Lombardy in the context of Sellero

The Etruscans (/ɪˈtrʌskən/ ih-TRUS-kən) created a civilization in Etruria in ancient Italy, with a common language and culture, and formed a federation of city-states. After adjacent lands had been conquered, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roughly what is now Tuscany, western Umbria and northern Lazio, as well as what are now the Po Valley, Emilia-Romagna, south-eastern Lombardy, southern Veneto and western Campania.

A large body of literature has flourished on the origins of the Etruscans, but the consensus among modern scholars is that the Etruscans were an indigenous population. The earliest evidence of a culture that is identifiably Etruscan dates from about 900 BC. This is the period of the Iron Age Villanovan culture, considered to be the earliest phase of Etruscan civilization, which itself developed from the previous late Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture in the same region, part of the central European Urnfield culture system. Etruscan civilization dominated Italy until it fell to the expanding Rome beginning in the late 4th century BC as a result of the Roman–Etruscan Wars; Etruscans were granted Roman citizenship in 90 BC and in 27 BC the whole Etruscan territory was incorporated into the newly established Roman Empire.

The Duchy of Milan (Italian: Ducato di Milano; Lombard: Ducaa de Milan) was a state in Northern Italy, created in 1395 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, then the lord of Milan, and a member of the important Visconti family, which had been ruling the city since 1277. At that time, it included twenty-six towns and the wide rural area of the middle Padan Plain east of the hills of Montferrat. During much of its existence, it was wedged between Savoy to the west, Republic of Venice to the east, the Swiss Confederacy to the north, and separated from the Mediterranean by the Republic of Genoa to the south. The duchy was at its largest at the beginning of the 15th century, at which time it included almost all of what is now Lombardy and parts of what are now Piedmont, Veneto, Tuscany, and Emilia-Romagna.

Under the House of Sforza, Milan experienced a period of great prosperity with the introduction of the silk industry, becoming one of the wealthiest states during the Renaissance. From the late 15th century, the Duchy of Milan was contested between the forces of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Kingdom of France. It was ruled by Habsburg Spain from 1556 and it passed to Habsburg Austria in 1707 during the War of the Spanish Succession. The duchy remained an Austrian possession until 1796 when a French army under Napoleon Bonaparte conquered it, and it ceased to exist a year later as a result of the Treaty of Campo Formio, when Austria ceded it to the new Cisalpine Republic.

Milan (/mɪˈlæn/ mil-AN, US also /mɪˈlɑːn/ mil-AHN, Milanese: [miˈlãː] ; Italian: Milano [miˈlaːno] ) is the regional capital of Lombardy, in northern Italy, and the second-most populous city in Italy, with a population of 1.36 million in 2025. The Metropolitan City of Milan is the largest city in Italy by urban area. Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Italy, and the fourth-largest in the European Union, with an estimated population of 6.1 million.

Founded around 590 BC by a Celtic tribe, Milan was conquered by the Romans in 222 BC, who Latinized the name of the city into Mediolanum and made it the capital of the Western Roman Empire. In the Late Medieval period, the wealthy Duchy of Milan was one of the greatest forces behind the Renaissance. As a major center of the Italian Enlightenment during the Early modern period, Milan's cultural and political struggle against Austrian domination was crucial in the reunification of the Kingdom of Italy. From the 19th century onwards, Milan led the industrial and financial development of Italy.

Northern Italy (Italian: Italia Settentrionale, Nord Italia, Alta Italia) is a geographical and cultural region in the northern part of Italy. The Italian National Institute of Statistics defines the region as encompassing the four northwestern regions of Piedmont, Aosta Valley, Liguria and Lombardy in addition to the four northeastern regions of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Emilia-Romagna.

With a population of 27.5 million in an area of 120,312.72 km (46,453.00 sq mi) as of 2025, the region covers roughly 40% of Italy and contains 46% of its population. Two of Italy's largest metropolitan areas, Milan and Turin, are located in the region. Northern Italy's GDP was estimated at €1 trillion in 2021, accounting for 56.5% of the Italian economy.

Lazio (UK: /ˈlætsioʊ/ LAT-see-oh, US: /ˈlɑːt-/ LAHT-; Italian: [ˈlattsjo]) or Latium (/ˈleɪʃiəm/ LAY-shee-əm, US also /-ʃəm/ -⁠shəm; from the original Latin name, pronounced [ˈɫati.ũː]) is one of the 20 administrative regions of Italy. Situated in the central peninsular section of the country, it has 5,714,882 inhabitants and a GDP of more than €212 billion per year, making it the country's second most populated region and second largest regional economy after Lombardy. The capital of Lazio is Rome, which is the capital city of Italy.

