Pavia

Pavia held out against the Visconti until 1359. A revolt in 1357 had driven out the Beccaria family, and Galeazzo II Visconti besieged the city for months until it surrendered on 13 November 1359. He made it the Visconti's second capital, beginning a vast castle in 1360 beside a great park, and in 1361 Charles IV granted a charter for a studium generale; famous teachers such as Lorenzo Valla were called to lecture there.

That park became a battlefield in the Italian Wars. Francis I of France laid siege to Pavia's imperial garrison in October 1524, and in February 1525 his army was routed among the park's walls and woods and the king himself was taken prisoner. Austrian rule, which began in 1706, brought a second flowering, as Maria Theresa and Joseph II rebuilt the university and brought the naturalist Lazzaro Spallanzani and the physicist Alessandro Volta to teach in it. In May 1796 Napoleon punished the city for a rising against his troops by giving it over to sack.