Ravenna Mosaics Pass
Tickets for 5 UNESCO sites
With the Ravenna Mosaics Pass, you can visit the most important Byzantine mosaics in the world: San Vitale, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Sant'Apollinare Nuovo and more - all in one digital ticket
5 monuments
Digital tickets
Valid for 7 days
Ravenna is the mosaic capital of the world. With the Ravenna Mosaics Pass, you can visit two to five of the city's most important monuments:
This is how it works: Buy the Ravenna Mosaics Pass online from our partner GetYourGuide. You will immediately receive a digital ticket that you present at the participating attractions. The validity period of seven days begins on the day of arrival specified at the time of booking. Each monument can be visited once.
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Price: from 12,50 EUR
Ravenna Mosaics Pass: What is included?
With the Ravenna Mosaics Pass, you can visit the most important Byzantine mosaics in the world - up to 5 monuments with a single combined ticket. You choose which option suits your visit at the time of purchase.
2-Monuments-Pass
5-Monuments-Pass
Included in all variants: 20 % discount in the bookstores of all included sites.
Advantages of the Ravenna Mosaics Pass
Ravenna - the mosaic capital of the world
Those who are not yet familiar with Ravenna usually underestimate the city. From the outside, it looks inconspicuous: a medium-sized town in Emilia-Romagna, an hour from Bologna, without the big tourist spectacle of its neighbors Florence or Venice. But when you step through the simple brick portals of the old churches, you enter another world - a world of gold, lapis lazuli and thousands of tiny glass stones that have been shining for 1,500 years as they did on the first day.
Ravenna was one of the most important cities in the West in the 5th and 6th centuries: First it was the capital of the Western Roman Empire, then the residence of the Ostrogoth king Theodoric and finally the seat of the Byzantine governorship in Italy. Each of these eras left behind buildings of extraordinary quality - and almost all of them feature the same artistic medium: the mosaic.
Ravenna has preserved what elsewhere fell into ruin, was burnt or destroyed in the medieval iconoclastic controversy. Nowhere else in the world are early Christian and Byzantine mosaics so complete and so well preserved.
The UNESCO committee has recognized eight of these buildings as World Heritage Sites - a density that is unique. At the center is the Basilica di San Vitale, built in the 6th century: an octagonal building whose interior simply overwhelms you when you first enter. The mosaics in the chancel depict Emperor Justinian I and Empress Theodora in solemn procession, surrounded by gold and purple.
Diagonally opposite is the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia - an inconspicuous transverse building from the outside, but a jewel box on the inside. The ceiling depicts a deep blue starry sky and is decorated with the oldest mosaics in the city, which were created in the early 5th century. A little further into the old town is the Basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, in which long processions of saints in gold and white stretch along both sides of the central nave - almost meditative in their silence.
It is practical for a visit that the most important sites are all within walking distance of the city center and can be easily explored in one day. Ravenna is not a place of mass tourism - the atmosphere is quiet, the old town is manageable and the mood in the churches is concentrated and dignified. If you arrive early in the morning, you will have many rooms almost to yourself.
Ravenna is ideal as a day trip from Bologna or as a stop on a round trip through Emilia-Romagna. However, it is also worth staying a night. Once the day tourists have left, the golden city is all yours.
Official website: https://www.ravennamosaici.it/