Aosta

An Alpine town on the Roman road over the Great Saint Bernard pass, where Anselm was born and from which he left for Normandy against his father's wishes.

Aosta sits in a valley ringed by the highest peaks in the Alps, laid out on a Roman grid that is still visible. Anselm's mother was devout and his father was not, and after her death the household became impossible. He crossed the mountains at twenty-three and spent three years wandering before reaching Bec in Normandy, where Lanfranc's school gave him somewhere to put an unusual mind.