Ravenna, AD 400–800: Archaeology, History and Art

Despite the well-known early Christian and Byzantine artistic and architectural heritage of Ravenna, the city's history, archaeology and wider heritage remains surprisingly poorly understood and disseminated. No up-to-date book exists in English that addresses the emergence and development of Ravenna in the crucial centuries of transition from Roma to Germanic to Byzantine rule between AD 400 and 750, when Ravenna was capital of the Western Empire and then capital of Italy. Beside extant churches with fine mosaics, other monuments exist, alongside an important wider archaeological record - most notably the excavations at the fleet base of Classe, with both economic and residential data as well as religious units. Furthermore, there is a highly important documentary and papyrological record which remains little utilised. Drawing on a wealth of archaeological and historical data, this book offers a unique and detailed overview of all the main aspects of Ravenna from late Roman to early medieval times, blending text, structures and finds. In so doing it provides a truly interdisciplinary survey of one of the great cities of early medieval Europe, and will no doubt stand as a model for future surveys of other urban sites of the late Roman to early medieval world.