New marches were formed, traversing the previous Lombard fabric and introducing divisions that decentralized the kingdom.

Thus the great vassals of Ivrea, Verona, Tuscany, and Spoleto raised themselves against Pavia.

The monarchs, placed between the Papacy and their ambitious nobles, were unable to consolidate the realm; and when Berengar, the last independent sovereign strove to enforce the declining authority of Pavia, he was met with the resistance and the hatred of the nation.
The kingdom Berengar attempted to maintain against his vassals and the Church was virtually abrogated by Otho I., whom the Lombard nobles summoned into Italy in 951.

When he reappeared in 961, he was crowned Emperor at Rome, and assumed the title of the King of Italy.

Thus the Regno was merged in the Empire, and Pavia ceased to be a capital.
Henceforth the two great potentates in the peninsula were an unarmed Pontiff and an absent Emperor.