Ravenna: Big-ticket sites, small town charm

I've just wrapped up my first day in Ravenna (and also wrote that last post), and it certainly was a busy one. But, before I get into what I saw today, I thought I'd give a little history about why Ravenna is important.  It's fairly important to understanding what I saw, so try to bear with me.  I'll make it as interesting and brief as possible.

As early as the 5th century, Ravenna was one of if not the most important city in Italy.  If you know anything about Roman history, you probably know that the barbarians started sacking Rome, and then Rome fell.  Well, the barbarian sacks of Rome were pretty important, for a number of reasons: fabulous amounts of wealth (the city hadn't been captured in over 800 years, which is a lot of time to accumulate money in one place), symbolism (how could the "Eternal City" be captured?), implications for the rest of the empire (if Rome could be taken, what next?), etc.  But, what you probably don't know is that the government was no longer located there.  Not even the Western Roman government.

All the way back to the late 3rd century, the emperors started moving the capital around, to wherever the military needed it most.  As barbarian invasions became more frequent, an imperial presence was more necessary in Northern areas.  Milan, Trier, even York--all were imperial capitals.  By the 5th century, the emperors in the West were no longer military men, at least for the most part.  A capital in the North was no longer necessary, because they were neither commanding the troops nor taking part in the fighting.  But, Rome was hopelessly difficult to defend.  It was massive, located out in the open, and had to immediate port.  So, rather than station the imperial court at Rome, Ravenna was chosen as the new home of the Western emperors.  At the time it was located in the marshes, somewhat similar to Venice, and so was extremely defensible.

When the last Roman emperor in the West was overthrown by his Gothic commander, Ravenna became the capital of the barbarian kingdom of Italy.  That is, until Justinian decided to invade.  When he had successfully taken control of Italy and reincorporated it into the Byzantine Empire, Ravenna became the new capital of the Exarchate (without getting into it, think of this as a part of the empire with a fairly large degree of independence.  Its leader, the Exarch of Ravenna, was sort of like a military governor.).  The Exarchate was under attack almost from the beginning (in the mid 6th century), and it finally succumbed to the Lombards in 751, effectively ending Byzantine influence over Northern Italy.

To sum up: Ravenna was an extremely important city in the last years of the Western Roman Empire, and the capital of Byzantine Italy for about 200 years.

As you might imagine, such an important city probably got some pretty impressive monuments, and those are what I went to see today.  The city boasts 8 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the most of any single place in the world (although to be fair "Ancient Rome" only counts as 1).  You'd never know it: there were shockingly few tourists, and most of those I saw were Italians.  Everyone was speaking Italian rather than English, as you'd find in Istanbul, Rome, Florence, or Venice.  It was a nice surprise, to get to see such fantastic things in a pretty authentic environment.  It was also nice that more Italian has stuck in my brain than I thought, because I may have been in trouble without it.

Anyway, I started by walking towards the center of the city (my hostel is about 1-1.5 miles away).  On the way, I noticed these walls, built in the Roman period:

Not quite the same as the Theodosian walls, but pretty cool nonetheless, especially since I didn't know they were there.

The first actual site I went to was the Basilica di San Vitale.  

One of the UNESCO sites, this church was built in the 6th century, right in the midst of Justinian's invasion.  By the time it was completed he was the boss, and it's pretty obvious when you see the inside:

The apse: Christ with angels and saints

Justinian with senators and soldiers

Theodora, the empress, with her attendants

The ceiling, with the Agnus Dei in the center

These are quite large, and absolutely complete.  I thought that St. Savior in Chora probably gave the best impression of a Byzantine church, but this is surely better.  So good in fact, that I can't resist including some more pictures:

Abraham about to sacrifice Isaac.  Not the angels dressed as Roman senators

Apostles

I hope these pictures get across just how extraordinary this place was.  The day continued in a similar vein.  On the same grounds as San Vitale was the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia.  She was the daughter of Theodosius I, half sister of Arcadius and Honorius (emperors of East and West), and mother of Valentinian III.  She was pretty important.  As would befit such a major figure, her tomb is quite splendid:

Concentric circles of stars, with the symbols of the evangelists in the corners.

In the second picture, you can see a window: note that it is made not of glass, but rather of stone.  All of the windows in the building--I assume they were included to illuminate the mosaics--are made of extremely thin stone, appearing solid from the outside but allowing a fair amount of light in from the inside.  Pretty ingenious, really.  I forgot to mention, this is also a UNESCO site.

I next went to the Museo Nazionale, which was right next door.  It was filled with a variety of artifacts dating as far back as the Bronze Age.  While it was very interesting, nothing seemed especially noteworthy, so no pictures of that one.

Next up was Dante's tomb.  Although a Florentine by birth, Dante Alighieri died in exile in Ravenna in 1321. Although Florence has begged for his body (there's even an empty tomb built in Santa Croce), Ravenna refuses to return him.  Personally I'm with Ravenna on this one, why should Florence get him now that he's famous when they rejected him before?  In any event, his tomb is now in Ravenna.

Oil lamp that has been burning continuously for over 100 years, courtesy of oil from the Florentines

I don't need to keep mentioning when I'm in the shot, do I?

I'm a big fan of the Divine Comedy, so this was particularly special.  Makes me wonder whether he had any idea how important he would be to posterity (his near-contemporary Petrarch certainly thought highly of himself, but I don't know about Dante).

For the third UNESCO site of the day, I went to the Orthodox Baptistery.  Built over top of a Roman bath, this is another mosaic filled structure.  You'd think they all start to look the same, but you'd be wrong:

Christ being baptized in the Jordan in the center, with apostles surrounding him

There were some fantastic marble reliefs, too

Hard to see, but that's supposed to be one of the gospels

After this I saw the Archepiscopal Museum, which was full of artifacts from the old cathedral.  There were numerous ancient Roman inscriptions as well as a few statues.  Most impressive were the ivory cathedra (bishop's throne) from the 6th century, and the Capella Sant'Andrea, a small mosaic-covered chapel.  Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures, but it was beautiful (and the 4th UNESCO site of the day).  Worth googling if you've liked what I've shown so far.

I wandered around for a while after this, getting mildly lost, and ended up at the Duomo, the city's cathedral. It's an 18th century building, so it's decorated in an entirely different fashion from the other churches I'd seen so far:

Good to change things up with a little baroque/rococo.  Bu, pretty soon I was back to the mosaics.  The last thing I did (besides walking back in the most inadvertently roundabout way possible) was to go see the Arian baptistery.  This was the baptistery built by the Goths to accompany their cathedral in Ravenna.  Being Arians--a heretic group that denied the divinity of Christ in favor of his human nature, and by the 5th century made up primarily of barbarians--they had their own churches and priests, and of course considered the Orthodox to be heretical.  Their baptistery was converted into a chapel after the capture of the city, but the mosaics on the ceiling of the dome remained untouched:

This was UNESCO site 5.  It was pretty interesting to compare the Orthodox and Arian baptisteries, as they are roughly contemporary (close enough anyway).  The walls were bare in the Arian baptistery, but it still seems to me that the mosaic is somewhat less complex (not in terms of the skill necessary to produce it, but rather the level of detail included).  That could probably be chalked up to the difference in resources available to the respective regimes, though.

In any event, that was my (exhausting!) day.  Tomorrow I'll see the rest of the UNESCO sites, and a handful of other things.  I'm thinking of taking a day trip to somewhere in Emilia-Romagna on Thursday though; if anyone reading this has suggestions, I'm all ears!

A domani!