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FrançaisRavenna’s 17 things to do start with eight UNESCO World Heritage monuments, and no single ticket covers all eight. Five of them belong to the diocese and share one combined ticket. The other three are state monuments sold separately, which is the detail most day trippers work out only while standing at a locked door with the wrong e-ticket on their phone. Almost everything on this list is indoors, so Italy gives you few better places to spend a grey day.
What the Ravenna combined ticket covers in 2026
The Ravenna combined ticket covers five monuments, not eight, and it is sold in three tiers by Opera di Religione della Diocesi di Ravenna. The diocese rebuilt the pricing on 8 January 2026, so any guide still quoting one flat price for “the mosaics” is describing a ticket that no longer exists. Every tier is valid for 7 days and allows one entry per monument.
The three tiers are listed below.
- 2 monuments, €10.50 (about $12, £9): the Basilica of San Vitale and the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. You have to name the day you plan to visit.
- 4 monuments, €12.50 (about $15, £11): the same two basilicas plus the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia and the Neonian Baptistery. Both of the added monuments need a booked entry time.
- 5 monuments, €14.50 (about $17, £12): all of the above plus the Archiepiscopal Museum and the Chapel of Sant’Andrea, which also needs a booked entry time.
That €2 step between the first and second tier is the part worth understanding, because it is the only way into the Neonian Baptistery and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Both rooms are small and the diocese limits you to 5 minutes inside each one for microclimate reasons, with 25 minutes allowed in the Archiepiscopal Museum. Five minutes sounds brutal until you are in there and realise a queue is forming behind you.
Three practical rules come with the ticket. Photography is allowed in San Vitale, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo and the Neonian Baptistery, flash is banned in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, and no photography at all is permitted in the Archiepiscopal Museum. From Easter until the first Sunday in November, San Vitale closes to visitors between 10am and 12pm because Mass is celebrated there. Ticket offices sit at Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (via di Roma 53), the Archiepiscopal Museum (piazza Arcivescovado 1) and San Vitale (via Argentario 22), and all three sell for the same day only.
Opening hours run on two seasons. From 8 March to 2 November 2026 the monuments open daily 9am to 7pm, and from 3 November 2026 to 6 March 2027 they open daily 10am to 5pm. Last admission is 30 minutes before closing at San Vitale, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo and the Archiepiscopal Museum, and 15 minutes before closing at the Neonian Baptistery and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. Everything shuts on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
If you would rather have the timing handled for you, Ravenna’s small centre suits a guided walk, and booking a private guided tour puts a guide on the mosaics rather than an audio file in your ear.
The eight UNESCO monuments in Ravenna
The eight UNESCO monuments in Ravenna were inscribed together in 1996 as a single listing, the Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna. These eight buildings keep their mosaic decoration from the 5th and 6th centuries almost intact, which is why the listing treats them as one site rather than eight. Five are covered by the diocesan combined ticket and three are run by Fondazione RavennAntica on state tickets.
1. Basilica of San Vitale
The Basilica of San Vitale is the one monument to see if you only see one. Consecrated in 547, the octagonal church carries the imperial panels of Justinian and Theodora facing each other across the presbytery, each ruler surrounded by a court frozen mid-procession in gold tesserae. A labyrinth is set into the floor in front of the altar, so look down as well as up.
Entry is on every tier of the diocesan ticket, so San Vitale costs nothing extra whichever tier you buy. Its own ticket office is on via Argentario, a short walk from the church door, and the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia stands in the same walled garden about 30 seconds away.
2. Mausoleum of Galla Placidia
The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia is the smallest building on the list and the one people remember. Its barrel vaults are a deep cobalt blue scattered with gold stars in concentric rings, with a golden cross at the centre and Saint Lawrence beside his flaming gridiron in the lunette over the door. The switch from daylight to near darkness as you step in is the whole effect, and it is why the 5-minute limit exists.
