Destinations: Ravenna

By Nina Heyn

The Adriatic coast city of Ravenna is an absolute delight—a small, clean, northern-style town that is very walkable. There are several Romanesque basilicas decorated with mosaics that would floor even the most jaded tourist, and there are no crowds to see those jewels, especially when compared with the anxiety-inducing throngs of Florence and Venice. The city of mosaics can be visited in one day, during which you can make an art trip into the Roman Empire’s past glory.

The city of Ravenna flourished for about two centuries in the 5th and 6th centuries AD—first when it became the capital of the Western Roman Empire after the empire’s centers of Rome and Milan had been abandoned under pressure from northern invaders, and then as a capital city for the barbarian king Odoacer (476-493 AD) and his successors and then the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire. Odoacer’s reign came to an end when he was conquered by the Ostrogoth warrior Theodoric, who then proceeded to rule the newly created kingdom of Italy for 30 years. As the new ruler of the remnants of the Western Roman Empire, Theodoric the Great (454-526 AD) enforced Roman-style laws and also expanded the kingdom into the Balkans and Spain. In Ravenna, he is credited with the construction of several churches. The Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo was his personal palace chapel devoted to Arianism, the variant of early Christianity that was this ruler’s creed.

Theodoric’s Mausoleum is an impressive structure on the outskirts of today’s city boundaries. The mausoleum has two floors of polygonal spaces, topped by a roof made from one piece of stone that is 33 ft in diameter (11 m) and weighs 500 tons. It is a marvel of engineering, created in 520 AD when no modern machinery was available to either transport or lift this enormous piece of Istrian limestone (quarried 249 miles or 400 km away in today’s Croatia). To this day, there is no archeological consensus on how this enormous ceiling stone was installed. The stone has a crack, which is associated with a legend that says that Theodoric took shelter in this structure, hiding from a bolt of lightning that had been foretold would kill him, but he was struck anyway. This is just a legend, however, because the ruler died in a battle. His kingdom survived barely 15 years after his death. In 540, a commander sent by Emperor Justinian conquered the city of Ravenna, which became part of the Byzantine Empire. This is why Ravenna’s churches are covered with some of the greatest achievements in Byzantine mosaic images, comparable to the famous mosaics in places like the Hagia Sophia basilica in today’s Istanbul.

The Mausoleum of Theodoric, as well as several churches nearby, have all been declared UNESCO heritage sites.

The Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo was extensively rebuilt and reconstructed over a period of 10 centuries, but most impressive are the original mosaics—Bible scenes from the time of Theodoric and images of martyrs from half a century later. The two long nave walls are lined with rows of female and male figures in a procession, all clad in gold and green robes, their heads encircled with golden halos. One row of figures features 22 Christian virgins, whose names are placed above each one. On the opposite nave wall, there is a row of 25 male martyrs, led by St. Martin and all with names above their heads as well.

It is said that Pope Gregory the Great (c. 540-604 AD), an energetic reformer of the early medieval church period (the Gregorian chant is named after him), ordered those golden mosaics blackened in order to stop worshippers from being distracted by so much beauty. Luckily, he did not have them destroyed, albeit some of the early images of Theodoric and other figures connected with the Arian version of Christianity have been chiseled out, and only some hands remain visible on the mosaic columns. Some of the figures and Bible scenes were created under the Roman-Hellenistic influence, while some, barely 50 years later, were made in the Byzantine style of the victorious Emperor Justinian. When you look at them, you can see art history in the making—with the more narrative, individualized style of Roman art giving way to the stiffer, more allegorical and symbolic iconography of medieval Christianity. It would take 800 years, until the advent of Sienese altars and Giotto’s frescoes, for church decorations to become more individualized again.

Many historians consider the Basilica of San Vitale to be “the most glorious example of Byzantine art in the West,” with beautiful green and gold mosaics that cover all the walls. It provides a perfect example of the iconographic transition from the ideas of early Christianity to the later, more codified religious imagery.

