The Mosaics of Ravenna

In which I learn that Dante is buried in Ravenna, and visit the mosaics that thrilled Gustav Klimt, Carl Jung, and every art history major ever (including yours truly).

{Ravenna, Italy}

Dante is kind of a big deal in Italy. He’s kind of a big deal everywhere, I should say, but he’s a really big deal here. As I travel through Italy, I feel somehow like I’m walking in his footsteps. I first wrote about him in Florence, the city of his birth. And then in Verona, the city that first granted him shelter when he was exiled from Florence. And now here I am in Ravenna, the city in which he died and is buried.

And it is here, in Ravenna, that I actually get a sense of just how important Dante is in this country. His bones rest in a tomb in the heart of the city, and the area that encompasses his tomb is closed to traffic for several blocks on each side. Banners wave in the breeze proclaiming that you are in a “zone of silence”. This zone, called Zona Dantesca, or Dante’s Area, was created so that Italy’s greatest writer could spend eternity an oasis of peace and tranquility, buffered from the sounds of the modern city.