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Home > Travel Italy > Italy Destinations > Vercelli
Vercelli
Italy, officially the Italian Republic or Repubblica Italiana, is a Southern European country comprising of the Po River valley, the Italian Peninsula and the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. It is shaped like a boot and for this reason Italians commonly call it lo Stivale, the boot or, due to its prevalent peninsular geographical nature, la Penisola, the Peninsula.
Vercelli is a commune and city of about 46,000 inhabitants in the Province of Vercelli, Italy. One of the oldest urban sites in northern Italy, it was founded, according to most historians, around the year 600 B.C, Before Christ. The town is situated in the Pianura Padana, between Milan and Turin. It is an important centre for the cultivation of rice, and is surrounded by paddy fields, which are flooded in summer. In Vercelli the world's first University funded by public money was established in 1228. Today Vercelli has a University of Literature and Philosophy and a satellite campus of the Politecnico di Torino. Vercellae was a city of the Libici or Lebecili, a Ligurian tribe it became an important municipium.
Vercelli was half ruined in St. Jerome's time. From 1885 it was under the jurisdiction of the prince-bishop, who was a count of the empire. It became an independent commune in 1120, and joined the first and second Lombard leagues. Its statutes are among the most interesting of those of the medieval republics. In 1197 they abolished the servitude of the glebe. In 1228 the University of Pavia was transferred to Vercelli, where it remained till the fourteenth century, but without gaining much prominence.
The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Vercelli is one of the two archdioceses which form the ecclesiastical region of Piedmont. The first bishop was St. Eusebius, a Sardinian, a lector of the Roman Church and a strenuous opponent of Arianism. From Eusebius to Nottingo there were forty bishops, whose images were preserved in the Eusebian basilica, so called because St. Eusebius, who dedicated it to the martyr St. Theonestus, was interred in it. He introduced the common and monastic life among his clergy, from whom bishops for the surrounding territory were often selected. It is also said the place of best geographical environment and can trace its origins back to prehistoric times.
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