Dynastic History | Sant'Apollinare Nuovo — The Hands Left on the Columns

Theoderic built this church beside his palace on the road now called Via di Roma, between 493 and 526, and dedicated it to Christ the Redeemer for Arian worship — his own church, not the one most of his subjects belonged to. High on the south wall his mosaicists set the Palatium: the front of the royal palace, arcaded, its arches hung back with curtains. Between the columns stood figures. They were the court, and on the usual reading the king stood among them.

After the Gothic War ended Ostrogothic rule the building passed to Nicene worship. Archbishop Agnellus reconciled it and rededicated it to Martin of Tours during his episcopate of 557 to 570; the date conventionally given is 561. The narrative of that reconciliation comes from the Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, compiled by a later Agnellus in the ninth century, some three hundred years after the fact. It is worth saying plainly, because it is the only account there is.

The court figures were taken out of the wall and replaced with plain drapery. The work was not thorough. Hands are still up there, resting on the columns where the bodies used to be, and an arm survives on one shaft. The church was renamed a third time in 856, when the relics of Apollinaris were brought in from Classe and it took the name it still carries.

It stands at Via di Roma 53 and is one of five monuments ticketed by the Opera di Religione della Diocesi di Ravenna. The Palatium is on the right as you face the apse, at the western end of the upper register.

📸 Cover: The Palatium mosaic in Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna, showing the curtained arcade — hands of the erased court figures remain on the columns. Photograph by Sibeaster, released into the public domain via Wikimedia Commons