Sant’Apollinare in Classe
The basilica stands alone on the plain where Ravenna’s port once lay. A bright nave with marble columns leads to the apse, where a green paradise meadow spreads out in mosaic. Bishop Apollinaris stands in the middle of the picture with sheep around him.
The church was built on the initiative of Bishop Ursicinus in the first half of the 6th century and consecrated in 549 by Archbishop Maximian. The work was paid for by Julius Argentarius, a banker who also financed San Vitale. It was built over the spot where Ravenna’s first bishop, Apollinaris, was probably buried, beside the port town of Classe. The church is built of thin brick in the style known as Ravennate, and the marble columns, with capitals of leaves blown by the wind, probably came ready-made from Constantinople.
The plan is a classic basilica with a tall nave and two aisles, separated by twelve columns on each side. The apse is raised above a crypt. The mosaic in the apse shows Apollinaris with his arms raised in prayer, standing in a green meadow with trees, flowers and birds. Above him hovers a great jewelled cross in a blue circle of stars; it is a symbolic image of the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountain, in which three sheep stand for the three disciples. Sarcophagi for Ravenna’s archbishops stand along the walls. The round bell tower beside the church was added in the 11th century.
The port of Classe silted up and was abandoned in the early Middle Ages, and the church was left alone in the countryside. In the 15th century the Venetians took marble from the walls, but the mosaic in the apse survived. The church has been part of the World Heritage Site of Ravenna’s Early Christian monuments since 1996. It shows how bright, spacious and clear an Early Christian basilica could be, and how mosaic was used to turn the apse into a window onto heaven.