VercelliLatin Vercellae city, capital of Vercelli provincia,
Piemonte (Piedmont) regione, northwestern Italy. It lies along
the Sesia River, southwest of Novara. The chief city of the
Libici (a Ligurian tribe), it later became a Roman municipium
(town). The Campi Raudii (Raudian Fields) to the south were the
scene of Hannibal’s first victory on Roman soil (218 BC) and of
the Roman general Marius’s defeat of the Cimbri in 101 BC. A
powerful independent republic in the Middle Ages, Vercelli fell
to the Visconti family of Milan in 1335 and to the house of
Savoy in 1427. The Spanish occupied it from 1638 to 1659. It was
a bishopric from the 4th century and has been an archbishopric
since 1817.  The city’s notable landmarks include the cathedral
(reconstructed 1572), with a valuable library that houses the
Codex Vercellensis, a late 10th-century Old English manuscript;
the Romanesque-Gothic Basilica of Sant’Andrea (1219–24); and the
churches of San Cristoforo, San Paolo, and San Francesco.
Vercelli was the birthpl