The Jewelled Lady

Tall and regal, she wears a magnificent jewelled crown, long pendants of pearls, and necklaces of pearls, emeralds, and rubies.  Her purple robes are embroidered with golden thread.  Her large, dark eyes regard us with a steady gaze.  She is confident, and accustomed to admiration.  Her beauty and her iron will have served her well in her progress from actress and courtesan to Empress of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Her brilliant mosaic image, on the right apse wall of the Basilica of San Vitale, in Ravenna, seems to personify the city. It is reproduced on countless travel brochures, coffee mugs, mouse pads and guidebooks.  But this royal lady never set foot in Ravenna.

She was Theodora, wife and partner of Justinian I, Ruler of Byzantium.  She and her husband commissioned the decoration of San Vitale after Justinian’s military commander, Belisarius, wrested control of Ravenna from the Ostrogoths in 540 AD.

In art, great cities are often personified as women; and although Theodora can’t properly represent her, we might think of today’s Ravenna as a prosperous lady, with many profitable investments: offshore oil and gas production, refineries, chemical plants, and a port supported by a 12 kilometre canal connecting the city to the Adriatic.  (Once, long ago, the city fronted the sea; Augustus created the port of Classe there, to shelter his new Roman military fleet.  But over the centuries, the sea receded, and Ravenna today is land-locked, except for the canal.  Where the fearsome triremes of the Empire once floated, sun worshippers now bask on sandy beaches.)

But in her heart, the historical centre, our wealthy matron harbours jewels of her own, given her by a succession of suitors over centuries of her majestic but perilous life. They are eight historic buildings from Ravenna’s past, and the glittering walls, ceilings, domes and arches inside seven of them are Lady Ravenna’s shining adornments. 

These are the early Christian mosaics for which Ravenna is world famous.  The eighth building, rather plain in comparison, holds the memory of perhaps her greatest suitor.  It is the mausoleum of Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths.

Not every visitor left Ravenna a gift, of course.  In 49 BC, Julius Caesar gathered his forces there before crossing the Rubicon on his way to Rome from Gaul.  Perhaps he would have given a token of thanks if he’d not been murdered five years later.  A couple of Roman Emperors gave practical gifts, if not exactly romantic ones:  Augustus’ harbour was very useful, of course, and Trajan built her an aqueduct. 

If you come by train, the terminus of the port canal is only a few hundred feet east of the stazione, but you won’t see it unless you look for it.  When we arrived, we headed west toward the centro storico.  It’s a pleasant walk along tree-lined Viale Farini toward Piazza del Popolo, passing the ancient church of San Giovanni Evangelista on the way. The church was commissioned by Galla Placidia, a woman whose rise to power is even more improbable than Theodora’s. We were to visit her mausoleum later, but we couldn’t resist strolling in the green and shady park around San Giovanni, musing on Galla’s story.

The Purloined Princess

Born about the year 390, she was the daughter of Theodosius I, who ruled the Eastern Roman Empire from Constantinople, and half-sister to the Western Roman Emperor, Honorius.  This young Imperial Princess happened to be in Rome in 410 when the city was sacked by the Visigoths, led by their king, Alaric, and Galla was among the prizes taken from the city. 

However, Alaric had not captured the capital of the Western Roman Empire.  Diocletian had earlier made Milan the capital, but Honorius had transferred the seat of government to Ravenna in 402.  (Honorius chose Ravenna because the port of Classe gave easy access to Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Empire, and because the swampy western approaches discouraged Barbarian invaders.  It turned out that some attackers didn’t mind getting their feet wet, but Ravenna managed to remain the capital for three-quarters of a century.)

After Alaric died, Galla evidently conquered the heart of his successor, King Athaulf.  They were married in Narbonne, in what is now southern France, in 414, over the objections of Honorius.  The abducted Roman Princess became, in effect, Queen of the Visigoths. 

The marriage seems to have been a happy one, and Galla may have persuaded Athaulf to support Roman rule in Italy with his Gothic troops.  However, he was assassinated a year later, and the Goths sent Galla back to Ravenna.  There, she reluctantly married the nobleman Flavius Constantius, with whom she had two children – Justa Grata Honoria, and Valentinian.  When Constantius became co-emperor with Honorius, Galla was proclaimed “Augusta” – Empress – of the Western Roman Empire.  After both Honorius and Constantius died, Galla’s son Valentinian became Western Emperor at age six.  Galla Placidia ruled the Western Roman Empire as Regent for the next twelve years; and ruled it well.  As for her children – well, the adult Valentinian didn’t have his mother’s strong character, and Justa Grata Honoria, as we shall see a little later, was a world-class problem child.

