It was in 1457 that they
began to build the really tremendous fortification or Rocca, the ruins
of which we may still see. They were engaged during some ten years
upon this great fortress, the master of the works being Giovanni
Francesco da Massa. They employed as material the ruins of the church
of S. Andrea dei Goti, built by Theodoric, which they had been
compelled to destroy to make room for the fortress, as well as the
materials of a palace of the Polentani. The Rocca with its great
citadel played a considerable part in the battle of 1512, and the
subsequent sack of the city. But when Ravenna came again into the
government of the Holy See, though the fortifications of the city as a
whole were enlarged, the Rocca itself soon fell into a decay and was
indeed in great part destroyed in the middle of the seventeenth
century, the monastery and the church of Classe being repaired and
enlarged with its ruins and the Ponte Nuovo over the Fiumi Uniti,
according to Dr. Ricci, being also constructed from its remains, as
were other buildings in Ravenna. Then like the Rocca Malatestiana at
Rimini it came to be used as a mere prison, and when it failed to
prove useful for that purpose it was allowed to become the picturesque
ruin we see.
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