Ravenna eterna. Dagli Etruschi ai Veneziani

A revelatory book, a historical and artistic synthesis that offers new interpretations. Ravenna is world-famous as a Byzantine city, but its particularity as the last great Roman city and its longevity throughout the Middle Ages are rarely highlighted. The topography, landscape, monuments, sculptures, immense heritage of mosaics and evolution of architecture are analysed from a historical, archaeological and artistic point of view. A fundamental work accompanied by a photographic campaign commissioned for the occasion and directed by the author From the Etruscan settlement, we move on to the Roman city in the middle of the water, strategically located on the Adriatic. Rome was in full decline, while in the 4th and 5th centuries Ravenna became a synthesis of the Roman era with Honorius and Galla Placidia. The Goth Theodoric himself, at the end of the fifth century, wanted to make Ravenna the direct heir to Romanity in terms of art and culture. The very important Byzantine interlude, to which San Vitale di Teodosio bears witness, does not exhaust Ravenna’s cultural and artistic history, which resisted both the Lombards and the Carolingians in the Middle Ages, and managed to express itself in a Romanesque style exclusive to Ravenna. During the Renaissance, Ravenna leaned on Venice, but in 1512 it was absorbed by the Papal State. Only then did the exceptional continuity of Ravenna’s art come to an end.