty, but the students have decreased from 1475 in 1860 to 604 in 1881-82. Among its subsidiary establishments are two colleges—the Borromeo and the Ghislieri—founded respectively by Archbishop Borromeo (1563) and Pope Pius V. (1569) for the gratuitous maintenance of a certain number of poor students; a museum of natural history, instituted in 1772 under Spallanzani; a botanical garden, commenced in 1774; an agricultural garden, bestowed on the university by Napoleon in 1806; and the oldest anatomical cabinet in Italy. The university library was founded by Maria Theresa in 1754; the famous collection of books which Gian Galeazzo brought together by the aid of Petrarch was carried off to Blois by the French in 1500. The civil hospital of San Matteo is a large and flourishing institution, dating from 1449; like the Borromeo and Ghislieri colleges, it has large landed estates in the circondario. Comparatively few manufactures are prosecuted in Pavia, but there is considerable trade by water as well as by rail, barges being able to pass down the Po to the Adriatic and along the canal to Milan. The population of the city was 27,885 in 1871 and 27,792 in 1881, or, including the suburbs Ticino, Calvenzano, and Borgorato, 29,836; that of the commune was 29,618 in 1871 and 29,941 in 1881.
History.— Ticinum—it was not till the close of the 7th century that the city was called Papia or Pavia—was a place of some importance under the Roman empire, having, according to Pliny, been founded by two Gallic tribes at the time of the first Gallic immigration into Italy. It was at Ticinum that Augustus met the funeral procession of Drusus; and Claudius II. was first saluted emperor by the garrison in the city. Ravaged by Attila in 452 and by Odoacer in 476, Ticinum was, after 489, raised to much more than its former position by Theodoric the Goth, who restored its fortifications and made it the seat of a royal palace. From Theodoric’s successors it was recovered for the Eastern empire by Narses; but the imperial garrison, after a siege of more than three years, was obliged by famine to surrender to the Lombards in 573, and Ticinum-Pavia became, as the capital of the Lombard kingdom, one of the leading cities of Italy. By the conquest of Pavia and the capture of Desiderius in 774 Charlemagne completely destroyed the Lombard supremacy; but the city continued to be the centre of the Carolingian power in Italy, and a royal residence was built in the neighbourhood (Corteolona on the Olona). It was in San Michele Maggiore in Pavia that Berengar of Friuli and his quasi-regal successors down to Berengar II. and Adalbert II. were crowned “kings of Italy.” Under the reign of the first the city was sacked and burned by the Hungarians, and the bishop was among those who perished in the flames. At Pavia was celebrated in 951 the marriage of Otto I. and Adelheid (Adelaide), which exercised so important an influence on the relations of the empire and Italy; but, when the succession to the crown of Italy came to be disputed between the emperor Henry II. and Harduin of Ivrea, the city sided strongly with the latter. Laid in ruins by Henry, who was attacked by the citizens on the night after his coronation in 1004, it was none the less ready to close its gates on Conrad the Salic in 1026. The jealousy which had meanwhile been growing up between Pavia and Milan having in 1056 broken out into open war, Pavia in the long run had recourse to the hated emperors to aid her against her now more hated rival; and for the most part she remained, through all the broils and revolutions of the time, attached to the Ghibelline party till the latter part of the 14th century. From 1360, when Galeazzo was appointed imperial vicar by Charles IV., Pavia became practically a possession of the Visconti family, and in due course formed part of the duchy of Milan. For the success which attended its insurrection against the French garrison in 1499 it paid a terrible penalty in 1500, being both given over to pillage and forced to furnish a contribution of 50,000 gold crowns. Having been strongly fortified by Charles V., the city was in 1525 able to bid defiance to Francis I., who was so disastrously beaten in the vicinity; but two years later the French under Lautrec subjected it to a sack of seven days. In 1655 Prince Thomas of Savoy invested Pavia with an army of 20,000 Frenchmen, but had to withdraw after fifty-two days’ siege. During the 18th century the city had its full share of the wars. The Austrians under Prince Eugène occupied it in 1706, the French in 1733, and the French and Spaniards in 1745; and the Austrians were again in possession from 1746 till 1796. In May of that year it was seized for the French republic by Napoleon, who, to punish it for an insurrection, condemned it to three hours’ pillage. The revolutionary movement of February 1848 was crushed by the Austrians and the university was closed; and, though the Sardinian forces obtained possession in March, the Austrians soon recovered their ground. It was not till 1859 that Pavia passed with the rest of Lombardy to the Sardinian crown.
At several periods Pavia has been the centre of great intellectual activity. It was in a tower which, previous to 1584, stood near the church of Dell’ Annunziata that Boetius wrote his De Consolatione Philosophise ; the legal school of Pavia was rendered celebrated in the 11th century by Lanfranc (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury); Christopher Columbus studied at the university about 1447; and printing was introduced in 1471. Two of the bishops of Pavia have been raised to the papal throne as John XIV. and Julius III. Lanfranc, Pope John XIV., Porta the anatomist, and Cremona the mathematician were born in the city.
See Breventano, I storia di Pavia, 1570; Marroni, De ecclesia et episcopis papiensibus commentarius, 1757; Capsoni, Mem. star, di Pavia, 1782; Carpa-neîli, Compendio istorico delie cose pavesi, 1817; and various monographs by the local antiquarians Magenta and Dell’ Acqua.
[1,565 words — estimated reading time: 9 minutes]