Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Fifth-century capital of the Western Roman Empire and later seat of the Byzantine exarchate
Ravenna, a modest place on the Adriatic coast of Italy, has an Etruscan name, which suggests that it was founded around 500 BC, the time when Etruscan activity in this area was at its peak. In the course of the fifth century the Etruscan element would have been absorbed by the local folk, the Umbrians; indeed, for the Romans, who didn’t think very deeply about it, Ravenna was just another Umbrian town. The region passed under Roman control at the end of the third century. Under the republic it was never more than a minor town, although its situation at the southernmost point of the province of Cisalpine Gaul eventually brought it a moment of fame: it was here that Julius Caesar spent the last night of his governorship of the Gauls, considering whether or not to take his troops south and start a civil war.
Caesar’s war went well, and that may have made him look kindly on Ravenna; before the year was out, in 49 BC, he had given its inhabitants Roman citizenship. His successor, Augustus, further boosted Ravenna’s position by stationing the Adriatic fleet at Classis, a port facility some five kilometres (three miles) to the south. (At Ravenna itself the sea was too shallow to be navigable.) Later rulers who added to the town’s amenities include the emperor Claudius (AD 41–54), who built a monumental gate, the Porta Aurea, at its southern entrance, and Trajan (98–117), who constructed a fine aqueduct. The town had now attained a comfortable position in the urban hierarchy: at the upper end of the common run, but with no claims to special attention.
The extra something needed to boost Ravenna’s size was added in the dying days of the Western Empire. In AD 402 the general in charge of the West’s defences told the emperor Honorius, then resident in MILAN, that he could no longer guarantee his safety if he and his court remained where they were. He suggested a move to Ravenna. At first sight this might seem a surprising choice because Milan was large and well fortified, whereas Ravenna was small and its walls relatively puny. But other factors made Ravenna the better option. Milan was on the main invasion route, Ravenna miles off it, up a cul-de-sac. Moreover, Ravenna was surrounded by marshes and lagoons, all fed by the waters of the Po. It was almost impossible to bring it under effective siege. Honorius, who was not a fighting man, had no problem accepting the proffered advice. Consequently, as from 404, Ravenna became the capital of the Western Empire and it remained the West’s capital until 476, when the last emperor was deposed. Subsequently it was the capital of the Gothic kingdom of Italy, and, after Justinian’s reconquest of the peninsula in 535–40, the seat of the East Roman governor of Italy, later termed the exarch. During this period the town more than quadrupled in size as Romans and Germans built palaces and churches and spent lavishly on their decoration. All this occurred at a time when there was hardly any building going on elsewhere in Italy, and none at all in the other parts of the West. As the Dark Ages settled over Europe and urban life contracted, often to vanishing point, Ravenna gleamed like a good deed in a naughty world.
The East Romans only enjoyed their recovery of Italy for a generation; in 568 a new wave of German invaders, the Lombards, overran the Po valley, and Ravenna’s status was correspondingly reduced. The exarchs held on to their capital and to the Adriatic coastline, but they were only marginal players in seventh-century Italy. By the time the Lombards took the city, in 751, it had lost most of its population and all of its significance. In the early medieval period it made a brief reappearance, being one of the first Lombard towns to declare its independence (1177). But it then faded out again and spent the rest of the Middle Ages being batted about by its more important neighbours before finally settling down under papal rule in 1509.
Ravenna’s awkward-looking perimeter reflects its history. The early Roman town was a thirty-hectare rectangle lying to the west of the coast road, the Via Popilia. The next phase began with the arrival of Honorius and his court in AD 402–4 and the creation of a new quarter north of the existing town. Finally, the Gothic king Theodoric (471–526) built his much larger palace on the east side of the Via Popilia. Theodoric is probably responsible for building the circuit of walls that pulled all three elements together. The walls, with the addition of a Venetian citadel, survive reasonably well today, and where they haven’t, we know where they ran. We also have a fair number of intact buildings, most notably one of Theodoric’s palace churches (S. Apollinare Nuova), and, in the area of Honorius’ palace, San Vitale, sumptuously decorated by Justinian to celebrate his recovery of Italy. But many other buildings have been lost and the city plan raises as many questions as it answers. Why is the Porta Aurea off centre? Could it be that the original Roman town was built in two stages, a small republican rectangle covering 9.5 hectares subsequently expanded to cover the full 30 hectares in the imperial period? Where is the hippodrome, usually said to lie alongside the Via Cerchio, although this is clearly not long enough to accommodate an imperial circus? And where in the higgledy-piggledy streets of the north-west quarter is the outline of Honorius’ palace? There is much work to be done.
The first secure data for Ravenna’s population are from 1371, when the number of taxable hearths was 1,743. Using a multiplier of four, this gives us a figure of 6,972, say 7,000. By 1656, numbers had increased to 12,963, and by 1796 to 16,000, of whom 9,500 lived within the walls. In the course of the nineteenth century the population increased to 36,000, but the number living within the walls only rose to 12,000. This suggests that the Ravenna of the late Roman period never held more than 10,000 people. It would only have had this many on its best days, i.e. from the early fifth century to the late sixth. So although it glowed, its light was small.