Spolia e riuso di materiali tra la tarda Antichità e l’alto Medioevo a Ravenna

The elevation of Ravenna as a new Imperial capital, at the beginning of the 5th century, determined a redefinition of the housing space and the plant of new buildings destined to the Court and to the display of the Imperial power. In this urbanistic renewal materials and structures of the earlier Roman city have been consistently reemployed. Reuse of tiles and architectural material was considerable, due to economic reasons and the necessity for immediate furnishing of necessary structures for the Imperial burocracy. The re-employment of ancient materials was so vast that most of the buildings of the previous Roman city have been destroyed – even the big important monuments. Temples, the area of the Forum, buildings for the administration and the civil basilica have all been completely absorbed and turned into the Late Antique urban fabrics, without leaving any material evidence. In this contribution we will consider spolia as a material of common use involved in this process of transformation of the ancient city together with the more important architectural elements. The main goal is to show that in this operation of recovery of building materials during the Late Antiquity there was no ideological intention, if we are to exclude the ones reused in order to compare the new capital to the symbol of power in those centuries: Constantinople.