The three marble sarcophagi inside are empty. Galla Placidia, daughter of the emperor Theodosius I, gave the building her name, but nothing in it holds her remains. Ravenna’s tourist board also tells a story that Cole Porter, on honeymoon in the city, was so struck by the starred vault that he went away and wrote “Night and Day”.
3. Neonian Baptistery
The Neonian Baptistery is an octagon of the early 5th century and one of the oldest early Christian monuments in the city. Its dome holds the oldest surviving mosaic depiction of the baptism of Christ inside a monument, with Jesus standing ankle deep in the Jordan while an old man personifying the river holds out a green cloth. Around them the twelve apostles walk in a circle in two groups, one led by Saint Peter and one by Saint Paul, each carrying a laurel wreath in veiled hands as a sign of deference.
The decoration reads in three bands from the ground up: marble, then stucco, then mosaic. In the middle of the floor stands the octagonal font of Greek marble and porphyry, rebuilt in the 6th century around surviving 5th-century fragments. This baptistery is also called the Baptistery of the Orthodox, to tell it apart from the Arian Baptistery a few streets away, and entry needs the 4-monument ticket or better plus a booked slot.
4. Archiepiscopal Museum and the Chapel of Sant’Andrea
The Chapel of Sant’Andrea is a private oratory built for Ravenna’s Catholic bishops at the start of the 6th century by Archbishop Peter II, while Theodoric ruled the city for the Arians. It is the only Orthodox monument of that period still standing in Ravenna, and the whole decorative scheme argues a case: everything in it glorifies Christ, read today as a deliberate anti-Arian statement. It took the name of Saint Andrew after the Byzantine conquest, when his relics arrived from Constantinople.
You reach the chapel through the Archiepiscopal Museum, which also holds the ivory throne of Archbishop Maximian: 27 carved ivory panels on an ebony frame, of an original 39, cut by at least four different hands. Only the 5-monument ticket gets you in, the slot has to be booked, and you are allowed 25 minutes inside. Leave the camera in your bag, because photography is not permitted anywhere in the museum.
5. Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo
The Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo was built by Theodoric as the Arian palace chapel next to his own residence, between the end of the 5th century and the start of the 6th. Its nave carries 26 Christological scenes, the largest monumental New Testament cycle anywhere and the oldest surviving one in mosaic. Below them two processions walk the length of the church, virgins on one side and martyrs on the other, ending at the enthroned Christ.
The detail to look for is political. One wall shows Theodoric’s own palace, and when Ravenna passed to Byzantine rule the court figures standing between its columns were scrubbed out of the mosaic. Whoever did the work missed their hands, which are still there, gripping columns that no longer have anybody attached to them. The cylindrical bell tower outside dates from the 9th or 10th century, not from Theodoric’s time.
6. Arian Baptistery
The Arian Baptistery costs €3 (about $3, £3) and is not on the diocesan ticket at all, which catches out anybody who assumes one purchase covers the mosaics. Theodoric built it for the Arian community around the same time as Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, and its dome repeats the Neonian scheme with a difference: Christ stands waist deep in a personified River Jordan while the apostles circle above, led by Saint Peter with the keys and Saint Paul with the scrolls.
The baptistery keeps short hours. From 26 April 2026 it opens Monday to Thursday 9am to 12pm, and Friday to Sunday and holidays 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm, with last entry 15 minutes before closing. Admission is free on the first Sunday of every month, on 23 July, on 30 August and on 4 November.
7. Mausoleum of Theodoric
The Mausoleum of Theodoric is the only monument on the list built for a Gothic king, and its roof is one piece of stone. Theodoric raised the two-storey decagon in 520 as his own burial place, using blocks of Aurisina stone laid dry without mortar, and capped it with a monolithic dome 10.76 m (35.3 ft) across and 3.09 m (10.1 ft) high. Twelve curved handles ring the rim, carved with the names of eight apostles and four evangelists, and a long crack runs across the dome that nobody has convincingly explained. Legend says lightning split it and killed Theodoric inside as punishment for his crimes.
