Ravenna

After these last few excrutiating days I wonder how any of these cities were built  at all.  In my mind I am imagining people digging at night by candle light, mortaring  bricks at dawn, before the sun becomes so relentlessly brutal.

People here are made of tougher stuff than I am.  Today we saw men working on  streets which are torn up waiting to be resurfaced.  Others were drilling holes in exterior walls for new store signage.  A man on a ladder painted the impossibly high side of a stuccoed brick church using a roller on long extension, like something out of a Fellini movie.  

Yesterday we tried to escape the heat by taking a train to Ravenna.  It was already late by the time we left the apartment because as I mentioned we've been sleeping in because the only relief from the heat is at night, so we end up staying up very late. Anyway, the idea was to enjoy some air conditioning while watching the world roll by.  Here are a few pictures from that mission which was accomplished via two trains, the first a 3 story split level that I thought was the ultimate in cooling mobile luxury, and then a second train we transferred to in Ferrara.  This one was all tall windows, super sleek and new. We had the cars to  ourselves in both cases, but little did we know this was an enigma that could not last.

When we got off the train we were met by a long plane tree and bench lined street that led right into the main part of Ravenna.  A had wanted to see this city, the last capital of the Roman Empire for its historical significance.  I had wanted to see it for another reason but forgot what that was.   

We wandered around a little bit before it hit me.

Ravenna is famous for its mosaic arts.  Just about everything you see in the photos below are surfaces decorated with tiny tiles of glass making up all manner of illustration.  I tried to take some representative pictures but it's difficult to see the tiny pieces that make up the whole of the scenes.  

We bought a pass to go to several sites that had the mosaics.  These are a couple of the buildings from the outside -- like walking into a gigantic geode - very rough and plain exteriors with sparkling bejeweled interiors.

The one below was one of my favorites because of the optical illusion.  How did the artist make those colonnaded structures around the outer circle seem so visually believable?  And A reminds me that this was done before the Renaissance and the advent of one point perspective.

This is one of the walls that support that incredible ceiling.

A detail from one of the corners.

This is a different building.  I love all the birds.

And then we headed back.  We had no idea that every teen from Bologna would be going home on the train after a weekend at the beach.  We stood the whole way back on an older, neglected train that not only had no AC but most of the windows were too jammed to open.  What happened to our earlier cars?