Ravenna differs from nearly all the well-known Italian cities in its antiquities; there are no pagan relics; only the monuments of early Christianity, and the remains of Imperial buildings. Yet, in the time of Augustus, it was the naval base of the Roman fleet in Adria, with a harbour that could hold two hundred and fifty vessels, "Portus Classis," which in those days was close to the town; to-day some miles of low swampy land separate the town from the sea. In later times its situation made it the metropolis of the Western Empire, under its Gothic Kings, and it became the bulwark of Italy against the hordes of Northern invaders, who might have changed the whole course of Italian history; to-day it has only one visible message for the traveller, its temples of Christianity.
Come into one of these, the great Church of S. Apollinaris in Classe, which stands in a lonely wild of swamp and marsh some distance from the town, built of the then Roman brick of classical times, as far back as 534 A.D. A spacious nave, the marble floor green with damp; lofty grey marble columns supporting clerestory walls, decorated with fresco paintings of Bishops and Archbishops in unbroken succession from the year 74 A.D., when St. Apollinaris was martyred: 129 in all. A flight of marble steps leads up to the high altar in the apse, enriched with mosaics of the year 550 A.D. The loneliness of the vast church, its silent spaces, once thronged, now only occupied by a handful of people for an occasional service, and the presence of that long array of saints of old who keep vigil there, as they have done for centuries past, is the most impressive witness to the power of Christianity to survive all changes and chances
