The main Byzantine administrative and military headquarters in Italy, ruled by an imperial exarch from Ravenna, governing the empire's surviving Italian territories after the Lombard invasions shrank Byzantine Italy to a scatter of coastal enclaves.
Fell to King Aistulf of the Lombards in 751, ending direct Byzantine rule in central-northern Italy; the Franks later granted the former exarchate's lands to the Papacy, forming the territorial nucleus of the Papal States.
The atlas holds 2 border frames for Exarchate of Ravenna — the shape you scrub through changes in 584 · 697.
Major recent history of Ravenna as the seat of Byzantine (and earlier Ostrogothic) rule in Italy, covering the Exarchate in depth.