- Sep 20, 2017
- 13,639
- 25,622
- 28,180
Every now and again, the awful proposal to reduce the Giro and Vuelta to two weeks pops up. This year, it seems the Giro is practicing for that possibility, because we have a parade at the end of the second week to go with the one at the end of the third week. In other words, welcome to the biggest waste of a penultimate Sunday in Giro history.
Map and profile
Start
Remember the finish of stage 12 being the closest point on that day’s route to the finish of stage 11? Well, just three days later, RCS have thrown in another needlessly long transfer to do the exact same thing once again. From Pila, we have transferred all the way back to the foot of the Apennines in Voghera, in the southwestern corner of Lombardy (Lombardia). As has been the case with seemingly more stage hosts than usual this edition, its early history is murky. The site was certainly settled before the Romans arrived in northern Italy, but the small town that seems to have existed here was of limited significance throughout antiquity. In the 6th century, the centre of gravity in northern Italy shifted significantly when the ailing Ostrogothic Kingdom moved its capital to nearby Pavia during the Gothic War, and especially when the Lombards made it their capital at the end of the century. It made sense to better defend the area around the capital, and thus Voghera was fortified by the 10th century at latest.
Pavia ceased to be a capital in the 11th century, but continued to loom large. In the 12th century, it became one of the few Ghibelline centres north of the Apennines, and was rewarded for this in 1164 with full control over Voghera, which was by then a proper town. The Vogherese purchased the right to partial self-government a century later, before falling into the orbit of Milan together with Pavia in 1359. The Milanese constructed a castle, built new fortifications enclosing a greater area, and made Voghera the seat of a county.
The town’s fortunes fluctuated with that of Milan during the next centuries, so considering the finish I’ll skip ahead a little. Much like Verbania, Voghera remained part of the Duchy of Milan until it was ceded to Piedmont-Sardinia in 1743, being separated from Pavia for the first time. It then became a provincial capital and received city rights. However, unlike Verbania, it became a part of Lombardy again during the process of Italian unification, when it was merged into the province of Pavia. This reduced political status did not impede the rapid growth that had started in the early 19th century and was accelerated by the arrival of the railway. Together with Tortona on the Piedmontese side of the border, it had always been on the crossroads of the Milan-Genoa and Turin-Bologna routes, and thus it became a railway junction. This status would cause it much grief in later years: WWII bombing claimed 79 lives, and then in 1962, a cargo train that was supposed to stop at the station to change locomotives ignored a red signal and crashed into a passenger train. At 64 deaths, this is the second-deadliest railway disaster in Italy in the past 80 years, surpassed only by the accident in Catanzaro I talked about on stage 4.
In all honesty, Voghera is not the most exciting or glamorous town – in Italian, the term casalinga di Voghera (Voghera housewife) is used as a stereotype for a lower-educated provincial woman (albeit not necessarily pejoratively). And as can be expected from a provincial town, the population has been in slow decline for decades. Having said that, it’s a perfectly nice backdrop for the Giro, a function it has not fulfilled since 1989.
(picture by Zairon at Wikimedia Commons)
The route
The entire day is spent in the Po valley, leaving me with little to talk about here. They take a bit of a detour early on, going via Stradella (where Alberto Bettiol won a pretty good breakaway stage in 2021) before looping back to Pavia for the intermediate sprint. I imagine Giovanni Lombardi will be a bit disappointed that this comes on a sprint stage, because it means he’ll probably have to choose between the intermediate in his hometown and actually riding for the stage. From Pavia, it’s a pretty direct route to Milan.
Finish
It’s been a while since a road stage has finished in Milan – Iljo Keisse won the final stage from the break on completely different roads in 2015, and before that in 2009, when Mark Cavendish won an equally pointless mid-race parade that ran an hour over schedule after the riders had the stage neutralised when they decided the circuit was too dangerous. As in 2009, we are finishing on Corso Venezia, one of the poshest places in Milan, but this time the circuit is much less technical. The only point of note is the wide, but sharp left-hander at 2k to go, as well as the inevitable run of tram track crossings. The final circuit is raced four-and-a-half times, with the bonus sprint coming halfway through the second lap.
