Ravenna Day Trip

Ravenna is 46 miles east of Bologna, a little more than an hour on the train. We set an alarm on Sunday morning so we could catch a 9:00 a.m. train. It's about a 30-minute walk to the Bologna train station from our apartment. The streets were quiet and deserted when we set out, so different than the usual hustle and bustle of crowds during the days and evenings. 

Our guide book describes our destination this way: "It's hard to believe that Ravenna was once the epicenter of the Western World for a brief spell, when it was the capital of the Western Roman Empire from A.D. 402 to A.D. 406. Those rulers and those fathers of the early Christian church, and then the Goths and Byzantines who followed them, blanketed Ravenna's churches and monuments in glittering mosaics..."

Oh, and Dante is buried there.

So after paying our respects to the poet and strolling through a "Dante versus Byron" prints exhibit (Byron used to visit Ravenna to visit his mistress and even lived there for bit), we headed to the Domus de Tappeti di Pietra (the Domus of Stone Carpets). Described as one of the most significant Italian archaeological sites discovered over the last few decades, it is an underground exhibit with beautiful mosaics from a 6th Century A.D. Byzantine palace. They were exquisite... the photos don't do them justice.

Next, we visited the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia for some very sparkly dome mosaics.

After a very lovely lunch break that deserves its very own blog post, we started our mosaic church crawl: the Basilica di San Vitale, Museo e Cappella Arcivescovile, and Basilica San Francesco (mosaics under water).

Turned out to be a 19,000 step day. We were looking forward to relaxing on the train except we were surrounded by teenage girls making Tik Toks with the volume up loud and repeating very annoying music over and over. At least our feet got to rest...