Ravenna, a city of Italy, 43 miles E. of Bologna, once close to, but now some 5 miles from the Adriatic, with which it is connected by the Corsini Canal, is enclosed by a wall 3 miles long, with five gates. It has been the seat of an archbishop since 438, and possesses a museum, a public library, a picture-gallery, municipal buildings (with a leaning tower), a theatre, &c. It has manufactures of silk, linen, paper, and glass, and a trade in wine and agricultural products. The streets are wide, and the squares are adorned with statues of the popes. The outward aspect of the town and its buildings is dull and disappointing, but the interiors of the churches are exceedingly interesting. Pop. 12,100; of commune, 60,573.
Possibly a Thessalian settlement, afterwards held by the Umbrians, Ravenna passed to Rome as one of the cities of Cisalpine Gaul south of the Po. It first became famous under Augustus as the station of the Adriatic fleet, with Classis—a flourishing suburb—as its port, a site marked now only by a church, and separated from the sea by the pine forest celebrated by Dante, Boccaccio, Dryden, and Byron. Deserted by the sea, and strongly entrenched by canals and marshes, Ravenna became the refuge of the Emperor Honorius (402), and the capital of Italy for the next 350 years. Imperial until Romulus Augustulus doffed the purple at the bidding of Odoacer (see ITALY), who ruled at Ravenna 476-493, it attained its greatest glory under Theodoric the Ostrogoth (493-526), whose mausoleum (La Rotonda)—now empty—is without the walls. Conquered by the generals of Justinian, Ravenna was the seat of Exarchs (q.v.) from Constantinople until 752, when it was taken by the Lombards, and afterwards by the Franks, by whom it was gifted to the pope. A republic in the early part of the 13th century, governed by its own dukes in the 14th, subject to Venice after 1440, it was won by Pope Julius II. in 1509, and continued papal until it became national in 1860.
Ravenna, chiefly on account of its numerous ancient churches, holds a unique position as 'the Pompeii of the 5th and 6th centuries'—that marked transitional period in early mediæval history. There are at least six churches of the time of Galla Placidia (390-450), the sister of Honorius and mother of Valentinian III. SS. Nazario e Celso is her mausoleum, and there lie her brother, her second husband Constantius III., and her son. Theodoric, leaving, with rare religious toleration, the cathedral of St Urso (almost entirely rebuilt, 1734) and the other churches to the Catholics, erected for his Arian Goths the basilica of St Martin (now St Apollinare Nuovo, with its marvellous mosaic processions of martyrs added about 560, when it was 'reconciled') as a cathedral, a baptistery (now St Maria in Cosmedin), and St Teodoro (now St Spirito). St Vitale (with contemporary portraits in mosaic of the emperor and Theodora)—the model for Charlemagne's cathedral at Aix-la-Chapelle—and the magnificent basilica of St Apollinare in Classe belong to the age of Justinian. The round campaniles, perhaps of the 10th century, form another architectural feature peculiar to Ravenna.
Dante died at Ravenna, September 14, 1321, and is buried there. A column, 2 miles from the walls, commemorates the fall of Gaston de Foix at the head of the French army of Louis XII., after a bloody and useless victory over the papal and Spanish troops, April 11, 1512. Byron resided at Ravenna from June 1819 to October 1821.