Ravenna: The Non-Mosaic Bits

Ravenna is usually a day-trip from Florence or Venice, not really on the way anywhere. The old town is very scenic and pedestrian-friendly, and clearly the city has cultural/touristic aspirations. It's already a World Heritage Site.

They have my vote for 2019

Main square

As I said, pretty much everything of age in

these precincts leans; here's a pretty good

(bad) secular example; the whole place is an

estuary, I think, and from here on north one

gets nothing but the huge lagoons, e.g., the

one Venice sits in; the area west of Ravenna,

after you cross the Apennines, is about the

most intensively cultivated place we have

seen, with every imaginable fruit/vegetable

cultivated; and it is totally flat country; many

canals, although unclear to me whether they

are for drainage or for irrigation...

Being a bit off the main tourist track, Ravenna doesn't get many

tour buses; we did see a few of these out in Classe

Many of the shops feature...mosaics

Actually, mosaics are everywhere; unlike many cities one

sees, Ravenna seems to have a pretty clear sense of itself

The Dante Alighieri Theatre

And Dante's tomb

Dante, reading his email, seems surprised at

something on the monitor; he spent his last

19 years in Ravenna, exiled from Florence;

wrote most of the Divine Comedy here; died

of malaria; I got several bites...

Even though we had seen the Adriatic before, sailing from

Patra in Greece to Bari in Italy, I wanted to see it at this

latitude; I was sorry I did...off-shore natural gas drilling is

very big here

Oops, almost forgot: here is the one picture of one of these

6th century churches, this one St. Vitale and its tower; the

mausoleum of Galla Placidia is on the same grounds