Basilica di San Vitale

Ravenna's most celebrated Byzantine church does not behave like a church: you approach it through a quiet courtyard, and suddenly an octagon of gold opens overhead, with the emperor Justinian and empress Theodora processing across the presbytery mosaics, still arguing their imperial case fifteen centuries on.

Why it matters

San Vitale is the building that made Ravenna's reputation among art historians. UNESCO inscribed it in 1996 as part of the serial property Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna, judging the city's mosaics among the best surviving works of their kind in Europe, and singling out this basilica as one of the highest creations of Byzantine architecture in Italy, where Western and Eastern traditions meet. Completed under Justinian's reign, its presbytery and apse preserve an exceptional sixth-century mosaic ensemble; the decoration of the main dome belongs to a later period.

What to notice

• The two imperial panels flanking the presbytery: Justinian at the centre of his courtiers and clergy, Theodora with her ladies in a shadowed doorway, both carrying gifts for the Eucharist — a golden chalice for the empress, a patera for the emperor — although, as the operators point out, neither ruler ever set foot in Ravenna.
• The apse vision: a young, beardless Christ dressed in imperial purple, seated on the sphere of heaven, handing the crown of martyrdom to Saint Vitalis, with Bishop Ecclesius offering a model of the church itself and the archangels Michael and Gabriel closing the scene.
• The lamb of God at the summit of the presbytery vault, placed exactly where the priest raises the host — architecture, liturgy and image engineered as a single gesture.
• Old Testament hospitality scenes along the presbytery walls: Abraham's table under the oak of Mamre, the sacrifice of Isaac, the offerings of Abel and Melchisedech, all foreshadowing the Eucharist.
• Roundels on the triumphal arch: the Redeemer, the twelve Apostles, and the saints Gervasius and Protasius, sons of Vitalis.
• The intoxicating detail work — peacocks, vines, acanthus — that so struck Gustav Klimt when he visited in 1903 and began his gold-toned "aureus" period afterwards.

Context and history

The basilica was begun in 525 by Bishop Ecclesius after a journey to Constantinople, financed by the banker Julianus Argentarius, and raised over an earlier fifth-century shrine of Saint Vitalis. It was consecrated by his successor, Bishop Maximian, in 547, and Maximian commissioned the interior decoration that survives today. The date sits inside Ravenna's extraordinary sequence: capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402, then seat of the Ostrogothic court, then the chief Byzantine city in Italy — which is why UNESCO reads these eight monuments as a single testimony to the artistic and religious contacts between East and West at a decisive moment of European history. San Vitale's octagon with its stepped spaces and gallery was the technological marvel of its day, and its mosaics preserve court costume, faces and ritual in a way no text can.