Rhaouenna
city · Emilia-Romagna, Italy
5 places to see, the best preserved and best known first.
Photo: Wwikiwalter · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
baptistery · Emilia-Romagna
Outside, plain brick walls with an arched window on each side and pairs of blind arches above, in a small garden between Piazza Duomo and Piazza Arcivescovado (it.wikipedia; the operator).
Photo: Commonists · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
church · Emilia-Romagna
Two buildings in one enclosure: the church, whose 6th-century mosaics cover the sanctuary around the altar, and the small Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, its interior lined with 5th-century mosaic (the operator; en.wikipedia).
Photo: Berthold Werner · Public domain · Commons
church · Emilia-Romagna
Outside, a plain brick church with a tall round bell tower (Musei Italiani); inside, what UNESCO called "an outstanding example of the early Christian basilica in its purity and simplicity of its design and use of space" (en.wikipedia).
Photo: Memi26 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
church · Emilia-Romagna
A cross-shaped room with a small vestibule in front of it, lined with marble below and mosaic above (en.wikipedia; it.wikipedia).
Photo: Simone Masini · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
town house · Emilia-Romagna
You go in through the small 18th-century church of Sant'Eufemia and down into a modern underground hall, then follow a raised walkway along the rooms of the house, close to the floors: the reception hall where visitors were received, and private rooms, corridors, courtyards and nymphaea, or fountain rooms (RavennAntica).
Ravenna was the capital of the Western Roman Empire for most of the 5th century, until its fall in 476, and what it keeps from those centuries is not ruins but whole buildings: eight churches, baptisteries and mausolea of the 5th and 6th centuries, most of them decorated with mosaics, which UNESCO lists together as the Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna. If late antique mosaic is what you want to see, few places in Europe compare. The diocese’s recommended ticket, €12.50, covers San Vitale, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the Baptistery of Neon and Sant’Apollinare Nuovo.
Almost everything here is late antique or early Byzantine rather than classical Roman. The buildings date from the 5th and 6th centuries, built under the last Western emperors, the Ostrogothic kings who followed them, and the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire that conquered the city in 540 (UNESCO; en.wikipedia). The stops below are sorted by where they are; each has its own page.
Around San Vitale. San Vitale, begun between 526 and the late 530s (published dates differ) and consecrated in 547, is a centrally planned church and an important surviving example of early Byzantine art and architecture (Pleiades; en.wikipedia). Its mosaics, famous above all for the portraits of the emperor Justinian and his wife Theodora (de.wikipedia), are among the most studied works of Byzantine art (en.wikipedia). The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, close by, is a small building of the first half of the 5th century, lavishly decorated inside with mosaics against a dark blue ground (UNESCO); despite the name, the empress was buried in Rome, not here (en.wikipedia). About 100 m from San Vitale, the Domus dei Tappeti di Pietra, the “house of the stone carpets”, is a 5th–6th-century house found in 1993: more than 400 square metres of mosaic and marble floors, seen from a walkway 3 m below today’s street, reached through the small 18th-century church of Sant’Eufemia (RavennAntica; de.wikipedia).
Around the cathedral. The Baptistery of Neon, begun by Bishop Ursus at the end of the 4th or the start of the 5th century, is the oldest monument still standing in the city (Pleiades; en.wikipedia); UNESCO calls it the finest and most complete surviving early Christian baptistery. Next to it, the Archbishop’s Chapel, built by Archbishop Peter II soon after 495 on the first floor of the bishops’ palace, is the smallest of the city’s mosaic sites and is seen through the Archbishop’s Museum (en.wikipedia; fr.wikipedia).
Theodoric’s buildings. The Ostrogothic king Theodoric built Sant’Apollinare Nuovo as his palace church and dedicated it in 504; the mosaics of its side walls and its 24 columns are preserved, while the façade portico is 16th-century and the apse a reconstruction after damage in the Second World War (en.wikipedia). About 300 m away, the Arian Baptistery, built for Theodoric’s Arian Christians between the end of the 5th century and the start of the 6th, keeps only the mosaic of its dome, with the baptism of Christ at the centre (en.wikipedia; Ministero della Cultura).
