Faenza

Italy

Faenza, the Roman Faventia, is a town in the province of Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy. Under the Manfredi family it flourished in the Renaissance, and it became so renowned for its tin-glazed ceramics that maiolica is known internationally as faience after the town. It is an episcopal see: the reforming monk and cardinal Peter Damian studied there in the early eleventh century, fell ill near Faenza on his final journey in 1072, and has rested in its cathedral since 1898. The physicist Evangelista Torricelli, inventor of the barometer, came from a Faenza family and was educated there, though he was born in Rome.