Italy
Who ruled Ravenna?
Ravenna dates from about 500 BCE. On our historical maps, the ground it stands on has been drawn inside 15 different states, empires and peoples. Read the history of Italy.
The history of Ravenna
Ravenna lies in the Emilia-Romagna region of north-eastern Italy, an inland city joined to the Adriatic by a canal. For most of the fifth century it was the seat of the Western Roman emperors; it then became the capital of the Ostrogothic kingdom and of Byzantine Italy. The churches and mosaics of those centuries make it one of the richest places in Europe for late Roman and early Byzantine art.
Lagoon town and imperial capital
Both the origin of the name and the date of the first town are uncertain. Archaeology shows the Umbri living here by the fifth century BCE at the latest, and the Celtic Senones settled the countryside to the south. The early town was built on piles across small islands in a marshy lagoon. Rome admitted it as a federated town in 89 BCE. Julius Caesar gathered his army at Ravenna in 49 BCE before crossing the Rubicon, and after 31 BCE Octavian founded the naval base of Classis nearby, an important station of the imperial fleet. Early in the second century Trajan gave the city an aqueduct about 70 kilometres long.
In 402 the emperor Honorius moved his court here, and Ravenna served as the effective capital of the Western Roman Empire for most of the century, when it may have had some 50,000 inhabitants. Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius I, later returned to the city with her son, the emperor Valentinian III, and under them the court favoured Christianity. In 476 the general Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, the last western emperor, at Ravenna and ruled Italy as king.
Goths and Byzantines
In 489, at the urging of the eastern emperor Zeno, the Ostrogothic king Theodoric marched on Italy to overthrow Odoacer. After several years of war Theodoric besieged Odoacer in Ravenna; a treaty in February 493 made the two joint rulers, but within weeks of entering the city Theodoric killed Odoacer at a banquet. Ravenna now served as the Gothic king's capital, and Theodoric was buried there in a stone mausoleum still counted among the city's finest monuments.
After Theodoric's death in 526 the Gothic monarchy weakened. Justinian I sent his general Belisarius into Italy in 535, and Belisarius took Ravenna in 540. From then on the city housed the exarch, the emperor's governor in Italy, whose territory took the name of the Exarchate of Ravenna. The archbishop of Ravenna ranked second in Italy only to the pope.
Lombards, popes and lords
The Lombard king Liutprand occupied Ravenna in 712 but had to hand it back. In 751 the Byzantine Empire finally surrendered the exarchate to the Lombard king Aistulf. Pope Stephen II turned to Pepin, king of the Franks, whose campaigns forced Aistulf in 756 to give up his conquests; Pepin then granted the former exarchate to the papacy, the gift that laid the legal foundation of the Papal States. Papal authority stayed distant for a long time, and in the eleventh and twelfth centuries emperors and popes contested the city.
In the thirteenth century Ravenna was caught up in the struggle of Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Traversari family ruled from 1218 until the emperor Frederick II besieged the city and expelled them in 1240; Pope Innocent IV recovered it in 1248. From 1275 the Da Polenta family governed as papal vassals, and under them the exiled Florentine poet Dante spent most of his last years in the city, where his funeral took place in 1321 and where he is still buried. The Republic of Venice removed the last Da Polenta lord in 1441 and held Ravenna until 1509, when the War of the League of Cambrai brought it back under papal rule. In 1512 French troops besieged the city, defeated the relieving army in the Battle of Ravenna and then sacked it.
Modern Ravenna
Apart from a Venetian occupation in 1527–29, Ravenna stayed papal until 1796, when it was absorbed into French client republics and then Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy. Returned to the pope in 1814, it was occupied by Piedmontese troops in 1859 and joined the unified Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
In the Second World War 52 Allied air raids badly damaged the city; bombs aimed at the railway destroyed the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in August 1944. Canadian and British troops entered Ravenna on 5 November 1944. Today it is a provincial capital of about 156,000 people, and eight of its early Christian and Byzantine buildings together form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Timeline
23 periods- 123,000 BCE – 10,000 BCENeanderthalMap of 123,000 BCE →
- 10,000 BCE – 5000 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 10,000 BCE →
- 5000 BCE – 4000 BCENo state drawn here on the mapunder Cardial Ware cultureMap of 5000 BCE →
- 4000 BCE – 1500 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 4000 BCE →
- 1500 BCE – 1000 BCEUrnfield culturesMap of 1500 BCE →
- 1000 BCE – 700 BCEUrnfield culturesMap of 1000 BCE →
- 700 BCE – 500 BCEUrnfield culturesMap of 700 BCE →
- 500 BCE – 323 BCEBoiiMap of 500 BCE →
- 323 BCE – 200 BCENo state drawn here on the mapMap of 323 BCE →
- 200 BCE – 100 BCERomeMap of 200 BCE →
- 100 BCE – 1 BCERoman RepublicMap of 100 BCE →
- 1 BCE – 300 CERoman EmpireMap of 1 BCE →
- 300 CE – 400 CERome (Maximian)Map of 300 CE →
- 400 CE – 500 CEWestern Roman EmpireMap of 400 CE →
- 500 CE – 600 CEOstrogothsMap of 500 CE →
- 600 CE – 800 CEEastern Roman EmpireMap of 600 CE →
- 800 CE – 900 CEPapal StatesMap of 800 CE →
- 900 CE – 1000 CECarolingian EmpireMap of 900 CE →
- 1000 CE – 1492 CEHoly Roman EmpireMap of 1000 CE →
- 1492 CE – 1878 CEPapal StatesMap of 1492 CE →
- 1878 CE – 1914 CEItalyMap of 1878 CE →
- 1914 CE – 1920 CEKingdom of Italyunder ItalyMap of 1914 CE →
- 1920 CE – todayItalyMap of 1920 CE →
Quick answers
- Who rules Ravenna today?
- On the latest map, Ravenna is in Italy.
- Who ruled Ravenna the longest?
- On our maps, the Holy Roman Empire, for about 492 years (1000 CE to 1492 CE).
- How many times has Ravenna changed hands?
- Our maps show it passing to a new ruler 8 times since 1 CE.
- Who ruled Ravenna in 1 CE, 1000, 1500 and 1900?
- In 1 CE: Roman Empire. In 1000: Holy Roman Empire. In 1500: Papal States. In 1900: Italy.
Dates are the years of our map snapshots, which are decades or centuries apart, so a change shown between two years happened at some point in that gap. The borders come from the historical-basemaps project and are approximate, especially for the ancient world and for peoples without fixed frontiers.
Ravenna on this site
- Died in Ravenna
- Theodoric the Great (454–526 CE) and Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
- Ravenna in the guided tours
- The Rise and Fall of Rome, The Huns and the Great Migrations, Byzantium: The Thousand-Year Empire and Europe Through History
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