Over the altar, there is a central image of Christ accompanied by angels. He is holding a scepter, and his face is youthful and clean-shaven. The good looks of a young and powerful deity bring him closer to the preceding pictures of Greco-Roman Apollo. His youthfulness and beauty were the expected attributes of this important god on whom early Christianity images were modeled.

Just above this image, on an arch at the nave, there is a portrait of Jesus that conforms to what we are used to finding in Christian imagery—a mature, bearded man with a gaunt face. In those two mosaics, you can trace the history of Christianity in art.

The side walls are adorned with some of the most famous mosaic images in history—formal portraits of Emperor Justinian and his consort, Empress Theodora (d. 548 AD). To create more individualized features, Theodora’s face is made of smaller pieces of tesserae (colored glass) than those used to make the faces of her ladies-in-waiting (except the two closest to her). She is also draped with strings of huge pearls and dressed in a robe of the imperial purple (the most expensive purple pigment was reserved for the royalty). These portraits do not have the complexity of craft and expression of the late medieval mosaics of, say the Basilica of San Marco in Venice (which was decorated 700 years later), but the raw immediacy of their work is extremely powerful. These mosaics were often created during the actual lifetime of the bishops and rulers portrayed.

Speaking of Ravenna’s rulers….

Next to the Basilica of San Vitale, there is an enchanting homage to an unusual woman from the 5th century. Galla Placidia (c. 393-450 AD) was a daughter of Emperor Theodosius I and as such, a precious bartering chip in the Roman “Game of Thrones.” She was first married off to King Athaulf to ensure the empire’s protection from the danger of the encroaching Visigoths. This would have been a good start toward a Roman-Visigoth alliance, were it not for the fact that Athaulf was assassinated in his bath in Barcelona by a Germanic chieftain in his service.  

For a while, Galla was passed around like a valuable token between fighting rulers, until she was forced to marry Emperor Constantius III as part of a bargain between the Visigoths and Romans. Her son, Valentinian III, was still a young child when her husband Constantius died, and a succession fight erupted. In 425, Galla became a regent queen on behalf of her underage son. During her reign, she was credited with the construction of churches and schools and with carrying out administrative reforms (something that would be known today as organizing a post-war mess). Whereas older history books, like Gibbon’s classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, paint Galla as power-hungry, the current viewpoint of Italian historians stresses her talents of peaceful management, the undertaking of educational and construction projects, and her negotiating skills—all very helpful if rare in the period of Roman decline and military aggression by the Huns, Goths, and other migratory tribes.

Galla died in Rome, but Ravenna is the location of a mausoleum devoted to her. The mosaic pattern of the ceiling is one of the most beautiful and striking examples of Ravenna’s design, and it is used to this day to adorn fabrics, bags, and other souvenirs. The ceiling is covered with the ink-blue and gold mosaic of a starry heaven, lit by windows made of slates of agate that cast an orange-colored light.

There is another basilica on the outskirts of town named Sant’Apollinare in Classe, which was consecrated in 549 AD. Civitas Classis was an old Roman town and a port area until Ravenna’s coast became silted and the actual port moved some miles away, but during Roman times, this area was a major military and commercial center. The side walls of this imposing church are now partially bare because the Venetians stripped the mosaics during a military raid in 1449. Luckily, they left the central apse intact, and this is now the most striking feature of this space—a huge arched half dome that shows the central figure of Christ among the lambs in a beautiful green meadow. This is an image of transfiguration on the Mount, so the nature elements include exotic flowers and palms and cypresses.

An exploration of Ravenna’s treasures of early mosaic art is a trip to the distant past, when the Western Roman Empire was disintegrating under waves of invaders and the Eastern Roman Empire was taking over. The latter shone for about a thousand years longer, emanating military power and cultural and religious dominance to places like Ravenna from its “invincible” capital of Constantinople. The word “invincible” deserves its quotation marks here, because nothing is ever truly invincible, and Constantinople itself fell to the Ottomans in 1453, ceasing to be the center of the empire that fell with it. The art of mosaics left the art stage as well, replaced by a rising new thing: paintings.