he prescrived that students from many towns of north Italy had to attend the lectures in the school of Pavia. In 924, the Hungarians, led by the deposed Lombard king, Berengar I, besieged but did not conquer the city. With Otto II Pavia become the stable site of the court, first with queen Adelaide of Italy and then with the wife of Otto II Theophanum. During the Ottonian period Pavia enjoyed a period of well-being and development. The ancient Lombard capital distinguished itself from the other cities of the Po Valley for its fundamental function as a crossroads of important trade, both in foodstuffs and in luxury items. Commercial traffic was favored above all by the waterways used by the emperor for his travels: from Ticino the Po was easily reached, a direct axis with the Adriatic Sea and maritime traffic. Furthermore, with the advent of the Ottoni, Milan again lost importance in favor of Pavia, whose pre-eminence was sanctioned, among other things, by the minting of the Pavia mint. The importance of the city in those centuries is also highlighted by the account of the Arab geographer Ibrāhīm al-Turtuši, who traveled to central-western Europe between 960 and 965 and visited Verona, Rocca di Garda and Pavia, which he defined the main city of Longobardia, very populous, rich in merchants and entirely built, unlike other centers in the region, in stone, brick and lime. In Pavia, Ibrāhīm al-Turtuši, was very impressed by the equestrian statue of Regisole, which he places near one of the doors of the Royal palace and by the 300 jurists working inside the palace. Also at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the city was the birthplace of Liutprand of Cremona, bishop, chronicler and diplomat in the service of Berengar II first and then of Otto I and Otto II and of Lanfranc, a close collaborator of William the Conqueror and, after the Norman conquest of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom, reorganizer of the English church. Pavia remained the capital of the Italian Kingdom and the centre of royal coronations until the diminution of imperial authority there in the 12th century. In 1004, Holy Roman Emperor Henry II bloodily suppressed a revolt of the citizens of Pavia, who disputed his recent coronation as King of Italy. In the 12th century, Pavia acquired the status of a self-governing commune. In the political division between Guelphs and Ghibellines