gardens. Something of what it was
we may gather from the mosaics of S. Apollinare Nuovo in which it is
conventionally represented. It came to owe much to Amalasuntha who
lived there during her brief reign, and more to the exarchs who made
it their official residence.

In 751 when Ravenna fell into the hands of the Lombards Aistulf
established himself there, but it might seem that the place had
suffered grievously in the wars, and it was probably little more than
a mighty ruin when, in 784, Charlemagne obtained permission from the
pope to strip it of its marbles and its ornaments and to carry them
off to Aix-la-Chapelle. Among these was an equestrian statue in gilded
bronze, according to Agnellus a portrait of the great Gothic king, but
as Dr Ricci suggests a statue of the Emperor Zeno. This too in the
time of Leo III. Charlemagne carried away. According to the same
authority the back of the palace was not then very far from the sea,
and this was so even in 1098. Nothing I think can give us a better
idea of the change that has come over the _contado_ of Ravenna than an
examination of its situation to-day, more than four miles from the sea
coast.

The only memorial we have left to us _in situ_ of that palace of the
Gothic king is a half-ruined building, really a mere facade with
round-arched blind arcades and a central niche in the upper story, a
colonnade in two stories, and the bases of two round towers with a
vast debris of ruined foundations, walls, and brickwork, scarcely
anything of which, in so far as it may be said to be still standing,
would seem to have been a part of the palace Theodoric built. Indeed
the ruined facade would seem to belong to a guard house built in the
time of the exarchs in the seventh or eighth century. If we seek then
for some memory of Theodoric in this place we shall be disappointed.

Far otherwise is it with the great church, the noblest in Ravenna, of
S. Apollinare Nuovo. This was built about the same time as the palace,
in the first twenty years of the sixth century, as the Arian cathedral
by the Gothic king. It was the chief temple in Ravenna of that heresy,
and it remained in Arian hands till with the re-establishment of the
imperial power in Italy it was consecrated, in 560, for Catholic use
by the archbishop S. Agnellus. It consists of a basilica divided into
three naves by twenty-four columns of Greek marble with
Romano-Byzantine capitals. Of old it had an atrium, but this was