The 10 Best Museums in Province of Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna

Archiepiscopal Museum and the Chapel of St. Andrew The Archbishop's Chapel of St. Andrew is guarded as a gemstone inside the Bishop's Palace. It was the private chapel of the bishops of Ravenna and it was built and decorated with mosaics from 494 till 519. Set up inside the rooms of the Bishop's Palace, the collection of the Archiepiscopal Museum contains epigraphs, the Cathedral treasure, remains of mosaics from the ancient Basilica of Ursus and above all the ivory throne of the bishop Maximian (6th century).

The MIC offers a complete vision of the ceramic cultures belonging to any age and place; pieces from the Far and Middle East, from South America and all Europe allow the visitors to have a unique experience. It was founded in 1908 and now it preserves more than 60.000 ceramics, from antiquity to nowadays, all housed in great and suggestive architectural spaces. Ceramic masterpieces from the Renaissance, works by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Leger, Burri, Fontana and other innumerable examples of excellence, make the MIC a unique museum in the world.

Built in the early 16th century, the cloister of the Abbey of Saint Maria in Porto gets its name from the Loggia del Giardino, better known as the Loggetta Lombardesca, from the Campionese and Lombard workers, operating there under the direction of Tullio Lombardo. The original building underwent changes in its use and function from the period of the Napoleonic suppressions, up until its renovation in the early 1970s. The only things remaining of the original building are the cloister, with original renaissance proportions, the layout of spaces and the elegant loggia with five arches, which has become the monumental emergence and symbol of the entire complex. Currently, the Loggetta Lombardesca is home to the Art Museum of the city of Ravenna, since 2002 the Institution of the Municipality of Ravenna. With the creation of the Institution, the museum (which was already the Municipal Art Gallery) has relaunched its cultural activities. It has combined the already-consolidated activity of preservation and promotion of the patrimony with a well-structured cultural production, by creating the International Mosaic Documentation Centre, and also an exhibition activity, allowing the results of the most advanced scientific research to be divulged. The museum moves in various directions, in order to investigate art workshops, from the wide topics of contemporaneity in a historical perspective, to the frontiers of emerging creativity and from work to promote the patrimony to the recovery of material culture and manufactured articles.