Mediolanum

• 1. Introduction

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  Mediolanum held about forty thousand people around AD 200, a solid provincial city on the plain of northern Italy. By the reign of Maximian, who ruled from 286 to 305, that number had swelled to roughly a hundred thousand. That made Mediolanum one of the largest cities in Roman Italy. A city that started as a Celtic settlement had become large enough to house an emperor's court. What pulled an emperor away from Rome itself and out onto this plain? What did the people who lived here value before Rome ever arrived? And how did a city built to last for centuries end up losing its own status as a capital within a few generations? The answers lie in the trade routes it commanded, the walls its rulers kept enlarging, and the crypts that still lie beneath modern Milan.

• 2. Origins And A Name

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  According to a legend recorded by the historian Livy, the Gaulish king Ambicatus sent his nephew Bellovesus north into Italy. Bellovesus led a party drawn from several Gaulish tribes and, the legend says, founded Mediolanum in the time of Tarquinius Priscus. The real settlers were Celtic, from the Insubres group within the Golasecca culture, who named their town Medhelanon around 590 BC.

  In 222 BC, Roman forces under consul Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus defeated the Insubres and took the city. The Insubres' chief submitted to Rome, handing the Romans control of Mediolanum and the surrounding territory. Rome folded the region into a new province it called Cisalpine Gaul, meaning Gaul this side of the Alps. The Romans then Latinized the Celtic name: the Gaulish word medio meant middle or center, and -lanon was the Celtic equivalent of the Latin -planum, for plain. Together the two roots formed Mediolanum, a settlement in the midst of the plain. A Celtic settlement had just become a Roman possession, with the markets, roads and building projects that status was about to bring.

• 3. Roads, Wine And Wool

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  Mediolanum sat at a hub in the road network of northern Italy, a position that shaped everything about how the city made its living. The Greek historian Polybius described the surrounding country as abounding in wine, in every kind of grain, and in fine wool. Herds of swine were bred in its forests for both public and private supply. Polybius also noted that the people of the region were known for their generosity.

  During the Augustan age, Mediolanum was famous for its schools, drawing students to a city that also had its own theater. It also had an amphitheatre measuring 129.5 by 109.3 metres. A large stone wall had encircled the city since Caesar's time. That Caesar-era wall would not be Mediolanum's last; a future emperor would need something built on a far grander scale.

• 4. Seat Of Emperors

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  The emperor Hadrian made Mediolanum the seat of the prefect of Liguria, the Praefectus Liguriae, formalizing its administrative importance. Constantine later made it the seat of the vicar of Italy, the Vicarius Italiae. By the third century the city also had its own mint, a public grain store called a horreum, and an imperial mausoleum.

  In 259, Roman legions under Emperor Gallienus defeated the Alemanni at what became known as the Battle of Mediolanum.

  In 286, Diocletian moved the capital of the Western Roman Empire from Rome to Mediolanum. Diocletian chose to reside at Nicomedia in the Eastern Empire, leaving his colleague Maximian in charge at Mediolanum. Maximian built a circus measuring 470 by 85 metres, along with the thermae known as the Baths of Hercules. He also raised a large complex of imperial palaces and other public buildings, most of which have left few visible traces. Maximian surrounded the growing city with a new stone wall about 4.5 kilometres long, enclosing 375 acres and studded with 24-sided towers. One twin tower from that wall survives inside the convent of San Maurizio Maggiore, still standing 16.60 metres high. It was in this same fortified capital, only a few years later, that an imperial decree would reshape the empire's relationship with religion.

• 5. Edict And Faith

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  In AD 313, Constantine issued what became known as the Edict of Milan from within Mediolanum, granting tolerance to every religion in the empire. The edict opened the way for Christianity to become the empire's dominant religion. Constantine was in the city at the time to celebrate the wedding of his sister to the Eastern Emperor, Licinius.

  The first bishop of Milan with a firm historical record is Merocles, who attended the Council of Rome in 313. Christian communities already existed in Mediolanum before him, and had contributed their share of martyrs during earlier persecutions.

  By the mid-fourth century, the Arian controversy split the city's Christians. Emperor Constantius backed Arian bishops, and at times rival bishops held office together. Auxentius of Milan, who died in 374, was a respected Arian theologian. During the reign of Valentinian II, bishop Ambrose of Milan blocked the dedication of a basilica to Arian worship.

  Four basilicas rose in the city in the late fourth century: San Simpliciano, San Nazaro and San Lorenzo. A fourth, the chapel of San Vittore, was built inside the basilica of Sant'Ambrogio. The Late Empire also encouraged the applied arts here, and ivory and silver work became common in public building projects. In the crypt of the Duomo, ruins survive of the ancient church of Saint Tecla and the baptistry where Augustine of Hippo was baptized. Augustine's baptism there would echo through Christian theology for centuries, even as graver threats were already gathering beyond the Alps.

• 6. Sieges And Sack

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  In 402, the Goths under King Alaric I besieged Mediolanum, forcing the imperial residence to relocate to Ravenna. In 452, the city was besieged again, this time by Attila.

  The real break with Mediolanum's imperial past came in 538, during the Gothic War. Uraia, a nephew of the Gothic king Vitiges, laid the city to waste that year. According to the historian Procopius, the losses amounted to 300,000 male citizens, while the women were sold to the Goths' allies.

  In 569, the Lombards captured Mediolanum itself, but chose not to rule from its ruins. They made Ticinum the capital of their Kingdom of Italy, renaming it Papia, the root of the modern name Pavia. Early medieval Milan was left to be governed by its archbishops. Wall stones and cathedral crypts from this shattered capital would still be visible under the streets of Milan, centuries after the Lombards moved on.

• 7. What Remains

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  Inside the basilica of Sant'Ambrogio, the Chapel of San Vittore still holds its Late Antique mosaics. Nearby stands the so-called Tomb of Stilicho, assembled from a Roman sarcophagus and other ancient material, alongside a large collection of inscriptions. In front of the church of San Lorenzo runs a Roman colonnade known as the Colonne di San Lorenzo. Roman lapidary material is also set into the Archi di Porta Nuova. The scant remains of a large amphitheatre now sit inside an archaeological park set aside for their preservation. A 16.6 metre tower from Maximian's circus still stands inside the Convento di San Maurizio Maggiore. A stretch of wall and a 24-sided tower from Maximian's third-century fortifications also survive. The church of San Lorenzo, built in the fourth or fifth century, still stands alongside its San Aquilino chapel, near ruins of the imperial palace. Further fragments from the Baths of Hercules, including pieces of ceilings and floors, are held in the archaeological museum. The body of Saint Ambrose, who died in 397, still lies in the crypt of Sant'Ambrogio, alongside remains possibly belonging to Saints Gervasius and Protasius. More traces survive in the crypt of San Giovanni in Conca, and in fragments of wall and pavement under Piazza Missori.

  The ancient city's name lives on today in the Mediolanum Forum at Assago and in the Mediolanum Corporate University in Milan. The Milan Metro station named Missori still carries commuters each day directly over those same fragments of Roman paving.