Entry costs €6 (about $7, £5), or €2 if you are aged 18 to 25, and it opens daily 8.30am to 7pm. The mausoleum sits in a small park behind the railway station rather than in the old centre, bus 5 serves it on weekdays and bus 18 on Sundays and holidays, and there is free parking both in front of the monument and along via Teodorico.
8. Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe
The Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe stands about 6 km (3.7 mi) south of the centre, at the site of Ravenna’s ancient port, and the apse mosaic there is the one image most people have seen without knowing where it is. Saint Apollinaris stands with arms raised in a green landscape among twelve white lambs, one for each apostle, under a gemmed cross set on a blue disc scattered with 99 gold and silver stars. Above it the hand of God reaches out of white cloud, and Moses and Elijah lean in from either side.
Skipping Classe is the most common mistake on a Ravenna day trip, and it is a 10-minute ride out. Bus line 4 runs from Ravenna railway station, Classe railway station is a short walk from the door, and a cycle path connects the basilica to the city. Entry costs €6 (about $7, £5), with the same €2 rate for visitors aged 18 to 25, and hours are Monday to Saturday 8.30am to 7.30pm and Sundays and religious holidays 1.30pm to 7.30pm.
If you plan to see all three state monuments, one combined ticket at €14 (about $16, £12) covers Sant’Apollinare in Classe, the Mausoleum of Theodoric, the Arian Baptistery, the National Museum and the so-called Palace of Theodoric. A shorter one at €7 (about $8, £6) covers the Mausoleum of Theodoric, the Arian Baptistery and the Palace of Theodoric.
Nine more things to do in Ravenna
Nine more things to do in Ravenna fill the rest of a day once the mosaics are done, and several of them cost nothing. Most cluster in the same walkable centre, with two exceptions out at the coast.
9. Dante’s tomb and the Zone of Silence
Dante’s tomb is free, open daily and sits in the middle of a pedestrian quarter the city officially calls the Zone of Silence. Dante Alighieri spent his last years in Ravenna, died here in 1321 and was buried here, and Florence has been asking for him back ever since. In 1810 friars hid the bones inside a wall so they would not be taken during the Napoleonic suppression of the monasteries, and they stayed lost until a workman uncovered them by accident in 1865.
The neoclassical tomb you see was built between 1780 and 1781 by the Ravenna architect Camillo Morigia, paid for by Cardinal Luigi Valenti Gonzaga, and locals call it la zuccheriera, the sugar bowl. It is viewed from outside rather than entered, opens 10am to 6pm from 1 November to 31 March and 10am to 7pm from 1 April to 31 October, and closes on Christmas Day.
10. Basilica di San Francesco
The Basilica di San Francesco is free to enter and its crypt is permanently under water. A double flight of stairs below the presbytery leads down to a 9th or 10th century crypt, and through a small arched window under the altar you look at a 5th-century floor mosaic submerged in groundwater. The water rises and falls with rainfall and sea level, and dozens of goldfish swim over the tesserae, which is the clearest proof that it is fresh water and not the sea.
Do not throw a coin in. The crypt has to be drained periodically to clean the mosaic and fish out the coins people toss through the window, because copper oxidises and damages the ancient surface. Dante’s funeral was held in this church in 1321, which is why the tomb stands just outside, and San Francesco opens 7am to 12pm and 3pm to 6pm on weekdays and 7am to 6.30pm at weekends.
11. Museo Dante and Casa Dante
The Museo Dante tells the story of Dante’s exile and his afterlife in Ravenna, and its ticket also covers Casa Dante around the corner. Tickets cost €5 (about $6, £4) for adults and €3.50 for concessions, and the two sites are only sold together. The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 5.30pm, with last admission an hour before closing, and shuts on Mondays.
