The story of this place
Consecrated in 547, San Vitale holds the finest Byzantine mosaics outside Constantinople, made when Ravenna was capital of the Western Empire and then the Byzantine exarchate of Italy. Its apse blazes with gold, and two facing panels immortalise Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora bearing offerings, surrounded by courtiers—portraits of imperial power created while both still lived, though neither ever set foot in Ravenna. The octagonal church's soaring design influenced later architecture as far as Charlemagne's chapel at Aachen. Together with Ravenna's other early Christian monuments, San Vitale preserves the moment when the classical and Byzantine worlds met in shimmering glass and gold.