Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 197, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1916 — A Quaint Italian Town. [ARTICLE]

A Quaint Italian Town.

Pavla is not very well known to the tourist. For 200 years, until Charlemagne overthrew them, it was the capital of the Lombard kings, the kings of that one-time Teuton tribe of Langobardi, who conquered Italy, only to be themselves slowly conquered and become Italians, or, more accurately, Romanized. It is they who ruled over the great fertile plain between the Alps and the Apennines. In the Church of San Michele kings of Italy were crowned a thousand years ago; here two Germans at least, Henry the Second—loo4—and Barbarossa —1155 received upon their brows that “iron crown of the Lombards” which conveyed the sovereignty of Italy.