Ravenna, Tuesday May 20, Day 27

This morning we headed off to the Ufficina de Tourismo and collected keys for two of Ravenna's free tourist bicycles. What a great city - it has free WiFi almost everywhere, and best of all, free bicycles. The bikes were a bit careworn as they spend their lives sitting outside, but they were serviceable and made getting round to Ravenna sights very easy.

First off we rolled down to the Orthodox Baptistry_of_Neon, built in the fourth century over a pre-existing Roman baths, handy for full immersion baptisms. Something very special about round domed spaces. From here we rattled our way to the  Cappella di Santa' Andreas, the Archbishop's_Chapel, which is cunningly disguised as the Archbishops museum, or that's what the signs say. What is left of the chapel is lovely, an intimate space where the mosaics feel close and personal, and again the dome and the arched roofs make a special space. There is a sort of dialogue between the space and the mosaics that was quite missing in the essentially rectangular space of the Basilica_of_Sant'Apollinare_Nuovo that we visited later in the day. Not that the mosaics there were not spectacular. Just seemed like the artists had a bit more trouble working out what to do with the space.  Here is a photo of Anne with our bikes outside that Basilica.

We had lunch in a fresh pasta shop, yum. While Anne undertook some extensive research of the very snappy shops that line the streets here, I headed off on my bike for a bit of exploring. I stumbled over a 14th century Venetian fort, walls and moat largely intact, and marble lion still standing proudly over the gate.  It once stood on the coast line but is now thoroughly landlocked, and is today a lovely park.  After the fort I headed over to the Mausoleum_of_Theoderic, a rather odd building from around 520 AD with a massive monolithic marble roof.

Found Anne again and we went to see the Arian_Baptistry with its very human rendition of Christ. Had a rather too filling dinner in a restaurant nearby, than a stroll round, in the course of which we stumbled upon Dante's tomb, which we'd planned to see but hadn't been able to find till now.

So, all in all, it has been a great couple of days in Ravenna. We like the pace of life here, and it is a great place to learn more about late antiquity.

Tomorrow we are heading off to Florence which will be a big change of pace.