Ian Thomson

City of dazzling mosaics: the golden age of Ravenna

Judith Herrin describes the imperial heyday of the city, when classical Rome, Byzantium and Christianity met

Detail of Empress Theodora (sixth-century mosaic in San Vitale, Ravenna). Credit: Bridgeman Images 
issue 19 September 2020

When we refer to someone as ‘Byzantine’ we usually mean guileful or too complicated and labyrinthine in manner or speech. Perhaps the term is ill-applied: Byzantium, the medieval Greek city on the Bosporus which the Roman Emperor Constantine I renamed Constantinople, was not in essence an unfathomable, over-hierarchical or manipulative sort of place.

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