The overlooked corners inside

• National Museum of Ravenna

  Step out of the basilica and the whole sweep of cloisters and courtyards beside it tells another story: this was once San Vitale's Benedictine monastery, and today it houses the National Museum of Ravenna. Its holdings don't come from the church but from the scholarly collections built up by the Camaldolese monks of Classe. The collection first became the municipal "Classense Museum" in 1804, passed to the state in 1887, and only in 1913 moved as a whole into the halls and cloisters of San Vitale's monastery. Stone carvings from Roman to Baroque, small bronzes, ivories, icons, weapons, and ceramics are arranged by category around this central court.

  Sources: it.wikipedia.org

• The Exterior

  Don't rush inside just yet; walk a full loop around the outer walls. The body of San Vitale is a rigorous octagon, from which rises an equally octagonal lantern tower (tiburio), joined to an apse. In the local Ravenna manner, this apse is polygonal on the outside and only resolves into a semicircle within, flanked by a few small spaces known as the pastoforia, prothesis, and diaconicon. It is nothing like the straight layout of a typical Christian basilica, where the entrance faces the apse head-on.

  Sources: it.wikipedia.org

• The Interior

  Look up at the ring of arches that holds up the dome. Between each corner of the octagon sits a semicircular projecting niche (esedra), opened out by two tiers of slender arches and framed in turn by a great arch carried on corner piers, so that the space radiates outward in every direction. The dome rests on these arches, set higher than the domes of comparable Eastern churches. The whole building feels light and fluid through the repetition of arches; back when it had not yet been partly buried below ground level and the columns still stood on tall, stepped bases, that lightness must have been stronger still.

  Sources: it.wikipedia.org

• The Mosaics

  Turn your eyes to the sanctuary; this is where the basilica's mosaics reach their climax. In the half-dome sits Christ Pantocrator (the Almighty), enthroned on a blue globe, an archangel standing on either side. With one hand Christ holds a scroll sealed with seven seals, and with the other he extends the crown of victory to St. Vitalis, who approaches from the left; on the right stands Bishop Ecclesius, the church's founding first bishop, holding a model of the church in his hands. On the outer edge of the apse arch, two flying angels together uphold a sun-shaped emblem of Christ, flanked by the heavenly cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

  Sources: it.wikipedia.org

• The Organ

  Don't only look down at the sanctuary; turn and raise your eyes to the gallery above the entrance, where an organ is installed. It is opus 798 of the Mascioni firm, built in 1960, with three manual keyboards and a concave radiating pedalboard, fully electric action, and 53 stops, of which 24 are real, 15 derived, 13 extended, and 1 a combination. Over the years some of the world's foremost organists, including Karl Richter and Marcel Dupré, have played on this instrument.

  Sources: it.wikipedia.org

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