Ravenna is a city of art and culture, of mosaics, and ancient city which 1,500 years ago was capital three times: of the western Roman Empire, of Theodore King of the Goths, of the Byzantine Empire in Europe. The magnificence of that period has left Ravenna with a great heritage of monuments, religious buildings decorated with mosaics, which have been declared patrimony of humanity by UNESCO. The art of mosaics was not born in Ravenna but it did find its greatest level of expression here where Christian iconology was born, a mixture of symbolism and realism, of Roman and Byzantine influence. Here a Latin hexameter on the walls of the Archbishop's chapel reads: Aut lux hic nata est aut capta hic libera regnat… in other words "Or light born here or imprisoned here, reigns free".

The beauty of the mosaics and harmony of the architecture are not the only features. In Ravenna you can stroll among bell-towers and monastic cloisters, the frescoes in Giotto style of Santa Chiara to the baroque apse of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Ravenna is roman, gothic, Byzantine and also medieval, Venetian and finally modern and contemporary, civilized and hospitable, full of events and shows of international prestige.

The first urban settlement, which was later to become the city of Ravenna, rose on a group of small islands, lapped by the sea, surrounded by marshes and to the northeast and to the south connected to a string of sand dunes. With the passing of the centuries the continuous formation of alluvial deposit brought down by various branches of the River Po produced a new arc of dunes, which marked the outer limit of the beach. There are many legends concerning the origin of Ravenna but very little certainty: Dionigi D'Alicarnasso mentioned that the city was founded seven generations before the Trojan Wars while according to Strabo it was founded by the Thessalonians and Pliny called it the city of the Sabines. In historical times the Etruscans occupied the city and this can be deduced from the fact that the suffix 'enna' in the name Ravenna seems typically Etruscan. Another proof of the presence of this civilization is the discovery in Ravenna of some objects clearly of Etruscan manufacture such as the votive bronzes and a statuette of a warrior dating perhaps from the end of the 6th century BC bearing an Etruscan inscription and now kept in the Antiquities Museum in Leida, Holland. Historiography insists on the presence of Umbrians who in historical times pushed as far as the River Po.