Ravenna

We finally made it down to Ravenna to see the city's famous mosaics and were not disappointed! Another interesting Italian city with a lot of history, no one knows for sure when it was first built, but by the second century BC it was definitely part of the Roman Empire. Later, Ravenna became the capital of the Western Roman Empire and eventually the Byzantine Empire's most important western city.

A beautiful city to walk around with lots of pedestrian streets connecting the many mosaic-filled buildings it's hard to believe that the city was in the poorest region of Italy for many years until very recently. Ravenna was once a coastal city of great importance, but for centuries the area had been silting up and the ports became marshes resulting in abandonment of the city. It's only since WWII that Ravenna has been restored to what it is today.

The reason tourists visit Ravenna is the mosaics. You can see historic mosaics in a lot of other places in Italy, but there's no place like Ravenna in terms of the quality of the mosaics or the sheer number of them. The closeup at left shows you how they are made, you can't appreciate the small details by most of the pictures I'm posting here. The grandness of the interiors shows well I think, but to really appreciate the mosaics you have to see them in person.

At first glance Ravenna may just seem like a nice city for a coffee as most of the buildings aren't all that interesting from the outside. Take the Basilica di San Vitale for example. From the outside it looks a bit like every other basilica you will see in every other Italian city. But that all changes when you go inside. The following pictures are all taken inside Basilica di San Vitale:

Some of our favorite mosaics were in the tiny Galla Placidia's Mausoleum. That photo above of Kristen looking up at the mosaics was made in this building. These are some of the oldest mosaics in Ravenna, dating back to the 5th Century. The gold cross set in a blue sky with gold stars in the ceiling of the mausoleum is a famous Ravenna image. The colors and details of the mosaics were amazing. One really interesting thing about this building is the way that it was lit inside. The only light coming in was through thin marble windows which created a golden glow on the colorful mosaics.

Another really interesting mausoleum was Dante's Mausoleum, not because it was as beautiful inside but because it was "the" Dante! Dante Alighieri, the famous Italian poet from the Middle Ages, is buried in Ravenna and you can walk back in time by entering his tomb. I really like this about Italy, that there is still such a connection to all these great artists and literary figures from the past...for example: right now I'm blogging in Caffe San Marco in Trieste where James Joyce wrote and yesterday we walked on the same cliffside path in Duino where Rilke was inspired to write his elegies.


Ravenna, the "city of art", is definitely on our list of must sees for anyone visiting Italy. I found Ravenna to be different than a lot of other cities full of antiquities that we've visited. For me, the art in the city held my interest more than other places (e.g., Venice) where I often grow tired of looking at paintings of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Maybe it's that I find mosaics to be so fascinating...I really like the intricate details in Italian mosaics the same way that I like paintings by Dutch post-impressionists like Van Gogh.




Here are some parting photos of the amazing art you can experience first hand if you visit this wonderful city.