The great event of Ritschl's life was a sojourn of nearly a year in Italy (1836–37), spent in libraries and museums, and more particularly in the laborious examination of the Ambrosian palimpsest of Plautus at Milan. The remainder of his life was largely occupied in working out the material then gathered and the ideas then conceived. Bonn, where he moved on his marriage in 1839, and where he remained for twenty-six years, was the great scene of his activity both as scholar and as teacher.