Palace of Theodoric (Ravenna)
The Palace of Theodoric (ital. Palazzo di Teodorico ) in the northern Italian city of Ravenna is a no longer existing Palace of the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great († 526).
Both the location of the former Theodoric's palace and a large part of the ground plan could be ascertained during the excavations carried out by Corrado Ricci between 1907 and 1911 of foundations and wall remains in the gardens of the Monghini family and in the adjacent area between Viale Farini and Via Alberoni. Ricci orientated himself on sewer pipes made of lead, in which the name Theodoric is engraved. The palace was behind the building fragment, which is now known as the so-called Palace of Theodoric and which had been mistakenly regarded as part of the palace building for a long time, and behind the church of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo , the court church of Theodoric. The lead pipes and other finds discovered during the excavations are now exhibited in a room of the National Museum in Ravenna.
During the excavations were u. a. also found remains of mosaic floors. The mosaic floors were brought to the attic of the so-called Theodoric's palace in 1923, which was set up as an exhibition space. A plaque with a plan of the excavated foundations is also shown in the exhibition room on the upper floor.
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What the palace might have looked like is suggested by a large-scale mosaic depiction that is attached to the upper southern wall of San Apollinare Nuovo and that dates from the time of Theodoric. After that, the palace doesn't seem to have been very big. The mosaic in question in San Apollinare Nuovo, which is said to have originally shown Theodoric sitting on a horse in the middle and members of his court or his family in the flanking two column corridors, was in places greatly changed after Theodoric's death († 526). Since he was an Arian , the Roman Church regarded him as a "heretic". After his death, all images on the mosaic that showed him and other people were removed and covered with other images. From the originally depicted figures, there are still hands that hold the palace pillars.
Charlemagne took building materials, including some columns, from the ruins of Theodoric's palace , which he reused for the construction of the Aachen Palatine Chapel . The columns, which are used for decoration and no longer have a static function, were dismantled under Napoleon I and then kept in the Louvre . Some of the columns were later brought back to Aachen.
literature
- Margarethe König (Ed.) In collaboration with Eugenia Bolognesi Recchi Franceschini and Ellen Riemer: Palatia. Imperial palaces in Constantinople, Ravenna and Trier (= series of publications by the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier. Vol. 27). Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier, Trier 2003, ISBN 978-3-923319-56-5 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm Jänecke : The three issues at the grave of Theodoric . In: Meeting reports of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class , born 1927/28, Winter, Heidelberg 1928.
Coordinates: 44 ° 24 ′ 58 ″ N , 12 ° 12 ′ 17 ″ E