Place:Lodi, Lodi, Lombardia, Italy

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Lodi (; Lodigiano: ) is a city and comune in Lombardy, northern Italy, primarily on the western bank of the River Adda. It is the capital of the province of Lodi.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Lodi was a Celtic village; in Roman times it was called, in Latin, Laus Pompeia (probably in honour of the consul Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo) and was known also because its position allowed many Gauls of Gallia Cisalpina to obtain Roman citizenship. It was in an important position where a vital Roman road crossed the River Adda.

Lodi became the see of a diocese in the 3rd century. Saint Bassianus (San Bassiano) is the patron saint of the town.

A free commune around 1000, it fiercely resisted the Milanese, who destroyed it in 1111. The old town corresponds to the modern Lodi Vecchio. Frederick Barbarossa rebuilt it on its current location in 1158.

From 1220, the Lodigiani (inhabitants of Lodi) spent decades in constructing a system of miles of artificial rivers and channels (called Consorzio di Muzza). It was created to give water to the countryside, turning arid areas into one of the region's important agricultural areas.

From the 14th century Lodi was ruled by the Visconti family, who built a castle there. In 1413, the antipope John XXIII launched the bull by which he convened the Council of Constance from the Duomo of Lodi. The council marked the end of the Great Schism.

In 1454, representatives from all the regional states of Italy met in Lodi to sign the treaty known as the peace of Lodi, by which they intended to pursue Italian unification. This peace lasted 40 years.

The town was then ruled by the Sforza family, France, Spain and Austria. In 1786 it became the eponymous capital of a province that between 1815 and 1859 would have included Crema.

On 10 May 1796, in the first major battle of his career as a general, the young Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Austrians aka the 1526-1804 Habsburg monarchy in the Battle of Lodi. In the second half of the 19th century, Lodi began to expand outside the city walls, boosted by economic expansion and the construction of railway lines that followed the unification of Italy.

In 1945, the Italian petrol company Agip, directed by Enrico Mattei, started extracting methane from its fields, and Lodi was the first Italian town with a regular domestic gas service. Today the town is at the heart of important communication routes, and is a technologically advanced industrial centre, maintaining, however, also its strong traditional ceramics tradition.

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