Day Nine: Ravenna

As our last official day of travel we started the day early with breakfast and packed bags. Our tour guide met us at our hotel in the city center and we started our 3 hour long tour.

Ravenna is located in the Emilia-Romagna region and serves as the current capital of the Province of Ravenna. Ravenna once consisted of small islands something similar to that of Venice today. Currently, Ravenna is home to 8 UNESCO World Heritage sights and is a popular tourist destination during the summer. The city is known for its beautiful mosaics in multiple Cathedrals around the city as well as the various mosaic workshops located in Ravenna.

The first stop on our tour was the basilica di San Vitale. The mosaics on the ceilings were absolutely breathtaking and our guide was very thorough on explaining each mosaic. The mosaics included biblical mosaics of Moses, Abraham, and Cain and Abel, as well as Emperor Justinian and his wife. I was in love with the colors and the way the pictures popped so I took many photos of the beautiful art.

After the Basilica we walked to the Tomb of Galla Placidia who was a Roman Empress. Inside the mausoleum, there were 3 tombs, which are supposed to hold the body of Galla Placidia. However, she is buried in Rome and not in the mausoleum.  However the mausoleum does house some of the most beautiful mosaics in all of Ravenna. One of these is called the Good Shepherd which depicts Jesus Christ watching over a flock of sheep. The beautiful religious and cultural content of each mosaic was gorgeous.

Once we finished in the mausoleum we made our way to the Tomb of Dante Alghieri. This is the current burial place of the author of the Divine Comedy. Dante lived the last of his years in Ravenna and possibly wrote his greatest works here although he was born in Florence. Every year the people of Florence come to Ravenna and ask for the body of Dante and every year the people of Ravenna decline. Right next to Dante’s Tomb was an old monastery. There was a library near the monastery and we found an expert on Dante and his literature and she showed us some of the oldest copies of the Divine Comedy. The books were absolutely gorgeous however I was a little shorter than my fellow classmates and had a harder time seeing the books up close.

Soon after the library, our tour guide took us to a mosaic store where the owner also hosts workshops. We were allowed to see her mosaics and the process that she does when creating a work. I was delighted to learn about the process of making mosaics and her art was absolutely beautiful. It was very interesting for me to think about how this historical Italian culture of making mosaics has transitioned into the modern world. Beautiful works of art will live on.  

 After the mosaic store, we visited the Basilica di Sant’Appolinare Nuovo. Orginally, this Basilica was an Arian church but after new rule in Ravenna, the mosaics in the church were said to have been ordered to be blackened and no longer exist. Today, some of the remnants of the mosaics from the Arian church can be seen in more recent works of art. My favorite mosaics were the longest which depicted female and male saints. Each person had a different expression and different physical features which I can only imagine took hours and hours of work.

After our tour finished we had the afternoon to ourselves and were allowed to shop and relax, we later met at the hotel and had a beautiful dinner in the city center. The food was delicious, the wine was fantastic and I loved bonding with my classmates over the beauties of Italian culture. It was a wonderful way to end our academic travel.