My first impression of Ravenna: The excruciating cold. We arrived in the middle of one of the coldest Winters the area had ever experienced.
-15 Degrees C., iced roads and cold and forbidding Adriatic winds. So our first act upon getting to the city, was to go shopping for "longjohns" for all three of us...
After that, came the delights:

We learned that Dante is burried in Ravenna. After being chased from Firenze, he went to Verona and then came to Ravenna where he finished his "Divine Comedy" before dying in September 1321.

We discovered Theodoric, the Ostrogoth King who ruled the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. He introduced the Arian Dogma which caused a lot of to-do to the established Church. He left the city adorned with beautiful cathedrals and excquisit mosaics, which were added to by the Byzantines and eventually made Ravenna the center of Mosaic Art today. He is buried in a Mausoleum where his effigy shows a very good looking young man sleeping, with a face like an angel. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside so I only have this seal, which does not flatter him..

The seal and Mausoleum pictures were sent to me by my dear friend Elfie to whom I am most grateful.