Vercelli (; ), is a city and comune of 46,552 inhabitants (January 1, 2017) in the Province of Vercelli, Piedmont, northern Italy. One of the oldest urban sites in northern Italy, it was founded, according to most historians, around 600 BC. The city is situated on the Sesia River in the plain of the Po River between Milan and Turin. It is an important centre for the cultivation of rice and is surrounded by rice paddies, which are flooded in the summer. The climate is typical of the Po Valley with cold, foggy winters ( in January) and oppressive heat during the summer months ( in July). Rainfall is most prevalent during the spring and autumn; thunderstorms are common in the summer. The languages spoken in Vercelli are Italian and Piedmontese; the variety of Piedmontese native to the city is called Varsleis. The world's first university funded by public money was established in Vercelli in 1228 (the seventh university founded in Italy), but was closed in 1372. Today it has a university of literature and philosophy as a part of the Università del Piemonte Orientale and a satellite campus of the Politecnico di Torino. History Vercellae (or Vercelum) was the capital of the Libici or Lebecili, a Ligurian tribe; it became an important municipium, near which Gaius Marius defeated the Cimbri and the Teutones in the Battle of Vercellae in 101 BC. The imperial magister militum Flavius Stilicho annihilated the Goths there 500 years later. It was half-ruined in St. Jerome's time (olim potens, nunc raro habitatore semiruta (1, 3.1)). After the Lombard invasion it belonged to the Duchy of Ivrea. From 885 it was under the jurisdiction of the prince-bishop, who was a Count of the Empire. It became an independent commune in 1120 and joined the first and second Lombard leagues. Its statutes are among the most interesting of those of the medieval republics. In 1197 they abolished the servitude of the glebe. In 1228 the University of Pavia was transferred to Vercelli, where it remained until the fourteenth century, but without gaining much prominence; only a university school of law has been maintained. In 1307, Fra Dolcino, the leader of the Dulcinians was tortured and burned at the stake. During the troubles of the 13th century, it fell into the power of the Della Torre of Milan (1263), of the Marquesses of Monferrato (1277), who appointed Matteo