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.

In October 2008 a campaign was undertaken to evaluate the nature of the archaeological deposit of the Basilica Petriana, the largest ecclesiastical building at Classe. The investigations, preceded and guided by a magnetometer survey, brought to light a number of structures belonging to the basilica. These included the southern perimeter wall as well as a part of the original opus sectile floor still in situ, datable to the 5th century. The results of this work are still being processed, but the find of the remains of the basilica – which definitively confirms the location of the monument and, on the basis of the stratigraphy, its chronology– is a very important addition to our knowledge of Classe.