CAPITAL FROM THE COLONNADE IN PIAZZA MAGGIORE S. APOLLINARE IN CLASSE CAPITAL FROM S. VITALE CAPITAL FROM SANTO SPIRITO SKETCH MAP SKETCH MAP OF CITIES IN IMPERIAL HANDS SKETCH MAP SHOWING NARSES' MARCH TO MEET TOTILA SKETCH MAP THE SARCOPHAGUS OF THE EXARCH ISAAC GUARDHOUSE OF THE PALACE OF THEODORIC THE CATHEDRAL (_Basilica Ursiana_) THE BAPTISTERY AND CAMPANILE OF THE CATHEDRAL THE CAMPANILE OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA S. VITALE CAPITAL FROM S. VITALE INTERIOR OF S. APOLLINARE IN CLASSE CAPITAL FROM S. VITALE THE CAMPANILE OF S. APOLLINARE CASA POLENTANA DANTE'S TOMB CAMPANILE OF S. FRANCESCO INTERIOR OF S. MARIA IN PORTO FUORI TORRE DEL COMUNE PORTAL OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA ROCCA VENIZIANA MONUMENT OF GASTON DE FOIX THE CLOISTER OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA THE PINETA THE PINETA TO PORTO CORSINI PLAN OF RAVENNA _see front end paper_ [Illustration: Colour Plate S. APOLLINARE NUOVO] RAVENNA A STUDY I THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND POLITICAL POSITION OF RAVENNA Upon the loneliest and most desolate shore of Italy, where the vast monotony of the Emilian plain fades away at last, almost imperceptibly, into the Adrian Sea, there stands, half abandoned in that soundless place, and often wrapt in a white shroud of mist, a city like a marvellous reliquary, richly wrought, as is meet, beautiful with many fading colours, and encrusted with precious stones: its name is Ravenna. It stands there laden with the mysterious centuries as with half barbaric jewels, weighed down with the ornaments of Byzantium, rigid, hieratic, constrained; and however you come to it, whether from Rimini by the lost and forgotten towns of Classis and Caesarea, or from Ferrara through all the bitter desolation of Comacchio, or across the endless marsh from Bologna or Faenza, its wide and empty horizons, its astonishing silence, and the difficulty of every approach will seem to you but a fitting environment for a place so solitary and so imperious. For this city of mute and closed churches, where imperishable mosaics glisten in the awful damp, and beautiful pillars of most precious marbles gleam through a humid mist, of mausoleums empty but indestructible, of tottering _campanili_, of sumptuous splendour and incredible decay, is the sepulchre of the great civilisation which Christianity failed to save alive, but to which we owe everything and out of which we are come; the only monument that remains to us of those confused and half barbaric centuries which lie between Antiquity and the Middle Age.