LOMBARDY, a territorial division of Italy, bounded on the north by the Alps, south by Emilia, east by Venetia and west by Piedmont. It is divided into nine provinces, Bergamo, Brescia, Como, Cremona, Mantua, Milan, Pavia, Sondrio and Varese, and has an area of 9,386 sq.m. Milan, the chief city, is the greatest railway centre of Italy, being the nearest great town to the tun nels of the St. Gotthard and the Simplon. The other railway centres of the territory are Mortara, Pavia and Mantua. The most important rivers are the Po, which follows, for the most part, the southern boundary of Lombardy, and the Ticino, one of the largest tributaries of the Po, which forms for a considerable distance the western boundary. The majority of the Italian lakes, those of Garda, Idro, Iseo, Como, Lugano, Varese and Maggiore, lie wholly or in part within it. The climate of Lom bardy is thoroughly continental ; in summer the heat is greater than in the south of Italy, while the winter is very cold, and bitter winds, snow and mist are frequent. In the summer rain is rare beyond the lower Alps, but a system of irrigation, unsur passed in Europe, and dating from the middle ages, prevails, so that a failure of the crops is hardly possible. There are three zones of cultivation : in the mountains, pasturage; the lower slopes are devoted to the culture of the vine, fruit-trees (includ ing chestnuts) and the silkworm; while in the regions of the plain, large crops of maize, rice, wheat, oats, rye, flax and wine are produced, and thousands of mulberry-trees are grown for the benefit of the silkworms, the culture of which in the province of Milan has entirely superseded the sheep-breeding for which it was famous during the middle ages. The chief agricultural products and the areas under cultivation were as follows in 1927: Milan is the principal silk market in the world. Of a total of 50,000 workers in the silk weaving and allied industries, about half are employed in 114 mills in or near Como, while the other mills are mostly in Milan and Turin. The chief centre of silk weaving is Como, but the silk is commercially dealt with at Milan, and there is much exportation. A very considerable
amount of cotton is manufactured. but most of the raw cotton has to be imported, the cultivation being insignificant in Italy. Lombardy has 58.45% of the spindles and 71•7% of the looms existing in Italy. Milan also manufactures motor-cars, though Turin is the principal centre in Italy for this industry. There are copper, zinc and iron mines, and numerous quarries of marble, alabaster and granite. In addition to the above industries the chief manufactures are felt, woollens, hats, rope, paper-making, iron casting, gun-making and printing. Lombardy is indeed the most industrial district of Italy. The population rose from in 1901 to 5,545,307 in 1931. In most of the provinces of Lombardy there are far more villages than in other parts of Italy except Piedmont ; this is attributable partly to their mountainous char acter. There are numerous and important hydro-electric plants directly connected with those of the Apennines. For Lombardy in the Iron Age see GOLASECCA and COMACINES. Previous to the fall of the Roman republic Lombardy formed part of Gallia Transpadana, and it was Lombardy, Venetia and Piedmont, the portion of the Italian peninsula north of the Po, that did not receive citizenship in 89 B.C. but only Latin rights. The gift of full citizenship in 49 B.C. made it a part of Italy proper, and Lom bardy and Piedmont formed the iith region of Augustus (Trans padana) while Venetia and Istria formed the loth. It was the second of the regions of Italy in size, but the last in number of towns; it appears, however, to have been prosperous, and culti vation flourished in its fertile portions.
For details of subsequent history see LOMBARDS and ITALY; and for architecture see ARCHITECTURE. G. T. Rivoira in Lombardic Architec ture (a vols. London, 191o), successfully demonstrates the classical origin of much that had hitherto been treated by some authorities as "Byzantine." In the development of Renaissance architecture and art Lombardy played a great part, inasmuch as both Bramante and Leo nardo da Vinci resided in Milan at the end of the 15th century.