Founded in the early 6th century by the Celts, Milan’s rise to power starts after its capture by Rome in 222 BC during the Second Punic War. By the end of the Republic, the city, then known as Mediolanum, had become one of the largest in northern Italy. However, unlike pretty much anywhere else in the western Empire, its peak would come in late Antiquity. When the Empire was first divided into a eastern and a western half under Diocletian (with Maximian becoming the emperor in the west), it was decided that the western capital should be moved from Rome to a location nearer the northern border so that the emperor could more easily deal with the by then increasingly frequent invasions. Mediolanum thus became the capital in 286, spurring massive urban development in what had already been a sizeable city. Thus, its population peak was reached in the early 4th century, at about 100000 inhabitants.
This is also the period of perhaps its most famous contribution to history, the promulgation of the Edict of Milan in 313. As discussed on stage 3, Galerius’ Edict of Serdica had formally ended the prosecution of Christians, but his nephew Maximinus Daza – the last remaining rival claimant to Constantine and his then-co-emperor Licinius following the famous Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 – had restarted persecutions in the east. The Edict of Milan was partially aimed at him, but also sought to go further than Galerius by ordering reparations to all Christians who had suffered material damage at the hands of the state. As discussed previously, the Edict was only one step in the long transformation of Christianity from object of persecution to state religion, but already during Constantine’s life, it was promoted to such a degree that it became ingrained in the public consciousness. In a way, the way Constantine saw the Edict is more important than the Edict itself.
Milan enjoyed prosperity throughout the 4th century, but by its end, the Western Roman Empire was approaching the brink of collapse. In 402, Milan was besieged by Alaric’s Visigoths, and the emperor’s response was to run with his tail between his legs to Ravenna, where he and his successors would more or less attempt to hide behind the marshes. It was perhaps the clearest sign of all that the Western Roman Empire would burn, and Milan burned with it. The city survived the siege of 402 mostly intact, but suffered severe destruction at the hands of Attila’s Huns half a century later and was then razed entirely by the Ostrogoths during the Gothic War in 539. Milan was rebuilt to some extent by the Byzantines, but was now a shadow of its former self and would play second fiddle to Pavia throughout the first half of the Middle Ages.
And then, its fortunes reversed at last. Ever since Charlemagne conquered large swathes of Italy in the late 8th century, Milan had been part of the Holy Roman Empire. By the start of the 11th century, imperial authority was showing signs of fraying, helping to create the conditions for the rise of the city-state. Milan was on the forefront of this development, and over the course of the century, it started to exercise power over more and more of its neighbours. This was the main reason why places like Pavia were Ghibelline, and it was after their request that Emperor Frederick Barbarossa descended upon northern Italy in 1162 to bring Milan to heel. The city was sacked and partially destroyed, but refused to give up and was one of the main drivers behind the Lombard League. As discussed previously, the League managed to defeat Frederick. With that, both self-government and a powerful status within northern Italy were secure, paving the way for Milan to once again become one of the leading cities in Europe during the next centuries.
In the 13th century, Milan transitioned from an oligarchy to a lordship, which was held from 1277 onwards by the House of Visconti. Visconti rule was generally successful, overseeing the transition from a city-state to a duchy that at its peak under Gian Galezzo, around 1400, controlled not just all of modern Lombardy, but also the likes of modern Ticino, Belluno, Verona, Parma, Pisa, Siena and Perugia. In the early 15th century, some of the territorial gains were reversed, before the duchy was thrown into chaos by the unexpected extinction of the Visconti male line in 1447. The so-called Golden Ambrosian Republic was established, but it was beset by internal strife between the Guelphs and Ghibellines (yes, that division somehow still hadn’t died by that point), attempts by its rivals, especially Venice, to exploit the situation, and military pressure from the various European courts who now claimed the throne. The one thing the Republic had going for it was the capable military command of Francesco Sforza (who was married to the last Visconti’s illegitimate daughter), but Sforza had designs on the throne himself and wound up allying with Venice. The Venetians thought they could install a puppet, but realised too late that Sforza was becoming powerful enough to claim the duchy in his own right, which he did in 1450.
