Book Ravenna theatre & attraction tickets

Few cities in Europe carry their history as visibly as Ravenna. Mosaics that have survived fifteen centuries still glow from the walls of its churches and mausoleums, their tesserae of gold, lapis, and turquoise as luminous today as they were when this Adriatic city served as the capital of the Western Roman Empire and, later, of the Ostrogothic kingdom. That sequence of imperial and ecclesiastical power left behind a concentration of late-antique and early Byzantine art that UNESCO recognised in 1996, designating eight monuments across the city as a World Heritage Site. Nowhere else in the world can you stand inside so many intact fifth- and sixth-century interiors within a single afternoon's walk.

The city centre is compact and largely flat, which suits the unhurried pace that Ravenna seems to encourage. The Piazza del Popolo forms the civic heart, its Venetian columns a reminder that the Republic of Venice governed here for over a century. A short walk south brings you to the Basilica di San Vitale, whose octagonal form and shimmering apse mosaics depicting the Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora remain among the most studied images in Western art history. Nearby, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia is smaller and darker, but the deep cobalt of its ceiling mosaic, scattered with gold stars, produces an effect that photographs consistently fail to capture. The Ravenna Pass, available through the tickadoo catalogue, covers entry to the main mosaic monuments and is the most practical way to move between them without queuing separately at each site.