Monza lies along the Lambro River, just northeast of Milan. The ancient Monza, was a village until the 6th century, when the queen Theodelinda established there a holiday residence and a cathedral (the "Duomo" of Monza) attracted from the beauty of the landscape and the closeness to the famous center of Milan. In the "Duomo" there is the iron crown (Corona Ferrea) of Lombardy, supposedly formed from one of the nails used at Christ's crucifixion and used after 1311 for the coronation of the Holy Roman emperors and of Napoleon (1805). In the XII century the archbishop of Milan took Monza under his ruling: by doing so he linked together Monza and Milan. Monza has sometimes been independent (under the emperors Federico Barbarossa e Arrigo VII), but the supremacy of Milan lasted for centuries and was bloodily underlined from Galeazzo I Visconti who answered to a rebellion of Monza's people by building a castle there (1325) with dreadful prisons ("forni"). In the XVI century Monza was under the domination of the Spanish through the De Leyva family; the famous "Monaca di Monza" (Suor Virginia Maria De Leyva) described by Manzoni in "I Promessi Sposi" was part of this family. The "Villa Reale" was one of the most liked residences of King Umberto I of Italy; he was assassinated there on July 29, 1900; an expiatory chapel was dedicated to him in 1910.