RAVENNA, a city and archiepiscopal see of Emilia, Italy, capital of the province of Ravenna, standing in a marshy plain 13 ft. above sea-level, 6 m. from the sea and 45 m. by rail east of Bologna. Pop. (1931) 14,295 (town), 78,143 (commune)—a considerable increase, as the population of 1881 was only 34.27o (commune). The town is a centre for agriculture, which has been much favoured by extensive drainage and reclamation works. There is also a sugar factory at Classe. The town is connected with the sea by the Corsini Canal. Ravenna has railway communi cation with Bologna (via Castel Bolognese), Ferrara and Rimini, and by steam tram with Forli. Though the external aspect of the town is not striking, no other in the world offers so many and such splendid examples of the ecclesiastical architecture of the centuries from the 5th to the 8th. The style is commonly called Byzantine; but the colonnades and the mosaics are not so much Byzantine as representative of early Christian art generally.
The cathedral of Ravenna, built by S. Ursus in 370-390, which had a nave and four aisles, was destroyed in only the (inaccessible) crypt and the round campanile remaining from the earlier structure; there are fragments of reliefs from a pulpit erected by Archbishop Agnellus (556-569) in the interior. The present cathedral contains several early Christian marble sarco phagi, a silver cross of the 11th century and the throne of the Archbishop Maximian (546-552), adorned with reliefs in ivory.
The period from the transference of the imperial residence to Ravenna to the death of Valentinian III. (404-455) was the first period of great building activity in Ravenna, when the archiepis copal see of Ravenna attained great importance. It was to it that we owe the erection of the Basilica Petriana at Classe (396-425), which has entirely disappeared, of the churches of S. Giovanni Evangelista (425), of S. Agata (425-432), of the chapel of S. Pier Crisologo (433-449), of the mausoleum of Galla Placidia (44o), the church of S. Pier Maggiore (now S. Francesco) the baptistery of Neon (449-458), S. Giovanni Battista and S. Croce.
S. Giovanni Evangelista, erected by Galla Placidia in fulfilment of a vow made on her voyage from Constantinople, has been entirely rebuilt, though the columns are ancient. The Gothic portal is fine, and the church contains a mosaic pavement of 1213 with representations of the 4th Crusade and some frescoes by Giotto, painted during a visit to Dante between 1317 and 1320.
S. Agata was almost entirely rebuilt in 1476-94. The chapel of S. Pier Crisologo in the archiepiscopal palace preserves its original mosaics; so also does the mausoleum of Galla Placidia (SS. Na zario e Celso), a small structure in the form of a Latin cross with a dome (in which, as in the baptistery of Neon, the old cathedral, etc., the constructional use of amphorae is noteworthy), with a plain brick exterior, and rich mosaics on a dark blue ground.
S. Francesco has been modernized, except for the crypt and campanile (loth century). The baptistery adjacent to the cathe dral was either originally part of the Roman baths, converted to a Christian baptistery by the Archbishop Neon (449-452), or a Christian building dating from before A.D. 396. It is an octagon, with a dome ; in the interior are two arcades one above the other. The mosaics of the 5th century, in the dome, are the earliest and perhaps the finest at Of S. Giovanni Battista, also erected in this period, hardly any thing remains after the restoration of 1683, and S. Croce has been overtaken by a similar fate. Honorius and Galla Placidia built a palace about A.D. 402, remains of which have been found under S. Croce.
The reign of Theodoric (493-526) marks another era of mag nificence. In the eastern part of the city he built for himself a large palace. There still remains fronting the Corso Garibaldi a high wall built of square Roman bricks, with pillars and arched recesses in the upper portion, which goes by the name of Palazzo di Teodorico, but is a guardhouse erected by the exarchs, recent explorations having made it clear that it was an addition to the palace, while mosaic pavements and a court once surrounded by colonnades and really belonging to the latter were found behind S. Apollinare Nuovo and the so-called Palazzo at a lower level and a different orientation. (See Ghirardini in Monumenti dei Lincei, xxiv. 737-838.) A mosaic in the church of S. Apollinare Nuovo gives some faint idea of the palace. The massive mauso leum of Theodoric stands still perfect outside the walls near the north-east corner of the city. It is circular internally and decago nal externally, in two storeys, built of marble blocks, and sur mounted by an enormous monolith, brought from the quarries of Istria and weighing more than 30o tons. It has been converted into a church dedicated to the Virgin.