Ravena is known for mosaic work and each of its citizens has a piece of mosaic for a name plate. There are local artists who have their own studio, making modern quirky versions of church classics. The one we visited was happy to share his skills, give away secrets of material he uses and has an exhibition in Japan next week.
The church at Ravena Basilica di Sant Appollinaire nuovo has immensely writeaboutable çeiling mosaics.
This town has a sense of humour. Outside churches, on electric control boxes, an artist has fun with the holy mother of God. In another church, two guys are sorting olive branches in preparation for an Easter event. We get talking and they say that the church is a 'fake church' as in... The original was destroyed by an earthquake and the church then decided to raze it to the ground and rebuild it.
You find busy lunch places with vegetarian vegan food and you could pay by the weight. Of course with wine and desserts.. cobbled streets, wanderings, poplar trees, wisteria, brick walls, pre-roman remnants, and then the churches and the mosaics. The Baptistry is built on older Greek pre Christian temple.
It's good weather and the bus to classe cruises. Classe comes and goes and the driver, with a benevolent turn of mouth, says he can't stop now. Huh? What? Apparently he has to be told to stop.. ahead of time. So we land up at this one cafe town with no way back. Then in that lone cafe, there was this girl. I explained in the little Italian I know... Aided by a series of gesticulating limbs...we needed to get to classe. No bus. No taxi. Walking on highway was forbidden. A customer came up and in a second offered to drop us to classe ... 10 km away. He went home, picked up his car, cleared it and drove us... He'd spent a month in Calcutta... And said he'd been stranded and was helped and that what goes around comes around...
That was one for faith in humanity.
Classe has a solitary church with its ceiling help up by wooden beams. light filters in through high windows and hits the golden mosaic... Somehow.. today it was more about about men than about the gods...
That's Ravenna.
For everything else... There's always
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenna
April 2019
April 2019
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