A walk outside to a local small church, designed in the traditional shape of a cross, offers a small mausoleum to two figures important to the region. It too was not built by Germans not Greeks. Built too in the 5th century, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia was intended to honor the assumption of the daughter of Theodosius the Great into heaven (the Roman emperor who required Christendom of all Romans for the first time, with punishment of death to all pagans and especially Jews who rejected the command). Her mortal remains are not housed here though. The building is 12.75 metres long and 10.25 metres wide as a cross. The interior is small but radiant; there are attractive non-Christian and Christian mosaics all over the interior, though the artwork is more faded than in the glorious church. Entrants may not use cameras and must leave after a few minutes oddly. The artistic design is interesting in that there is little Greek influence here (that one would expect for a Byzantine emperor's daughter's honorary tomb), but rather a pre-Christian Roman style. There are depictions of the Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) inside as well as a number of angels and artistic symbols. The multiple tombs in the room apparently house no corpses, but once did. They are in the non-Christian style of the Roman past interestingly, but the original "blasphemous inscriptions" were forbidden and etched away after the Byzantine conquest of the city from the Goths of Theodoric. It is unclear what type of inscription this was: German Runic, Greek, Aramaic, or simply a blasphemous or non-Christian passage in Latin? No photos are allowed here.

Though the city offers several more monuments dating to the same period more than 1,400 years ago with equally fantastic glory, the most famous monument of the city in its hinterlands is the Tomb of Theodoric the Great, where his physical body was interned after his death. It shows the classical Gothic style in its preserved original style. It was erected here because of its location in a local German cemetery before Christendom was established as the state faith of the Italians. Unfortunately, this location was in a swamp, which caused the tomb to be covered in water for more than 500 years. As a consequence, the exterior is wondrously in great condition but the interior is literally vacant and empty. Ethnic hatred for the Germans and religious hatred for the Arian Christians by the Greeks and Italians also discouraged any preservation effort, and many of the glorious gold valuables in the tomb were stolen or collected by locals later. A massive dome atop the structure, originally probably entirely covered in gold leaf, was added miraculously as a 500-ton single piece atop the structure; an architectural oddity. There is also a cross at the peak. A long path to the tomb allows one to enter the lower level and the top level; the lower level is literally empty entirely. None knows what was housed in the lower level originally: perhaps a holy Bible, perhaps hordes of sacrificial treasures for the afterlife, perhaps the bodies of his many slaves who died with him, perhaps simply massive mosaics on the walls that are now vacant. A walk up the original stairs to the top level reveals a similar upsetting fact: the top floor is also nearly empty. Instead of endless hordes of treasure one would expect from a wealthy and powerful dictator-king, there is nearly nothing but stone walls and pigeons. There is, however, blatant evidence that elaborate frescoes and mosaics of solid gold, gems, jewels, and marble once adorned this important mausoleum. Faded text can also be seen wrapping around the room in German in the Latin and also perhaps originally German Runic scripts (the script of the Gothic kingdoms and most Germans at the time). There is a large original cross made of stone in the corner of the room in a strange recess in the wall perhaps for treasures or his corpse originally. The ceiling reveals a washed-away (by the waters of the swamp) "X" shape that was probably actually a cross or a halo to imply his ascent to heaven or divine protection. The center of the room (probably relocated there later) reveals Theodoric's original sarcophagus. It is a bizarre and unique massive red marble coffin with a very large and wide interior. The sides are smashed and cracked; there is no top at this point. The interior is also empty. His body was removed and desecrated by the Byzantines after they destroyed his pagan and heretical empire, some say, though it may have been relocated to protect from erosion later or was washed away by the swamp waters. The tomb survived American and British bombing during World War II, an odd target due to its lack of importance to the war effort, and the fact that no Italian would care if his tomb were destroyed; perhaps it was either an accident or an effort to anger the race-based German state to the north, where Heinrich Himmler and other SS leaders considered the tomb a type of pilgrimage site for ethnic Germans (Volkdeutsche).

The European continent that the Romans built from virtually nothing into various degrees of civilization had declined into virtual anarchy after less than 600 years of world conquest, and the "barbarian" Germanic, Slavic, and Turkic (Hunnic) peoples had annexed nearly all of their former domains, bringing a new brand of self-interested continental civilization to replace the failed Roman one before it. This transition, easily the most important historical shift in world history, can only be studied to such a degree first hand in this quiet and timeless city of Ravenna, a capital to German and Italian empires alike for nearly a thousand years.

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