Ravenna (last day)

Well today we finished the course in the early afternoon. It has been an amazing week. Cost a small fortune to post things home but I am definitely not carting 2 mosaics, a hammer & 2 chisels around with me! Took the opportunity to add in a couple of books & a few of the souvenirs I've bought to lighten my pack.

I am meeting Sylvie in Venice on Tuesday for a tour of the smalti (glass used in the mosaics) factory, arranged in about 5 seconds by Luciana. Will catch a train to Treviso where Kay & Daniel live tomorrow morning.

Ravenna is a lovely town, small enough to walk most places. The mosaics we saw on our little tour yesterday were wonderful. I felt like I'd seen a lot of them since there are postcards everywhere! One of the interesting things I found out is that Ravenna sits on water table, so every house has a "raised floor". Nowadays they pump the water out to keep the level right, but in the past they just used to cover the floor with rubble, raise the level & build a new floor! One church has almost 3 metres difference between the 6th & 16th century floor levels.

When excavating behind a church for a carpark, a mosaic was found. But they just kept finding more, and all in all there were nine levels of mosiacs, one on top of the other! They call the building The House of the Stone Carpets since this is literally what it looks like, & of course that was essentially the purpose thet served anyway. Only one level is on display - the others are displayed in some museum.

Our guide, Sylvia was great. She has studied the symbology of mosaics, invcluding her thesis on the symbology of the jewels in a particularly famous mosaic portrait! But it helped to understand the what & why of the things we were seeing.

Anyway, that's about all for now. The weather is hot & I am not complaining exactly, but it's really really really hot!!!

Ciao for now,
Bella ( my Italian name of course!) xxx