TICINO (Ger. Tessin, anc. Ticinus), a river of Switzerland and north Italy, which gives its name to the Swiss canton of Ticino (q.v.), and gave it in classical times to the town of Ticinum (Pavia). It rises at the foot of the Gries pass to the west of Airolo ; from Airolo to the Lago Maggiore its valley bears the name of Val Leventina, and is followed as far as Bellinzona by the St. Gotthard road and railway. It flows through Lago Maggiore, leaving it at its south end at Sesto Calende, and thence flows S.S.E. into the Po, which it joins a little way south of Pavia. TICINUM, an ancient city of Gallia Transpadana (mod.
Pavia, q.v.), founded on the banks of the river of the same name (mod. Ticino) a little way above its confluence with the Padus (Po). Its importance in Roman times was due to the extension of the Via Aemilia from Ariminum to the Padus (187 B.c.), which it crossed at Placentia and there forked, one branch going to Mediolanum and the other to Ticinum, and thence to Laumellum whence one branch went to Vercellae (and thence to Eporedia and Augusta Praetoria) and the other to Valentia (and thence to Augusta Tatirinorum or to Pollentia). At Ticinum a triumphal
arch was erected in honour of Augustus and his family ; in the 4th century A.D. there was a manufacture of bows there. It was pillaged by Attila in A.D. 452 and by Odoacer in 476, but rose to importance as a military centre in the Gothic period. At Dertona and here the grain stores of Liguria were placed, and Theodoric constructed a palace, baths and amphitheatre and new town walls. From this point, navigation on the Padus began. Narses recovered it for the Eastern Empire, but after a long siege, surrendered it to the Lombards in 572. The regular ground plan of the central portion of the modern town, a square of some 1,150 yd., betrays its Roman origin.