From 2001 onwards the school of Medieval Archaeology at the University of Bologna’s Ravenna subsidiary, has been involved in a series of projects and excavations at the abandoned town of Classe, south of Ravenna. Prior to the town, the site was occupied in the imperial period by a number of necropoli and villas. The town grew up in the 5th century as a satellite of nearby Ravenna, and in particular as the commercial port for the latter, at the moment when it was chosen as the capital of the western empire.

The discoveries in the port area of Classe consisted mainly of occupation evidence dating to the imperial period. These few structures, probably belonging to a suburban villa with phases dating to the 2nd-3rd century, included a mosaic pavement with black and white tesserae forming geometric motifs.
The creation of the port structures themselves dates to the beginning of the 5th century. This was a port-canal, articulated around two main infrastructures: the canal connecting the coast to the interior and, further north, the town of Ravenna; and a basalt paved road which – at least for a stretch – ran parallel to the canal.

The quarter mainly comprised warehouses overlooking the canal and the road. These buildings produced enormous quantities of pottery which made it possible to define Ravenna’s trading relationships with the rest of the Mediterranean. The installation had a long life and, over time, almost all the buildings underwent various types of alteration. The slow disappearance of the port had already begun in the second half of the 7th century, when the volume of commercial traffic was greatly diminished due to the decline in sea transport, and some of the warehouses were occupied by small houses. At the same time a number of burials appeared in the quarter. Occupation continued until the 8th century by which time the warehouses were almost completely in ruins and were in part substituted by small wooden semi-interred structures.