Rachel's Adventures in Rome!: Running Around Ravenna (our first stop up north)

As we headed off on our 10-day trip north, I was both excited and apprehensive--excited to see new places, but worried that I had either over or under-packed. Did I have enough clean underwear? Ten days was going to be a long time to be away from my new home-away-from-home, but I knew that adventures would fill the days ahead.

Our first stop was Ravenna. After three or so hours on the train, we arrived refreshed (most of us had snuck a nap) and walked the short distance to our hotel. Ravenna was an important stop for us because it was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 402 until that empire collapsed in 476. It then served as the capital of the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths until it was conquered in 540 by the Byzantine Empire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenna). Our first stop was at Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, the palace chapel of the Ostrogoth king, Theodoric. The chapel contained gorgeous mosaics on the apse and along the aisles. Along each aisle were parades of martyrs. Along one side, the parade of martyrs was made up entirely of women in white dress. This was unusual because we had seen Mary represented, and individual females saints, but up until this point we hadn’t seen this number of women represented together in mosaic. My favorite part of the mosaic-work were the two depictions of buildings/cites at the very back of the chapel. On one side was the port of Classe, including beautiful ships with great white sails. On the other side was the famous “palatium” mosaic which showed Theoderic’s palace adorned in gold, white, and blue. The depiction of the palace showed Roman-style columns and arches. I was so struck by this mosaic and its history, that it became the subject of a short paper that we wrote about an image from our Northern trip. Two things about the mosaic were particularly interesting: 1. Because Theoderic was an Arian, he began building Arian churches, a system that would sit in parallel to the Orthodox building program. The original mosaic had reflected this Arianism, and had included an image of Theoderic on horseback and Arians standing in the archways with their hands outstretched. In the mid-6th century when the chapel fell under Catholicism, Justinian I had the figures covered over with curtains and a blank background to conceal the aspects of the chapel that he considered to be too Arian. But, on one of the columns it is still possible to see the outstretched hand of one of those figures. This gave me a very real sense of the layering and repurposing that had happened within the space over the centuries. Again, I could see the layers that existed, one on top of the other. The second interesting thing about the mosaic is that it is considered to be a visual document, evidence of what the palace originally looked like. Both textual and archaeological evidence of the building are quite slim, and so scholars have turned to the mosaic to help complement this evidence. It is amazing to think that a several hundred year-old mosaic is serving a similar purpose that an old photograph might--giving us an architectural look at a building that no longer looks as it once did. Next door to the chapel, we were able to see the remains of Theoderic’s palace. They were limited in size and scope which made it hard to get a sense of the grandeur that must have once existed. Next we visited two different baptistries, both of which had amazing mosaic ceilings. Each ceiling depicted the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. While the subject was similar, the style of the two mosaics was very different. One had a more Byzantine style, while the other was more classical. After a snack break (we picked up some amazing candied nuts!) we headed to San Vitale and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. San Vitale has one of the largest and best-preserved mosaic programs, and we visited the basilica with Dottoresa Cetty Muscolino who has been involved in the restoration of the mosaics. It was interesting to hear just how intricate the work is--you have to match color and material and then replace each piece without damaging the pieces around it, all while keeping the original image intact. We ended the day in Ravenna with a group dinner at a lovely restaurant with high ceilings. It specialized in wine, and had the feel of a very large wine cellar. We had a room off to side mostly to ourselves, and we enjoyed a several hour Italian dinner complete with wine and espresso. The next day we headed out off the main city to see Sant’Apollinare in Classe, another basilica with fabulous mosaics. Outside of the church was a large field containing life-sized water buffalo statues. After visiting the church, we entertained ourselves by taking group photos with these (very patient) buffaloes. Because we didn’t have a lot of free time to wander in Ravenna, I didn’t get a particularly good sense of the city as a whole. When we were walking from place to place, the city felt very modern and quite spread out. In the cities to come, there would be a much more condensed city-center, but I didn’t get this same sense in Ravenna. It felt more like we jumped from interesting place to interesting place, but the parts didn’t come together into one whole city for me.