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Ravenna: The Twilight of the Roman Empire

Elaine Ruffolo, Renaissance art historian 

A Traveler in Italy…from the Twilight of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance Courts, a four part series with art historian Elaine Ruffolo who will take us on a cultural history tour of some of Northern Italy’s lesser known towns to explore their architecture, economy, patrons, rulers, art and architecture.    

For a brief, dazzling moment, Ravenna was an unlikely refuge for a world falling apart. The city’s history, enshrined in superb Byzantine mosaics, reflects the twilight of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Middle Ages. While ageless monuments were falling everywhere, Ravenna was crowded with new and sumptuous palaces and churches. As the capital of the Western Roman Empire in its last days, then of the occidental provinces of the Byzantine Empire, it offered a refuge of luxury and splendor, a return to antique civilization rising above the relentless seas of barbarism.

 Art historian Elaine Ruffolo highlights the history of this city, its important architecture, and the extraordinarily decorative walls of its palaces and churches - masterpieces of an age when artistic achievement was reaching one of its summits in the form of mosaics. UNESCO has recognized the “outstanding universal value” of Ravenna’s early Christian buildings, citing “the supreme artistry of the mosaic art that the monuments contain” and “the crucial evidence that they provide of artistic and religious relationships and contacts at an important period of European cultural history.

$15 door fee for guests and subscribers (no fee for members)