Un viaggio dantesco a Ravenna
Ravenna’s Zona Dantesca and the Basilica di San Pietro Maggiore in San Francesco
Ravenna had long been on my list of places in Italy I wanted to visit and, as my year abroad was coming to an end, I didn’t expect it to happen. It’s out of the way from where I was living at the time in central Tuscany, and I didn’t fancy attempting the 500-kilometre round trip in a day. However, in July, in the final weeks of my year abroad, my friend and I went to stay with our former flatmate in Rimini. I suddenly realised how close Ravenna and Rimini are to each other, and I knew that this was my opportunity to make the trip. So, I put in my request.
At first glance, arriving at Ravenna’s train station, the city seemed somewhat unremarkable as I looked down the long avenue which takes you from the station to the city centre. However, it wasn’t long after we started walking towards the centre that Ravenna’s delights begun to show themselves. The first (of many) churches we came across was the Basilica di San Giovanni Vangelista, on the city’s eastern edge. It was deceptively large, airy and spacious inside and, like many of Italy’s churches, filled with works of art. Here, I began to get a sense of Ravenna’s history, as my friends and I explored the remnants of frescoes which adorned the basilica’s ceiling, trying to work out which stories they had once depicted.
The fractured mosaics of the Basilica di San Giovanni Vangelista
After spending more time in the basilica than we had planned, we eventually made our way into the city centre proper and, by this point, I was keen to see what I had gone to Ravenna for: la tomba di Dante. Dante was proudly, fiercely Florentine, and so when I first learned that the great poet’s tomb finds itself in Ravenna – in what was, at the time, an entirely different state to the one from which he came – I was a little confused. I later discovered that, after his political exile from Florence in 1302, he had eventually settled in Ravenna, where he lived for just three years before his death, and he was given a huge funeral there. Florence first begun requesting Dante’s remains just seventy-five years after his death but, despite many attempts to the contrary, they have stayed in Ravenna. (Florence does, of course, have many of its own memorials to Dante, including his tomb in the massive Basilica di Santa Croce, deliberately constructed to seem more outwardly impressive than its counterpart in Ravenna.)
The current mausoleum containing Dante’s tomb was constructed between 1780 and 1782, a small, white neoclassical-style building; the Museo Dante was, much later, logically placed next door. We went to the museum first, which occupies a set of relatively large cloisters and, as an Italian student, this museum was like a dream come true. Every Dante-related object I could think of was there. I loved seeing the various artistic depictions of Dante from across the centuries, the adorned manuscripts of his poetry, and imagining the poet himself walking these streets seven hundred years earlier.
Annibale Gatti: Dante in Esilio (1854, oil on canvas). This painting is normally kept in the Museo d’Arte di Ravenna, but was seen here at a temporary exhibition in the Museo Dante.
Dante’s tomb itself is difficult to access, even in a relatively quiet time of year, as it was when we were there. This is because the tomb itself is only visible through a small door, with Dantis poetae sepulcrum engraved in the stone above, and you have to fight through the crowds of tourists (of which we formed a part that day) in order to look inside. I had my ten seconds of looking in, during which time I tried to internalise every element of the room within. It was relatively simply decorated, not adorned with artworks like the basilica we had just come from. Instead, there was just one image of Dante carved into the marble above the tomb depicting the poet reading a book to his right, with his hand on another open book on a surface in front of him. In that ten seconds, I had the chance to appreciate the fact that, above his tomb, Dante had been immortalised in the act of reading.
2021 was not just any year in the world of Dante – it was the seven-hundredth anniversary of the poet’s death. This meant that, if it is even possible, Ravenna was even more ‘Dante-ified’ than usual; temporary banners and signs with quotes from Dante’s most famous work, La Divina Commedia, were everywhere throughout the city. There were innumerable posters for talks, conferences, theatre performances and exhibitions taking place in the city, all relating to Dante somehow. I remember seeing these and thinking how academically vibrant a city Ravenna must be. Perhaps some of it was a gimmick to appeal to tourists, but I admit to being utterly taken in. I think this is when the city’s charm first started to rub off on me.
La tomba di Dante
The rest of the day passed in a flash as we wandered the streets of Ravenna. The city is filled with green spaces, a rare attribute for Italy’s medieval cities, and this provided the potential for openness which I hadn’t seen elsewhere. This openness was taken advantage of by Ravenna’s residents; bicycles seemed to be the main mode of transport, thanks to the city’s accessible streets and open piazzas. I imagined what it must be like to live there, being able to cycle down to the seaside in minutes.
I can’t quite remember all the churches we managed to go into, if that gives an idea of just how many there are in Ravenna. Our philosophy seemed to be if there’s a church, go inside – a philosophy which served me well in Italy, where each and every church has something beautiful to discover within. Between wandering into churches, we managed to grab a gelato and sit taking in our surroundings on the historic Piazza del Popolo.
Piazza del Popolo, Ravenna
An article about Ravenna wouldn’t be complete without mentioning its other claim to fame, which is its mosaics. We began noticing them the moment we arrived, as small snippets of mosaic patterns decorate many of Ravenna’s street signs. However, the best of the mosaics are found in the Basilica di San Vitale, on the north side of the town; its domes are decorated with spectacular multicoloured mosaics, some of which date from as early as the fifth century. We discovered that these mosaics, unique in Italy, continue to inspire artists to this day: one of my fondest memories of this day, before we had to run for our train back to Rimini, was stumbling upon a small mosaic studio, where the artist was in the process of creating her art as we entered. Her mosaics were intricate and spectacularly detailed and, seeing the artist at work, I couldn’t help but to reflect on Ravenna’s artistic heritage. Italy is a country whose best-known art is hundreds of years old, but this elderly woman creating mosaics demonstrated to me that Italy’s regional cultural heritage is still in the process of being created, and it is as unique to each locality as it has ever been.
I think this feeling is part of why I loved Ravenna so much. We were there for only a few short hours, but in that time it jumped to the top of my list of my favourite Italian cities. It is small enough to feel manageable, and yet around every corner, there is something intriguing to be found. Sweet independent shops and cafes exist alongside ancient basilicas, and there is an academic and cultural life that Dante would be proud of. Ravenna is packed with culture and a city that, while remembering its illustrious artistic past, is constantly in the process of reinventing itself.
All image credits: Jenny Frost