Lazio was the home of the Etruscan civilization, then stood at the center of the Roman Republic, of the Roman Empire, of the Papal States, of the Kingdom of Italy and of the Italian Republic. Lazio boasts a rich cultural heritage. Great artists and historical figures lived and worked in Rome, particularly during the Italian Renaissance period.

The Ligures (Latin sg. Ligus; also Ligustici or Ligustini) or in English Ligurians, were an ancient people after whom Liguria, a region of present-day north-western Italy, is named. Because of the strong Celtic influences on their language and culture, they were also known in antiquity as Celto-Ligures and hence in English as Celto-Ligurians.

In pre-Roman times, the Ligurians occupied the present-day Italian region of Liguria, Piedmont, northern Tuscany, western Lombardy, western Emilia-Romagna, and northern Sardinia, reaching also Elba and Sicily. They inhabited also the French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and Corsica; however, it is generally believed that around 2000 BC the Ligurians occupied a much larger area, extending as far as what is today Catalonia (in the north-eastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula).

Francesco Melzi, or Francesco de Melzi (1491 – 1570) was an Italian painter born into a family of the Milanese nobility in Lombardy. He became a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci and remained as his closest friend and professional assistant throughout his career. After Leonardo’s death, Melzi became the literary executor of all Leonardo's papers and compiled them into a manuscript known as the Codex Urbinas. This compilation later served as the basis for the Trattato della Pittura (Treatise on Painting), which was published posthumously by others based on Melzi’s organization of Leonardo’s notes.

A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from the ocean, although they may be connected with the ocean by rivers. Lakes, like other bodies of water, are part of the water cycle, the processes by which water moves around the Earth. Most lakes are fresh water and account for almost all the world's surface freshwater, but some are salt lakes with salinities even higher than that of seawater. Lakes vary significantly in surface area and volume of water.

Lakes are typically larger and deeper than ponds, which are also water-filled basins on land, although there are no official definitions or scientific criteria distinguishing the two. Lakes are also distinct from lagoons, which are generally shallow tidal pools dammed by sandbars or other material at coastal regions of oceans or large lakes. Most lakes are fed by springs, and both fed and drained by creeks and rivers, but some lakes are endorheic without any outflow, while volcanic lakes are filled directly by precipitation runoffs and do not have any inflow streams.

The 2026 Winter Olympics (Italian: Olimpiadi invernali del 2026), officially the XXV Winter Olympic Games and commonly known as Milano Cortina 2026, is an upcoming international multi-sport event scheduled to take place from 6 to 22 February 2026 at sites across Lombardy and Northeast Italy.

A joint bid by Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo was awarded the 2026 Winter Olympics at the 134th IOC Session on 24 June 2019, beating a bid by Stockholm and Åre, Sweden; they will be the first Olympic Games to officially be co-hosted by multiple cities, with Milan primarily hosting ice events, and the remaining events being hosted in clusters around Cortina, and the Valtellina and Fiemme valleys. They will mark the third Winter Olympics, and fourth overall, to be hosted by Italy; Cortina d'Ampezzo had previously hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics.

The March of Tuscany was a march of the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages. Located in northwestern central Italy, it bordered the Papal States to the south, the Ligurian Sea to the west and Lombardy to the north. It comprised a collection of counties, largely in the valley of the River Arno, originally centered on Lucca.
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Matilda of Tuscany (Italian: Matilde di Toscana; Latin: Matilda or Mathilda; c. 1046 – 24 July 1115), or Matilda of Canossa (Italian: Matilde di Canossa [maˈtilde di kaˈnɔssa]), also referred to as la Gran Contessa ("the Great Countess"), was a member of the House of Canossa (also known as the Attonids) in the second half of the eleventh century. Matilda was one of the most important governing figures of the Italian Middle Ages. She reigned in a time of constant battles, political intrigues, and excommunications by the Church.

She ruled as a feudal margravine and, as a relative of the imperial Salian dynasty, she brokered a settlement in the so-called Investiture Controversy. In this extensive conflict with the emerging reform Papacy over the relationship between spiritual (sacerdotium) and secular (regnum) power, Pope Gregory VII dismissed and excommunicated the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV (then King of the Romans) in 1076. At the same time, Matilda came into possession of a substantial territory that included present-day Lombardy, Emilia, Romagna, and Tuscany. She made the Canossa Castle, in the Apennines south west of Reggio Emilia, the centre of her domains.

