Ravenna Discovery Guide

Ravenna holds the best late-antique mosaics anywhere outside Istanbul, in eight buildings that between them span the fall of the Western Empire, the Gothic kingdom that replaced it and the Byzantine province that followed. All eight are UNESCO-listed and all are walkable in a day.

The work is fifteen hundred years old and almost entirely original. In the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia the vault is a deep blue field of gold stars, and it has looked like that since the 430s.

The friction is that Ravenna is off the main line and most itineraries run Bologna to Venice without stopping. Come for two nights, buy the combined ticket, and see something in Emilia Romagna that has no equivalent anywhere else in Italy.

If you travel slowly: two nights. Mosaics reward returning — the same vault looks different in morning and afternoon light — and a second visit to Galla Placidia on the included ticket is the best fifteen minutes in the city.

If you want the essentials: San Vitale and Galla Placidia first thing, the Neonian Baptistery and Sant’Apollinare Nuovo before lunch, and Dante’s tomb on the way between them. That is the core, on foot, in a morning.

If you’re after local character: eat a piadina from a kiosk rather than a restaurant, and go to the covered market. Ravenna is a provincial working city and its centre empties of visitors by evening.

If you want to go past the obvious: cycle the eight kilometres to Sant’Apollinare in Classe, which stands alone in the fields where a naval harbour used to be, and continue into the Pineta di Classe. Or go north into the delta lagoons, where the birdlife is as much the point as the mosaics.

Ravenna is the least Italian-looking important city in Italy, and its character comes from having been the western edge of the Byzantine world rather than a Renaissance city-state.

Looking east, not south

The plans, the techniques and the iconography here come from Constantinople. San Vitale has more in common with buildings in Istanbul than with anything in Florence, and the city knows it — the comparison is made locally with some pride.

A craft that never stopped

Mosaic workshops still operate, still cut glass tesserae by hand, and still train apprentices. Restoration on the monuments is done by people who learned the sixth-century method, and contemporary mosaic is made here as art.

Custody of Dante

Ravenna took in an exile Florence had condemned to death, and has kept his body for seven hundred years against repeated requests. The lamp at the tomb burns on oil sent annually from Florence, which is either a reconciliation or a very long argument, depending on who you ask.

Romagna, not Emilia

People here identify as Romagnoli, eat piadina rather than gnocco fritto, and regard the difference as obvious. The region’s hyphenated name covers two cultures, and this is firmly the eastern one.

Ravenna’s pressures are conservation pressures. The mosaics are fifteen hundred years old, and the main threats to them are humidity, temperature swings and breath.

Accept the timed entry. Galla Placidia limits numbers and visit length in the busy months, and charges a small supplement to do it. That is not revenue-raising; small interiors full of people change the humidity measurably.

Do not touch the walls, and follow the flash rules. Tesserae are set in lime mortar and surfaces are original. This is the rare case where a rope is protecting something irreplaceable rather than managing a queue.

Come out of season if you can. Winter visits spread the load on the small buildings and are a better experience anyway.

Buy mosaic from the workshops. The craft survives because there is a market for contemporary work, and the same workshops do the restoration.

Keep to paths and hides in the delta. The lagoons are breeding habitat for colonial nesting birds, and disturbance at the wrong moment costs a season.

April to June and September to October are the best windows: mild, uncrowded, and comfortable for cycling out to Classe or into the pinete.

June and July bring the Ravenna Festival, when concerts are staged inside the basilicas. Worth planning around if music matters to you.

July and August are hot and humid, and the coast fills with Italian beach holidaymakers even though the historic centre stays relatively quiet. Mosquitoes are at their worst.

November to March is cold, damp and very quiet, and it is underrated here. The monuments are interiors, they are open, and you can have Galla Placidia effectively to yourself — which, given that admission is timed and limited in high season, is a real advantage.

What a visitor actually pays in Ravenna

Ravenna is inexpensive for what it holds — the combined ticket for five UNESCO monuments costs less than a single major museum in most Italian cities. The one supplement to know about is a small extra charge for Galla Placidia in the busy months, which pays for the timed entry that protects it.