City
Ticeno
Pavia
Listen to the story
Ticinum shares its name with the river Ticinus, near whose junction with the Po a Celtic settlement grew into the city of Pavia. Augustus honoured it with an arch, yet neighbouring Milan outshone it, and the town mattered above all as a crossroads of roads and waterways. The Huns sacked it in AD 452, the Goths later made it a royal city, and under the Lombards it came to be called Papia, the root of its modern name. The map leaves out the distance onward to the river Lambro; the inscribed silver cups found at Vicarello give twenty Roman miles.