The Modena is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. Modena was known as Mutina in Roman times and it was, in 44 BC, the site of a battle in which Octavian defeated Mark Antony. Mutina was used by the Roman Empire as a military base against barbarians and civil wars, and Attila the Hun was prevented from sacking Mutina only because of a dense fog. Nevertheless, during the 7th century, Modena was buried by a great flood, and its exiles founded a new city a few miles to the northwest. By the 9th century, the city had been re-fortified. Modena sided with the Holy Roman Empire during its wars with the Pope in the Middle Ages. In 1288, the House of Este came to rule Modena, which became its main seat of power after the loss of the Duchy of Ferrara to the Papacy in 1598. In 1796, Ercole III d'Este was ousted from power by the French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars, and Ercole's only child, Maria Beatrice d'Este, married a Habsburg, creating the House of Austria-Este. On 20 August 1859, Piedmontese revolutionaries invaded Modena and annexed the country to the Savoyard nation of Italy. In 2015, Modena had a population of 184,732 people.
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