Museo Arcivescovile

Ravenna's Archiepiscopal Museum preserves objects from the city's cathedral and gives access to the Chapel of Sant'Andrea, one of the eight monuments in the city's UNESCO World Heritage listing. Its collections include the sixth-century ivory throne of Bishop Maximian, while the chapel preserves early Christian mosaics and paintings.

Why it matters

The museum took shape in the eighteenth century, when Archbishop Maffeo Nicolò Farsetti gathered mosaics, inscriptions and carved stones from the demolished Ursian cathedral. The collection spans more than fifteen centuries of Ravenna's church art. The adjacent chapel was decorated during Bishop Peter II's episcopate, between 494 and 519, and is recognised by UNESCO as the only orthodox monument built during the reign of Theodoric, whose court followed Arian Christianity.

What to notice

The throne of Bishop Maximian is a celebrated late-antique ivory work, made from carved relief panels mounted on a wooden frame. Other objects include the sixth-century silver cross of Bishop Agnello and a marble tablet recording an early Christian Easter calendar. The museum also preserves a headless porphyry-clad statue, possibly representing an emperor, mosaics from the apse of the old cathedral and an ambo reused from the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo.

The Sala della Torre Salustra occupies a structure associated with the terminal of Trajan's aqueduct. In the Chapel of Sant'Andrea, a vaulted vestibule combines painted and mosaic decoration, including birds among pergolas. Above the doorway, Christ is shown as a warrior trampling a lion and serpent; an inscription plays on the idea of light as both born and captured in the chapel.

Context and history

The Archiepiscopal Palace has a core dating to the fifth century. After the Ursian cathedral was rebuilt in the eighteenth century, its displaced marbles and other fragments were collected here, including remains of the 1112 apse mosaic cycle. UNESCO inscribed the Chapel of Sant'Andrea among Ravenna's eight monuments in 1996, recognising its distinctive position within the city's early Christian heritage.