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Milan was founded not by well-heeled urbanites with a keen eye for design, but by a group of meandering Insubri Celts apparently inspired by visions of salami. According to legend, this settlement site was chosen when the king caught an auspicious glimpse of a ridge-backed boar on the horizon.
These Celts also had a notion to take over Rome, but the Romans beat them to the punch in 222BC and took over the town, which they gave the descriptive if rather unimaginative name Mediolanum (middle of the plain). The city grew from a key pitstop on the trade routes between Rome and Northwestern Europe into the capital of the Western Empire, and a site of religious significance after Emperor Constantine announced an edict here in 313 AD granting Christians freedom to worship.
Like the city, Milan's patron Sant'Ambroggio underwent an impressive transformation - from lowly public servant to bishop - and it all happened in about a week. It began with the vocal support of rowdy Milanese crowds, soon followed by a personal invitation from the Emperor, a hasty baptism, and a Bishop 101 crash course from church leaders. Sant'Ambroggio was gutsy and upright, a staunch defender of the poor who would not sacrifice principle for diplomacy - under threat of excommunication he demanded that Emperor Theodosius repent for the massacre of 7,000 people at Thessolonica, and got his way. After his death in 397, his body was entombed at Sant'Abroggio, where it can still be viewed today in dessicated form.
From these lofty beginnings, the city descended into centuries of chaos caused by waves of barbarian invasions. But scrappy Milan mastered the art of the comeback, forming a commune (town council) in the 11th century that led the city into a period of rapid growth. Perhaps because of this success, the city did not get along well with its neighbours.
The Holy Roman emperor, Frederick I (Barbarossa), decided to exploit the local conflicts, and attacked Milan in 1162. Galvanised by a common enemy, the surrounding towns banded together as the Lega Lombarda and kicked Frederick to the curb in 1176.
From the mid-13th century, the city was governed by a succession of important families: the Torrianis, the Viscontis and the Sforzas. Under the latter dynasties, Milan enjoyed considerable wealth and power. The city came under Spanish rule in 1535 and was given to Austria in 1713 as part of the Treaty of Utrecht. Austrian power-broker Maria Theresa left her mark on the city; the facades of La Scala and the Palazzo Real remain her favorite shade of yellow. Napoleon made Milan the capital of his Cisalpine Republic in 1797 and of his Italian Republic five years later, and the city hosted his coronation as King of Italy in 1805.
Austria regained control of the city from 1814-1859, but troops commandeered by Victor Emmanuel II and Napoleon III soon wiped up the Austrian forces at the Battle of Magenta. Milan was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy in 1860.
During WWII central Milan was heavily bombed, leaving the opera house blown to smithereens and entire neighbourhoods near the centre mostly in ruins. But even before the worst bombing began, Milanese had had enough of Mussolini. When Milanese factory workers faced prison to strike in protest against Fascist rule in 1943, it was the beginning of the end of Mussolini's career. Italy surrendered to Allied forces on September 8, but two weeks later Mussolini declared a new Fascist republic in Saló, forcing a drawn-out bloody fight against the Allies and fellow Italians. The Northern Italian resistance movement came to a head in 1945, when an insurrection in Milan toppled the occupying Nazi forces in three days, and Mussolini was shot dead trying to flee the country. To add one final insult, the corpses of Mussolini and his mistress were hung upside down from the roof of a petrol station on Piazzale Loreto.
The postwar industrial boom led by car manufacturing and access to northern Europe via new Alpine tunnels produced yet another of Milan's signature growth spurts. But life was not all roses, risotto, and Ferraris for Milan. Growing gaps between the haves and have-nots and waves of migrants from southern Italy inflamed underlying social tensions, and the Red Brigades terrorised Milan and other centres of industry throughout the 1970s. Extremist parties such as the nationalist Lega Nord benefited from the resultant political vacuum, though recently the extreme right has ceded ground to moderates and leftists in Milan.
Milan is also making a concerted effort to clean up its act in the wake of organised crime and Tangentopoli ('Bribesville') scandals. The city was shocked into action by the 1995 mafia-hit murder of Gucci heir Maurizio Gucci (ordered by his estranged wife) followed by a rash of mafia hits in 1999. The recently implemented New York-style 'zero tolerance' policy does seem to have improved policing, though criminals do not seem entirely dissuaded: in December 2000, a bomb was discovered on the roof of Milan's Duomo. In the 1990s, kickback scandals were exposed that went right to the top of the region's political, administrative and commercial elites - a legacy of corruption that now appears have affected even Milan's beloved football teams.
Milan's self-made big shot (and Italy's richest man), Silvio Berlusconi, was elected Italian prime minister in 2001, and managed to hold the position until 2006 - the longest run of any Italian prime minister after World War II.
