Baptistery of Neon

Baptistery of Neon tickets: which one to buy

The baptistery is one of the five monuments on the Ravenna combined ticket, with San Vitale, Galla Placidia, Sant'Apollinare Nuovo and the Archbishop's Chapel; there is no separate entry and no reason to want one. A small supplement applies to Galla Placidia in the busy months. The ticket lasts a week. The baptistery stands beside the cathedral, two minutes from the centre, and the five sites are all within a fifteen-minute walk of each other.

Guided tours of the mosaics cost several times the ticket and repay it, because the programme here is a piece of fifth-century theology aimed at people about to be baptised. Numbers inside are limited and a queue can build in summer; the flow is managed by the custodian. Tickets are sold at San Vitale and at the Neonian Baptistery itself, and the queue at San Vitale is usually the longer of the two.

Visiting Baptistery of Neon: what to see

This is the oldest monument in Ravenna, an octagonal brick building begun by Bishop Ursus at the end of the fourth century and finished with its mosaics by Bishop Neon at the end of the fifth. The octagon is standard for baptisteries and stands for the eight days, the seven of creation plus the day of resurrection. The original floor is three metres below the present one, so the proportions are not what the builders intended.

Look up: the dome shows the baptism of Christ in the Jordan, with a bearded Christ waist deep and the river personified as a pagan river god beside him, and around that a procession of the twelve apostles in white and gold moving in both directions to meet at Peter and Paul. Below them, empty thrones and altars with open gospels. The blue and gold are as intense as anything in Italy. A marble font in the middle, assembled in the sixteenth century from older fragments, replaced the original pool in which candidates were immersed. Stucco figures of prophets stand in niches below the mosaic band, and the lower walls keep their original marble revetment from the Roman bath the building stands on.

Baptistery of Neon opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily on the Ravenna monument schedule, mid-morning to early evening with shorter winter hours. The mosaics are artificially lit, so the weather matters less here than at San Vitale. Numbers inside are capped at around twenty-five and visits are short by design. Ravenna sees a fraction of the crowds of Venice or Florence even in August. Photography without flash is allowed. Dress is informal.

Allow fifteen minutes here and a full day for the five monuments. The Arian Baptistery, built fifty years later by the Ostrogoths with a near-identical dome mosaic and a different theology behind it, is ten minutes away and is included in some tickets. The cathedral beside it is free, eighteenth-century and unremarkable, which surprises visitors who expect it to match the baptistery.