More from the last capital of Rome

Saturday, July 4 - Ravenna

[Edit: Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, pictured above, is where the traveling choir of seniors suddenly burst out with the Ave Maria — one of the most magical moments of the trip. I felt so privileged to be there. I've uploaded an mp3 of the last 45 seconds of their performance, if you'd like to listen to it while looking at the purty pictures. I don't own the rights to their performance, obviously, but I don't think they'd mind. If they do, I'll take it down.]

One of the things I like about Ravenna is its small-town approach to historical preservation. It's not really a small town — about 150,000 people live there — but it feels that way, and they seem to have a pragmatic attitude toward the treasures they steward, as though the local politics of some arts board are the only concerns they need to satisfy. Given a crumbling 16th-century fortress (the Rocca Brancaleone), they turned the interior (rather brilliantly) into a public park for watching movies and riding merry-go-rounds. Their city museum* is a maze of echoing galleries: priceless, minutely detailed ivory carvings next to a room filled with empty, dusty glass cases, then Bronze Age potsherds beside racks of medieval weapons beside a wall display of children's crayon drawings. In Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, home of some of the most stunning ancient mosaics in the world — important enough that the UN named it a World Heritage Site — they installed a light-up neon halo and cross on a statue of St. Francis Anthony, presumably because somebody thought it would be pretty (unless there was a horrible misunderstanding about the Baptistry of Neon). I think that's how Ravenna has always been, apart from the one or two moments in history when it was important — an out-of-the-way corner of the world that happened to be the capital of the western world for a few years, with all the remnants of sudden grandeur that that implies. Since then, they've just been going about their business.

This was our second of two days in Ravenna. We saw San Vitale (photos in a forthcoming post), the museum, Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, the Mausoleum of Theodoric (after a long hike along the railroad tracks), and the Rocca Brancaleone. Pictures behind the cut. ( Cut for magi in awesomepants! )

Here's all 60 photos, on Flickr.

* No photography allowed, alas.