Members’ Lecture- Ravenna: The Twilight of the Roman Empire

For a brief, dazzling moment, Ravenna was an unlikely refuge for a world falling apart. The city’s history, enshrined in superb Byzantine mosaics, reflects the twilight of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages. As the capital of the Western Roman Empire in its last days, then of the occidental provinces of the Byzantine Empire, it offered a refuge of luxury and splendor, a return to antique civilization rising above the relentless seas of barbarism.