Judith Herrin takes us on a tour of Ravenna and the lessons for cities today.

What can we learn from the great cities of the past? In 402 AD, after invading tribes broke through the Alpine frontiers of Italy and threatened the imperial government in Milan, the young Emperor Honorius made the momentous decision to move his capital to a small, easy defendable city in the Po estuary – Ravenna. From then until 751 AD, Ravenna was first the capital of the Western Roman Empire, then that of the immense kingdom of Theodoric the Goth and finally the centre of Byzantine power in Italy. It was ‘the melting pot’ of Europe.

Herrin explains how scholars, lawyers, doctors, craftsmen, cosmologists and religious luminaries were drawn to Ravenna where they created a cultural and political capital that dominated northern Italy and the Adriatic.

She shows how the city became the meeting place of Greek, Latin, Christian and barbarian cultures and the pivot between East and West. She argues that the fifth to eighth centuries should not be perceived as a time of decline from antiquity but rather, thanks to Byzantium, as one of great creativity – the period of ‘Early Christendom’. These were the formative centuries of Europe. There are many lessons to be learnt from the study of Ravenna that are relevant to cities of today.

In conversation with Jenny Lacey.

Part of Festival of the Future City, run by Bristol Ideas: https://www.bristolideas.co.uk/projec...

Judith Herrin’s Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe: https://www.waterstones.com/books/sea...

Images in video: Kieran Dodds