Duchy of Spoleto

The Duchy of Spoleto was a duchy of central Italy that existed from the late sixth century until the early thirteenth, centred on the city of Spoleto and controlling the mountainous interior of what are now Umbria, Abruzzo, Marche and Lazio. It emerged during the Lombard conquest of Italy in the 570s under Duke Faroald I, and because it sat astride the Via Flaminia it controlled the main routes between Rome and Ravenna, cutting the Byzantine territories off from the pope. Its dukes nominally recognised the Lombard kings but often ruled independently: in 592 Ariulf even concluded a separate truce with Pope Gregory I apart from King Agilulf. Under King Grimoald the duchy tightened back under the crown through Transamund I, who governed some forty years, and Faroald II restored the great Farfa Abbey and in 716 captured Classis, Ravenna's port. After the Franks took the Lombard kingdom in 774 Spoleto kept its own identity under Carolingian suzerainty, and in the ninth and tenth centuries its rulers, Guidoni such as Guy I, Lambert I and Guy III, divided the duchy by inheritance, marched against Saracens at Bari and Naples, and rose to kings of Italy and emperors. From the late twelfth century the duchy was folded into the Papal States and had ceased to exist as an autonomous polity.