Battistero Neoniano

The smallest of Ravenna's great rooms may be its oldest. Beside the cathedral, inside a garden most locals cut through on their way to work, an octagon tiled from floor to cupola keeps the scene of Christ's baptism turning slowly overhead — twelve apostles with crowns in their veiled hands, walking a dome sixteen centuries old.

Why it matters

UNESCO counts the Neonian Baptistery among the eight monuments of the Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna and calls it the finest and most complete surviving example of an early Christian baptistery anywhere; its marbles, stuccoes and mosaics form a remarkably rich surviving ensemble. It is also the city's most ancient surviving monument, and its dome preserves the earliest large-scale mosaic programme in Ravenna, executed before the court mosaics of San Vitale and Sant'Apollinare Nuovo. For anyone trying to understand why the capital of the Western Roman Empire turned into a workshop of gold glass, this is the first chapter.

What to notice

• The central medallion of the dome: Christ baptized by John in the river Jordan, with an unexpected third figure — the personification of the river as an old man rising from the water, holding a reed in one hand and a cloth for the Saviour in the other.
• John the Baptist holds a patera rather than laying his hand on Christ's head: the operators note the lighter colour of these tesserae shows the object was inserted later, a rare visible correction in early mosaic.
• The ring of twelve apostles in tunics and pallia, carrying crowns of the aurum coronarium — the tribute a defeated people paid a victor — led by Peter and Paul in a slow, processional rotation.
• The outer band of eight sectors alternating empty thrones of the Hetoimasia, altars with open Gospels, and gardens — the prepared throne of God awaiting the Last Judgement.
• Below the dome, canthari sprouting vines, acanthus spirals and peacocks: signs of eternal life that recur across the city's monuments.

Context and history

The building began as the cathedral baptistery erected by Bishop Ursus around the start of the fifth century, when Ravenna had recently become the capital of the Western Roman Empire. Around the middle of that century Bishop Neon completed and decorated the existing octagonal building you see now, and the building takes its second name from him — it is also called the Orthodox baptistery, because it served the Catholic community at a time when the Arian court of Theodoric later built its own rival baptistery a short walk away. Reading the two domes against each other has been the standard exercise in Ravenna ever since: same subject, same river-god figure, different theological accent. UNESCO's dossier places the monument within the fifth and sixth centuries, when the city passed from Western imperial to Ostrogothic to Byzantine rule and each power left its monuments.