For a moment around AD 500 this small Adriatic city was the capital of the Western Roman Empire, then of Ostrogothic and Byzantine Italy, and it spent that brief glory on mosaics. Eight buildings survive glittering inside with gold-ground images: an empress and her court, Christ as a beardless youth, star-filled vaults. The mausoleum of Galla Placidia is a plain brick box hiding a ceiling of deep-blue heaven. Dante, exiled from Florence, died here and is buried here still, Florence's requests for his bones politely refused for seven centuries.
Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.
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