Fifth day of travel, May 28: Ravenna!

One of our main aims in visiting northern Italy was to get to Ravenna, which is not always on the itinerary of someone doing the abbreviated modern version of the Grand Tour.

Mark has mentioned how Guy Gavriel Kay’s book “Sailing to Sarantium” made him want to see Ravenna. I had read of the mosaics there many years earlier, but I confess that I too decided on the basis of the fantasy novel that it would be wonderful to see the town.

Mark had discovered at the internet café that we should leave from Venice Santa Lucia at about 10:45, getting to Ferrara around noon, and we could pick up a local to Ravenna arriving in Ravenna around 2:30. This we did, getting a little snack in Ferrara and discovering outside the station there an immense number of parked bikes, which I think Mark pulled a snapshot of. In both Ferrara and Ravenna, bikes seem to be a popular mode of transport. Certainly we saw lots of folks in Ravenna going about their ordinary business on bicycle.

We made our way first to the biggest thrill in Ravenna, the Basilica of San Vitale. It’s not called a basilica because of its shape, which is just an octagonal drum, but for some ecclesiastical reason that I don’t understand. You get the feeling while standing in it that it’s higher than it is wide; of course my photographs can’t help you judge that.

The mosaics were more beautiful than I ever imagined, showing a lot of stylistic variation in the portraits of the saints. There are actual portraits there, of the Emperor and of the Bishop who commissioned the church, but I don’t think that I have snaps of any of these latter.

Fortunately there was plenty of light for me to take time-exposures, by resting the camera against a pillar. In many of the pictures, this pillar shows up. No way to avoid that, I think.

Not all the beauty was on the walls and ceilings: as you see in two pictures at the left, the floors were very lovely as well.

Needless to say, this tondo does not date from the sixth century. It’s at the very top of San Vitale. The gray shape at the corner is probably the pillar that I rested the camera against for taking a time-exposure. (Larger image)

The next stop was the Battistero Neoniano, called in English the Baptistery of Neon, which is correct, but looks awfully funny when you write it down. It’s the Orthodox (Catholic) baptistery, as opposed to the Arian one, which we unfortunately didn’t get to. At any rate, this is the oldest monument in Ravenna, and I’ve used details of this here and there as samples of the beauties of Ravenna.

Now, a couple of weeks later and 10000 kilometers away, I’m wondering why I took only three pictures here. Maybe I was just still reeling from San Vitale, which is rather more spectacular.

And perhaps it was just that the eyebones were getting tired, but I also took far too few pictures in the Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo as well. This was originally an Arian church, built by Theodoric the Great, but was reconsecrated as a Catholic church in 561, only 35 years after Theodoric's death. Below are two of the most interesting pictures I took there:

The left-hand picture shows a bunch of saints in a row—if you look at the big image, you can see which one is which. Maybe not so easy to see in the small image. I find it interesting that the saints are identified just by name, rather than by iconographic details: no arrows for Saint Sebastian, for instance. You probably recognize that the row of saints is what I’ve used for the background of these pages.

In the right-hand picture (large image small), the three kings wearing their Persian trousers are bringing their gifts to a Virgin and child who for some reason are enthroned in glory rather than roughing it amongst the domesticated animals. I guess I really should be avoiding flippancy here: these places are just about the oldest Christian churches I’m likely to get into and admire, or you, either: even Hagia Sofia in Istanbul isn’t as old as San Vitale, and that one hasn’t been a church for 500 years.