The Lombards invade Italy and found their own kingdom
A war-ravaged peninsula gets a new Germanic ruling class within years of Byzantium's reconquest
Quick facts
- Location
- Northern and central Italy
- King
- Alboin (r. c. 560-572)
- Last city to fall
- Pavia, after a 3-year siege (572)
- Alboin's death
- Assassinated 572 by conspirators led by his wife Rosamund
What happened
In the spring of 568, King Alboin led the Lombards out of Pannonia into an Italy left weakened by two decades of the Gothic War. Byzantine defenses, thinned after Narses's victory, offered little resistance, and Alboin's forces took city after city with ease, the major exception being Pavia, which held out under siege for three years before falling in 572. Alboin divided his new kingdom into 36 duchies, each under a duke answering directly to him, and ruled from Verona. He did not survive to consolidate it: in 572 his own wife Rosamund, whose father Alboin had killed, conspired with his foster brother Helmechis to assassinate him.
Why it matters
The Lombard kingdom controlled most of Italy for the next two centuries, permanently ending any realistic hope of restoring a unified Byzantine Italy and setting up the political fragmentation, independent duchies, a Lombard north, and a papally-protected center around Rome, that would define Italian politics through the Carolingian period and beyond.
How we know
The main narrative source is Paul the Deacon's Historia Langobardorum, written roughly two centuries after Alboin's reign; other near-contemporary chroniclers including Gregory of Tours and Marius of Aventicum corroborate the broad outline of the assassination even where details differ.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Lombards · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Lombards · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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