From the Etruscans to today - More than two thousand years of history.
The origins of Cremona are uncertain. Probably founded by the Etruscans, its real history begins
with the Romans, who in 218 BC made it a military stronghold in the Po Valley to defend against the barbarians.
Cremona had towers, walls and iron-bound gates, all surrounded by a wide moat. It withstood the assaults
of the Gauls and of Hannibal the African and was very prosperous at the end of the Republic.
Sacked by Vespasian's soldiers in 69 AD, it was later garrisoned by the Greeks and then yielded
to the Lombard king Agilulf, and we have reached 603.
In the 9th century Cremona was the seat of a vast episcopal county.
An enemy of Milan and Crema, it sided with the imperial party of Frederick Barbarossa and in 1249 it had as podestà
Uberto Pelavicino (Pallavicino), who made it the centre of a vast lordship in Lombardy and Piedmont. When this
collapsed after the Ghibelline defeat at Benevento (1266), the city suffered under the Cavalcabò family the horrors of the Guelph
revenge, while its anti-Ghibelline attitude during the descent of Henry VII cost it a sacking.
It was held by the Cavalcabò and the Visconti in the 14th-15th centuries, until it passed in 1441 to Francesco Sforza.
But Venice coveted Cremona; and although in 1431 F. Sforza and N. Piccinino had thwarted the attempt of Carmagnola,
defeating with a clever stratagem his powerful river fleet, Venice obtained it from the French in 1499 through the
Treaty of Blois and kept it until 1509. Occupied (1525) by the Spanish, during the Thirty Years' War its
territory was the scene of a battle (June 1648) between Spanish and French: the latter, victorious, then
laid siege to Cremona, which lasted fruitlessly for a few months. The city remained Spanish until 1702, when
the Austrians occupied it. Taken by the French in May 1796, it was part of the Kingdom of Italy until 1814,
as capital of the department of Alto Po. Returned to Austria, on 19 March 1848 it rebelled, forcing
the Austrians to withdraw.
Cremona is today a provincial capital. It is a quiet city on the left bank of the River Po,
devoted above all to agriculture and the food industry but also to violin making.
A marked talent for making use of what nature offers is perhaps the common root of the various activities
of the people of Cremona, who successfully founded industries and trades. On the basis of agriculture, they cultivated the art of gastronomy and,
thanks to the sensitivity with which they were able to make stringed instruments sing, they became famous throughout the world
and Cremona became a synonym for violin making. Indeed, today one of the main centres
(if not the most important) for violin making is Cremona itself, with 70% of the world's handmade production
and a centuries-old tradition going back to the Renaissance and the great Masters Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù.
Cremona and its province count more than 150 master violin makers.