Ravenna Festival

Become a mosaicist for a day! Come and discover the art of mosaic. Before or after visiting the UNESCO monuments of Ravenna with its wonderful mosaics, also you can become a mosaicist for a day! You will have the opportunity to discover the world of mosaic by visiting a real artisan workshop: you will be shown the materials used, the special tools used to cut the tiles, the different execution techniques. You will witness the manual cutting of the tiles using traditional tools: hammer and cutting board. You can choose among some Byzantine motifs that you can admire in the monuments of the city and use glassy materials produced in the ancient furnaces of Venice. You will actively participate in all stages of processing. At the end of the experience you can bring home a souvenir of Ravenna made with your own hands.

By following the traces that marked its history, we will introduce you to a hidden Ravenna, off the beaten tourist track, discovering the glorious past that made it famous, through an itinerary in search of lost elements of which only a few traces remain.     This time journey will first lead us to the Arian Baptistery, one of the most important testimonies of the Arian-Hostrogothic cult in Ravenna (later condemned to heresy), where we can contemplate the mosaic decoration of the dome, which makes it one of the city's Unesco heritage sites. Here we will also admire the decorative and structural changes that the monument has undergone over the centuries.   Then, we will wander through the alleys of the historical centre, until we reach the gardens of San Vitale, through which we will access the ancient Benedictine monastery that now houses the National Museum, silent guardian of the city's history. The museum, established more than 100 years ago, has in fact been housing archaeological finds and collections of applied arts since 1885, collected with care, love and patience by citizens and learned monks from the great abbeys. Inside, the Chapel of St Clare, with its Giottesque frescoes, will be the perfect conclusion to this journey discovering the history of Ravenna.