Hannibal, planning to win the war with…

Hannibal, planning to win the war with Rome by a surprise invasion of Italy from the north, makes his younger brother Hasdrubal commander in Spain, crosses the Pyrenees and southern Gaul, and then marches up the Rhône River.

Although impeded by early snows and the presence of eighty cumbersome elephants in his baggage train, Hannibal unexpectedly crosses the Alps, probably somewhere between the Little St. Bernard and Mt.

Genevre passes, into the Po Valley in the autumn of 218.

Once in the Po Valley, Hannibal recruits the Gauls, recently defeated by Rome between 225 and 220.

Piacenza must have been walled immediately, as the walls are in place when the Battle of the Trebbia is fought around the city in December.

There is no evidence either textual or archaeological of a prior settlement on that exact location; however, the site would have been obliterated by construction.

Piacenza, the fifty-third colony to be placed by Rome since its foundation, is the first among the Gauls of the Po valley.