Insubres

The Insubres or Insubri were a Gaulish population settled in Insubria, in what is now the Italian region of Lombardy. They were the founders of Mediolanum (Milan). Though completely Gaulish at the time of Roman conquest, they were the result of the fusion of pre-existing Ligurian and Celtic population with Gaulish tribes who had come from what is now Central Europe.

The Insubres are mentioned by Cicero, Polybius, Livy, Pliny the Elder, Strabo and Caecilius Statius.

Polybius called the Insubres the most important Celtic tribe of the Italian peninsula, while according to the Livy they were the first to inhabit Cisalpine Gaul, from the VII century BC.

Insubres were part of the Golasecca culture, which takes its name from a town near Varese, where Abbot Giovanni Battista Giani made the first findings of about fifty Celtic graves with pottery and metal objects. It is a culture that developed at the end of the Late Bronze Age, between the rivers Po, Serio and Sesia, and which has its counterpart in the Central European Hallstatt culture.

The Insubres culture followed then what was a slow and of its own evolution. Thanks to the cultural and commercial exchanges with neighboring areas, such as Etruria, Venetia and Transalpine Gaul, the Insubres knew progress and created a distinct society of their own. In the light of archaeological findings it can be also assumed that it was an oligarchic society, where power was in the hands of a few Lords.

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