Far otherwise is it with the great church, the noblest in Ravenna, of S. Apollinare Nuovo.  This was built about the same time as the palace, in the first twenty years of the sixth century, as the Arian cathedral by the Gothic king.  It was the chief temple in Ravenna of that heresy, and it remained in Arian hands till with the re-establishment of the imperial power in Italy it was consecrated, in 560, for Catholic use by the archbishop S. Agnellus.  It consists of a basilica divided into three naves by twenty-four columns of Greek marble with Romano-Byzantine capitals.  Of old it had an atrium, but this was removed in the sixteenth century, as was the ancient apse in the eighteenth.  The original apse, however, was ruined in an earthquake, as Agnellus tells in his life of S. Agnellus, in the sixth century, and of the atrium only a single column remains in situ before the church.  The campanile, a noble great round tower, dates from the ninth century for the most part, its base is, however, new.  The portico before the church is a work of the sixteenth century, as is the facade, which nevertheless contains certain ancient marbles, among which are two inscribed stones, one of the fourth century and the other of the eleventh.

When Theodoric built this great and glorious church he dedicated it to Jesus Christ.  It seems to have been dedicated in honour of S. Martin in 560 by the archbishop S. Agnellus who consecrated it for Catholic worship, and finally in the middle of the ninth century to have been given the title of S. Apollinare by the archbishop John, who asserted that he had brought hither the relics of the first archbishop of the see from S. Apollinare in Classe when that church was threatened by the Saracens.

The oldest name by which the church was generally known, however, is that of Coelum Aureum.  Agnellus in his life of the archbishop S. Agnellus says, speaking of the Catholic consecration of the church, “Then the most blessed Agnellus the bishop reconciled within this city the church of S. Martin Confessor, which Theodoric the king founded, and which was called Coelum Aureum....”  And he goes on to say that it was found from an inscription that “King Theodoric made this church from its foundations in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ."[1] It got the name of Coelum Aureum perhaps from its glorious roof of gold.  This, however, was destroyed in 1611.

[Footnote 1:  Cf. also Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis, Vita Theodori, cap. n.]

The church has indeed suffered very much in the course of the fourteen hundred years of its existence, and yet in many ways it is the best preserved church in Ravenna.  In the sixteenth century, for instance, it was fast sinking into ruin; the floor of the church and the bases of the columns were then more than a metre and a half beneath the level of the soil, and it was decided that something must be done if the building was to be saved.  In 1514 this work was undertaken; the columns were raised and the arches cut and thus the church and its great mosaics were preserved.  It is, however, still sinking; the new pavement of the sixteenth century has disappeared, and that of 1873 which was brought from the suppressed church of S. Niccolo covers the bases of the columns.