Sept 03 - Ferrera to Ravenna

 Sept 03 - Ferrera to Ravenna

A travel day. 


Unusual for us on a travel day but with an earlier train than planned, and no previous ‘tenants’ in our accommodation, we were out ‘discovering’ Ravenna way before lunch. 


Ravenna, home to 8 UNESCO World Heritage sites, is well known for its mosaics and so our first visit was to one of those, the Baptistery of Neon(?).  This is the oldest of the 'mosaic' sites in Ravenna, dating back to the fourth century, and is sometimes called the Orthodox' Baptistry to distinguish it from the 'Arian' Baptistry, another one in town.  On the outside it’s a plain little octagonal building but on the inside there’s a magnificent ceiling mosaic with, at the centre of the dome, a large medallion containing the scene of the baptism of Jesus immersed in the Jordan River. 

Bottom R: The Baptistery of Neon


Top R: Close-up of the mosaic tiles

Our next port of call was next door, the Chapel of San Andrea, a private chapel in the Bishop’s palace dating from the 6th century.  This tiny chapel, only about 6 metres long, has mosaics on every surface and apparently includes over 90 depictions of local birds, it’s beautiful. 

After the chapel, and based on a local recommendation, we then took off to the Domus dei Tappeti di Pietra, a church museum a.k.a. the ‘The Domus of the Stone Carpets’ (due to it being home to the marble and mosaic floors from a recently discovered Roman villa).  The mosaics here are very different from the brilliantly coloured, sparkling ones we’d already seen today as here are they are muted and the tiles are made from stone.  This Roman villa has unfortunately lost most of its interior walls but there are still about a dozen "rooms" each with a different patterned floor.  The exhibition here provides a great view of an actual Roman floor as it was found but it certainly doesn’t have the Wow! factor that we’d seen earlier on today. 



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