Ravenna historical timeline

Ravenna became capital of the Western Roman Empire in 402, when Honorius moved the court from Milan because the marshes here could be defended and Milan could not. The empire in the west ended in 476 with the deposition of its last emperor, in this city.

Theodoric the Ostrogoth then ruled Italy from Ravenna for over thirty years. He was an Arian Christian, which is why the city has two baptisteries and two cathedrals’ worth of decoration — one set built by Arians, one by the Catholic congregation. After the Byzantine reconquest the Arian buildings were reconsecrated, and in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo you can still see where figures from Theodoric’s court were removed from a mosaic, leaving hands on the columns where they had been.

From 540 the city was the seat of the Byzantine exarch, the emperor’s representative in Italy, until the Lombards took it in 751. San Vitale and the Justinian and Theodora panels date from that period and were made by craftsmen working to Constantinopolitan standards.

Ravenna then slid into provincial obscurity for a thousand years, which is why the mosaics survive. Dante, exiled from Florence, died here in 1321 and is buried in the city; Florence has asked for him back repeatedly and still sends oil for the lamp at his tomb each year.