I’m about one day behind on my entries but so far I have been just too busy to keep up! I have a few free hours now so I figure it might be a good time to get up to date and upload those pictures!
After our time on the beach at Rimini, we were excited to go inland and see some of the mountains. The region we would be entering next is called Toscana (Tuscany) and is famous for its wines, olive oils, and the presence of the Apennine Mountains. After our morning swim we all boarded the bus in Rimini and drove about three hours to get to Ravenna, a very important town in terms of the scope of Italian history. Ravenna was once declared the capitol of the Eastern Roman Empire when Justinian relocated it there towards the end of the Roman period and the grandeur and style of the art and architecture are clearly fitting of a Roman capitol.
Our first stop in Ravenna was the Basilica di Santo Apollinare Nuovo. Designed and paid for by Theodoric the Goth, an Aryan monarch, this structure, seen below, had a somewhat normal to austere exterior, but its inside displayed a fabulous array of art which separated the basilica from the more traditional northern Italian churches. The main medium of art was the mosaic and as you can see in photos below, the detail is quite stunning for being completed literally over 1500 years ago. The glass tiles were cut individually and placed in organized patterns into wet plaster so that when they hardened the glass, and the patterns, would stay for a very long time. All of the yellow tiles in the photos are made of glass sandwiching a layer of gold leaf, so not only is it beautiful, but it is also costly!
Next, we continued our walking tour with our local guide and we arrived at the tomb of Dante Alighieri, the author of the Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy) feauturing the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Dante is considered to be the founder of the modern Italian language because he, like Shakespeare and Cervantes, was a innovative writer who moved on from the classical approach of writing only in Latin to give masterworks of literature in the languages of the people who would read them. I personally have read the divine comedy so I thought it was great to see the author’s actual tomb.
After visiting a baptistery adjacent to the church, we headed into the Basilica di San Vitale. This church had some fabulous designs which were much more related to the eastern tradition than the usual architecture seen in Venice and Rome. The mosaics were absolutely stunning, there were some awesome marble designed formed by splitting a sheet of marble with a design into four pieces and laying them next to each other, and a giant frescoed ceiling of the dome made it all the more fabulous.
After a full day in Ravenna we headed onto the bus and made the final journey to our hotel in Montecatini. This town is a type of in-between town which gives hotel services as well as massages for guests who are visiting Ravenna, Florence, and other surrounding major cities. That night we went on a cable car (Funicolare) ride up to the top of the mountain overlooking the city and we got to basically just relax and take in the sights while preparing for our big day in Florence tomorrow.
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