The History

Monza (Munscia in Western Lombard) is a city on the river Lambro, a tributary of the Po, in the Lombardy region of Italy some 15km north-northeast of Milan. It is best known for its Grand Prix motor racing circuit, the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.
Since June 11, 2004 Monza has officially been designated the capital of the new province of Monza and Brianza. This new administrative arrangement will come fully into effect in 2009, and until then it will continue to be treated for many purposes as a comune within the province of Milan.
Monza is the third-largest city of Lombardy and the most important economic, industrial and administrative centre of the Brianza area, supporting a textile industry and a publishing trade.
Monza also hosts a Department of the University of Milan Bicocca, a Court of Justice and several offices of regional administration.
History
Origins in the Bronze Age
Late nineteenth-century finds of funerary urns show that the human presence in the area dates back at least to the Bronze Age, when people would have lived in settlements of pile dwellings raised above the rivers and marshes.
The Roman period
During the third century BCE the Romans subdued the Insubres, Gauls who had crossed the Alps and settled around Mediolanum (now Milan). A gallo-celtic tribe, who also seem to have been Insubres, then founded a village on the Lambro, of which the ruins of a bridge remain. Standing in a place where young people practised sports, the bridge was named ‘Arena’ and its remains can be seen near today’s Ponte dei Leoni (Lions Bridge).
During the Roman Empire the town was known as Modicia