Lodi has evolved its name from the ancient Laus of the Romans, another evidence of the oblique transformation of Latin into the modern dialect. The men of Lodi were ever rivals of the Milanese, but it is to Napoleon’s celebrated engagement at the Bridge of Lodi that it owes its fame in the popular mind.
Above Lodi, the River Adda circles and boils away in a sort of whirlpool rapid, which Leonardo da Vinci, setting his palette and brushes aside, set about to control by a dam and a series of sluices. How well he succeeded may be imagined by recalling the fact that the Italian Edison Company in recent years availed themselves of the foundation of his plan in their successful attempt to turn running water into electricity.
The panorama to the north of Milan is grandiose in every particular. On the horizon the Alpine chain lies clear-cut against the sky, the Viso, Grand Paradise, Mont Blanc, Splugen and other peaks descending in one slope after another, one foothill after another, until all opens out into the great plain of Lombardy.
North of Milan, towards Como and the Alpine background, is Monza. Lady Morgan called Monza dreary and silent, but her judgments were not always sound; she depended too much upon moods and hers were many.
Monza’s Broletto was built by Frederick Barbarossa, or it was a part of a palace built by that monarch. Italian Gothic of an unmistakable local cast is its style and the effect is heightened by the ringhiera between the windows of the south side.
In Monza’s Cathedral—an antique interior with a Gothic exterior, by the way—is the celebrated Iron Crown of Lombardy with which the German Emperors of Lombardy were crowned. Charles V, Napoleon and Ferdinand I also made use of the same historic bauble which is not of much splendour. It costs a five franc fee to see it, and the sight is not worth the price of admission.
