Laudes Mediolanensis civitatis

Laudes Mediolanensis civitatis ("Praises of the City of Milan"), also known as the Versum de Mediolano civitate ("Verse of the City of Milan") or Versus in laudem mediolanensis civitatis ("Verse in Praise of the City of Milan"), is an early medieval Latin poem, which describes and praises the Italian city of Milan. It dates from the mid-8th century, during the era of the Lombard Kingdom. The poet is unknown. The poem is an encomium, an example of the urban eulogy genre. It celebrates not only the Christian heritage of Milan, but also its pagan Roman history. It is considered to be the earliest surviving medieval description of a city. The poem served as a model for the Carolingian Versus de Verona, a similar encomium to its rival Verona, written around 50 years later.

Laudes Mediolanensis civitatis has been dated at around 738, or 739–49. The Milan of that date was a bustling city in the Lombard Kingdom in northern Italy, which had regained its stability after the collapse of the Roman Empire. The anonymous poet is likely to have been a clergyman. No contemporary Milanese manuscript copies have survived, and the poem is known from a single 9th-century manuscript from the library of Verona, another city in Lombardy.

Milan was a popular subject for writers.Ordo Nobilium Urbium, a 4th-century poem by the Roman poet Ausonius, includes a brief section on the city. Later medieval descriptions include the anonymous De situ civitatis Mediolani (780–1000), and ones written by Bonvesin da la Riva (1288) and Benzo d'Alessandria (around 1316), all of which are in prose.

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