Emilian

The Emilians are the people of the Po plain of Emilia, named after the via Aemilia, the Roman road of 187 BC from Piacenza to Rimini; in 1337 their cities of Bologna, Modena, Ferrara, Parma and Mantua were among the richest in Italy. Their speech, Emilian, is an unstandardized Gallo-Italic language split into urban varieties.

After Lombard and Frankish rule the towns became free communes in the twelfth century, joined the Lombard League against the Hohenstaufen emperors, long torn by Guelph and Ghibelline feuds, before passing to signori: Este in Ferrara and later Modena, Gonzaga in Mantua, Farnese in Parma, while Bologna came under the papacy.

The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, made the region a centre of legal learning, and Este courts patronized Ariosto and Tasso. Napoleon formed the Cispadane Republic in 1797, where the Italian tricolour was first adopted; after his fall the Congress of Vienna in 1815 restored the Este and Farnese duchies under Austrian protection.