Churches of Ravenna, and then some

I. One Week Ago…

Well, this would have been posted on Wednesday, had the server at LinguaViva been working. The culture shock, the homesickness, the weird food—none of it is nearly as painful as expecting to come to school and communicate with people and then be thwarted by this unpredictable system. It isn’t like it was just this one time. That would be bearable. But this is nearly an every-day occurrence. Sometimes the Internet will be off and on all day, so you’ll be lucky to get five minutes of connectivity. Other times it’s perfectly fine. And then there are days like Wednesday, where we have absolutely nothing scheduled for the afternoon, and there is absolutely no hope of getting online. (One of the students here is a computer science major, so he can sometimes fix things. On Wednesday it was a server issue, though, so there was nothing he could do.) Well, enough of this complaining. I guess the lesson to be learned is that nothing is dependable in Italy, or if they are, then it’s never the things you expect to be.

Ravenna, then. We went last Saturday with LinguaViva (and Samuele). It was about a two and a half hour drive through Tuscany on a glorious sunny morning that brought us to the strange town. It’s the first city I’ve been to in Italy that doesn’t seem to be completely stuck in its history. Yes, all the windows have shutters, there are monuments to be had all over and, naturally, a plethora of cathedrals, baptisteries, etc. But the streets are wider, and somehow the feeling of sunshine on your back when you’re walking along is the only thing that will bring a place into the real present day.

The first place we visited was, naturally, San Vitale, possibly Ravenna’s most famous cathedral. It’s not so much a Romanesque structure as a Byzantine one. I didn’t get a picture of the front because 1) it’s pretty boring and 2) there were a bunch of trees in the way anyway. But here is part of it:


The back was much more visible, and it’s pretty much what the front looks like anyway.


Before I go into the interior of San Vitale, we first stopped in this little mausoleum at the back of the cathedral. It’s really nothing from the outside, but the entirety of the inside is covered in really colorful abstract mosaic patterns. It was built for one of the Byzantine emperor’s sisters. It would be great if I could remember her name, but I can’t. Sorry.


Unfortunately this angle gives you no idea of what the interior of the mausoleum was like. (But I think the frescoes are the most interesting thing anyway.) Basically the plan is a Greek cross with a square dome-ish thing in the middle that has a dark blue mosaic with little gold stars. The figures are different saints/martyrs standing next to some representation of how they died. The gold squares are window-like things. I think that there was some really thin rock that diffused the light. The architects really thought about the lighting in the mausoleum because there are little slits in the wall behind the sarcophagi that make them look like they’re glowing. It’s a very cool effect (that I couldn’t capture on film)…


At the end of the barrel vault on this one, you can kind of see Jesus and his flock. I remember we studied this mosaic in art history in high school, so it’s probably important. I liked the abstract blue parts better. Here's picture of the exterior, so maybe that will give you a better understanding of the layout.


So then we went inside San Vitale, which was a really awesome experience. It’s a circular plan, rather than a basilica. During the Baroque period, most of the mosaics were stripped down and replaced with frescoes, but one little wing still has the original mosaics. So here’s the astonishing and somewhat disconcerting picture you see when you walk in:


And just to the left is the wing with mosaics. The Byzantine style calls for all these gold backgrounds to suggest the heavens, but a lot of these frescoes have naturalistic spaces and landscapes, so they were really interesting. In this shot you can see the really famous mosaic of Theodora, Justinian’s wife, participating in mass (I’ll explain in a second).


In this shot, you can see Justinian participating in mass. Ravenna is really far from Constantinople, so Justinian and Theodora never came to this cathedral, even though they commissioned it. So these mosaics show that they were there in spirit (and also show that they were important and spiritual enough to participate in the mass itself).


This shot is a bit to the left and up from the last one, showing the more naturalistic mosaics. The four evangelists are on the groin vault up top there, and I think that the heads on the arch on the left are saints or, you know, some important Christian iconography.


The thing to note in this one is the capital on the column. It’s a Byzantine invention—there’s inlaid marble in an abstract pattern. And some weird demented horses.


And this is how the mosaic section and fresco section interact:


After San Vitale, we went to visit Ravenna’s baptistery. It’s nothing compared to Florence’s, but it’s still pretty nice. It’s much older, if I’m remembering correctly, so everything is a bit simpler.


Remember that scene of Jesus getting baptized, because it’s going to come back later!

When we left the baptistery, I snapped a couple of shots of Ravennanites.


Samuele let us go after these two sites, and we wandered off to find the market. There we got a taste of the local cuisine. They make a sandwich-like thing called paidina. The best way to describe it is like a big thick tortilla that tastes like a Bisquik pancake which gets folded in half and there’s melted meat and cheese in the middle. I had salami and mozzarella, and it was pretty good. It wasn’t the best thing I’ve had here, but the price was right. After lunch, we wandered the streets some, a few people bought some souvineers, and we finally ended up in the main square. After, of course, I fed my fixation of the old doors here.


When we reunited with Samuele, we skipped off to visit Dante’s tomb. I actually forgot to take a picture of it, but I can at least relate the funny story behind it. Dante is actually from Florence, but they kicked him out during his lifetime. He went to Ravenna and subsequently died there. Florence then decided that they wanted his remains (since he had, by this time, become famous). But Ravenna won’t give him up, so all Florence can do is donate the oil that lights the lamp in his mausoleum.

