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When Swabian Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa) levelled Milan and set up his own puppet mayors, the region’s happily self-governing cities banded together as the Lombard League and with papal support forced Barbarossa to return their autonomy.

Archbishop Visconti overthrew the leading Torriani family in 1277. Under 160 years of Visconti rule, Milan extended its hegemony over much of the north.

The last Visconti died in 1447, leaving only an illegitimate daughter who couldn’t inherit the title but was married to one Francesco Sforza. Milan’s young Ambrosian Republic rashly hired Sforza to defend them from Venetian power-grabbers. Instead, he cut a deal with Venice, split up the territory and made himself duke.

Francesco’s son Galeazzo Maria was murdered in 1476, after which power passed to Galeazzo’s brother Lodovico, who was known as “Il Moro” (“The Moor”) on account of his looks. Lodovico ushered the Renaissance into Milan, inviting the likes of Leonardo da Vinci to his court, but in 1499 ceded control to Louis XII. The city changed hands repeatedly until Austria seized power in 1706.

The 19th-century Risorgimento (unification movement) inspired the Milanese to rise up, on March 18, for five days, with their victory triggering the demise of Austrian rule. By 1859 King Vittorio Emanuele II controlled Lombardy: he sent General Garibaldi off to conquer the rest of the peninsula, forming a new kingdom – Italy.

Mussolini’s fascist regime ended after his alliance with Hitler put Italy on the losing side of World War II. As the Allies drew closer Mussolini fled with his mistress. They were caught by partisans and shot on Lake Como, their bodies later strung up on Milan’s Piazzale Loreto and stoned.

Northern resentment of sharing wealth with the poor south found political expression in the Lombard League, a separatist party that came to prominence in 1990. Re-dubbed the Northern League, the party espoused federalism and in 2001 gained power as part of the Forza Italia coalition led by media mogul Silvio Berlusconi.

The Po Valley and land to the north, once called Cisalpine Gaul, was a Celtic province that often found itself up against Rome. Its alliance with the Samnites failed, and Rome used the excuse to push its boundary north of the Po.

In the 5th century barbarian tribes overran the disintegrating Roman Empire. Most came, sacked and left, but the Germanic Lombards took Pavia in 572 and settled in the Po Valley, expanding across the north. Eventually the Byzantines and Charlemagne trounced them, and the region dissolved into a network of city-states that lasted throughout the Middle Ages.

Ernest Hemingway’s World War I novel (written in 1929) tells the story of an American soldier wounded while fighting for the Italian army. He convalesces in a Milan hospital, and, after inadvertently deserting while escaping the Germans, reunites with his love in Stresa on Lake Maggiore. They stay at the Des Iles Borromées hotel (where Hemingway himself often stayed) before fleeing by boat across to Swiss Locarno.