Every design for Lodi

The Castello visconteo recalls the century when Lodi passed into the Duchy of Milan under the Visconti, but the city's story begins with a destruction. In 1111 the Milanese razed the old town of Laus Pompeia, once a Roman municipium, and the peace terms forbade anyone to rebuild it.

The Tempio civico della Beata Vergine Incoronata, with the Chiesa di San Francesco and the Chiesa di Sant'Agnese, is among the monuments that make Lodi one of the art cities of the Po Valley today. They stand in a town that owes its existence to Frederick Barbarossa, who refounded it on 3 August 1158, not on the old ruins, now Lodi Vecchio, but on the banks of the Adda, where it could better control the land around. Forced into the Lombard League, it fought at Legnano; its golden age came in the Renaissance, after it hosted the signing of the Treaty of Lodi in 1454. The farmland around it, once marsh, now feeds a cheese-making tradition and a faculty of veterinary medicine.

Coming home to Lodi means crossing the Adda and seeing the old town on its rise above the river, exactly where Barbarossa chose to put it.