Nel Archbishopric Museum of Ravenna are preserved materials from the ancient Ursine cathedral (4th century), destroyed in the eighteenth century. To the “Lapidary Room,” as the museum was originally called, are aggregated typologically varied materials and from different origins: Roman tombstones of clergy, sculptures and architectural fragments, capitals, mosaics, steles, sarcophagus fronts, a headless porphyry statue depicting a victorious 5th-century emperor.
The museum also houses the very famous Maximian chair, one of the most celebrated ivory works known, created by Byzantine artists of the 6th century. On the first floor, the path is chronologically set between early Christian and Byzantine age collections, starting from the same Farsetti Lapidary Room and adjacent environment, where the organization of materials reproduces the original content but with a chronological distribution of the artifacts. The route now also includes two unpublished eighteenth-century small rooms decorated with fine stuccoes.
Among the exhibited artifacts, of considerable importance, are the marble liturgical calendar, the Ambon of Adeodatus with an inscription from the year 597, coming from the church of Saints John and Paul, the marble chapel of Saints Quiricus and Julietta, from the first half of the 5th century, with bas-reliefs on the four fronts; silk fragments and liturgical vestments and the chasuble of Bishop Angelopte, dating back to the 12th century. The museum route continues in the archbishop’s chapel, also called the Oratory of St. Andrew or of St. Pier Crisologo, erected by the will of Peter II, bishop of Ravenna from 491 to 519. It is preceded by a small arched room with a barrel vault covered by mosaics, as well as the sixteenth-century sail vault; the side lunettes are frescoed by the sixteenth-century Ravenna painter Luca Longhi.
From the oratory, you access the Salustra Tower, probable remains of the homonymous Roman gate of the 1st century AD. Here the chair of Bishop Maximian is kept, a masterpiece of ivory sculpture made by artists of Alexandrian and Byzantine influences.
On the second floor of the palace is the Archbishopric Archive, where about 13,000 parchments dating back to the 7th century are preserved, six papyri, among which the pontifical diploma of Paschal I (819) and a illuminated codex by Giulio Clovio. The rooms also display some works of art, including a ‘Madonna with Child’ by Baldassarre Carrari and the ‘Bust of Cardinal Capponi’ by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
