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This summer Italy has relaunched 'Dante's Train,' a special route tracing the journey of the Father of the Italian Language from Florence to Ravenna, every weekend until 1 November. The vintage train takes visitors from the Tuscan capital of Florence to Ravenna in the Emilia Romagna region where Dante fled in 1302 to avoid the prospect of being bur...

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Dante Alighieri is a symbol of Italy and its poetry, but also of the city he was born, Firenze. A proud Florentine, Dante never kept the love he had for his hometown a secret, so why is he buried in Ravenna? Well, because that’s where he passed, of course, but the matter of where his mortal remains should rest was the cause of mystery and diatribes...

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“Dante’s Train,” a rail route tracing the journey of the Supreme Poet from Florence to Ravenna during his exile years, is returning for the summer season. Launched last year to celebrate the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, the vintage steam train takes travelers from Florence, the Tuscan capital, where Dante was born, to Ravenna in Emilia-Romag...

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Life in late Byzantine Ravenna in its last 200 years, after Belisarius reconquest of Italy, lasted till 751 A. D. A governor/military commander ruled under the Byzantine emperor of Constantinople. The Greek language dominated. Byzantine Italy with its capital in Ravenna was not ruled by an incoming, ethnically distinct group. The church had more po...

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Ravenna, the most important centre of Romagna, is only eight kilometers from the Adriatic Sea and the nine Ravenna beaches, and it is included in the list of Italian World Heritage sites by Unesco for its extraordinary early Christian monuments. The city boasts a long history, which saw it becoming the seat of a large Roman military fleet and, then...

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Spring in Italy smells of freshly bloomed flowers and trees that are colored with new light, the climate becomes mild, the squares of the cities come back to life and the sun reappears to make the landscapes shine. In short, for many this is the best time of year to travel and to enjoy landscapes and locations without the confusion of summer or the...

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The Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna are part of our lives. We don’t even realize it. At a recent holiday social of the Constantine Cassis AHEPA Chapter in the hall of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of St. Paul, at St. Paul’s Cathedral of Hempstead, it was brought to my attention that their mosaics had elements from Ravenna’s Byzantine art. The church ha...

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Sometimes called the city of mosaics, Ravenna is known for its spectacular early Christian mosaics, dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, that decorate the walls of its churches and monuments. Ravenna was the western capital of the Roman Empire and of the Byzantine Empire in Europe from early fifth to the eighth centuries and the mosaic art sh...

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8 UNESCO monuments, 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, Mosaics and Street Art. These are just some of the interesting attractions just waiting to be discovered here. Among the most beautiful towns in Emilia-Romagna, and completely flat, Ravenna Old Town is paved mostly with cobblestones: not ideal for mobility, but the excellent maintenance makes...

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«O lone Ravenna! many a tale is told | Of thy great glories in the days of old: | Two thousand years have passed since thou didst see | Caesar ride forth to royal victory.» Oscar Wilde  Of a beauty that is elegant and refined, she is a city of Saints, bankers and kings: Ravenna, in Emilia Romagna, is Italy's second-largest city by extension, but pe...

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