[7] 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 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.

[9] Pavia was important as a Military site (near the city, in 271, the emperor Aurelian defeated the Juthungi) because of the easy access to water communications (through the rivers Ticino and Po) up to the Adriatic Sea and because of its defence structures.

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.

[47] 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.

[50] On October 1, 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.

[52] 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.

[59] 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 ancient Lombard capital distinguished itself from the other cities of the Po Valley for its fundamental function as a crossroads of important trade, both in foodstuffs and in luxury items.

In 1004, Holy Roman Emperor Henry II bloodily suppressed a revolt of the citizens of Pavia, who disputed his recent coronation as King of Italy.

[74] Several times the Pavia army 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.

This symbol, probably derived from blutfahne, the original flag of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, had a clear political meaning: to underline Pavia's belonging to the Ghibelline faction.

The coat of arms of the municipality also depicts the cross which, starting from the end of the 16th century, began to be represented in an oval shape and within a rich frame, on top of which there is a mask with a crown count and often flanked by two angels holding the shield and the letters CO-PP (Comunitas Papie).

The Pavia municipality falls in the orographic system of the Po Valley formed after the alluvial filling of the wide of the gulf occupied by the Adriatic Sea before the Quaternary.

The city occupies an area of 62.86 km2 (24.27 sq mi) west of Lombardy, located along the so-called "Karst spring's belt", where there is the meeting, in the subsoil, between geological layers with different permeability, an aspect that allows the deep waters to resurface on the surface.

The fluvial terrace on which Pavia stands appears engraved by two deep furrows due to the erosive action of two postglacial rivers, represented today by the Navigliaccio (originally occupied by the Calvenza) and by the Vernavola.

The two valleys tend to converge just behind the area of the ancient city, so that primitive Pavia found itself on an almost isolated and difficult to reach trunk or stump of terrace, almost triangular in shape, which Ticino had to the south, the Calvenza and then the Navigliaccio to the north-west and the Vernavola to the north-east.

The Romanesque collection is very rich, one of the largest in northern Italy, which also preserves important oriental architectural dishes from the Islamic and Byzantine East that adorned the facades of churches and buildings.

[97] The Pinacoteca Malaspina (which is part of the Pavia Civic Museums) established by the Marquis Luigi Malaspina di Sannazzaro (Pavia 1754– 1834), houses works by important artists of the Italian and international scene, from the 13th to the 20th 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 Gottuso.

[99] 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 votive offerings donated by Pope Pius XI) and Roman (some from Pompeii).

[100] The Natural History Museum of the University (Kosmos), housed inside Palazzo Botta Adorno, is one of the oldest in Italy, it was in fact founded by Lazzaro Spallanzani in 1771 and which preserves a naturalistic heritage of high scientific and historical value, including nearly 400,000 finds divided between the collections of zoology, comparative anatomy and paleontology.

[105] Next to the Cathedral, inside the crypt of the ancient cathedral of Santa Maria del Popolo (11th century), is the Diocesan Museum of Pavia, inaugurated in 2023, which collects silverware and liturgical objects (among which a crosier in elephantine ivory carved, painted and gilded made by a Sicilian workshop by the hand of Arab craftsmen and dating back to the end of the 12th century), sculptures and paintings, such as the panel of the Madonna della Misericordia by Lorenzo Fasolo.

The center, among the most important of its kind in Italy, preserves collections of documentary material (manuscripts, typescripts, letters, first editions, libraries, photographs, drawings, furnishings, paintings and other objects) relating to writers, intellectuals, publishers, artists and scientists of the past two centuries.

Among the archival collections preserved we remember those of Alberto Arbasino, Riccardo Bacchelli, Romano Bilenchi, Emilio De Marchi, Ennio Flaiano, Alfonso Gatto, Tonino Guerra, Claudio Magris, Luigi Meneghello, Eugenio Montale, Indro Montanelli, Salvatore Quasimodo, Mario Rigoni Stern, Amelia Rosselli, Umberto Saba and Roberto Sanesi.

In 1754, by the will of Empress Maria Theresa, the Biblioteca Universitaria was created, the most important in terms of book heritage in the city, which also preserves 1,404 manuscripts, 702 incunabula, 1,153 parchments (from 1103 to 1787), the 3,592 old prints, and 1,287 old geographical maps.

[115] In 1887 the Biblioteca Civica Carlo Bonetta was established, the main seat of the library system of the city which is divided into eight loan and reading points distributed evenly over the entire municipal area.

The wealth of springs and waterways have made Pavia, and its territory, one of the main Italian centers for the production of rice, it is therefore no coincidence that there are numerous recipes that allow you to discover the thousand faces of this cereal.

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 Francis I after the disastrous defeat at the gates of the city.

The large quantities of water required for the rice has meant that over the centuries a very dense irrigation network has been designed and built which still today characterizes the landscape of the Pavia countryside.

[165] The city experienced a strong development of industry starting from the 1880s, so much so that it also hosted establishments of national importance, such as Necchi or the first large Italian factory of artificial silk and synthetic fabrics, the Snia Viscosa, built in 1905.