Joanne's long walks: Via Romea Germanica Day 90: Ravenna - detour to Classe

Quando voglio capire la storia d'Italia prendo un treno e vado a Ravenna.

(When I want to understand Italian history, I take a train and go to Ravenna.)

- Arnaldo Momigliano, historian

Today let's start with...

A bit of history: Ravenna

Legend has it that the city of Ravenna was founded by the Greeks, though there is no evidence to support this theory. It is known that the city was inhabited by the Umbri, an ancient people who lived alongside the Etruscans for many centuries. The Romans took over the territory around the third century B.C., and in the days of the Roman Empire Ravenna was a cosmopolitan city, home to between 6000 and 10,000 sailors and their families from all over the Empire lived in the city.

Artist's impression of Ravenna in the first century after Christ

...and of the sixth-century expansion, with the districts of Cesarea and Classe

In A.D. 402 the 18-year-old Emperor Honorius made Ravenna the capital city of the Western Roman Empire, easily connected with the heart of the Empire, Constantinople, by sea. The city was surrounded with defensive walls, and the fifth to eighth centuries saw Ravenna's golden age, when the monuments for which it is renowned today were constructed, many of them incorporating columns and other components manufactured in the Near East. This is when the nearby port city of Classe was founded, consisting of rows of warehouses along a canal connecting it with the sea and with the city of Ravenna, which was also connected by road, and a town with homes, infrastructure and monuments of its own. Foodstuffs, olive oil, ceramics and other goods were imported from Carthage in northern Africa; wine was imported from the Near East and from Palestine - particularly valuable for use during Mass, because of its origin in the Holy Land.

Late fifth-century amphorae for importing Garum (fermented fish sauce) from Tunisia

By the middle of the seventh century the port was silting up due to sediments carried by the river, and was abandoned along with the rest of the city of Classe.

Classe had a great basilica of its own, the last and one of the largest to be built in the Ravenna area: the late sixth-century Basilica di San Severo a Classe, built over the ruins of a Roman villa, featuring complex floor mosaics depicting animals and geometric patterns which must have been truly fantastic to see. A Benedictine monastery was founded beside the basilica in the late 9th century, by which time the town of Classe had been largely abandoned. An inhabited monastic community for hundreds of years, the monastery passed into the hands of the Cistercians in the 13th century, and was unfortunately abandoned and dismantled in the 15th century. It was only rediscovered during excavation of the area in 1965. Fragments of the mosaics are displayed in the archaeological museum in Classe, along with floor mosaics from a number of Roman domuses.

All this I learned, and saw, at Classis Ravenna Archaeological Museum in Classe, 5.5 kilometres from my starting point in central Ravenna. A two-kilometre detour from the Via Romea Germanica route towards Forlì, following the alternate route that leads to Cervia - but well worth the extra distance!

Let's backtrack for a moment: happy to be back on the road, but also to have spent a fruitful day touring Ravenna, I was the first up in the morning and had the hostel kitchen all to myself; I had put some overnight oats in the fridge for a hearty breakfast. I left my keys and donation in my room as instructed, and set off out of Ravenna. After crossing the bridge over the Fiumi Uniti, a 12-kilometre long river formed by the confluence of the rivers Montone and Ronco south of Ravenna, I detoured down the cycling path beside the road to Classe, where I hoped to visit the Basilica di Sant'Apollinare in Classe.

But I had not done my homework: the Basilica is closed on Sunday mornings! 🙄

No problem: I had all day to get to Ghibullo, only 12.5 kilometres south of Ravenna, where I had found the only inexpensive B&B close to the route, to break up the 35-kilometre stage between Ravenna and Forlì. So I sat in a café in Classe, completing yesterday's blog post over a cup of tea, until Classis Ravenna Archaeological Museum opened at 10. The museum is located just behind the basilica, in the former Eridania sugar mill, constructed in 1899-1900 and in operation until 1982.

After touring the museum and writing up the above notes on the history of Ravenna and Classe, I still had an hour before the basilica opened at 1:30. Time for lunch! Right across from the museum entrance is a small park, with a kiosk selling piadine romagnole, the traditional local flatbread, with a variety of fillings. I chose a delicious if unconventional one with a filling of hummus, red cabbage and sun-dried tomatoes, with a German Weiß beer - in keeping with the theme of the Via Romea Germanica - and sat inside the sheltered veranda of the kiosk, as it was rather windy out.

Right next to the kiosk is the small train station of Classe. So an easier way to visit Sant'Apollinare in Classe would be to spend an extra night in Ravenna, and take the train one stop from Ravenna to Classe and back. And if you take the variant of the Via Romea Germanica leading to Cervia, further along the coast, you will pass through Classe anyway, on your way.

The Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe was consecrated on 9 May, 549 by the bishop Maximian and dedicated to Saint Apollinaris, the first bishop of Ravenna and Classe.

After visiting the church, and obtaining a stamp for my pilgrim credential and a few knick-knacks in the gift shop, I retraced my steps along the cycling track toward Ravenna for about a kilometre and a half before turning off and cutting through the settlement of Ponte Nuovo, on a route along the road that Mapy.cz assured me would save two kilometres compared to going all the way back to the bridge and then along the embankment of the river Ronco. When I rejoined the river near Madonna dell'Albero, the road bridge was being repaired and I had to walk through a construction site to get up onto the embankment; it being Sunday, there was no work going on and no-one to notice, so I walked around the barrier. Out of the construction site and on the narrow, paved embankment road, I stopped for a short break at the base of a column commemorating the Battle of Ravenna, involving Spanish and Papal troops aligned with Romagna fighting French troops on the side of the Duke of Ferrara, in 1512.

From here on, it was the now-familiar landscape: the river on the right, often hidden from view by tall bamboo canes; fields, apple orchards and the occasional farmhouse on the left. This has been the common denominator of the Via Romea Germanica ever since Padova - though I believe that is about to change, as we get into the Apennines after Forlì!

Ten kilometres after leaving Sant'Apollinare in Classe, I crossed a bridge over the Ronco into the town of Ghibullo, which is basically just a strip of houses along the highway, and where there is absolutely nothing to see and do - fine with me! I can rest my eyes after all the sparkling mosaics of Ravenna, and my ears after the Bach cello suites. I checked into my room at La Vecchia Stazione R&B - not Rhythm & Blues, but Rest & Breakfast. I have a triple room, which for some reason cost less than a double, and comes with - a bathtub! The plug has been removed, so they presumably want you to use it only as a shower - but I have my handy universal silicone plug with me! Hah!

The owners also, I discovered, have a roadside piadina stand - so I probably should have had something else for lunch, and a piadina for dinner, and saved myself the trouble of carrying food all the way from Ravenna!