Aosta (French: Aoste) is the principal city and episcopal see of the Aosta Valley in the Italian Alps, 48 miles north-northwest of Turin, in Piedmont. It is site is near the Italian entrance of the Mont Blanc Tunnel, at the confluence of the Buthier and the Dora Baltea, and at the junction of the Great and Little St Bernard routes. Aosta is not the capital of the eponymous province, as these function are shared by the region and he communes.
Aosta was settled in proto-historic times and later became a Celtic-Ligurian city of the Salassi. Terentius Varro captured it in 25 BC and founded the Roman colony of Augusta Praetoria. After 11 BC Aosta became the capital of the Alpes Graies ("Grey Alps") province of the Empire.
After the fall of the Western Empire, the city was conquered by the Burgundians, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines. The Lombards, who had annexed it to their Italian Kingdom, were expelled by the Franks of Pepin the Younger. Under Charlemagne it acquired importance as a post across the Via Francigena, leading from Aachen to Italy. After 888 it was part of the renewed Kingdom of Italy under Arduin of Ivrea and Berengar of Friuli.
In the 10th century Aosta became part of the Kingdom of Burgundy. After the fall of the latter in 1032, it entered the lands of Umberto I Biancamano of the Savoy House house. After the creation of the county of Savoy, with its capital in Chambery, Aosta followed its history, as well as the later Kingdom of Sardinia and unified Italy.
Under the Savoy House Aosta was granted a special status that it mantained after the new Italian Republic was proclaimed in 1948.
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