La trasformazione veneziana di Ravenna: la Rocca Brancaleone (1457-1470) sulla chiesa di S. Andrea dei Goti (518)

Perhaps for the effects of the damnatio memoriae that followed the Agnellian censorship of Arian churches, Ravenna completely forgot the Church of the Goths; yet numerous documents allow us to locate its remains. It was a massive circular building with a central plan created on the ruins of a Roman building, as described by the Chronicle. The Arian bishop Unimundus built the church out of town in the XXIV year of Theodoric’s reign (A.D. 518). According to another source, Theodoric himself built the church near the Tremedula gate and the church of S. Stefano de Oliviis. The church was rededicated to St. Eusebius after being converted to the Catholic cult. The title reported by Agnellus, in our opinion, refers to the Catholic rededication, as well as the Arian Cathedral of Pavia, also rededicated to St. Eusebius. Near the church in the IX cent. a monastery dedicated to St. Andrew was built. The building itself is described as Ecclesia Gothica in another part of the Chronicle within the architectures that Theodoric built during his reign and cited in numerous other medieval notarial documents as ecclesia gothica. In the fifteenth century during the construction of the Rocca Brancaleone, the defensive system of the city incorporated the building, turning it into a dungeon. This architecture is a singular example of continuity of use from the first century to contemporary times, its original function of thermal conditioner, possibly part of a Roman thermal plant, was maintained, so as to retain the title of the ice tower (torre della ghiacciaia), in spite of a total cancellation of the collective and historical memory of its existence. All consulted authors, needless here to repeat the entire list, but already the Rossi referred to the church as demolished, report the building as demolished for the construction of the fortress, which cannot find any documental or material confirmation. The architect dismantled the stone cladding and used it for the foundations of the fort, but preserved the core wall. It is an exceptional material document, perhaps the only Gothic building in Ravenna not having suffered heavy nineteenth-century restorations and preserved to this day thanks to the new Venetian use.