iazza Maggiore where there are eight columns of granite
upon the left of the Palazzo del Comune with late Roman capitals, four
of which have the monogram of the Gothic king. The church of S.
Andrea,[1] according to Dr Ricci, stood by the city wall, near where
the Venetians in the fifteenth century built their Rocca, destroying
the church to make room for it. Dr. Ricci suggests that when they
began to construct the Portico of the Piazza they used, as indeed they
more than any other people were wont to do, the material of the
demolished church in their new building and among it these great
columns with their Roman capitals and strange monograms.

[Footnote 1: S. Andrea was, according to Rasponi, _op. cit. ut supra_,
the same as the chapel of the Arcivescovado called S, Pier Crisologo.]

But astonishing though these churches are which Theodoric built by the
art and hands of the Italians during the generation of his rule in
Ravenna, they would not impress us with the strength and importance of
his personality and government, as undoubtedly they do, if we had not
in his mausoleum perhaps the most impressive late Roman building left
to us practically intact in all Italy, a thing which, quite as much as
the mightier tomb of Hadrian, assures us of the enormous vitality of
Roman civilisation, its weight, endurance, and unfailing continuance
through every sort of disaster and misgovernment.

This mighty monument is situated upon the north-east of the city,
perhaps upon the old Roman road the Via Popilia. That it was built by
Theodoric himself might seem certain. For though it has been said that
it was erected by Amalasuntha the Anonymus Valesii tells us that
Theodoric built it before he died. "While yet he lived he made a
monument of squared stone, a work of marvellous greatness, covered
with a single stone." It is perhaps of little consequence to whom we
owe this mighty tomb, for it is absolutely, and in any case, Roman
work, and might seem to have been modelled upon the far larger and
more tremendous mausoleum of Hadrian.[1]

[Footnote 1: Choisy points out that the mausoleum of Theodoric has
stylistic affinities with Syrian work, and Strzygowski, who reminds us
that several bishops of Ravenna were Syrians, thinks that Ravenna in
much derived from Syria especially from Antioch.]

The mausoleum is built in two stories of block after block of hewn and
squared stone. The lower of the two stories is decagonal and has in
every s