The Lombard language (Lombard: lombard, lumbard, lumbart or lombart, depending on the orthography; pronunciation: [lũˈbaːrt, lomˈbart]) belongs to the Gallo-Italic group within the Romance languages. It is characterized by a Celtic linguistic substratum and a Lombardic linguistic superstratum and is a cluster of homogeneous dialects that are spoken by millions of speakers in Northern Italy and southern Switzerland. These include most of Lombardy and some areas of the neighbouring regions, notably the far eastern side of Piedmont and the extreme western side of Trentino, and in Switzerland in the cantons of Ticino and Graubünden. The language is also spoken in Santa Catarina in Brazil by Lombard immigrants from the Province of Bergamo, in Italy.

Gian Galeazzo Visconti (16 October 1351 – 3 September 1402), was the first duke of Milan (1395) and ruled that late-medieval city just before the dawn of the Renaissance. He also ruled Lombardy jointly with his uncle Bernabò. He was the founding patron of the Certosa di Pavia, completing the Visconti Castle at Pavia begun by his father and furthering work on the Duomo of Milan. He captured a large territory of northern Italy and the Po valley. He threatened war with France in relation to the transfer of Genoa to French control as well as issues with his beloved daughter Valentina. When he died of fever in the Castello of Melegnano, his children fought with each other and fragmented the territories that he had ruled.

Piedmont (/ˈpiːdmɒnt/ PEED-mont; Italian: Piemonte [pjeˈmonte]; Piedmontese: Piemont [pjeˈmʊŋt]) is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the Northwest of the country. It borders the Liguria region to the south, the Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions to the east, and the Aosta Valley region to the northwest. Piedmont also borders Switzerland to the north and France to the west.

Piedmont has an area of 25,402 km (9,808 sq mi), making it the second-largest region of Italy after Sicily. It has 4,255,702 inhabitants as of 2025. The capital of Piedmont is Turin. This city was the first capital of the Kingdom of Italy, from 1861 to 1865.

The Metropolitan City of Milan (Italian: città metropolitana di Milano; Milanese: cittaa metropolitana de Milan, Lombard: [tʃiˈtaː metrupuliˈtana de miˈlãː]) is a metropolitan city (not to be confused with the metropolitan area) in the Lombardy region of Italy. It is the second most populous metropolitan city in the nation after the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital. Its capital is the city of Milan. It replaced the province of Milan and includes the city of Milan and 132 other comuni (sg.: comune). It was first created by the reform of local authorities (Law 142/1990) and then established by the Law 56/2014. It has been operative since 1 January 2015.

The Metropolitan City of Milan is headed by the Metropolitan Mayor (sindaco metropolitano) and by the Metropolitan Council (consiglio metropolitano). Since June 2016 Giuseppe Sala, as mayor of the capital city, has been the mayor of the Metropolitan City.

Campione d'Italia (Italian: [kamˈpjoːne diˈtaːlja]; Comasco: Campiùn [kamˈpjuŋ]) is a comune (municipality) of the Province of Como in the Italian region of Lombardy. Located on the shores of Lake Lugano, it is an enclave surrounded by the Swiss canton of Ticino. At its closest, the enclave is less than one kilometre (0.6 mi) from the rest of Italy, but the intervening mountainous terrain requires a journey by road through the Swiss village of Bissone of over 14 km (9 mi) to reach the nearest Italian town, Lanzo d'Intelvi, and over 28 km (17 mi) to reach the city of Como. The comune's population was 1,748 in 2021.

Tyrsenian (also Tyrrhenian or Common Tyrrhenic), named after the Tyrrhenians (Ancient Greek, Ionic: Τυρσηνοί Tyrsenoi), exonym used by the ancient Greeks to refer to the Etruscans, is a language family of closely related extinct ancient languages, proposed by linguist Helmut Rix in 1998, that has gained acceptance. The family would consist of the Etruscan language of northern, central and south-western Italy, and eastern Corsica; the Raetic language of the Alps, in northern Italy and Austria, named after the Rhaetian people; and the Lemnian language attested in Lemnos in the northern Aegean Sea. Camunic in northern Lombardy, between Etruscan and Raetic, may belong to the family as well, but evidence of such is limited. The Tyrsenian languages are generally considered Pre-Indo-European, and more specifically Paleo-European.