Pavia

The Ostrogothic royal seat in northern Italy where Boethius was imprisoned, wrote the Consolation of Philosophy, and was executed.

Pavia was a capital under Theodoric, and it is where his most distinguished Roman official ended up in a cell. Boethius had been consul, and his two sons were consuls together in the year he fell. Accused of treasonous correspondence with Constantinople, he was condemned without the chance to answer. In prison he wrote the dialogue with Lady Philosophy that became the most widely read book of the Middle Ages after the Bible. Then he was beaten and killed.