CHURCHES CHURCHES CHURCHES

This was the weekend of churches in both Ravenna and San Miniato. I can simply say I was fully churched out by Saturday night, but would do it again any day.
San Miniato is at the top of a huge hill of stairs, and our professoressa lead us at quite the chirpy jaunt while lecturing us about the surrounding buildings and random miracles that were performed along our route. She knows EVERYTHING. I swear she must have a photographic memory because she knows every date and every name of anyone even remotely connected to the Renaissance and Italy in general. The shortened story of San Miniato goes like this: he was a priest and had his head chopped off for doing something bad. After his beheading, he rose to his feet, picked up his head and walked away with it up the big hill we were struggling with earlier (my prof kept saying "if saint miniato could do it without his head, i think we will make it just fine!"). The top is where he laid down to rest and where they built the church. At 5:30 we stayed to hear the monks chanting in his crypt. It was incredible. Actually it was really cold and I was being lulled to sleep by thier chants, but still. Incredible.
We left for Ravenna at 7:45 in the morning and slept on the bus until we got to the Baptistry. It was the first of 4 baptistries we saw that day. And of the 3 churches.
I'm not going to go into the details of each church and baptistry because no one wants to read that. seriously. But! I'll highlight my favorite parts.
First, all of these buildings are vaulted and are coated with early 4th and 5th century Christian mosaics. They detail Christ's passion and his miracles. In the Baptistries there was always, of course, John the Baptist, the River Jordan God (just chillin, sometimes with crab legs coming out of his head), and a nude Christ up to his waist in blue wavy lines. God's hand of course was peeking out of the clouds overhead. The coolest thing about mosaics, and these especially, is their color! They are so beautiful and playful and bring a childish sense to the sometimes too serious tales. Another thing, they never put into mosaic the crucifixion or the resurrection. Awesome. This crypt was underwater and had goldfish swimmin around with the sarcophagi.


















there was even a UNICORN! jeez they are everywhere.




these mosaics were hung on a wall and were little illustrations of folk tales.

















This is the last example of Early Christian mosaics and shows the changes that the style made. It is so colorful and wonderful.

We got home at 8, showered, ate dinner, took naps and headed out to Angie's Pub to meet up with some friends and relax after the crazy day. This coming weekend we are going to Rome. My professoressa gave us our itineraries today...it is a small guidebook in itself. I cant imagine how tired we are going to be after 3 days of 6:30-9 non-stop HISTORY! I cant wait!