A capital in the marshes
In the late fourth century the Western Roman Empire was under pressure from Germanic armies. In 402, with the Visigoths in Italy, the emperor Honorius moved his court from Milan to Ravenna, on the Adriatic coast. Rome remained the symbol of the empire, but emperors had not lived there regularly for a long time.
Ravenna had three advantages. It was surrounded by marshes and lagoons that made an attack by land very difficult. It had a large harbour at nearby Classe, the base of the Roman fleet in the Adriatic, so it could be supplied by sea even under siege. And the sea kept it in contact with the eastern capital, Constantinople, from which help and money might come.
Honorius’s sister, Galla Placidia, ruled the West for years as regent for her son. A small cross-shaped building, known as her mausoleum, has the oldest of Ravenna’s great mosaics, with a vault of gold stars on deep blue. Galla Placidia actually died in Rome in 450, and whether she was ever buried here is uncertain.
A capital for Gothic kings
In 476 the Germanic general Odoacer deposed the last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus. The Western Empire ended, but Ravenna kept its role. In 493 Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, took the city and ruled Italy from it for more than thirty years. He was a Christian of the Arian church, which differed from the Catholic church on the nature of Christ, and he built churches, a palace and a baptistery for his people. His tomb, a two-storey building in stone, is covered by a single block of Istrian stone, estimated at around 300 tonnes.
In his palace church, now Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, long mosaic friezes run along the nave. One of them shows Theodoric’s palace. Look between its columns and you can see hands and outlines where figures once stood: after the Byzantine conquest, the images linked to the Arian king were removed and replaced with curtains.
A capital for Byzantine governors
In 540 the general Belisarius took Ravenna for the emperor Justinian, who wanted to reunite the old Roman world. The city became the seat of Byzantine power in Italy, later governed by an official called the exarch, until the Lombards took it in 751. The great churches finished in these years, San Vitale, consecrated in 547, and Sant’Apollinare in Classe, consecrated in 549, carry the imperial message in gold and colour.
Why so many mosaics survive
Ravenna’s mosaics are the result of more than a century and a half as a capital, under three different powers, each building to show its authority and faith: the Western emperors, the Ostrogothic kings and the Byzantine governors with their bishops. Each wanted churches to match. Then, after 751, the city lost its importance and its harbour silted up. Ravenna was never rich enough again to rebuild its churches in later styles, and so the decoration of the fifth and sixth centuries stayed in place.
In 1996 eight of its early Christian monuments were added together to the UNESCO World Heritage List: the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the Neonian Baptistery, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, the Arian Baptistery, the Archiepiscopal Chapel, the Mausoleum of Theodoric, San Vitale and Sant’Apollinare in Classe. They form the richest group of mosaics from this period anywhere, the best introduction to early Byzantine art outside Istanbul.
Where to see it
Seven of the eight monuments are in the historic centre of Ravenna, within walking distance of each other; Sant’Apollinare in Classe lies about 5 kilometres south, near the site of the old port.
Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, “Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna”.
- Opera di Religione della Diocesi di Ravenna, the monuments and their history.
- D. M. Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2010).
- J. Herrin, Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe (London, 2020).
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