A Cluster of Gems

Ravenna’s origins are lost in the mists of prehistory, but the eight buildings that make up Lady Ravenna’s famous adornments (and all of them are Unesco World Heritage sites) date from three distinct historic periods, each of them dominated by one extraordinary person.  Galla Placidia’s colourful personality marked the Imperial age, when the city was the capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed in 476.

The second great building period was the reign of Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths, who ruled Italy from Ravenna, from 493 to 526.  Theodoric admired classical Rome, and sought to maintain Roman civilization in Italy.  He was also a follower of Arianism, which held that Christ, though divine, as the Son of God was subordinate to God the Father.  However, his reign was marked by religious tolerance of both Orthodox Christians and Jews.

The third was the time of Byzantine rule in Ravenna, which fended off the Lombards until the 8th century.  The man who showed his love of Ravenna most concretely, in the great churches he made, was an obscure cleric named Maximian who was appointed Bishop of Ravenna by Justinian. 

Most of Ravenna’s glittering mosaic treasures are strewn around Piazza del Popolo, the heart of historic Ravenna.  Our B&B was on Via Guaccimanni, just a few blocks away, so we dropped our bags in our room and headed for the Piazza.

Piazza del Popolo is spacious and attractive, surrounded by handsome historic buildings, including the graceful, arcaded Palazzetto Veneziano, dating from the 15th century, when the Venetian Republic ruled the city.  Two tall columns remain from the Venetian era.  St. Apollinare’s statue tops one of them; he was the first Bishop of Ravenna as Christianity struggled to survive. There are two great churches named for him, one very near the Piazza, and the other a few miles out of town, in Classe, the ancient port.  Both churches are famous for their mosaics.  The other column once held the lion of St. Mark, but it was removed when Venetian rule ended in 1509.  The lion was replaced by St. Vitale, a popular saint in Ravenna, although nobody seems to know much about him except that he was martyred in the time of Nero and his relics are in the Basilica that bears his name.

St. Vitale on his perch reminded us it was time to visit his Basilica.  It is the most famous of Ravenna’s mosaic treasures, though not the oldest.  Construction began under the Ostrogoths, but it was Bishop Maximian who completed and decorated San Vitale.  The building is in Byzantine style, not actually a basilica at all.  It is octagonal, surmounted by a dome, and with a tall apse containing a high vault and a semi-dome.  The central dome is decorated with 18th century frescoes, but the apse and presbytery are fantasias of Byzantine mosaic:  biblical scenes in brilliant greens, blues, and gold dance and shimmer from the arches and lunettes.  The apse vault, like the vault of heaven, shows the Agnus Dei, the “Lamb of God”, surrounded by a paradise of angels, peacocks, birds, twining acanthus, and garlands of flowers.  Christ the Redeemer appears in the semi-dome, seated on a blue orb, symbolizing the universe.  San Vitale himself is there, receiving a martyr’s crown from Christ’s own hand. 

On either side of the apse are the iconic portrait scenes of Justinian and Theodora – and Bishop Maximian himself, beside the Emperor.  Scores of other bright scenes dazzle the senses.  The church is quite overwhelming, and defies description.  (Charlemagne visited Ravenna in 787, and was so impressed that he modelled his Palace Chapel in Aachen after the Basilica of San Vitale.)

Afterward, we stopped into a cosy bar on Via Mariani for coffee.  It was empty except for the owner and a friend from the neighbourhood.  It was mid-afternoon, and they were sharing some of the morning’s pastry, cut into small pieces.  “It’s too late to sell them,” she explained as we leaned on the bar, drinking caffe lungo and munching slightly stale brioche.  We were still ecstatic about the mosaics, and our new friends were listening politely, when I happened to see the name of the bar reflected in the window of a passing taxi.  “Café Dante!” I exclaimed.  “Is it far to …?”

“No,” the neighbourhood friend interrupted.  “He’s very near.  There’s a big empty tomb in Santa Croce, in Firenze.  But we have Dante!”

