Basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo

We walked through the Piazza Populi to visit the Church of St. Apollinare, one of the imperial churches of the late Roman Empire. As at the Church of San Vitale, the mosaics here exemplify the finest early Christian iconography in the world. Our guide showed us that the building has required considerable repair over the centuries. She also showed us that an honorific inscription showed the face of the Emperor prior to the one who actually made the endowment. As far as these Christians were concerned, an Emperor was an Emperor, so they used the image of his predecessor. She also showed us several places where a mosaic image was incompletely "erased," leaving evidence of the previous image.Read more