Concession pricing here rewards planning. Holding a ticket for the Domus of the Stone Carpets or for MAR, Ravenna’s art museum, gets you the reduced rate.
12. Domus of the Stone Carpets, under the church of Sant’Eufemia
The Domus of the Stone Carpets is a Byzantine-era house buried under the church of Sant’Eufemia, and you enter it through the church. Builders digging an underground car park in via D’Azeglio hit it in 1993, the regional archaeological authority stopped the work, and what came out was 14 rooms and 2 courtyards of floor mosaic, including the Dance of the Genii of the Seasons and a 4th-century Good Shepherd panel with two peacocks and a set of pan pipes hanging in a tree.
Entry costs €6 (about $7, £5) and it opens daily 10am to 5pm, with last entry 40 minutes before closing. The church above is worth the two minutes it takes: Sant’Eufemia was built between 1742 and 1747 to a design by Giovanni Francesco Buonamici, the architect of Ravenna’s cathedral, and entry to it is free. Visitors under 26 get into the domus free every Wednesday.
13. National Museum of Ravenna
The National Museum of Ravenna is where the context lives, so it repays a visit before the monuments rather than after. It has occupied the former Benedictine monastery attached to San Vitale since 1885, and its collections run from Roman glass and Byzantine ivories to icons, ceramics and Renaissance bronzes. The visit ends in the old refectory with a 14th-century fresco cycle by Pietro da Rimini, lifted from the church of Santa Chiara and rehung at its original height in the same low light it spent centuries in.
Tickets cost €7 (about $8, £6), or €2 for visitors aged 18 to 25. Its hours split the day in an unusual way, and getting them wrong wastes an afternoon: 8.30am to 2pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 2pm to 7.30pm on Thursdays and Fridays, last admission 30 minutes before closing, and closed on Mondays.
14. Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Kennedy
Piazza del Popolo is the square Ravenna actually uses, and the two granite columns at its edge are a Venetian statement. Venice took the city in 1441, enlarged and paved the square in its own style, and raised the columns in imitation of Piazza San Marco, putting Saint Apollinaris on one and the Lion of Saint Mark on the other. When Pope Julius II retook Ravenna in 1509 the lion came down and a statue of Saint Vitalis by Clemente Molli went up in its place.
Look at the bases before you order a coffee. The circular Roman plinths under the columns carry a carved zodiac, and it runs to thirteen signs, because Ophiuchus the serpent bearer is cut in alongside the usual twelve. Two minutes south, Piazza Kennedy was once the private 70 m garden of Palazzo Rasponi dalle Teste, whose facade carries 43 windows framed in Istrian stone, and the outline of the 5th-century Basilica of Sant’Agnese is marked out in the paving of the square.
15. Marina di Ravenna
Marina di Ravenna is the city’s beach, a short bus or car ride east of the centre, and it turns a day trip into a proper day out in summer. Beach clubs line the sand, restaurants run to fried seafood and piadina, and pine forest backs the whole strip. Divers head out to the Paguro, a collapsed gas platform roughly 19 km (12 mi) offshore that is now a protected artificial reef.
16. Mirabilandia and Mirabeach
Mirabilandia calls itself Italy’s largest theme park and sits just outside Ravenna, with six themed areas: Nickelodeon Land, Route 66, Far West Valley, Ducati World, Dinoland and Adventureland. The park runs a seasonal calendar, closes over winter and puts on a Halloween programme with evening openings in autumn.
Mirabeach is a separate water park on the same site and needs its own ticket. It opened for the 2026 season on 13 June, so a spring visit to Mirabilandia does not include it.
17. Eat a piadina
A piadina is the thing to eat in Ravenna, and it belongs to Romagna rather than to tourism. The dough is unleavened, cooked flat on a hot plate and folded around a filling, and the two classic ones are squacquerone cheese with rocket and plain prosciutto crudo. Kiosks and counters selling them are scattered across the centre, a filled one costs a few euro, and it is the cheapest lunch in a city where the monuments do the spending.
