Ticinum

Ticinum (the modern Pavia) was an ancient city of Gallia Transpadana, founded on the banks of the river of the same name (now the Ticino) a little way above its confluence with the Padus (Po).

It was said by Pliny the Elder to have been founded by the Laevi and Marici, two Ligurian tribes, while Ptolemy attributes it to the Insubres. Its importance in Roman times was due to the extension of the Via Aemilia from Ariminum (Rimini) to the Padus (or Po) (187 BC), which it crossed at Placentia (Piacenza) and there forked, one branch going to Mediolanum (Milan) 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 (Turin) or to Pollentia.

In 271 the Emperor Aurelian defeated a retreating army of Juthungi at the Battle of Ticinum. Ticinum was the site of a mint, transferred from Mediolanum by Aurelian in 275, which remained active until closed by Constantine the Great in 326.

The city was pillaged by Attila in 452 and by Odoacer in 476, but rose to importance as a military centre in the Gothic period. At Dertona and here the grain stores of Liguria were placed, and Theodoric the Great constructed a palace, baths and amphitheatre and new town walls; while an inscription of Athalaric relating to repairs of seats in the amphitheatre is preserved (529). Boethius wrote De consolatione philosophiae while imprisoned at Ticinum before his execution in late 525 or early 526. From this point, too, navigation on the Padus seems to have begun. Narses recovered it for the Eastern Empire, but after a long siege, the garrison had to surrender to the Lombards in 572.

Saint Damian of Pavia was bishop of the city from 680 to 710.

The picturesque covered bridge, the Ponte Coperto or Ponte Vecchio, which joins Pavia to the suburb on the right bank of the river, was preceded by a Roman bridge, of which only one pillar, in blocks of granite from the Baveno quarries, exists under the remains of the central arch of the medieval bridge, the rest having no doubt served as material for the latter. The medieval bridge dates from 1351 to 1354. It was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War and subsequently rebuilt in a similar shape and position.