- We spent a day exploring Ravenna’s World Heritage Early Christian Monuments. Stepping off the train from Bologna you wouldn’t guess that you were walking into a place that has played a signifcant role in European history. Modern Ravenna is unprepossessing at first impression. Stepping off the modern streets and into the ancient churches, baptistries, and mausoleums presents an entirely different picture. You are blasted by a quantity and quality of art and architecture befitting a place that was capital of the Western Roman Empire, capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom, and a base for reuniting the Eastern and Western Roman Empires under Justinian the Great and his wife Theodora. Ravenna remained an exarchate or lordship of the Eastern Roman / Byzantine Empire until it was captured by the Lombards in 751.
- This ‘time capsule’ exists in part because of natural processes. Ravenna used to lay about four kilometres inland from its ancient port at Classe. The port silted up and by the 10th C Ravenna was literally a back water. Over time siltation has moved the coastline a further nine kilometers east and Classe now is far from the coast. This greatly benefited the city of Venice with its access to the Adriatic. Yet it also helped to preserve the remarkable buildings and mosaics of Ravenna that were protected by irrelevance and inaccessibility.
- We started at the Arian Baptistry which has an incredible dome mosaic of Christ being baptised by John the Baptist, surrounded by twelve Apostles. It was commissioned by the Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great around the year 500. Theodoric was an Arian Christian and decided to let the Goths (Arians) and the Orthodox Christians co-exist albeit in separate neighborhoods with separate religious buildings.
- Next stop was the Basilica di Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, built around the same time as the Arian Baptistry. Along one wall a procession of 26 female martyrs is shown leaving the town to follow the Magi who bear gifts for the Virgin. On the other wall a line of male martyrs leave Theodoric’s palace to honour Christ. It’s a mesmerising sight.
- After the poet Dante Aligheri was exiled from Florence his wanderings eventualy led him to Ravenna where he completed his great poem The Divine Comedy before dying in 1321. We visited Dante’s Tomb which sits within a small neoclassical monument next to the Basilica of San Francesco. [Having visited Dante’s Tomb in 2009, it was interesting to visit Alfredo Jaar’s ‘The Divine Comedy’ at MONA, our local museum, in 2019. Not sure if it’s significant but Jaar’s interpretation of Hell was by far our favourite.]
- The Neonian Baptistry is named after Archbishop Neon who commissioned its mosaics around 485. The building is a converted Roman bathhouse which is octagonal in shape. It also has a dome mosaic of Christ being baptised. Four of its eight walls bear mosaics of altars and the other four bear mosaics of empty thrones symbolising ‘preparing of the throne’ for Jesus to deliver the last judgement.
- It’s easy to overdo the superlatives in describing Ravenna’s treasures, but the Basilica di San Vitale is probably the highest of the highlights. The combination of greens, blues and gold is startling, and the mosaics of Justinian and Theodora make them seem surprisingly human.
- Next to San Vitale is the small Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Galla Placidia led an amazing life. She was daughter of the Emperor Theodoius I, half-sister of the Emperor Honorius, held hostage by then married to King Athaulf becoming Queen of the Visigoths, and Regent of the Western Roman Empire when Honorius died hierless, ruling for 13 years in the name of her son Valentinian III. Her mausoleum is appropriately spectacular, though in a final twist she’s actually buried in Rome.
- Across the railway lines and surrounded by parkland stands the Mausoleum of Theodoric. It’s an austere monument built in 520 out of Istrain stone and assembled without mortar. The roof alone is a single slab weighing over 300 tonnes and enormous effort must have been required to transport the material to Ravenna then construct the building. Inside is a beautiful Roman porphyry basin which was recycled as a sarcophagus. Theodoric was a Germanic warrior who, around the year 488, brought over 100,000 people across the Alps and into Italy after their homeland was overrun by the Huns. His mausoleum provides a fascinating link between the Roman empire, the Barbarian invasions, and the Byzantine empire. It seemed the perfect way to end an amazing day.
15 columns with double capitals
22 Mausoleum of Galla Placidia
24 Mausoleum of Theodoric