• Mausoleo di Galla Placidia (475). A very small building adjacent to the Basilica San Vitale, a mausoleum for Galla Placidia (386-452), sister of Emperor Honorius (who moved the capital to Ravenna), highlighted by a starry cerulean mosaic sky and a wall mosaic of San Lorenzo on his griddle with flames shooting up through: "I'll just put another saint on the barbie."
• Basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo (526). Slightly southeast of the town center, a big rectangular basilica that felt more like an auditorium, with a double arcade of columns above which ran two enormous linear mosaics showing lines of martyrs -- one row of women, one of men -- in flowing white robes as if approaching the altar for canonization. Each saint not only bore his or her martyrdom symbol but had his or her name scrolled in Greek letters jumbled around the available spaces not filled with gilded background tiles. A surprisingly peaceful place.
• Basilica di San Vitale (547). Ravenna's crown jewel, a magnificently geometric octagonal cluster just south of Galla Placidia. In the main dome a Christ Pantokrator flanked by saints, the donor bishop, Emperor Justinian,and his Empress Theodora. Even with the limited palette of irregular bits of colored glass, Justinian's face crackles with intelligence and command, Theodora's with a serenity borne of the certainty of her place and wealth. (Originally considered little more than Justinian's prostitute, she was apparently the real brains behind the throne.) The marble floor just beyond held a design of the ancient circular labyrinth -- one path from exit to center that loops and swirls. Something of that circular choiceless maze fascinates humanity; the same labyrinth appears independently in Navajo weavings and Anasazi petroglyphs.
• Capella Sant'Andrea (550). This chapel is tucked away inside and upstairs in a museum attached to the Museo Arcivescovile adjacent to Ravenna's uninspired cathedral. We mounted the usual flight of dusty cold travertine steps, paid our entrance fee, wandered through the rooms, turned left … and were in the chapel. The hemispherical dome sparkles with golden stars surrounding a cross, set in a cobalt night sky, facing a Christ dressed as a legionnaire.
• Battistero Neoniano (560?). Adjacent to the cathedral, this cylindrical building is Ravenna's oldest, though its mosaics are newer than some. By now the face of San Pietro is rounded with delicate white and pink shades, the background a sophisticated tracery of balconies.
• Battistero degli Ariani (560). A building so small that entry was free though it maintained a guard in her glass-enclosed phone booth. Directly above the baptismal font itself, the dome mosaic featured a full-scale Baptism of Christ (he pink-skinned, convex-bellied, clean-shaven and oval face) with a goat-skinned bearded John on Christ's left, and on his right the personification of the River Jordan, a white-haired Neptune with a palm branch.
• San Apollinare in Classe (549, mosaics from 625 on). Three miles south of town in flat, open country. By now the mosaics show refinement, three-dimensionality, and a welcoming softness, even the double line of martyrs. In the Dome, the Transfiguration (Christ turned into a beam of light) above San Apollinaire in blessing to the congregation.

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ã Copyright 2002 David Alexander Smith