Ravenna travel guide

Top 10 sights in Ravenna

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Commonists · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Basilica of San Vitale

   Church in Ravenna consecrated in 547, octagonal and modelled on Byzantine practice. Its apse mosaics show Justinian and Theodora with their courts, made within their lifetimes.

   TiqetsKlook
2. 

   2© Petar Milošević · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

   A small cross-shaped building of about 430 whose vault is a dark blue sky filled with eight hundred gold stars, with the Good Shepherd over the door. These are the oldest mosaics in Ravenna and, in a room this size, the most overwhelming.

   TiqetsKlook
3. 

   3© ThePhotografer · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Mausoleum of Theodoric

   The tomb Theodoric the Great built for himself about 520, in Istrian limestone with no mortar, roofed by a single carved slab weighing over two hundred tonnes — hauled from the coast and lifted into place by means nobody has satisfactorily explained.

   TiqetsKlook
4. 

   4© Ввласенко · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo

   Church in Ravenna built around 505 by Theodoric as his palace chapel. Its side walls carry a procession of martyrs in mosaic, altered when the Arian building became Catholic.

   TiqetsKlook
5. 

   5

   Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe

   A basilica consecrated in 549 in what was then the port, five kilometres from the modern town. Its apse holds the Transfiguration rendered as a jewelled cross among twelve sheep, and the tall brick nave is empty enough to feel the sixth century.

   TiqetsKlook
6. 

   6

   Baptistry of Neon

   The oldest monument in Ravenna, a fifth-century baptistery built partly on a Roman bath. Its dome shows the baptism of Christ with the river Jordan personified as a bearded man, and the whole interior is mosaic from the floor up.

   TiqetsKlook
7. 

   7© Georges Jansoone · CC BY 2.5

   Arian Baptistry

   A baptistery built about 500 by Theodoric for Arian Christians, who denied that Christ was fully divine. Its dome repeats the baptism scene of the orthodox baptistery across town with small but pointed differences, which is the reason to see both.

   TiqetsKlook
8. 

   8© Stefano Suozzo · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Archbishop's Chapel, Ravenna

   The smallest of Ravenna's mosaic sites, a private chapel on the upper floor of the bishop's palace from about 500. Christ is shown in it as a Roman soldier treading on a lion and a snake, which is not how he is usually depicted.

   TiqetsKlook
9. 

   9© Gianni Careddu · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Ravenna Cathedral

   The cathedral, rebuilt in 1734 on the site of the fourth-century basilica whose baptistery survives beside it. Its round bell tower is tenth century, and the museum next door holds the ivory throne of Bishop Maximian.

   TiqetsKlook
10. 

    10

    Mirabilandia

    The largest theme park in Italy, at Savio outside Ravenna, with eighty-five hectares of rides and a twelve-hectare water park beside it. Its coasters are its reputation and its summer crowds come from the whole Adriatic coast.

    TiqetsKlook

Popular tickets & tours in Ravenna

Live products and prices are provided directly by Klook.

KlookOpen Ravenna activitiesBrowse tickets & toursKKdayOpen Ravenna activitiesBrowse tickets & tours

Trending now

Based on 2025 Wikipedia pageviews — popular places beyond the top 10.

1. 

   1© ThePhotografer · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Dante Alighieri's tomb

   A neoclassical tomb of 1781 over the grave of Dante, who died in exile in Ravenna in 1321. Florence, which had sentenced him to death, has asked for the bones back for six centuries and been refused; it sends oil for the lamp every September instead.

   TiqetsKlook
2. 

   2© José Luiz · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Basilica di San Francesco

   A church first built in 450 whose crypt is permanently flooded by groundwater — goldfish swim over a tenth-century mosaic floor a metre below the water, lit by a coin-operated switch. Dante's funeral was held in this church in 1321.

   TiqetsKlook
3. 

   3© José Luiz · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Palace of Theodoric

   The residence of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric at Ravenna in Italy. Excavations by Corrado Ricci between 1907 and 1911 established much of its position and plan.

   TiqetsKlook
4. 

   4© en:User:Attilios · CC BY-SA 3.0

   San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna

   A church built in the 420s by Galla Placidia in fulfilment of a vow made when her ship nearly went down between Constantinople and Ravenna. Bombing in 1944 destroyed much of it; the medieval floor mosaics with their crusader scenes survive.

   TiqetsKlook
5. 

   5© Freddo · CC BY-SA 3.0

   iSpeed

   A launched steel coaster at Mirabilandia, opened in 2009, which accelerates from a standstill to over a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour in two and a half seconds before a vertical climb. It was Intamin's second of the type.

   TiqetsKlook
6. 

   6© Stefan Scheer · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Katun

   An inverted coaster at Mirabilandia, twelve hundred metres long with six inversions and a fifty-metre drop, and the longest of its kind in Europe. Riders hang below the track with their legs free.

   TiqetsKlook
7. 

   7© Incola · CC BY 4.0

   Archiepiscopal Museum of Ravenna

   A museum behind the cathedral in Ravenna, beside the Neonian Baptistery. It preserves early Christian material including mosaic fragments from the first cathedral and the chapel of Sant'Andrea from the Gothic kingdom.

   TiqetsKlook
8. 

   8© Roller Coaster Philosophy · CC BY 2.0

   Eurowheel

   A Ferris wheel of ninety-two metres at Mirabilandia, the tallest in Europe when it went up in 1999 and hung with some fifty thousand bulbs — which is enough to be seen from the motorway and from the beach at Rimini.

   TiqetsKlook
9. 

   9© ThePhotografer · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Santa Maria in Porto Basilica

   A basilica on the Via Roma holding a marble relief of the Virgin brought from Constantinople and known as the Greek Madonna, credited with arriving by sea on its own. Its cloister now houses part of the municipal art collection.

   TiqetsKlook
10. 

    10© Franco Musa · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Capanno Garibaldi

    A marsh hunter's hut in the delta north of Ravenna where Garibaldi hid on the night of 6-7 August 1849, fleeing after the fall of the Roman Republic. First built in 1810 and rebuilt several times since, most recently after a fire in 1911, it has been kept as a shrine of the Risorgimento since 1879.

    TiqetsKlook