The most important mountainous area is the Alpine zone including the Lepontine and Rhaetian Alps ( Piz Bernina, 4,020 m), the Bergamo Alps, the Ortler Alps and the Adamello massif. The orography of Lombardy is characterised by the presence of three distinct belts: a northern mountainous belt constituted by the Alpine relief, a central piedmont area of mostly pebbly soils of alluvial origin, and the Lombard section of the Padan Plain in the southernmost part of the region. Pizzo Coca is the highest peak in the Bergamasque Alps (3,050 m) The term was also used until around 965 in the form Λογγοβαρδία ( Longobardia) as the name for the territory roughly covering modern Apulia which the Byzantines had recovered from the Lombard rump Duchy of Benevento. As such 'Lombardy' and 'Italy' were almost interchangeable by the mid-8th century the Lombards ruled everywhere except the Papal possessions around Rome (roughly modern Lazio and northern Umbria), Venice and some Byzantine possessions in the south (southern Apulia and Calabria some coastal settlements including Amalfi, Gaeta, Naples and Sorrento Sicily and Sardinia). ĭuring the early Middle Ages, 'Lombardy' referred to the Kingdom of the Lombards ( Latin: Regnum Langobardorum), a kingdom ruled by the Germanic Lombards who had controlled most of Italy since their invasion of Byzantine Italy in 568. Some scholars suggest the second element instead derives from Proto-Germanic *bardǭ, *barduz ('axe'), related to German Barte ('axe') or that the whole word comes from the Proto-Albanian * Lum bardhi 'white river' (Compare modern Albanian lum i bardhë). The word Lombardy comes from Lombard, which in turn is derived from Late Latin Longobardus, Langobardus ('a Lombard'), derived from the Proto-Germanic elements * langaz + * bardaz equivalent to long beard.

3.5 Late-Middle Ages, Renaissance and Enlightenment.3.4 Renaissance duchies of Milan and Mantua.Virgil, Pliny the Elder, Ambrose, Caravaggio, Claudio Monteverdi, Antonio Stradivari, Cesare Beccaria, Alessandro Volta, Alessandro Manzoni, and popes John XXIII and Paul VI are among those with origins in the area now known as Lombardy. Of the fifty-eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Italy, ten are in Lombardy.

The metropolitan area of Milan is the largest in the country, and is among the largest in the European Union. Over a fifth of the Italian gross domestic product is produced in the region. It has an extent of 23,844 km 2 (9,206 sq mi) in the northern-central part of the country, and a population of about 10 million people, constituting more than one-sixth of the population of Italy. Lombardy ( Lombard and Italian: Lombardia) is one of the twenty administrative regions of Italy. Italian: lombardo (man), lombarda (woman)

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