Alba

Alba was a free commune, formerly the Roman town of Alba Pompeia. It joined the Lombard League. In 1337 it lay in southern Piedmont.

Montferrat and the Visconti of Milan fought over Alba, which later passed to the Gonzaga. Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy captured it in 1628 after a siege; the Treaty of Cherasco assigned it to Savoy in 1631. French revolutionary troops established a short-lived Republic of Alba in 1796; after French annexation, the town returned to the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1814.