The Middle Ages - Piemonte Feel

Between the fifth and sixth centuries three foreign powers contended for the control of Piedmont: Byzantium, Burgundy and the Goths. After 568, Piedmont was occupied by the Lombards and divided into four duchies: Turin, Asti, Ivrea and San Giulio d’Orta. Charlemagne invaded Italy via the Susa valley in 773. The Franks became the dominant group overpowering the local peoples and establishing a provincial bureaucracy that was to survive the Empire’s crisis of 888. At the end of the ninth century Piedmont was governed from the march of Ivrea, under the control of the Anscari family. In about 950 the domain was again divided into four new marches: the marca arduinica centred on Turin; the marche aleramica and obertenga in south-east Piedmont; and Ivrea. It was a Marquis of Ivrea, Arduino, who was the last king of Italy, before the union of the Italian and German crowns. After his death in 1050, power in Piedmont fell into the hands of the bishops and a new rising aristocracy: the marquises of Saluzzo to the south and the counts of Savoy in the Susa valley. As the Carolingian empire disintegrated, the towns and cities began to organise into free communes (or city-states), later entering the Lombard League, ready to fight Frederick “Barbarossa” in the mid-twelfth century. It was during the struggle with the emperor that the League built the new city of Alessandria. During the fourteenth century the single communes lost their power to the stronger dynasties in the area: the counts of Savoy who now controlled the Susa and Lanzo valleys, Ivrea and the surrounding Canavese area and Cuneo; the princes of Acaia who dominated Turin and the outlying regions to the south; the marquises of Saluzzo whose possessions included the town of the same name and its surrounding area as well as the valleys of southern Piedmont. Eastern and south-eastern Piedmont (Novara, Vercelli, Asti and Alessandria) were ruled by the Visconti family of Milan. Despite the complex political composition, it was during this period that Piedmont began to be identified as a geographical entity.