While Milan had lost significant territory, the Sforzas ushered in a new age for the city, which now became one of the centres of the Renaissance and wealthier than ever before. It also helped that, after the repeated wars with Venice during the latter years of Visconti rule, northern Italy was mostly peaceful for the next decades. However, they would become the architects of their own downfall. Interfamilial politicking within Milan itself brought it into conflict with the Kingdom of Naples, to which the kings of France had recently inherited a claim. The reigning duke then decided it was a great idea to induce the French to invade Naples in 1494. He realised his folly within the year, when it became clear that France was militarily superior to any of the Italian states, and joined an anti-French alliance, but the damage had been done. For the next 65 years, Italy would more often than not be at war during the so-called Italian Wars, but for Milan, that was the lesser part of the problem. Not only France, but soon also the Habsburgs would repeatedly join these wars, and both had designs on Milan. The French were the first to strike, seizing the duchy in 1499. They were driven out by Swiss forces in 1512, who installed a puppet Sforza, before France reclaimed Milan three years later. The Sforzas returned a final time with Habsburg help in 1521, but by now the line was nearly extinct and the Habsburgs knew they would seize control through their capacity as Holy Roman Emperors if the childless duke died without an heir. Milan now allied itself with France, but after the Habsburgs won another bout of war that forced France to give up its claims, the end was near. With the extinction of the House of Sforza in 1535, Milanese independence was over, and when the Habsburg holdings were divided into a Spanish and an Austrian half in 1556, Milan became part of the former.
The long cycles of war had hurt Milan (and the rest of Italy) greatly, but its prosperity was not a particular priority for the Spanish crown. Like the rest of the empire, the city had to help pay for the bottomless pit that were the military expenses. However, Spain could not be blamed for by far the greatest blow of all: an outbreak of the Black Death in 1629-31 that is estimated to have killed 60000 of the city’s 130000 inhabitants. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Austria seized control of the Duchy. Their rule marked a definite improvement over the Spanish period, with Milan somewhat rebounding as a centre of neoclassicism between the mid-18th and mid-19th century. Midway through this period, the Duchy was disestablished by revolutionary France and never restored, with modern Lombardy being established instead.
In the revolutionary year of 1848, Milan took centre stage in Italy when five days of rebellion succeeded in expelling the Austrian forces. With uprisings taking place almost throughout the Austrian Empire, the opportunity to end the Austrian presence seemed obvious, and it was in direct response to the Milanese revolt that Piedmont-Sardinia invaded, starting the First Italian War of Independence. The fact that there would be a second is an indicator of how things went. The Austrian forces in Italy proved a much tougher nut to crack than expected, and with the immediate threat of being overthrown in revolution themselves slowly receding, rulers in other parts of Italy (crucially including the Pope) backed out of joining the war. By 1849, the Piedmontese-revolutionary alliance had been soundly defeated, and the new king (his father had been forced to abdicate) concluded that outside help was needed in a future attempt. That ally was found sooner than expected in France, and twelve years later, Milan had become a part of a unified Kingdom of Italy (although Rome would not be annexed until 1870).
Milan flourished within newly-unified Italy, quickly developing into the financial and industrial centre of the country. It also played its part in the budding world of sport, of course being the place where the Giro d’Italia originated. And, to the sorrow of the world, it would also help define Italy politically. It is here where Mussolini founded the fascist movement, it was here that he overthrew the democratically-elected socialist local government and faced no repercussions, and it was here that the March on Rome was officially launched. The city paid a heavy price in the Second World War, when it was the most heavily bombed city in northern Italy. By the end, over 2200 people had been killed and over a third of the population left homeless. The Milanese exacted retribution of a sort, forcing Mussolini and his closest allies to flee the city, after which they were discovered on the shores of Lake Como, executed, and then returned to Milan to be hanged on Piazzale Loreto, which today’s final circuit passes through.
Milan rebounded rapidly after the Second World War, attracting many economic migrants from the south of the country. While its industries have declined in size since then, the tertiary sector has only grown, notably including its transformation into a global fashion capital. Its position in the sporting world has also only grown over time – 10 Champions League wins between AC Milan and Internazionale and the hosting of this year’s Winter Olympics probably being the standout features. As the traditional home of the Giro, it has of course hosted the race more often than any other city, but the five-year layoff since the most recent visit (the finish of the 2021 edition) is the longest in the race’s history save for the World Wars.
