Antiquity The name of Chiavenna, believed to derive by paretymology from
clavis () referring to its pivotal position on the mountain passes between
Northern Italy and the
Posterior Rhine valley, comes in reality from a much older, pre-Latin (probably Ligurian and certainly non-Celtic) etymon
klava, meaning fallen rocks of a mountain slip. In
Roman times
Clavenna, conquered in 16 BC by the troops of Emperor
Augustus during his Alpine campaigns, temporarily was a town of the
Raetia et Vindelicia province, though actually located on the
Italian (
Cisalpine Gaul) side of the
Alpine crest, north of the head of the
Lacus Larius (modern Lake Como) at the entrance of the
Valle Spluga. The Romans had two important
roads built from
Clavenna: the itineraries demonstrate that the route up the Valle Spluga to
Splügen Pass was frequented in ancient times; as well as another, which separated from it at Clavenna, and led by a more circuitous route up the
Val Bregaglia (Val Chiavenna) and across
Septimer Pass to
Curia (modern
Chur), where it rejoined the preceding road. (Itin. Ant. pp. 277, 278; Tab. Peut.; P. Diac. vi. 29.) These passes had already played an important role as a line of supply for the
Roman legion. It was by one or other of the roads that
Magister militium Stilicho crossed the Alps in midwinter, a feat celebrated by
Claudian (
de B. Get. 320–358).
Middle Ages . After the collapse of the
Western Roman Empire the city marked the northern limit of the
Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy.
Clavenna belonged to the Italian territories retaken by the
Byzantine Empire in the mid-6th century during the reign of Emperor
Justinian the Great and avoided capture by the
Lombard kingdom until the 7th century. Clavenna probably derived some importance from its position at the junction of the two pass roads, as does the modern town of Chiavenna, which is the chief town of the surrounding district. When the
East Frankish king
Otto I married the dowager queen
Adelaide of Italy in October 951 and campaigned against King
Berengar II, he assigned the Val Bregaglia and the control over Septimer Pass to the
Bishopric of Chur, while the
Bishops of Como held the adjacent estates from
Villa down to Chiavenna in the southwest (corresponding to the current Italian-Swiss border). In 961 King Otto himself took the Septimer road to traverse the Alps on his way to Rome to be crowned
Holy Roman Emperor the following year. The citizens of Chiavenna received
town privileges from the Como bishops in 1030. '' (13th century) Chiavenna is crowned by a ruined castle, once an important strategic point, and the seat of the counts who ruled the valley from the time of the Goths till 1194, when the district was handed over to the Bishops of Chur. fighting against the
Sforza who had succeeded the Visconti as
Dukes of Milan. In 1486 they set Chiavenna ablaze; two years later,
Ludovico Sforza had the town fortified. Nevertheless, Chiavenna was conquered by the Leagues's forces during the
War of the League of Cambrai, when they allied with the
Swiss Confederacy defeating the
French troops of King
Louis XII at the 1513
Battle of Novara. Together with the Valtellina and
Bormio (Worms), the Chiavenna estates became
bailiwicks governed by the Three Leagues. A first
Protestant parish arose in 1542; thereafter, Chiavenna became a centre of the
Reformation while numerous religious refugees from the Italian lands settled here, among them notable theologians like
Camillo Renato,
Bernardino Ochino, and
Girolamo Zanchi. Temporarily lost during the
Bündner Wirren in 1620–39 during the
Thirty Years' War, the Three Leagues' rule over Chiavenna actually lasted until 1797, when the French revolutionaries merged it into the
Cisalpine Republic which was rapidly promoted to the ''Regno d'Italia'' with
Eugène de Beauharnais as Viceré (the King being
Napoleon Bonaparte himself). Hence, together with neighbouring Bormio and Valtellina valleys, it did not form part of the Swiss Confederacy, as the Free State of the Three Leagues (modern
Canton of Grisons, ) was not part of Switzerland until Napoleon's much later conquest. To this day, there is a statue of the Anglo-Swiss count
Peter de Salis (1738–1807) in Chiavenna, from the time when he was governor of the Valtellina. After the fall of Napoleon, from 1815 to 1859 Chiavenna and the whole of Lombardy and Veneto went to the House of Habsburg, who always wanted control of the pass from Austria to Milan to link the
Habsburg families. During the favourable time of the
Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, primary schools were created in every place, and the instruction was made obligatory for maids. Lombard and Venetic women where the first to be alphabetised in Italy, long before the women of other Italian provinces. The Austrian administration build bold modern routes (Spluga, Stelvio), created hospitals and brought the level of medicine in Milan up to the top for the time. A citizen of Chiavenna could study in the universities of Innsbruck, Vienna, Prague, Budapest. He could serve in the imperial army, become an officer, accede to the higher administration, and be ennobled. After the proclamation of the Sabaudian Regno d'Italia, Chiavenna followed the sort of the rest of Lombardy. On 6 June 2000, a
Catholic sister,
Maria Laura Mainetti, was murdered in a
satanic sacrifice by three teenage girls. ==People==