Montferrat in the context of "Valenza Po"

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.

Casale Monferrato (Italian pronunciation: [kaˈzaːle moɱferˈraːto]) is a town in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, in the province of Alessandria. It is situated about 60 km (37 mi) east of Turin on the right bank of the Po, where the river runs at the foot of the Montferrat hills. Beyond the river lies the vast plain of the Po valley.

An ancient Roman municipium, the town has been the most important trade and manufacturing centre of the area for centuries. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Casale became a free municipality and, in the 15th and early 16th centuries, served as the capital of the House of Palaiologos. Then in 1536, the town passed to the Gonzagas who fortified it with a large citadel. In the 17th century, Casale was heavily involved in the War of the Mantuan Succession and besieged by French and Spanish troops. During the wars of Italian unification the town was a defensive bulwark against the Austrian Empire.

The marquises and dukes of Montferrat were the rulers of a territory in Piedmont south of the Po and east of Turin. The March of Montferrat was created by Berengar II of Italy in 950 during a redistribution of power in the northwest of his kingdom. It was originally named after and held by the Aleramici. In 1574, Montferrat was raised to a duchy by Emperor Maximilian II (see Duchy of Montferrat).

Gallo-Italic of Sicily, (Italian: Gallo-italico di Sicilia) also known as the Siculo-Lombard dialects, (Italian: Dialetti siculo-lombardi) is a group of Gallo-Italic languages found in about 15 isolated communities of central eastern Sicily. Forming a language island in the otherwise Sicilian language area, it dates back to migrations from northern Italy during the reign of Roger I, the Norman Grand Count of Sicily, and his successors.

Towns inhabited by the new immigrants became known as the "Lombard communities" (Latin: oppida Lombardorum, Sicilian: cumuna lummardi). The settlers, known as the Lombards of Sicily, actually came principally from the Aleramici fiefdoms of southern Montferrat, comprising today south-eastern Piedmont and north-western Liguria, "Lombardy" being the name for the whole of northern Italy during the Middle Ages. In addition to a common place of origin, the colonizers brought their Gallo-Italic languages. These languages added to the Gallic influence of the developing Sicilian language (influences which included Norman and Old Occitan) to become the Gallo-Italic of Sicily language family.

Asti (UK: /ˈæsti/ AST-ee, US: /ˈɑːsti/ AH-stee; Italian: [ˈasti] ; Piedmontese: Ast [ˈɑst]) is a comune (municipality) of 74,348 inhabitants (1–1–2021) located in the Italian region of Piedmont, about 55 kilometres (34 miles) east of Turin, in the plain of the Tanaro River. It is the capital of the province of Asti and it is deemed to be the modern capital of Montferrat.

The Duchy of Mantua (Italian: Ducato di Mantova; Lombard: Ducaa de Mantua) was a duchy in Lombardy, northern Italy. Its first duke was Federico II Gonzaga, member of the House of Gonzaga that ruled Mantua since 1328. In 1531, the duchy also acquired the March of Montferrat, thanks to the marriage between Gonzaga and Margaret Paleologa, Marchioness of Montferrat.

The duchy's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family made it one of the main artistic, cultural, and especially musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole. Mantua also had one of the most splendid courts of Italy and Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries.

The Duchy of Montferrat was a state located in Northern Italy. It was created out of what was left of the medieval March of Montferrat after the last Palaeologus heir had died (1533) and the margraviate had been briefly controlled by the Emperor Charles V (until 1536). After that brief interlude, it passed by marriage of the last heiress, Margaret of Montferrat, to the House of Gonzaga, already dukes of Mantua. In 1574 the fief was elevated from marquisate to duchy.

Its territory, located in southern Piedmont, is still known today as Montferrat.