Classe, the old port. Sant’Apollinare in Classe, consecrated in 549, is UNESCO’s “outstanding example of the early Christian basilica”, with 24 columns of Proconnesian marble and an apse mosaic of Saint Apollinaris in a green landscape (en.wikipedia; Ministero della Cultura). About 2 km nearer the town is the excavated port of Classis, where Octavian based the Roman fleet of the Adriatic by 12 BC (Pleiades); the open-air site opened in 2015 (RavennAntica), and stretches of Roman paved road are mapped across it (OpenStreetMap).
The road. Ravenna lay on the Via Popilia, the road begun in 132 BC that ran up the Adriatic coast from Rimini (Pleiades; sl.wikipedia). No source records a visible stretch of it in the town.
Yes, for the mosaics, which are the reason to come and are among the best surviving examples of the art in Europe (UNESCO). Be clear about what kind of Roman site this is: none of the stops is a forum, a theatre or a bath of the early empire. Roman Ravenna in that older sense is the port excavation at Classe, which the operator opens only to booked groups and school parties (RavennAntica). What the town offers instead is the Roman world turning Christian and Byzantine, in buildings you walk into rather than ruins.
It is also compact. Apart from the two sites at Classe, the stops lie within about 700 m of the cathedral, so the centre is a walking visit, and the diocesan ticket is valid for seven days, one entry per monument (Opera di Religione). The two small mosaic rooms, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia and the Baptistery of Neon, are entered at a booked time and at busy times, and for groups, allow only five minutes inside (Opera di Religione).
The centre’s stops are on foot from one another. The square in front of Ravenna’s railway station, Piazza Farini with its bus stop named Stazione FS, is about 1 km from the cathedral and 400 m from the Arian Baptistery; Sant’Apollinare in Classe is about 300 m from Classe station, and buses 4 and 176 run from Ravenna station out to the ancient port (OpenStreetMap; RavennAntica). Drivers will find a large car park, Largo Imperatore Giustiniano, about 120 m from the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, and car parks about 100 m from the basilica at Classe (OpenStreetMap).
The monuments are run by three operators, each with its own tickets (each operator’s page, read 14 October 2026):
Before you go
Hours and prices checked 14 October 2026 on the operator's own site. Confirm before travelling.
Ravenna’s origins are pre-Roman: en.wikipedia names the Umbri as its first settlers, and Pleiades suggests an Etruscan centre. It came under Roman control in 89 BC, and Octavian built the military harbour of Classis beside it; the city remained an important Adriatic port into the early Middle Ages (en.wikipedia).
Its great century began in 401 or 402, when the emperor Honorius moved his court here from Milan (published dates differ by a year); Ravenna was the capital of the Western Roman Empire until 476 (en.wikipedia; Pleiades). After the fall of the Western Empire it was the capital of Odoacer and then of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Theodoric, who built Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, the Arian Baptistery and, around 520, his own mausoleum (en.wikipedia). In 540 Belisarius took the city for the Byzantine Empire, and Ravenna became the capital of Byzantine Italy; San Vitale and Sant’Apollinare in Classe were consecrated in 547 and 549 (en.wikipedia; Pleiades).
The eight early Christian monuments were inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1996 (en.wikipedia). With so many mosaics in one town, the city has long been associated with workshops and schools of mosaic, and is often called the “capital of mosaics” (en.wikipedia).
Photo: Flying Russian · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons
Photo: Capvalerio85 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
49 km · town house · Emilia-Romagna
The excavation covers about 700 m², and the first mosaics lay some 2.5 m below the modern ground (it.wikipedia).
Photo: Il Malatestiano · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
49 km · city · Emilia-Romagna
The historic centre keeps the Roman town's street plan (en.wikipedia, Rimini), and its monuments are a short walk apart.
Straight-line distances.
Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.
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