We then went to an Arayan baptistery a couple of blocks away. In case you aren’t familiar with the Arayans, they were a heretic group that believed in Jesus’s existence and that he had powers, but they didn’t believe that he was the son of God. So in THEIR version of Jesus’s baptism, the god of the river is infusing Jesus with magic/power/whatever. But still, they pretty much ripped their mosaic off of the other Ravenna baptistery.


By this time we were all pretty pooped. Even though we’d only been to a few locations, Samuele LOVES to talk, so he’ll just go on and on about these places. During these weekend trips he manages to hold back (but when we went to Santa Croce on Thursday, he talked nonstop for about three hours. I love the man, and I know how hard it must be for him to only tell us certain things about this stuff. But sometimes it’s just over the top). But we headed off to yet another church. This time we went to Santa Apollinare Nuova. It is another one of these Byzantine style churches. Oddly enough there were palm trees in front of it. Samuele didn’t explain that one to us. Anyway, it’s because of these palm trees that I don’t have a shot of the exterior. But the interior was pretty. The flat ceiling is pretty typical for Byzantine architecture, but the coffers might have been added later in the Baroque period. You can see the original mosaics above the columns. In the first shot, you can see the apse that was also added later in the Baroque period. It’s really bordering on Rococo if you ask me (and that’s not necessarily a good thing).


And in the courtyard of this church, bananas! In January!


Then it was back on the bus. We were all relieved after walking all day. There was, however, one more church to visit. We drove for about ten minutes to Classe, the original site of Ravenna. Back in the Medieval period Classe was actually on the sea, but over time the shore line built up, and now Classe is about five kilometers from the sea. We were all excited to see some water, but we never got to. Even though I haven’t seen any evidence of these bodies of water, it’s still cool to think that I’ve been from one side of Italy to the other in about two weeks (Pisa to Ravenna). So this Santa Apollinare was the original Santa Apollinare. Some places in the floor have been excavated so that you can see the original marble. Mostly my impression of it was that it was very clean and empty. But the apse had a really intricate mosaic of Jesus and his flock. I guess it’s safe to say that it wasn’t my favorite church so far, but still very interesting. (I could go into it, but I guess you can probably tell by now that I was tired when we were there, and I’m too tired to talk about it now.)


You can see some of the tombs around the edges of the walls in the previous picture. I really liked the old inscription above one particular one:


I didn’t get a shot of the exterior until we were back in the bus, so you’ll have to forgive the trees in front of the façade, but it was the best I could do.


Driving home we got to see a really beautiful sunset. Most of the bus fell asleep on the way home, but I stayed up to watch it.



II. Uffizi, Visit 1

Last Tuesday, we went to the Uffizi for the first time. (No pictures allowed, so I’ll apologize in advance.) I can’t describe the experience—all I can say is that every time I turned a corner it was like, “Oh, there’s ANOTHER incredibly family work of art!” So here is an unbelievably incredible list of unbelievably famous works of art I saw in the Uffizi:

• Cimabue’s Maesta
• Duccio’s Maesta
• Giotto’s Maetsa
• Martini’s Annunciation
• Botticelli’s Birth of Venus
• Botticelli’s Primavera
• Botticelli’s San Barnaba Altarpiece
• Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi
• Filippo Lippi’s Medici Madonna and Child with Saints
• Filippo Lippi’s The Coronation of the Virgin
• Leonardo’s Annunciation
• Leonardo’s Adoration of the Magi
• Verrochino’s Baptism of Christ
• Titian’s Venus of Urbino
• Parmigianino’s Madonna of the Long Neck
• Laocoon
• Ghentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes
• Caravaggio’s Bacchus
• Caravaggio’s Medusa

Naturally we saw much more than that, but all these works were really notable ones in my art history courses. For the 15 Euro entry fee, we were only there for about three hours. After class was over, we all went off to explore different parts of the museum, but they kicked us out pretty soon after six. But we will return!


III. More famous works of art crammed into one big one

So on Thursday we went to Santa Croce with Samuele! (We went to the Uffizi with Janet.) I thought that morning well, I don’t want to carry anything heavy around all day, so I left my camera behind. So no pictures, sorry. You can’t really do any of these cathedrals justice anyway. Besides, they were just setting up the scaffolding for a ten-year restoration project—it’s not that pretty at the moment. We were there for about three hours, but we got to see Michelangelo’s tomb, Machiavelli’s tomb, Ghiberti’s tomb, Rossini’s tomb, a monument to Dante, and a lot of frescoes by Giotto. It was really awesome to be there, but so, so cold. I’m at the point now where my amazement of everything is starting to wear off, and my physical concerns are starting to take precedence. I think I’ll be able to suck it up, though. Some day I’ll get a picture of the façade—it’s really interesting. Even though the church was built in the 1300’s, the façade wasn’t completed until the 1900’s by a Jewish architect. He added a big blue star of David to the middle pediment, so we all had a hearty laugh about that. But I guess he was able to justify it. People liked it so much that he was buried right in front of the church.

This weekend I plan on seeing the parade for Carnivale, and on Tuesday night, we’re going to parties for Mardi Gras. Expect pictures! As a little closer, here are some random extra pictures from Ravenna that I don't really have any explanations for but I think are pretty/funny.