Suspended in the salt marshes halfway between Venice and Rimini, Ravenna, having been the capital of the Western world, has become something of a backwater for tourists even in the peak of summer.
And yet it boasts the greatest collection of mosaics in Christendom. Only those created seven hundred years later in Monreale Cathedral, in Sicily, can rival them. Even they lack the scale of Ravenna’s 5th- and 6th-century mosaics spread throughout its churches and mausoleums, most of which are in the pedestrianised centre.
Ravenna’s importance began with the construction of its port at Classe, south of the city, as one of two bases for Augustus’s Adriatic fleet. It became another thriving Roman town, but no one would
