In recent years research on the early medieval north-eastern Italy has made important advances in the study of archaeological finds from the entire Adriatic area but also in the field of critical analysis of the early Venetian duchy’s relations with the Lombard (and later Italian) kingdom and Byzantine Italy. This study focuses on the second subject, starting from the arrival of the Lombards in 569, which established the conditions for the birth of Venice. From the sixth to the ninth century, Venice was a Byzantine duchy embedded in a dense network of political, social and economic relations which extended across the whole northern Adriatic. The formation of Venetian society and the city itself, its institutions and political identity were profoundly influenced by social and institutional developments on the Italian mainland. Simultaneously Byzantine, Adriatic and Italian in character, Venice developed in delicate equilibrium with all these different social components.

This study focuses on Ravenna during the period from its fall into the hands of the Lombards in 751 to the decline of Byzantine power in the West from the mid-eleventh century. It argues that Ravenna shared common features with a number of other cities in the upper Adriatic, for example Comacchio, Venice and Zadar. The city maintained its earlier economic and artistic ties with Istria and Dalmatia, but also with Constantinople. The ties to Byzantium were based on admiration, nostalgia or identity and were used as part of strategy of resistance to threatening outside forces. However, the increasing dominance of local landowning elite led to the local autonomy and the strongest Byzantine influence remained the social and cultural cachet of the empire.