Ravenna on the Grand Tour: A View of Late Antiquity in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

Ravenna, the former grand capital of the late Roman and early Byzantine Empires and a popular modern UNESCO World Heritage site, is a city rarely included in major historical surveys of Italy during the Grand Tour. An exploration of period sources may reveal why: it was, for many centuries between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, a rundown parish town that was incredibly difficult to reach by conventional transportation. This article collates and deconstructs a number of Grand Tour sources in order to gain an understanding of Ravenna in the eighteenth century, and, further, an understanding of the contemporary attitudes towards post-Classical monuments and artwork. This exploration allows us to ask broader questions about Ravenna’s place on the Grand Tour. As a city with very little to offer in the way of Classical monuments, it slightly complicates our idea of classical reception on the Grand Tour and shows us how travellers navigated a place replete with late antique basilicas and Byzantine mosaics instead of marble sculptures and tombs.