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. We took the train from Bologna Centrale to Ravenna on December 28 (Wednesday). The trip took a little over an hour, and it was foggy most of the way. In fact, it was foggy for most of our 3-day visit, apparently not unusual for this time of year.
Ravenna is a city that interested us when we had the idea to move to Italy. It is in flat farmland, is not overwhelmingly large, has a lot of art and history, is near the Adriatic and a couple of pine forests, and has an opera house and a classical music festival in the summer. All good things. We also hoped that the air quality would be better than in Bologna, but at least in the winter, that seems not to be the case. Naturally we wanted to see the famous mosaics in the ancient churches and also explore some of the neighborhoods where we have been looking at apartments online. We did all of that; we saw all but one of the UNESCO sites, and did a lot of walking. We also took the local bus to neighboring Classe to see Sant' Apollinare Nuovo, and we rode another bus for a while to get a tour of the oceanside area, though the fog made seeing the ocean almost impossible. The host at our hotel recommended a restaurant, Passarelli, and we went there for dinner twice. The food was really good, and we also had nice experiences meeting people there. The first night we met a young father, Niccolo, and his charming 3-year-old daughter, Lucrezia. On Thursday we had a long conversation with our waitress, who is from Moldavia. We also met a couple from Switzerland: the husband is a college professor of percussion (and a composer of percussion music) and an active maker of mosaics, and his wife is a grade school teacher. They spoke better French than Italian, and we supplemented with English. In further posts I will talk about more specific places and experiences. I decided to give my aching feet a rest yesterday, so we did not walk for miles, as we have done since we got out of Covid prison. However, we did walk to a pharmacy, which we picked out for 3 reasons: 1) it was nearby 2) its website said that it supports LGBT people 3) the proprietor is a singer-songwriter, Federico Aicardi. Mr Aicardi was there, in his small pharmacy-shop, and must be one of the friendliest people I have ever met. He showed us several books by a famous writer that he knew, Fernanda Pivano, who knew and translated many American authors, from Hemmingway to the Beats and beyond. Federico is charming and enthusiastic about music, Bologna, and everything else that we talked about. He also gave us a CD of his music, called "I Love Bologna," which is the name of the title track. You can hear the song on Aicardi's YouTube channel: We had a lovely time chatting, and he invited us for an apertivo at the bar-club where his band plays regularly. We plan to go, certo! Here are some sounds that we heard yesterday. We see (and hear) very few birds in Bologna except for pigeons. However, yesterday we heard a bird that sounded a lot like a mockingbird. It was perched on the chimney of a 3-story apartment building on a rather busy street. We listened to it for a while; we thought that it sang louder as cars went by - a competitive kind of bird! I post a short sound clip below. The sound clip below is from Santo Stephano, bells that we heard from a courtyard. It was quite loud and almost danceable. Careful - the sound is quite loud.
We had a quiet Christmas; we spent some time sending greetings to family and friends, then took a long walk southwards. We explored the area surrounding the Margherita Gardens, and decided that it wasn't terribly interesting, though there are a lot of nice houses. In contrast to the busy streets of the city center, these streets were almost entirely deserted. We headed back into the city center and eventually found ourselves at the Santo Stephano basilica complex, which was open and full of people, so we went in. As usual, the pictures I am posting are just things that interested me visually. I'm not attempting to give an overview or be educational in any way! But perhaps a flavor of the place comes through. We don't have a lot of news; we have been doing a lot of walking in the part of Bologna that is within the old city walls. It is interesting how the atmosphere changes once we get away from the university area: fewer bookshops and tiny food places, more upscale shops and stores. The city is somewhat decorated for Christmas, though I am told that it has been toned down to save energy costs this year. I am posting a bunch of unrelated photos below. |
Nancy Rexford
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