The Peripatetic Poet

In 1318, when Dante Alighieri arrived in Ravenna, he was under a death sentence in his hometown, Florence, where he was allied with the wrong political faction, and faced trumped-up charges of embezzlement.  He’d been an exile since 1302, and had wandered from city to city, seeking sanctuary.  During his exile he began writing his Commedia, probably the greatest and most influential poem ever written in Italian.  He finished it in the city that gave him his final sanctuary, Ravenna, and died there in 1321.

In time, the Florentines regretted their treatment of their famous son, and began to demand that Dante’s remains be returned to the city of his birth.  Ravenna’s leaders stoutly maintained that they had earned the right to keep him.  In 1519, Pope Leo X (Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son Giovanni, and therefore a Florentine partisan) ordered Ravenna to return the poet’s bones to Florence.  When the Florentines arrived to claim them, however, Dante was … gone.  The Franciscan Friars, who maintained his very modest tomb in their monastery near the Church of San Francesco, suggested that perhaps Dante preferred to continue his wanderings.  In fact, they had hidden the body in another monastery.  Later, in 1677, they placed his bones in a wooden casket engraved with his name, and hid it beneath a gateway leading to the garden of a small oratory.  Then, it seems, everyone forgot where it was, because it wasn’t found again until 1865.

Today, there’s a small marble mausoleum near San Francesco church, four blocks from Café Dante.  The route passes the Teatro Alighieri, Ravenna’s opera house.   In the mausoleum, the poet rests in a stone casket inscribed with a Latin epitaph.  It ends “…born to Florence, an unloving mother”.  There is a lamp with a perpetual flame, fuelled by oil donated by Florence every September, in penance.

Levitating Martyrs, Golden Skies, and other Wonders

In the morning city bus 4 took us to the old port, and the great Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe, consecrated by Bishop Maximian in 549. The church honours the first Bishop of Ravenna, Apollinare of Antioch, who was martyred in the time of Vespasian.  In the apse, the saint stands in a beautiful garden, surrounded by sheep, while behind him in a golden sky, the Transfiguration of Christ is represented by an enormous jewelled cross.  

Back in the city is Sant’Apollinare Nuovo church, built by Theodoric and dedicated to Christ the Redeemer.  It contains both Arian and Orthodox mosaics.  Much of the original Arian decoration was reworked after the Byzantines regained the city, to remove Theodoric and his court from the scene; but there are a few ghostly disembodied hands left here and there.  On one wall of the nave, a procession of martyrs seem to float, rather than walk, toward Christ the Redeemer, while on the opposite wall, a file of holy virgins, led by the Magi, glide toward the Madonna and Child.

There are two baptisteries in town, each with elaborate mosaics, and each with a scene of Christ’s baptism.  The Arian scene depicts a young and beardless Christ, while the Orthodox depiction shows a mature, bearded Saviour.  The small Archiepiscopal Chapel, in the Bishop’s Palace, contains some of the best preserved early 6th century mosaics in the world, still as bright as when their tesserae were first set.

We saved Galla Placidia’s Mausoleum for last, perhaps because it is the oldest and most intriguing of the monuments.  There are two famous lunettes – one with a lovely depiction of the good shepherd, and the other with St. Laurence dancing toward a flaming griddle.  Unfortunately, we could not photograph them. Underneath the starry sky of the dome, there are three sarcophagi.  One is said to contain the remains of Galla’s son, Valentinian, and another those of her half-brother, Honorius.  Legend says the third and largest is Galla’s final resting place.  Scholars say she’s not there.  I hope they’re wrong.

One member of the family is conspicuously missing.  Justa Gratia Honoria (usually just called Honoria), Galla’s daughter, is not interred in the mausoleum.  Early historians related that Honoria was ambitious and a bit promiscuous, and when ordered by the Emperor to marry a rather unpromising nobleman in 450, she sent a letter, and her ring, to Attila the Hun, asking him to come and take her away.  Whether or not she promised to marry him, Attila sent to Ravenna demanding Honoria and half of the Western Empire as her dowry.  After Emperor Honorius refused his demand, Attila invaded Gaul.  He was stopped at the Battle of Châlons in 451.  No one knows what happened to Honoria.  But that is just one of the secrets Lady Ravenna, like all great ladies, is entitled to keep.

© Text © 2015 by Joe Gartman; Photographs © 2015 by Patricia Gartman. First published in Italia! Magazine, November 2015