The Lands of the Lord of Milan

(Today part of: Lombardy and parts of Emilia-Romagna in Italy)

The northern and central parts of the Apennine Peninsula were made up of a colorful mosaic of, often hostile, city-states, organized into communes. The fundamental characteristic of the communal structure is the partial or complete independence of the commune from rulers, nobility, and the political and administrative authority in the country, in their case the Holy Roman Empire. The loyalty towards one’s city (Milan, Pavia, Verona, Padua, Florence, Brescia etc.), one’s own tiny homeland, i.e. a strong sense of localism, became the dominant factor of the society in the sense of belonging to a greater community. At the end of the 13^th century, Milan vas probably the most populous city of Catholic Europe. At the beginning of the 14^th century it ceased to be a commune to become a Signoria (Italian for "Lordship"), which marked that kind of a political movement in a city-state, in which the authority gained by the Signore and his family replaced or imposed itself over the existing communal bodies. Soon after, most communes of the Po Valley turned into Signorie belonging to one or other prominent family. All of the families were renowned and well-known for their chivalric tradition that they put at the service of the city where they had laid their roots a long time before that, which they then continued to govern.

The Visconti family ruled over Milan from 1277 to 1477, first as Lords, then, from 1395. as Dukes becouse the Duchy of Milan was created within Holy Roman Empire..Between the years 1378 and 1402 the Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconty of Milan succeeded, in a series of wars and bold attacks, to secure his control over not only Lombardy and a greater part of Emilia, including Bologne, but over Verona and Vicenza as well. So was it that from a long series of wars in the second half of the 14^th century and the first half of the 15^th century, the Duchy of Milan under the Visconti family emerged larger and stronger than any other state on the Peninsula.