Ravenna : Italy
Ravenna is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, population 134,631 (2001). The city is inland, but is connected to the Adriatic Sea by a canal. Ravenna once served as the seat of the Roman Empire and later the Ostrogothic kingdom. It is presently the capital of the province of Ravenna.
Early history
Nowadays the city is land-locked, but Ravenna was an important seaport on the Adriatic, as well as an administrative center of the Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages. When Ravenna was settled, it was on a coastal lagoon (which still appeared on 16th century maps), and the city in Antiquity was traversed with canals. Ravenna was an ancient ally of Rome against the Gauls, and kept its identity as an ally until it sided with Marius in the Civil Wars of the 1st century BC. Sulla annexed it to the province of Cisalpine Gaul. It was an important station of the Roman imperial fleet (“classis”), which gave a name to Classis the dockyard port city of Ravenna, protected at first by its own walls. The imperial Porta Aurea of Classis was not demolished until the 16th century, the last of the standing remains. Columns from Classis were scattered as trophies among Christian churches in Ravenna, and even shipped to Venice. Roman sculptures were built into churches such as San Giovanni in Fonte or San Vitale.