(picture by Steffen Schmitz at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Nothing.
Map and profile
Start
Remember the finish of stage 12 being the closest point on that day’s route to the finish of stage 11? Well, just three days later, RCS have thrown in another needlessly long transfer to do the exact same thing once again. From Pila, we have transferred all the way back to the foot of the Apennines in Voghera, in the southwestern corner of Lombardy (Lombardia). As has been the case with seemingly more stage hosts than usual this edition, its early history is murky. The site was certainly settled before the Romans arrived in northern Italy, but the small town that seems to have existed here was of limited significance throughout antiquity. In the 6th century, the centre of gravity in northern Italy shifted significantly when the ailing Ostrogothic Kingdom moved its capital to nearby Pavia during the Gothic War, and especially when the Lombards made it their capital at the end of the century. It made sense to better defend the area around the capital, and thus Voghera was fortified by the 10th century at latest.
Pavia ceased to be a capital in the 11th century, but continued to loom large. In the 12th century, it became one of the few Ghibelline centres north of the Apennines, and was rewarded for this in 1164 with full control over Voghera, which was by then a proper town. The Vogherese purchased the right to partial self-government a century later, before falling into the orbit of Milan together with Pavia in 1359. The Milanese constructed a castle, built new fortifications enclosing a greater area, and made Voghera the seat of a county.
The town’s fortunes fluctuated with that of Milan during the next centuries, so considering the finish I’ll skip ahead a little. Much like Verbania, Voghera remained part of the Duchy of Milan until it was ceded to Piedmont-Sardinia in 1743, being separated from Pavia for the first time. It then became a provincial capital and received city rights. However, unlike Verbania, it became a part of Lombardy again during the process of Italian unification, when it was merged into the province of Pavia. This reduced political status did not impede the rapid growth that had started in the early 19th century and was accelerated by the arrival of the railway. Together with Tortona on the Piedmontese side of the border, it had always been on the crossroads of the Milan-Genoa and Turin-Bologna routes, and thus it became a railway junction. This status would cause it much grief in later years: WWII bombing claimed 79 lives, and then in 1962, a cargo train that was supposed to stop at the station to change locomotives ignored a red signal and crashed into a passenger train. At 64 deaths, this is the second-deadliest railway disaster in Italy in the past 80 years, surpassed only by the accident in Catanzaro I talked about on stage 4.
In all honesty, Voghera is not the most exciting or glamorous town – in Italian, the term casalinga di Voghera (Voghera housewife) is used as a stereotype for a lower-educated provincial woman (albeit not necessarily pejoratively). And as can be expected from a provincial town, the population has been in slow decline for decades. Having said that, it’s a perfectly nice backdrop for the Giro, a function it has not fulfilled since 1989.
(picture by Zairon at Wikimedia Commons)
The route
The entire day is spent in the Po valley, leaving me with little to talk about here. They take a bit of a detour early on, going via Stradella (where Alberto Bettiol won a pretty good breakaway stage in 2021) before looping back to Pavia for the intermediate sprint. I imagine Giovanni Lombardi will be a bit disappointed that this comes on a sprint stage, because it means he’ll probably have to choose between the intermediate in his hometown and actually riding for the stage. From Pavia, it’s a pretty direct route to Milan.
Finish
It’s been a while since a road stage has finished in Milan – Iljo Keisse won the final stage from the break on completely different roads in 2015, and before that in 2009, when Mark Cavendish won an equally pointless mid-race parade that ran an hour over schedule after the riders had the stage neutralised when they decided the circuit was too dangerous. As in 2009, we are finishing on Corso Venezia, one of the poshest places in Milan, but this time the circuit is much less technical. The only point of note is the wide, but sharp left-hander at 2k to go, as well as the inevitable run of tram track crossings. The final circuit is raced four-and-a-half times, with the bonus sprint coming halfway through the second lap.
