Vigevano

Vigevano is an ancient town in the province of Pavia, Lombardy, northern Italy, which possesses many artistic treasures and runs a huge industrial business. It is at the center of a district called Lomellina, a great rice-growing agricultural centre. Vigevano hosts a Duomo, a tower by Bramante, the Castello Sforzesco, and the world-famous shoe-museum, dedicated to the town's major activity, which is in fact the industrial production of fashionable shoes.

History

The earliest notices of Vigevano date from the tenth century, when it was a favoured residence of the Lombard king Arduin, for the sake of the good hunting in the vicinity.

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The cathedral was built in 1100, rebuilt in the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth by Bishop Caramuel Lobkowitz, 1680, himself an architect, who also contributed to the expense.

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Vigevano was a Ghibelline commune, favoring the Emperor and was accordingly besieged and taken by the Milanese in 1201 and again in 1275. In 1328 it finally surrendered to Azzone Visconti, and thereafter shared the political fortunes of Milan. The Church of S. Pietro Martiere was built, with the adjacent Dominican convent, by Filippo Maria Visconti in 1445. In the last years of Visconti domination it sustained a siege by Francesco Sforza, himself a native of the city. Once he was settled in power in Lombardy, Sforza procured the erection of Vigevano as the seat of a bishop and provided its revenues.

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The first bishop was Galeazzo Pietra, succeeded by his nephew Maurizio Pietra (1552). Marsilio Landriani (1594) founded a Barnabite college for the education of young men. Giorgio Odescalchi (1610) was a very zealous pastor; the process of his beatification has been commenced. Giovanni Caramuel Lobkowitz (1675), who designed the duomo's facade, was also the author of many philosophical and theological works, though his "Theologia fundamentalis" was censured. Pier Marino Sonnani (1688), a Minorite, enlarged the seminary. Nicola Saverio Gamboni was placed in the see by Napoleon in 1801.

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See also geography of Italy.

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