Dynastic History | Mausoleo di Galla Placidia — The Tomb Named for Someone Buried in Rome

The western Roman court moved to Ravenna in 402, trading a capital an army could reach for one ringed by marsh and served by a naval harbour. Aelia Galla Placidia, daughter of Theodosius I and mother of Valentinian III, held the title augusta and governed as regent from 425. The small cruciform building that carries her name went up in the second quarter of the fifth century, and not as a free-standing tomb: it was an oratory at the end of the narthex of the church of Santa Croce, and the two were only separated in 1602. Its floor has been lifted above the fifth-century level to stay ahead of the water table, which is why a visitor now steps down into it rather than up.

She is not inside. She died at Rome in 450 and was buried in the imperial vault there, most likely beside Honorius at Old St Peter's. The attribution to this building is medieval — Ravennate tradition placed her tomb somewhere in the city, and the tradition settled here. Three sarcophagi stand under the vaults. None carries her name, and none has been shown to be hers.

What kept the building standing is the decoration: a barrel vault of gold stars on deep blue, a lunette of deer at a stream, the earliest of Ravenna's surviving mosaic programmes. It is one of five monuments run by the Opera di Religione della Diocesi di Ravenna, entered from the San Vitale enclosure on a timed ticket that caps both how many people are inside and how long they stay.

📸 Cover: Exterior of the Mausoleo di Galla Placidia, Ravenna, Lorenza Tuccio, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons