The first mosaic site we visited is located right behind the building that we stayed in. It is a baptistry, where Christians of the Arian persuasion went to be baptized. Arianism was eventually eradicated by the not-so-tender mercies of the winning theological party (Trinitarians), but the baptistry was preserved. It is a relatively simple and small brick building with a dome covered by a mosaic. In the center is a beardless Jesus, flanked by John the Baptist on the right, and the river Jordan personified on the left. We spent a lot of time looking at the faces of the Apostles; each face is different and you can almost imagine their characters from the way they are depicted. The rest of the building is now bare brick, and, like other old buildings in Ravenna, it is sinking. I include a picture of a 'pop-up' gallery just across the alley from the baptistry; they were selling skateboards, 'street' art, and small images like the big red fellow in the picture.
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By the time we left Dante's Tomb, we needed to sit down, so we went into a Mercato Coperto (covered market) and found a table. I ordered coffee, and I got a hot chocolate for Nancy. Her hot chocolate turned out to be very hot and very thick. I had one on a return visit, and it's the most intense chocolate experience that I can remember. Below is a view of the place and the chocolate. That evening we went to Passarelli, a restaurant recommended by our hotel host. The food was really good (we splurged) and we also met the charming Lucretzia and her father, an engineer from Bergamo who makes machine tools. While Nancy conversed in broken Italian with Niccolo, I played toss-the-doll with Lucretzia, who was puzzled that an adult could be so stupid as not to understand her! From the library, we went to a tourist office on Piazza San Francesco, then went into the church of San Francesco to look at the mosaics, which are located beneath the altar, submerged in water. On the way in, we met a Pakistani man named Asim, who was 'helping' the tourists by holding the door (panhandling). We went in and looked at the mosaics (see the pictures), and when we came out, we had a long conversation in English with Asim. He told us that he is a Christian who was beaten and stabbed (he showed me the scar) by Islamic fundamentalists in Pakistan. He said that he walked from Pakistan to Italy, which took seven months, and he had to pay to be smuggled over the border. Now the government has accepted him as an asylum-seeker, but he has no job, thus his 'work' at the church. He asked us as Americans to urge our government to pressure Pakistan to protect its Christian minority. Dante was expelled from Florence and went to live in Ravenna, and his tomb is next door to the San Francesco church. We wandered through the grounds of the museum dedicated to him, but did not go into it. We will do that next time. After SanGiovanni Evangelista, we walked south, past Sant' Apollinare Nuovo and the Museo d'Arte della città di Ravenna. I will talk about both of these later. We walked through a number of side streets, many of which are lined with old, interesting buildings. The pictures below show a couple of examples. The Biblioteca Classense was a big attraction for us during the research phase of our trip to Italy in the 2nd quarter of 2022. It is a large and wonderful place, with exhibits and resident cats. There also is a very old resident tortoise named Santino. The link below explains: www.turismo.ra.it/en/myravenna/stories/at-the-classense-library-800000-books-2-cats-1-turtle-and-1-bee-colony/ We do not have a lot of good pictures of the library. We wanted to see other things and did not stay for long. But here are a few. Realizing that my last post (the overview) will be at the bottom of list, I am going to post about things that we saw in chronological order. This means that the last things that we saw will be at the top of the blog. See that? Time travel IS possible. San Giovanni Evangelista is nearest to the train station, which is why we went there first. Being near the trains has had a significant drawback: the church was bombed by the Allies in WW2, and was terribly damaged. It has been rebuilt, and portions of its mosaics have been preserved and are exhibited on the walls. These mosaics are crude, compared to others that we saw later. Their colors are lighter and tend toward grays and earth tones, and the animals and human figures look a bit like children's drawings. But they have a powerful presence, and we liked them very much. They remind me a little of paintings by Matthew Wong, a modern artist that I like. The animal mosaics were placed towards the front of the church, but were roped off so we couldn't get too close to them. The four mosaics below might be part of the shipwreck narrative of Galla Placidia, as the plaque describes it. We can't be sure. |
Nancy Rexford
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