The Mausoleum of Theodoric (Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

: Mausoleo di Teodorico) is an ancient monument just outside Ravenna

Ravenna

Ravenna is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and the second largest comune in Italy by land area, although, at , it is little more than half the size of the largest comune, Rome...

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. It was built in 520 AD by Theodoric the Great

Theodoric the Great

Theodoric the Great was king of the Ostrogoths , ruler of Italy , regent of the Visigoths , and a viceroy of the Eastern Roman Empire...

 as his future tomb.

Description

The current structure of the mausoleum is divided into two decagonal

Decagon

In geometry, a decagon is any polygon with ten sides and ten angles, and usually refers to a regular decagon, having all sides of equal length and each internal angle equal to 144°...

 orders, one above the other; both are made of Istria

Istria

Istria , formerly Histria , is the largest peninsula in the Adriatic Sea. The peninsula is located at the head of the Adriatic between the Gulf of Trieste and the Bay of Kvarner...

 stone. Its roof is a single 300–ton Istrian stone

Istrian stone

Istrian stone, pietra d'Istria, the characteristic group of building stones in the architecture of Venice and Dalmatia, is a dense type of impermeable limestones that was quarried in Istria, between Portorož and Pula....

, 10 meters in diameter. A niche leads down to a room that was probably a chapel for funeral liturgies

Liturgy

Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...

; a stair leads to the upper floor. Located in the centre of the floor is a circular porphyry

Porphyry (geology)

Porphyry is a variety of igneous rock consisting of large-grained crystals, such as feldspar or quartz, dispersed in a fine-grained feldspathic matrix or groundmass. The larger crystals are called phenocrysts...

 stone grave, in which Theodoric was buried. His remains were removed during Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

 rule, when the mausoleum

Mausoleum

A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or persons. A monument without the interment is a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type of tomb or the tomb may be considered to be within the...

 was turned into a Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

  oratory

Oratory (worship)

An oratory is a Christian room for prayer, from the Latin orare, to pray.-Catholic church:In the Roman Catholic Church, an oratory is a structure other than a parish church, set aside by ecclesiastical authority for prayer and the celebration of Mass...

. In the late 19th century, silting from a nearby rivulet that had partly submerged the mausoleum was drained and excavated.

It was inscribed with seven other "Early Christian Monuments and Mosaics of Ravenna" buildings as one of the UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

 World Heritage Sites in 1996. According to the ICOMOS evaluation, "the significance of the mausoleum lies in its Gothic style and decoration, which owe nothing to Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 or Byzantine art, although it makes use of the Roman stone construction technique of opus quadratum

Opus quadratum

Opus quadratum is an ancient Roman construction technique, in which squared blocks of stone of the same height were set in parallel courses, often without the use of mortar.-Technique:...

, which had been abandoned four centuries before" and in the fact that "it is the only surviving example of a tomb of a king of this period."

An approximate replica of this tomb was constructed in the USA in 1925 when the Taplin Gorge Dam was constructed north of Fergus Falls, Minnesota. The designer (Vernon Wright who was also the president of the dam's owner - the Otter Tail Power Company

Otter Tail Power Company

Otter Tail Corporation is an energy company based in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. Its main subsidiary is the Otter Tail Power Company.As of 2007, Otter Tail Power Company serves at least 423 towns at retail and delivers power to about 14 municipal utilities...

) based the design of the powerhouse

Power station

A power station is an industrial facility for the generation of electric energy....

on this mausoleum.

External link and references

• Original text adopted from http://www.turismo.ravenna.it/eng/monumenti/616.htm. No copyright notice has been found on the site so far. Please remove the text and the photo if you find one.
• Revolving image of the upper floor. The dark color tub appears at the lower corner.
• Download a free paper model of Theoderic's Mausoleum (www.papermodel.cz)