FAENZA, the ancient Faventia, a town in the delegation of Ravenna, Papal States, situated in a fertile plain at the junction of the canal of Zanelli with the Lamone, 20 miles S.W. of Ravenna. Pop. about 20,000. It is regularly built, and is surrounded by walls, and defended by a citadel. Around the market-place (a spacious square in the centre of the town, with a fine marble fountain) are ranged the cathedral, town-hall, theatre, and many handsome private residences. Faenza possesses numerous churches and monasteries, a lyceum, college, school of painting, hospital, and two orphan asylums. A kind of porcelain which has been supposed to take its name of faience from this town, one of the earliest sites of this peculiar product, still continues to be manufactured here, though not to such an extent as formerly. Faenza has also manufactories for spinning and weaving silk, some paper-mills, and a considerable trade by the Zanelli canal. Faventia is noted in history as the place where Carbo and Norbanus were defeated with great loss by Metellus, the general of Sulla, in B.C. 82. In the time of Pliny it was celebrated for its manufactures of linen, which was considered to surpass all other linens in whiteness. Torricelli the famous natural philosopher was born here.