Ravenna

Ravenna began as a settlement of the Umbri, houses on piles across small islands in a marshy lagoon, much as Venice would later be built. Rome accepted it as a federated town in 89 BC; Julius Caesar gathered his forces here before crossing the Rubicon in 49 BC, and Octavian founded the naval harbour of Classis, a base of the imperial fleet. In 402 the emperor Honorius moved his court here, protected by the marshes, and Ravenna was the capital of the Western Empire for most of the 5th century. Galla Placidia's rule brought the Orthodox Baptistery and San Giovanni Evangelista, and in 476 the last western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed here.

Odoacer held the city until the Ostrogoth Theodoric took it in 493 after a three-year siege. Theodoric built Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, an Arian cathedral and baptistery, and his own mausoleum; Arian Goths and Nicene Romans lived side by side under their own laws. Justinian's general Belisarius took Ravenna in 540, and it became the seat of the Byzantine exarch who governed Italy. In those decades the bishops completed San Vitale and Sant'Apollinare in Classe.

The Lombards took the city in 751; Pepin's donation of 756 handed the former exarchate to the pope. The Da Polenta family ruled from 1275 and sheltered the exiled Dante, who died here in 1321. Venice annexed Ravenna in 1441 and built the Rocca Brancaleone; Venetian rule ended in 1509, and in 1512 French troops sacked the city after the Battle of Ravenna. Drainage canals over three centuries turned the marshes into farmland. Ravenna joined unified Italy in 1861, and Allied bombing in 1944 destroyed San Giovanni Evangelista before Canadian and British troops liberated the city on 5 November.

Mosaic is Ravenna's art and identity. Eight early Christian buildings form a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the concentration of mosaics has made the city the "capital of mosaics", with workshops and schools that still teach the craft. Several of the monuments remain places of worship, and their calm interiors set the tone for a city that is quieter than its Romagna neighbours on the coast.

Literature has long drawn on the city. Dante spent most of his exile here, mentioned Ravenna in the Inferno and lies in a tomb whose remains Florence has sought in vain since at least 1519; the area around it is a zone of silence. Lord Byron lived here from 1819 to 1821 for love of Teresa Guiccioli and continued Don Juan; Oscar Wilde and Alexander Blok wrote poems named after the city, Hermann Hesse wrote two about it, and Michelangelo Antonioni filmed Red Desert in its industrial zone in 1964.

Music fills the summer. The Ravenna Festival, founded in 1990 by Maria Cristina Mazzavillani, wife of the conductor Riccardo Muti, a longtime resident who regularly takes part, brings orchestras from around the world to the Teatro Alighieri, the Palazzo Mauro de André and the basilicas of San Vitale and Sant'Apollinare in Classe. The beaches, which hosted the 2011 Beach Soccer World Cup, are where the city spends its summer weekends.

About 156,000 people live in Ravenna, which is the second-largest municipality in Italy by area, stretching across farmland, pine woods and coast. More than a quarter of residents are over 65, and about 15 per cent were born abroad, most often in Albania, Romania, Senegal, Moldova or Ukraine. Lido Adriano, Mezzano and Marina di Ravenna are the largest of its many outlying villages.

The economy rests on the port, an important commercial and tourist harbour reached by the Candiano Canal, on the industry around it, on agriculture in the reclaimed land and on tourism, both cultural in the centre and seaside along the lidi. Gas pipelines come ashore along the coast, and coastal erosion is a concern: Lido di Dante lost 35 cm in the first two decades of the century.

Daily life is calm and largely lived on bicycles in the flat centre, with lunch at the covered market or a piadina kiosk and summer evenings at the beach. Ravenna FC plays in Serie C. Ravenna was among the cities hit by the Emilia-Romagna floods of May 2023.

Ravenna eats the food of Romagna. The piadina, a thin flatbread of white flour, lard or olive oil, salt and water, was first recorded in 1317 and holds EU protected status; it was traditionally cooked on a terracotta dish called a teggia or testo, now usually on a flat pan or griddle. It is commonly filled with squacquerone, a very soft, spreadable fresh cow's-milk cheese with a lactic, sweet-sour taste, which has its own protected designation.

Cappelletti, ring-shaped filled pasta named for their hat shape, are larger and thicker than tortellini; the traditional filling includes meats, Parmesan, eggs and nutmeg. Strozzapreti, a long hand-made pasta whose name means 'priest chokers', are the other Romagna classic.

The Mercato Coperto, built in 1922 just north of Piazza del Popolo, is a popular place for lunch. Sangiovese di Romagna and the white Albana are the wines of the surrounding hills, and the salt pans of Cervia lie just down the coast.