How to get to Ravenna
Ravenna is easiest by train, and the station sits about a 10-minute walk from Piazza del Popolo. Regional services run from Bologna, Ferrara and Rimini, and Bologna is the usual connection if you are coming from Florence, Milan or Venice. Ticket machines at small Italian stations are unreliable and the ticket window often has a queue, so buying before you travel saves the stress. I used Omio when I was in Italy because it puts trains from the different operators and the long-distance buses on one screen.
Driving needs more thought than the distance suggests. The historic centre is a ZTL, a limited traffic zone with camera enforcement, so you park outside it and walk in, and the fine arrives by post months later if you get it wrong. A car does earn its keep for Sant’Apollinare in Classe, the Mausoleum of Theodoric, Mirabilandia and the beach, and comparing rates across suppliers on DiscoverCars before you land is cheaper than booking at the airport desk.
Inside the city you will not need transport at all. Five of the eight monuments, Dante’s tomb and both museums sit in a centre you can cross on foot in about 20 minutes, and the only journeys worth a bus are Classe, the Mausoleum of Theodoric and the coast. Want more of the region? These day trips from Bologna cover the rest of Emilia-Romagna.
Ravenna FAQ
How many UNESCO sites are there in Ravenna?
Ravenna has eight UNESCO World Heritage monuments, inscribed together in 1996 as the Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna. They are San Vitale, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the Neonian Baptistery, the Archiepiscopal Chapel, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, the Arian Baptistery, the Mausoleum of Theodoric and Sant’Apollinare in Classe.
Does one ticket cover all the Ravenna mosaics?
No single ticket covers all eight monuments. The diocesan combined ticket covers up to five of them, and the Arian Baptistery, the Mausoleum of Theodoric and Sant’Apollinare in Classe are sold separately by Fondazione RavennAntica, either singly or on a €14 (about $16, £12) state combined ticket.
How long is the Ravenna combined ticket valid?
Every tier of the diocesan combined ticket is valid for 7 days and allows one entry per monument. The 2-monument tier asks you to name your visit day when you buy, and the 4- and 5-monument tiers require a booked entry time for the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the Neonian Baptistery and the Archiepiscopal Museum.
Is Ravenna worth a day trip?
Ravenna is worth a day trip if mosaics interest you at all, because the centre is small enough to take in five UNESCO monuments on foot in a morning. Add Sant’Apollinare in Classe in the afternoon and you have seen six of the eight without hurrying. Families usually split the day differently and give the second half to Mirabilandia or the beach at Marina di Ravenna.
WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips
Five details decide how well a day in Ravenna goes, and all five are easy to miss.
- Book the timed slots before you travel. The Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the Neonian Baptistery and the Archiepiscopal Museum only admit you at a booked time, and you get 5 minutes inside the first two. Turning up without a slot on a summer morning means waiting for a gap.
- Do not visit San Vitale between 10am and 12pm. From Easter until the first Sunday in November Mass is celebrated there, and tourist visits stop for those two hours.
- Go on the first Sunday of the month if your dates are flexible. The Mausoleum of Theodoric, the Arian Baptistery, Sant’Apollinare in Classe and the National Museum are all free that day, which is €22 of tickets for nothing.
- Check the National Museum’s split hours before you walk over. It opens mornings on Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, afternoons only on Thursday and Friday, and not at all on Monday.
- Put the camera away at the Archiepiscopal Museum. Photography is allowed at San Vitale, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo and the Neonian Baptistery, flash is banned at Galla Placidia, and no photography of any kind is permitted in the Archiepiscopal Museum.
About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the first-hand notes in this post come from a day trip to Ravenna made while travelling in Emilia-Romagna by train. The team covers Italy for independent travellers, including the guided tours, rail tickets and car hire worth booking around Ravenna’s mosaics, and updates this page when prices, opening hours and ticket rules change.
