Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 205, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1915 — RAVENNA, A DYING CITY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

RAVENNA, A DYING CITY

LOVERS of the moat beautiful things have had one great piece of good fortune in that Ravenna i does not lie on the route of the mass of ordinary tourists through Italy. Honeymooning couples avoid it; so do the personally conducted flocks. It is, moreover, externally a dull town, and its streets and near surroundings are flat and uninteresting, writes Sir Martin Conway in Country Life. A'few miles away, indeed, there is the beautiful pine forest sung by Dante, a wild stretch of broken ground along the Adriatic coast, with charming- glades and hollows, bushy below and overarched by rugged and pathetically dignified trees, where those who do not suffer from fear of snakes can wander in romantic surroundings. The neighborhood of Ravenna is, moreover, fever-stricken. I shall never forget a visit paid to the church of Santa Maria in Porto Fuori. It stands in a hamlet of decaying houses, itself also far gone in decay —the pavement broken, plaster falling from the walls, and all the usual signs of dilapidation. A woman who brought the keys of the church told us how the few peasants about were all broken down with fever, how the priest was away as much as possible, how the folk were mostly atheistie and anarchistic, and how only the very minimum of work was done by anyone about There were reeking quagmires and damp places and stagnant pools on all sides, and the old church itself seemed to be sinking into the swamp. Thus, in fact, Ravenna actually is sinking. It is not merely that the level of the ground of the town is rising, as ground levels in towns normally rise; but the buildings sink into the soft alluvial Boil by little and little, and have thus sunk from the day they were built. The process is a very slow one, but likewise very sure, and it cannot be stayed. Already in the wet season of the year the naves of the old churches stand a foot or two deep in water, and that although the floor level has been raised as much as three or four feet, so that the bases of the columns are buried. The older the church the deeper it lies in the ground. Some have been

dog out and surrounded by a kind of walled moat; but all this only postpones the inevitable ultimate end. Ravenna is, in fact, a dying.city, and haa been dying slowly ever since the Lombards came and drove out the exarchs of the emperor of Byzantium a century or so before Charlemagne liberated the pope from Lombard oppression. Once Actually on the Coast. At an earlier time Ravenna was actually on the coast. The Roman port was only a mile or two away, a relatively shallow port in the midst of lagoons, which were continually being silted up. That port, however, was the best then available for ships of war, and its site, now miles inland, still bears its ancient name, Classe. Even today steamers of inconsiderable size enter Ravenna, and a few, a very few, of my readers may have landed there on their way from Dalmatia back into Italy; but it is only along dredged channels and canals that Ravenna can thus be reached. In late Roman days Classe was a very important place, the fleet being a chief defense of Italy. Descriptions of Classe tell Us of its great basins and quays, its noble streets and houses, its many churches and monasteries. We likewise learn from them of the noble avenue of stately buildings which led thence to Ravenna itself, where was the splendid palace of the prince and such numbers of churches and public buildings as almost to seem incredible. Today, of Classe and the great avenue of buildings, not one stone remains upon | another except in the case of the sin- ]

gle church which is famous under th# name of St. Appollinare in Classe. The site of most vanished cities is marked by ruined walls or at least mounds. Of Classe there Is not a wall nor a hillock. All that was not overthrown and carried away haß sunk into the soil, and only by excavation can here and there some fragment of foundation be revealed. The surviving churches within the city of Ravenna itself are numerous, and many more than the present population requires. Yet they are only a few compared with the number that once existed* Mausoleum of Galla PlacldlaThe earliest building of interest still existing in Ravenna is the small but most attractive little mausoleum of Galla Placidia. It attempted no rivalry with the mausolea of the great Roman Imperial days, such as that of Trajan or even the Constantinian Santa Costanza. It is only a little cruciform structure of brick, surmounted over the crossing by a tiny dome; but the three sarcophagi that fill Its arms are stately, and the lining of gold ground mosaic that covers its lunettes and vaults glows with all the splendor which ancient artists knew so well how to attain; while the revetment below them, admirably restored, and the marble pavement and thin alabaster window slabs (likewise restorations), complete an interior decoration which, for perfect taste, subdued magnificence, and simple dignity could scarcely be surpassed. St. Appollinare in Claßse I suppose is sometimes used for worship, but it wears a look of tidy abandonment. There are no houses near to supply worshippers, and only the visitor breaks the solitude; but it is a peopled solitude all the same, a solitude vocal with memories of great men and great doings long ago. The spacious marble floor is divided by the two great ranges of columns, noble antique monoliths of veined marble standing upon sculptured bases which are not buried. The simple apse, enriched with mosaic, is all the more splendid in effect because so much else of the walls is bare. An ancient altar -of small dimensions is in the midst of the nave. Another, surmounted by a remarkable ciborium of

sculptured marble on spirally fluted columns, fills the east corper of the north aisle. Tomb of the Great Ostrogoth. One other monument of great importance cannot be passed over without a brief mention. This Is the mausoleum of Theodoric himself. It is not large, a little larger than Oalla Placidia’s, but it is imposing by the strength of its massive stone construction. Polygonal in plan, twostoried, with external staircases leading to a gallery round the empty upper chamber —that is all. For roof it Is covered by one huge hollowed block of stone, like an inverted saucer in. form, with an external protuberance in the center, on which a bronze ornament once stood. The bronze doors, the bronze parapet of the gallery, andi perhaps other ornaments, were carried away by Charlemagne and built into his palatine chape! at Aix-la-Chapelle, where some of them can still be seem Nothing of Theodoric himself remains in his grave. His body was thrown out when orthodoxy supplanted. Arianiam. The mausoleum is now amere empty shell, well protected by a salaried guardian, who in the hot season, when I was last there, accompanied me with a broom to sweep away thp harmless snakes which are now the sole occupants of the pile. _ Enemies could throw out-Tbeodorlc's bones, but his memory they could not obliterate—the memory of one of the few really great men who snatched from falling Rome the torch of civilization she had borne so high, and. availed for a short span to keep it, burning. - ••• :