Ravenna

Ravenna, city, northern Italy, capital of Ravenna Province, in Emilia-Romagna Region, near the Adriatic Sea (with which it is connected by the Corsini Canal). Ravenna is a center for the marketing and processing of agricultural products. Its industries include cement works, chemical plants, and facilities for the processing of methane and petroleum.

The city is famed for its buildings that date from the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries and for the mosaics that decorate many of the interiors. Most notable are the Tomb of Galla Placidia; the octagonal baptistery of Archbishop Neon (flourished 5th century), which may have been transformed from a Roman bath; the octagonal Arian Baptistery (5th-6th century); and the Church of San Vitale (consecrated in 547). Ravenna also contains the tombs of the Ostrogothic emperor Theodoric and of Dante.

At about the beginning of the Christian era, the Roman emperor Augustus built a canal connecting Ravenna with the Po River and enlarged its port of Classis (the modern Classe), which he made the chief station of the Roman fleet in the northern Adriatic Sea. In 402 the Roman emperor Flavius Honorius, threatened by the invasion of northern Italy by the Visigoths, moved to Ravenna from Mediolanum (present-day Milan). Thereafter Ravenna was the chief imperial residence, until its capture in 476 by the German barbarian ruler Odoacer. In 493, after a three-year siege, Theodoric took Ravenna from Odoacer and made it his capital. The city was captured in 540 by the Byzantine general Belisarius. Ravenna thereupon became the seat of the Byzantine viceroys, called exarchs, who governed Italy. In 751, after a long struggle, Ravenna was captured by the Lombard king Aistulf (reigned 749-56). Six years later the Frankish king Pepin the Short, who had conquered the Lombards, awarded Ravenna to the papacy. Ravenna remained strong for a time under a line of archbishops; however, because it lacked revenue to maintain the port and the channel to the Po River, the city declined. Venice assumed the trade of the city, and, in the 15th century, Ravenna itself came under Venetian control. Ravenna again became part of the papal domain in 1509; in 1861 it was incorporated into the kingdom of Italy. Population (2007 estimate) 151,055.