Founded in the early 6th century by the Celts, Milan’s rise to power starts after its capture by Rome in 222 BC during the Second Punic War. By the end of the Republic, the city, then known as Mediolanum, had become one of the largest in northern Italy. However, unlike pretty much anywhere else in the western Empire, its peak would come in late Antiquity. When the Empire was first divided into a eastern and a western half under Diocletian (with Maximian becoming the emperor in the west), it was decided that the western capital should be moved from Rome to a location nearer the northern border so that the emperor could more easily deal with the by then increasingly frequent invasions. Mediolanum thus became the capital in 286, spurring massive urban development in what had already been a sizeable city. Thus, its population peak was reached in the early 4th century, at about 100000 inhabitants.
This is also the period of perhaps its most famous contribution to history, the promulgation of the Edict of Milan in 313. As discussed on stage 3, Galerius’ Edict of Serdica had formally ended the prosecution of Christians, but his nephew Maximinus Daza – the last remaining rival claimant to Constantine and his then-co-emperor Licinius following the famous Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 – had restarted persecutions in the east. The Edict of Milan was partially aimed at him, but also sought to go further than Galerius by ordering reparations to all Christians who had suffered material damage at the hands of the state. As discussed previously, the Edict was only one step in the long transformation of Christianity from object of persecution to state religion, but already during Constantine’s life, it was promoted to such a degree that it became ingrained in the public consciousness. In a way, the way Constantine saw the Edict is more important than the Edict itself.
Milan enjoyed prosperity throughout the 4th century, but by its end, the Western Roman Empire was approaching the brink of collapse. In 402, Milan was besieged by Alaric’s Visigoths, and the emperor’s response was to run with his tail between his legs to Ravenna, where he and his successors would more or less attempt to hide behind the marshes. It was perhaps the clearest sign of all that the Western Roman Empire would burn, and Milan burned with it. The city survived the siege of 402 mostly intact, but suffered severe destruction at the hands of Attila’s Huns half a century later and was then razed entirely by the Ostrogoths during the Gothic War in 539. Milan was rebuilt to some extent by the Byzantines, but was now a shadow of its former self and would play second fiddle to Pavia throughout the first half of the Middle Ages.
And then, its fortunes reversed at last. Ever since Charlemagne conquered large swathes of Italy in the late 8th century, Milan had been part of the Holy Roman Empire. By the start of the 11th century, imperial authority was showing signs of fraying, helping to create the conditions for the rise of the city-state. Milan was on the forefront of this development, and over the course of the century, it started to exercise power over more and more of its neighbours. This was the main reason why places like Pavia were Ghibelline, and it was after their request that Emperor Frederick Barbarossa descended upon northern Italy in 1162 to bring Milan to heel. The city was sacked and partially destroyed, but refused to give up and was one of the main drivers behind the Lombard League. As discussed previously, the League managed to defeat Frederick. With that, both self-government and a powerful status within northern Italy were secure, paving the way for Milan to once again become one of the leading cities in Europe during the next centuries.
In the 13th century, Milan transitioned from an oligarchy to a lordship, which was held from 1277 onwards by the House of Visconti. Visconti rule was generally successful, overseeing the transition from a city-state to a duchy that at its peak under Gian Galezzo, around 1400, controlled not just all of modern Lombardy, but also the likes of modern Ticino, Belluno, Verona, Parma, Pisa, Siena and Perugia. In the early 15th century, some of the territorial gains were reversed, before the duchy was thrown into chaos by the unexpected extinction of the Visconti male line in 1447. The so-called Golden Ambrosian Republic was established, but it was beset by internal strife between the Guelphs and Ghibellines (yes, that division somehow still hadn’t died by that point), attempts by its rivals, especially Venice, to exploit the situation, and military pressure from the various European courts who now claimed the throne. The one thing the Republic had going for it was the capable military command of Francesco Sforza (who was married to the last Visconti’s illegitimate daughter), but Sforza had designs on the throne himself and wound up allying with Venice. The Venetians thought they could install a puppet, but realised too late that Sforza was becoming powerful enough to claim the duchy in his own right, which he did in 1450.
