Ravenna

Full disclosure first. Ravenna is famous and well visited, and this site would normally treat it as a base or a transit point, not a discovery. We say so up front because honesty is the site's only real asset.

It is here for one precise reason: Ravenna is the southern terminus of the Carinthian Door trunk route, the Bologna–Ferrara–Ravenna rail corridor that connects the Italian Adriatic to Vienna and the German-speaking north. As a terminus it earns its place. What waits at the end of the line is among the most concentrated accumulations of early-Christian and Byzantine art anywhere in Europe: eight monuments, inscribed as a single UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996, all within walking distance of each other in the old centre.

The eight are the Basilica di San Vitale, the Mausoleo di Galla Placidia, the Basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, the Battistero Neoniano (Neonian Baptistery), the Battistero degli Ariani (Arian Baptistery), the Cappella Arcivescovile (Archiepiscopal Chapel), the Mausoleo di Teodorico (Mausoleum of Theodoric) and the Basilica di Sant'Apollinare in Classe. The mosaics inside, fifth and sixth century, executed under Roman, Gothic and Byzantine patrons in quick succession, are why Ravenna deserves the journey even from a traveller who has seen Rome and Florence. Nothing else in Italy looks like them.

Dante Alighieri died in exile in Ravenna in September 1321 and is buried here. Florence has been trying to recover his bones intermittently since the sixteenth century. It has not succeeded.

The real quiet lies east and south of the city: the Po delta wetlands and Comacchio's canal town, with the Romagna hinterland behind them.

May, June, September and October. The mosaic monuments run timed-entry ticketing, and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the most intimate of the eight, lit by alabaster windows, books out weeks ahead in July and August. Late spring and early autumn let you walk the historic centre without crowds and reach Sant'Apollinare in Classe (3 km from the city, set in flat agricultural land) without the heat. The day-trip bus out to Comacchio and the Po delta has room on the return run. The Ravenna Festival, an internationally ranked music and dance programme, runs through June into early July; it is a reason to come, not a reason to stay away. December and January have their own logic. On a weekday morning the mosaic monuments are nearly empty, which is the correct way to see the Galla Placidia.

No transfer needed: Ravenna is directly train-reachable. The Bologna–Ravenna regional line (Trenitalia/Tper) runs hourly services of approximately 60 minutes, stopping at Imola and Lugo. The Ferrara–Ravenna regional line (approximately 75 minutes) connects to the Venice–Bologna main line at Ferrara, which opens the route from Venice and Verona, and from Innsbruck beyond, without going via Bologna. The Rimini–Ravenna regional line (approximately 58 minutes) extends south along the Adriatic coast. From Vienna, the standard routing on the Carinthian trunk is Villach → Udine → Bologna (via the Pontebbana / Tarvisio corridor) → Ravenna, all day-trainable with one or two changes. No ferry. No car needed for the city or the mosaic circuit, though one adds flexibility for the Po delta villages. The station is a 10-minute walk from the historic centre and all eight UNESCO monuments.

Ravenna has a full range of city accommodation; what follows is scoped to the site's register. Albergo Cappello, in a fifteenth-century palazzo on Via IV Novembre, is small and carefully restored, five minutes' walk from San Vitale (check current operation and rates). Sant'Andrea Bed & Breakfast occupies a former Franciscan refectory near the Basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo; the building's own history is part of the stay. Travellers using Ravenna as a base for the Po delta can look instead at the Comacchio area (40 minutes by TPER bus 333 or car), where smaller agriturismo options sit in the quiet of the delta margins. The Ravenna city tourism board (turismo.ra.it) maintains a current accommodation list. Avoid the large business hotels on the ring road unless you arrive by car. The city centre is walkable, and the extra ten minutes on foot matters.

Ravenna is in Romagna, not Emilia proper, and the kitchen reflects the distinction. Piadina romagnola, the thin flatbread filled with squacquerone cheese, rocket, prosciutto crudo, is the street food of the region, sold from kiosks throughout the centre. Cappelletti in brodo (small pasta hats in meat broth, not the same thing as Bolognese tortellini) is the Sunday dish. Brodetto di pesce, the Adriatic fish stew, appears on menus near the seafront and reflects the city's working-port history. For a long sit-down meal, Ca' de Ven on Via Corrado Ricci occupies a fifteenth-century cellar and serves the regional kitchen with a Sangiovese di Romagna wine list (confirm it still operates). The Mercato Coperto on Piazza Andrea Costa opens weekday mornings, with stalls selling produce, cheese, piadina. Drink the local Sangiovese di Romagna; Lambrusco belongs to Emilia, and this is different wine territory.

Buy the combined Ravenna Mosaici ticket, which covers six of the eight UNESCO sites on a single entry, and fix your Galla Placidia slot before anything else: the Mausoleo di Galla Placidia needs a separate timed reservation and books out ahead of high season. Everything in the old centre is within walking distance, so the day arranges itself around that one appointment. Leave time for Dante's tomb in the Zone of Silence, the small neoclassical rotunda built between 1780 and 1781 behind the Basilica di San Francesco, best on a weekday morning when it is nearly empty. Next door, in the old Franciscan cloisters, the Museo Dante opened in 1921 on Corrado Ricci's initiative and was rehung completely in 2021 for the seventh centenary of the poet's death; it holds the casket in which the friars hid his bones.

Two more sites repay a slow half-day. The Domus dei Tappeti di Pietra lies under the church of Sant'Eufemia, a private Byzantine residence found by accident in 1993 during work on an underground car park; the sixth-century floors, the Dance of the Seasons among them, drew the phrase stone carpets from the art historian Federico Zeri. A few streets away the Cripta Rasponi and its hanging gardens sit inside the Palazzo della Provincia: the crypt floor is laid with late sixth-century mosaics brought from the lost basilica of San Severo at Classe, and the Italian garden above is where Byron met Countess Teresa Guiccioli in 1819. For what happened to the craft afterwards, the MAR occupies the Renaissance Loggetta Lombardesca and keeps a collection of contemporary mosaics tracing the medium's revival from the 1950s.

Then go south to Classe. Sant'Apollinare in Classe stands 3 km south, reachable on foot, by bike or on a city bus, in flat land that has barely changed since the sixth century and with far fewer visitors than the centre. Beside it the Antico Porto di Classe has excavated quays, warehouses and paved streets of the imperial harbour, and the Classis Ravenna museum fills a converted sugar factory nearby. North of Ravenna the wetlands take over: Punte Alberete, a flooded forest with a short loop and a bird hide, the Pineta di San Vitale, and the Pialassa della Baiona lagoon. For the canal town and its eel fishery, take the TPER bus 333 from Ravenna station to Comacchio (55 minutes) and pick up the Po delta wetland circuit there; flamingos nest in the valley lagoons. In June, check the Ravenna Festival programme; the venues include the monuments themselves.

• Language: Italian
• Currency: euro
• Plug: European type F/L
• Money: ATMs throughout the historic centre; cards universally accepted
• Seasons & hours: The mosaic monuments require advance booking in high season; Reserve Galla Placidia weeks ahead in July and August (ravennamosaici.it)
• Mobile coverage: good throughout the city; patchy in the Po delta wetlands
• Nearest hospital: Ospedale Santa Maria delle Croci, Ravenna (full services)
• Getting there: Ravenna station has luggage storage
• Getting around: City bikes available from the municipality rental scheme (Ravenna is flat; cycling is the natural way to reach Sant'Apollinare in Classe)