Where did the violin come from?

Andrea Amati was making the violin in Cremona, northern Italy, by about 1560, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art holds one of his violins from then. The Victoria and Albert Museum notes that from about 1660 the violin began to replace the higher-pitched viols, because it gave the brisk sound then in fashion. Antonio Stradivari (1644 to 1737), also of Cremona, is widely regarded as the greatest violin maker of all time.