The city is a real trea­sure trove rep­re­sent­ing some the high points in the his­tory of art.Byzantium in the West through the Exarchate.

The Eight Mon­u­ments of Ravenna. Firstly, San Vitale and the Mau­soleum of Galla Placidia are included in the list of UNESCO World Her­itage sites and hold the rich­est her­itage of mosaics dat­ing from the fifth and sixth centuries.

The Byzan­tine and Paleo-Christian basil­i­cas, the bap­tis­ter­ies, Romanesque churches, the cylin­dri­cal cam­paniles of the tenth and eleventh cen­turies, the fres­coes by Giotto of Santa Chiara, the crypts, the places of ulti­mate refuge of Dante Alighieri, build­ings and clois­ters of Renais­sance archi­tec­ture left by the Vene­tians, ele­gant sev­en­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­tury palaces in the cen­tre, the new pre­cious dis­cov­ery of the Domus of Stone Car­pets archae­o­log­i­cal areas in the Classe vicin­ity which con­tinue to dis­play impor­tant evi­dence of the antique Port of Augusto, all ren­der Ravenna “the city of art par excellence.”

Ravenna is a city that does not, how­ever, remained motion­less in rela­tion to the past, but is dynamic in rela­tion to the present with future plans to accept new and ambi­tious chal­lenges, such as the can­di­tature for 2019 for Ravenna as Euro­pean Cap­i­tal City of Cul­ture, in this way claim­ing its place as a cul­tural and artis­tic centre.

The ele­gant cen­tre that runs in wind­ing streets — now dot­ted with ele­gant shops – is rem­i­nis­cent of a past cen­tral lagoon. With a charm­ing view of the city walls and crossed by slow water­ways, which were closed at the end of the 1400’s thereby cre­at­ing new spaces which could be ded­i­cated to the city, like the one that hosts the ele­gant square, Piazza del Popolo today.