Ravenna Early Christian Monuments (UNESCO)

The Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna comprise eight buildings inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1996, dating from the 5th and 6th centuries AD when Ravenna served successively as capital of the Western Roman Empire, the Ostrogothic kingdom of Theodoric, and the Byzantine Exarchate of Italy. Together they preserve the most complete and luminous ensemble of late-antique and early Byzantine mosaics surviving anywhere. The Basilica di San Vitale (consecrated 547) is famous for its apse panels depicting Emperor Justinian and Empress Theodora with their courts, set against shimmering gold grounds. The adjacent Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, a small cruciform building of around 425-450, contains an intensely blue starry vault and the celebrated Good Shepherd lunette. Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, built by Theodoric, displays long processions of martyrs and virgins along its nave walls, while Sant'Apollinare in Classe, just outside the city, crowns its apse with a vast green-and-gold transfiguration scene centred on Saint Apollinaris. The group also includes the octagonal Neonian (Orthodox) Baptistery with its domed mosaic of Christ's baptism, the Arian Baptistery built under Theodoric, the Archiepiscopal Chapel, and the Mausoleum of Theodoric, a monolithic stone structure capped by a single 300-tonne Istrian limestone slab. The mosaics combine Roman naturalism with the emerging abstraction and symbolism of Byzantine art, recording the religious tensions between Orthodox and Arian Christianity that marked the period. Centuries of conservation, including major 20th-century restoration campaigns, have stabilised the tesserae and structures, and the monuments remain in remarkable condition. Scattered across central Ravenna in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, they are visited on foot, with a combined ticket covering five of the principal sites.