History of Milan

Legend has it that Belloveso found a mythological animal known as the scrofa semilanuta (in Italian: "half-wooly boar") which became the ancient emblem of the city of Milan (from semi-lanuta or medio-lanum).

[13] The Celtic sanctuaries, and that of Medhelanon was not an exception, were equipped with a moat, which had the purpose of sacredly defining the urban space, distinguishing the "inside" and the "outside", and at the same time had to protect it from the flowing waters in the territory.

[13] At the current Biblioteca Ambrosiana, in Piazza San Sepolcro, archaeological excavations have revealed the presence, under the stone floor dating back to the 1st century AD.

[25] Other important findings attributable to the Celtic era were found along the south-west side of the Royal Palace, where, five meters below the modern road surface, remains of houses and a furnace were discovered which date back to a period between 5th and 4th centuries BC.

There were Christian communities in Mediolanum, which contributed its share of martyrs during the persecutions,[36] but the first bishop of Milan who has a firm historical presence is Merocles, who was at the Council of Rome of 313.

In the summer of 569, a Germanic tribe, the Lombards (from which the name of the Italian region Lombardy derives), conquered Milan, overpowering the small Byzantine army left for its defense.

[4] As a result of the independence that the Lombard cities gained in the Peace of Constance in 1183, Milan returned to the commune form of local government first established in the 11th century.

The position was a dangerous one: in 1252 Milanese heretics assassinated the Church's Inquisitor, later known as Saint Peter Martyr, at a ford in the nearby contado; the killers bribed their way to freedom, and in the ensuing riot the podestà was almost lynched.

In 1259 Martino della Torre was elected Capitano del Popolo by members of the guilds; he took the city by force, expelled his enemies, and ruled by dictatorial powers, paving streets, digging canals, and taxing the countryside.

He also brought the Milanese treasury to collapse; the use of often reckless mercenary units further angered the population, granting an increasing support for the della Torre's traditional enemies, the Visconti.

The most important industries in this period were armaments and wool production, a whole catalogue of activities and trades is given in Bonvesin della Riva's "de Magnalibus Urbis Mediolani".

[49] In 1386, Archbishop Antonio de' Saluzzi, supported by the population, promoted the reconstruction of a new and larger cathedral (12 May 1386), which was built on the site of the oldest religious heart of the city.

Milan's last independent ruler, Lodovico Sforza, called French king Charles VIII into Italy with the expectation that France might be an ally in inter-Italian wars.

During the 1635–1659 Franco-Spanish War, Milan sent and paid for on average 4,000 soldiers per year to the Spanish crown, with many of these men serving in the Low Countries against the Dutch States Army.

During the end of the reign of Maria Theresa of Austria, throughout the subsequent Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy and the return of Austrian, Milan was the protagonist of a strong cultural and economic rebirth, during which Neoclassicism was the dominant artistic style and the greatest expression.

[67] He conceived the completion of the Sforza Castle with the Foro Buonaparte [it], a project he later rejected due to the excessive cost, but which generated the current road semicircle, which was envisaged around the surviving nucleus of the Sforza Castle (not yet renovated at the time) a new seat of the republican government formed by an imposing Doric colonnade and some buildings that would become the new political center of the city; the only part of the Foro Buonaparte that was actually built were the Arena Civica and the Parco Sempione.

In this historical period, which is called the Risorgimento, on 18 March 1848, Milan effectively rebelled against Austrian rule, during the so-called "Five Days" (Italian: Le Cinque Giornate), that forced Field Marshal Radetzky to temporarily withdraw from the city.

[72] The bordering Kingdom of Piedmont–Sardinia sent troops to protect the insurgents, starting the First Italian War of Independence, and organised a plebiscite that ratified by a huge majority the unification of Lombardy with Piedmont–Sardinia.

[74] Following this battle, Milan and the rest of Lombardy were incorporated into Piedmont-Sardinia, which then proceeded to annex all the other Italian statelets and proclaim the birth of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861.

On 14 November 1914, again in Milan, the printing of Il Popolo d'Italia began, the interventionist newspaper founded by Benito Mussolini, who was still part of the Italian Socialist Party at the time.

During World War II, Milan's large industrial and transport facilities suffered extensive damage from Allied bombings that often also hit residential districts.

During this period, Milan was rapidly rebuilt, with the construction of several innovative and modernist skyscrapers, such as the Torre Velasca and the Pirelli Tower, that soon became the symbols of this new era of prosperity.

Notable people who have been dedicated a tree in the Giardino dei Giusti include Moshe Bejski, Andrej Sakharov, Svetlana Broz, and Pietro Kuciukian.

Due to this discovery, Eni, under the leadership of Enrico Mattei, was not dissolved as originally intended and began to play a decisive role in the economic growth of the country, then building its headquarters in Metanopoli (frazione of San Donato Milanese) at the southern border of Milan.

The economic prosperity was, however, overshadowed in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the so-called Years of lead, when Milan witnessed an unprecedented wave of street violence, labour strikes and political terrorism.

[113] This period led the mass media to nickname the metropolis "Milano da bere", literally "Milan to be drunk",[114] a journalistic expression that recalled the widespread well-being, the careerist and opulent rampantism flaunted by the emerging social classes and the "fashionable" image of the city.

[116] The city boasts several popular tourist attractions, such as the Milan Cathedral and Piazza del Duomo, the Teatro alla Scala, the San Siro Stadium, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the Castello Sforzesco, the Pinacoteca di Brera and the Via Montenapoleone.

[119] On 8 October 2001, the city was shocked by the most serious plane crash in the history of Italy:[120] at 08:10 local time a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 of the Scandinavian Airlines was taking off from Milan-Linate Airport, collided with a private Cessna Citation which, due to thick fog and difficult to read signs, had followed a different route from the one indicated by the control tower and had mistakenly entered the take-off runway.

[123] Opened in 2005, is a fairground complex designed by architect Massimiliano Fuksas, located in an area on the border between the towns of Rho and Pero replacing the former grounds which were developed into the new CityLife district of Milan.

[125] The long decline in traditional manufacturing has been overshadowed by a great expansion of publishing, finance, banking, fashion design, information technology, logistics and tourism.