We added Ravenna to our travel plans because Carol took a class on La commedia (in italian, where the language is not capitalized, only the first word in a book title is capitalized) over the Winter. Of course, the prof’s name was Beatrice. Our September travels were primarily dedicated to un giro da la vita di Dante - a trip about the life of Dante. He was exiled from his beloved Florence at about 23 years old and lived in Verona among other places. The charges that resulted in his exile were trumped up, and he was judged while in Rome on a diplomatic mission that many scholars believe was set up to get him out of Florence so he could be falsely accused of misappropriation of civic funds. This was about 1303. La commedia takes place after he was exiled, but he does not directly talk about it.
Dante’s daughter, Antonia, later joined a convent in Ravenna. The author lived the last 20 or so years of his life there. And, for the purpose of our trip, it is also where the great man is buried. What we did not know is that the entire month of Sept is la festa dantesca, the Dante festival, as that is the month he died. Not much was going on the two days we were there, but Carol would like to return with better knowledge of possible events to attend. There were Dante readings in multiple languages, including Hungarian.
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| Dante's original burial site |
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| The place of honor |
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Paying homage at Dante's tomb
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We did find something really interesting for us. The city of Ravenna is old. It was once the Western capital of the Roman Empire. Since then, it hasn’t seen much fame, other than now as a world heritage site for Roman mosaics. We weren’t quite as keen to go from mosaic museum to mosaic museum as some, but we did locate Domus tappeti di pietra (carpets of stone.) In the 1980s a man was digging a hole to build a garage. The earth caved in and archeologists discovered a 14 room roman home, with amazing mosaic floors. Today, a tourist can walk on elevated platforms from room to room. One huge room was geometric designs with representations of the four seasons dancing in the center. That sight alone was worth the trip to Ravenna. We also visited a mosaic workshop where several people were painstakingly making copies of the ancient works.
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| Superman works to re-create "Superman" |
The ride to Ravenna was lovely. We skirted the Po Delta, as we didn’t have time to ride through it, and with lots of water, innumerable roads which most likely didn’t have signs on them, and a hot day, we would have spent hours trying to find our way out of the maze. Instead, we road through more farmland along canals. We were nearly consumed by biting insects of various sorts, and had an all-around great ride.
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| Where the Po flows into the Adriatic |
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| The delta makes a nest of dead-end roads |
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| The only way to cross is on a small, rope-tow ferry |
Other than those two activities, we walked the streets for hours, one of our favorite past-times.
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| And you thought Pisa had the only leaning tower. |
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