Archbishop’s Chapel, Ravenna

Archbishop's Chapel, Ravenna tickets: which one to buy

The chapel is covered by the Ravenna combined ticket, which also admits you to the Basilica of San Vitale, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Sant'Apollinare Nuovo and the Neonian Baptistery; the five sites are sold together and there is no useful single entry. During spring and summer a small supplementary charge applies to Galla Placidia because of visitor numbers. The chapel is inside the archbishop's palace, entered through the Museo Arcivescovile, which is included.

Guided tours of the mosaic sites cost several times the ticket and are worth it, since the iconography of Ravenna's fifth and sixth-century mosaics is an argument about theology rather than decoration. The ticket is valid for a week, so the five sites can be spread out. Nothing else needs booking. The museum around the chapel holds the ivory throne of Maximian, the finest piece of late antique carving in Italy, and is included in the same ticket.

Visiting Archbishop's Chapel, Ravenna: what to see

This is the smallest of the eight Ravenna monuments on the World Heritage list and the only private early Christian oratory anywhere to survive. Archbishop Peter II built it shortly after 495, during Ostrogothic rule, when the ruling Goths were Arian Christians and the archbishop was not; the chapel is a statement of orthodox belief in a city governed by heretics. Over the vestibule door a beardless Christ in the dress of a Roman general treads on a lion and a serpent, carrying a book that reads I am the way, the truth and the life.

The vault mosaic shows four angels holding a monogram of Christ with the symbols of the evangelists between them, and the walls carry medallions of apostles and saints on gold. The room is barely a few metres across, and the concentration is the point. Some of the wall mosaics were replaced by sixteenth-century tempera painting by Luca Longhi, and the difference in surface is visible from a metre away.

Archbishop's Chapel, Ravenna opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily on the same schedule as the other monuments, roughly mid-morning to early evening with shorter winter hours. The chapel is small and the museum controls the flow, so waits are short. Ravenna is quieter than most Italian art cities and even in August the crowds are manageable. The mosaics are artificially lit, so weather and time of day matter less here than at San Vitale, where the light through the alabaster windows changes everything.

Photography without flash is allowed. Dress is informal. Allow twenty minutes for the chapel and a full day for the five sites together, which are all within fifteen minutes of each other on foot. Ravenna's mosaics are floodlit for a summer evening programme, and the museum sometimes opens late during it. Ravenna is a flat city and the five monuments are best walked between, which takes a full day at a comfortable pace.