While Milan had lost significant territory, the Sforzas ushered in a new age for the city, which now became one of the centres of the Renaissance and wealthier than ever before. It also helped that, after the repeated wars with Venice during the latter years of Visconti rule, northern Italy was mostly peaceful for the next decades. However, they would become the architects of their own downfall. Interfamilial politicking within Milan itself brought it into conflict with the Kingdom of Naples, to which the kings of France had recently inherited a claim. The reigning duke then decided it was a great idea to induce the French to invade Naples in 1494. He realised his folly within the year, when it became clear that France was militarily superior to any of the Italian states, and joined an anti-French alliance, but the damage had been done. For the next 65 years, Italy would more often than not be at war during the so-called Italian Wars, but for Milan, that was the lesser part of the problem. Not only France, but soon also the Habsburgs would repeatedly join these wars, and both had designs on Milan. The French were the first to strike, seizing the duchy in 1499. They were driven out by Swiss forces in 1512, who installed a puppet Sforza, before France reclaimed Milan three years later. The Sforzas returned a final time with Habsburg help in 1521, but by now the line was nearly extinct and the Habsburgs knew they would seize control through their capacity as Holy Roman Emperors if the childless duke died without an heir. Milan now allied itself with France, but after the Habsburgs won another bout of war that forced France to give up its claims, the end was near. With the extinction of the House of Sforza in 1535, Milanese independence was over, and when the Habsburg holdings were divided into a Spanish and an Austrian half in 1556, Milan became part of the former.
The long cycles of war had hurt Milan (and the rest of Italy) greatly, but its prosperity was not a particular priority for the Spanish crown. Like the rest of the empire, the city had to help pay for the bottomless pit that were the military expenses. However, Spain could not be blamed for by far the greatest blow of all: an outbreak of the Black Death in 1629-31 that is estimated to have killed 60000 of the city’s 130000 inhabitants. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Austria seized control of the Duchy. Their rule marked a definite improvement over the Spanish period, with Milan somewhat rebounding as a centre of neoclassicism between the mid-18th and mid-19th century. Midway through this period, the Duchy was disestablished by revolutionary France and never restored, with modern Lombardy being established instead.
In the revolutionary year of 1848, Milan took centre stage in Italy when five days of rebellion succeeded in expelling the Austrian forces. With uprisings taking place almost throughout the Austrian Empire, the opportunity to end the Austrian presence seemed obvious, and it was in direct response to the Milanese revolt that Piedmont-Sardinia invaded, starting the First Italian War of Independence. The fact that there would be a second is an indicator of how things went. The Austrian forces in Italy proved a much tougher nut to crack than expected, and with the immediate threat of being overthrown in revolution themselves slowly receding, rulers in other parts of Italy (crucially including the Pope) backed out of joining the war. By 1849, the Piedmontese-revolutionary alliance had been soundly defeated, and the new king (his father had been forced to abdicate) concluded that outside help was needed in a future attempt. That ally was found sooner than expected in France, and twelve years later, Milan had become a part of a unified Kingdom of Italy (although Rome would not be annexed until 1870).
Milan flourished within newly-unified Italy, quickly developing into the financial and industrial centre of the country. It also played its part in the budding world of sport, of course being the place where the Giro d’Italia originated. And, to the sorrow of the world, it would also help define Italy politically. It is here where Mussolini founded the fascist movement, it was here that he overthrew the democratically-elected socialist local government and faced no repercussions, and it was here that the March on Rome was officially launched. The city paid a heavy price in the Second World War, when it was the most heavily bombed city in northern Italy. By the end, over 2200 people had been killed and over a third of the population left homeless. The Milanese exacted retribution of a sort, forcing Mussolini and his closest allies to flee the city, after which they were discovered on the shores of Lake Como, executed, and then returned to Milan to be hanged on Piazzale Loreto, which today’s final circuit passes through.
Milan rebounded rapidly after the Second World War, attracting many economic migrants from the south of the country. While its industries have declined in size since then, the tertiary sector has only grown, notably including its transformation into a global fashion capital. Its position in the sporting world has also only grown over time – 10 Champions League wins between AC Milan and Internazionale and the hosting of this year’s Winter Olympics probably being the standout features. As the traditional home of the Giro, it has of course hosted the race more often than any other city, but the five-year layoff since the most recent visit (the finish of the 2021 edition) is the longest in the race’s history save for the World Wars.
(picture by Steffen Schmitz at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Nothing.
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