Norwich bulletin., 1921-10-14
IN THE DAYS NEWS
Ravenna.

Many a mean place marks the shrine of great man; but in Ravenna crowds
 are honorng Dante in city as nearly unique as the singular genius of that poet" says a bulletin from the Washing ton, D. C.. headquarters of the National Geographic society
 Its geographical position once render ed 1t an 'impregnable city of the sea and preserved il as a 'Pompeii of the Byzan- | tine era,. Its present interest is asso- ciated with the 600th anniversary of the 1 death of Dante who is buried there. but 1 its permanent significance lies in the fact that it was the deathbed of the (Roman) empire and it's tomb
 l "Ravenna is the Hamlet of Italian i cities. To its isolation and solitude it i owed the presence of the emperors of ] declining Rome, and the same quality has preserved the mystic spirit of the four 1 centuries, the fifth to eighth, which it 1 alone typifes.
 l Recall that the Apennines cut across 1 the upper part of the Italian boot from
 Genoa to Rimini, just north of Ravenna There the range turns south, short of the Adriatic Ravenna therefore has a | strategic position in relation to CisaIpine 1 Gaul, the Italian peninsula, and the Ad- 1 riatic.
 This position, in conjunction with it's l inaccessibility. made the little town of Gallia C=salDina. Caesars rendezvous to ] plot with Roman adherents while he
 campaigned in Gaul. into the mighty Ravenna, where Honorius first establish ed an imperial residence, Odoacer. set up a kingdom, and Theodoric the Ostrogotb
 finally established a Versailles of the medieVa. world
 .
 was laid out along canals among marsh
 es. The tide was the sanitary agant The principal complaints in this respect
 were against flies and frogs and an in-
 adequate water supply. One writer re-
 ports: We were thirsty in the midst of
 the waves Martial wrote: That landlord at Rayenna is plainly
 but 8 cheat
 paid for wine and water, but he served wine to me neat
 ArchttecturaIly Ravenna is the Brook. lyn of Europe. Its churches are uniou,
 because they exhibit the threefoId influ . effe of Roman, Byzantine and Christian
 aH' A dozen or more of these edifice. :. are counted of high artistic and histori
 cal merit, and about them entire volume. nave been written. No place affords sucl an opportunity as RaVenna to study tn, years just before and after the break -ul Of the Roman empire
 "Ravenna long has passed the zenitl a of her influence and power when Dant
 spent the last years of his life there. H, was the invited guest of Guido Novello lord of the city, whose patronage of ar e and letters kindled a flicker among tn ). embers of the city's great past = It is paradoxieal that in a city note, 7, chiefly for it's architectural treasures tn e ashes of it's most famous resident shout o repose in a shrine described by Byron a o a little cupofa more neat than solemn It Byron, it will be recalled lived at Ra e venna in 1826-21 during the time he wa l. enamored by the Countess Guiccioli ''Fhe sea has receded from RaVenns is it's lagoons now are marshes Tw l. streams which are not naxigabIe and
 canal connect it with the Adriatic It
 capital of the modern province of Ra venna, in the compartment of Emilis
 and lies 45 miles east of Bologna
 was among the first cities to cast it's vol l. for Italian unHy in 1859. Ten year l. earlier Garibaldis wife died in th d marshes outside the city while she a, le eonpanied her husband in his flight frol
 Rome"