Ravenna
Discover Ravenna
A concise introduction to Ravenna, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Ravenna is a city of about one hundred and sixty thousand people in eastern Emilia Romagna, near the Adriatic. It was three times a capital — of the Western Roman Empire, of Theodoric’s Ostrogothic kingdom, and of the Byzantine exarchate in Italy — and the buildings from those three centuries are why anyone comes.
The centre is flat, compact and unhurried, and the monuments are close together: San Vitale and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia share one enclosure, the two baptisteries and Sant’Apollinare Nuovo are a few minutes away, and Dante’s tomb is in the middle of it.
Two outliers need transport: the Mausoleum of Theodoric on the northern edge, and Sant’Apollinare in Classe, eight kilometres south, which stands more or less alone in a field.
Modern Ravenna is also a working industrial port and a beach destination for the Romagna coast, neither of which the visitor sees unless they go looking.