Pavia is the city where royal authority, hospitality, and homecoming converge in the Decameron. It is the seat of Agilulf’s Lombard kingship and the home to which Messer Torello d'Istria is miraculously returned after captivity in Alexandria. In Torello’s story, Pavia first receives a stranger through lavish hospitality, then a husband believed dead through a recognition scene in which a ring turns a wedding feast into a reunion.

Royal seat and domestic setting

Pavia is identified as the city in Lombardy where Agilulf fixed the seat of his kingship, following the practice of his predecessors. The city therefore belongs to the story’s political geography as well as its domestic one: the royal household of Agilulf and Theodolinda is established there, and a horsekeeper’s concealed love for the queen unfolds within that world. Pavia’s position as the royal seat gives the private plot its setting of rank and proximity, where the horsekeeper serves the queen and observes the king’s visits to her chamber.

The city also anchors Torello’s family life. His estate lies on the Tesino, outside Pavia, while his household and the civic community are located within the city. This distinction shapes the opening hospitality episode: Torello encounters Saladin and his companions on the road from Milan to Pavia, sends them onward to a place to lodge, and rides to his country estate to arrange supper. The next day he brings them to his own house in Pavia, where about fifty of the city’s leading citizens are assembled to welcome the travelers.

Hospitality in the city

Saladin, traveling in the disguise of a merchant with two high-ranking officers and three servants, asks how he and his companions can reach Pavia before its gates close. Torello answers that they cannot arrive in time and arranges lodging for them rather than leave the strangers to fend for themselves. At his country house, he prepares supper in the garden and waits at the entrance for his guests. The welcome continues in Pavia the following day, when the visitors expect to be guided to an inn but are instead taken to Torello’s residence.

The welcome is not a private gesture alone. Torello’s wife, Madam Adalieta, receives word from the servant sent ahead and organizes a magnificent banquet, summoning friends and servants and inviting many of the town’s noblest people by torchlight. At Torello’s house, the assembled citizens meet Saladin and his companions; they are attended with elaborate courtesy and served a lavish meal. Pavia thus becomes the setting for a hospitality that begins with a chance meeting on the road and expands into a civic welcome. The guests, who are accustomed to magnificence, are astonished that so much honor is offered by a host they understand to be a citizen rather than a lord.

Return to Pavia

Years later, after Torello has joined a crusade, been captured, and fallen ill from longing, Saladin arranges for him to be transported by magical art from Alexandria to Pavia in a single night. Torello is placed in the church of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, asleep in a rich bed and surrounded by the costly gifts Saladin has bestowed on him. At matins, the sacristan sees the bed and flees in fright. The abbot and monks enter with lights, but when Torello wakes and sighs, they too run away, supposing the sight to be supernatural.

Torello calls the abbot by name and explains that he is alive and has returned from overseas. The recognition is difficult: the abbot has believed him dead for months. Torello’s arrival therefore transforms a church into the first place where the city’s lost man is recovered—not yet by his wife, but by a relative who must overcome fear and disbelief before accepting what he sees. The church setting holds together the story’s apparent miracle and its human explanation: Saladin’s extraordinary intervention has brought Torello home, but the people of Pavia must still learn that he has returned.

The wedding feast and the city’s response

Torello reaches the house where Madam Adalieta is celebrating a new marriage, having accepted another husband because she believes Torello dead. He does not immediately disclose himself. Instead, he uses the custom of sending a guest wine from the bride’s cup: he drops into it the ring Madam Adalieta had given him at their parting. When she finds the ring, she recognizes it as hers and identifies the supposed stranger as her husband. Her recognition overturns the wedding and reunites the couple in front of the gathered company.

The bridegroom accepts that Torello, being alive, may take his wife back. Madam Adalieta puts aside the ring and crown of her new husband and wears the ring she has recovered from the cup and the crown Saladin sent her. She and Torello go with the wedding party to his house, where they comfort his grieving friends, relatives, and townspeople with the news of his return. Pavia’s communal response completes the homecoming: what first appeared to be a private reunion becomes a public celebration, and the city that had mourned Torello receives him as though he had returned by a miracle. Torello shares his jewels with the man who had paid for the wedding, the abbot, and others, and sends messages of his safe return to Saladin, whom he continues to regard as a friend and servant.