Ravenna served as the capital of three successive, very different states within a few centuries, and its mosaics still show traces of the theological rivalry that came with the last of them.
Capital three times over
Ravenna served successively as capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402, then of the Ostrogothic Kingdom under the Arian Christian king Theodoric, and finally as the seat of the Byzantine Exarchate after Justinian's reconquest, an unusually rapid succession of very different ruling powers for one relatively compact city, each of which left its own building programme behind.
Mosaics judged among the finest anywhere
The city's surviving mosaics, including the imperial portrait panels of Justinian and Theodora at the Basilica of San Vitale and the deep blue, star-filled dome of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, are widely regarded as among the best-preserved and most technically accomplished examples of Byzantine mosaic art surviving anywhere, executed in the glass tesserae technique that gives Ravenna's interiors their distinctive shimmering quality.
As this entry's companion article covers
The specific duplication of major religious buildings, including separate Arian and Orthodox baptisteries and cathedrals, a direct legacy of the city's period under a ruler whose Christian theology differed from that of the Byzantine authority that later replaced him, is addressed directly in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.