Last summer I was in Ravenna (my grandfather is also from this area) and I could admire the beautiful mosaics. I like mosaics very much, so I want to talk a little about them.

The mosaic is a technique used in the decoration of the surfaces, like floors, walls or vaults, that consists to put near, with a particular drawing, fragments of stone, glassy dough or ceramic. Since the old times the mosaics were used to ornate floors and walls, and also to cover swimming pools and fountains, places where the humidity could damage other forms of art more delicate.

We don’t know with certainty who has invented the mosaic. The ancients Egyptians and Sumerians embellished their buildings with geometric drawings of various colours, but it seems that this art disappeared without further developments.

Minor Asia, Cartagen, Creta, Greece, Sicily, Syria and Spain were all pointed as the mosaic’s land of origin, as well as a writer assumables that "the technique of mosaic had been invented, forgotten and then reinvented on a number of occasions and in different regions of Mediterranean area." The most ancient mosaics, some of which date back from the IX century B.C., were made from pebbles arranged in a way to form simple geometric drawings and the tonality of colours depended of the local material.

In the IV century B.C. the artisans began to cut the little stones in more little pieces.

Few times after the little stones were replaced by little cubes of stone, or tesserae. The tesserae offered a more wide range of colours and their laying was more simple. In the II century d.C., a large use of fragments of coloured glass was done and that made more rich the palette of the mosaicists.

The ellenistic period (300-30 B.C.) saw the production of figure mosaics. The Greek mosaics, enriching more and more the chromatic scale and reducing the dimension of the tesserae until 1 cubic mm, arrived to compete with the great painting, because they succeeded in obtaining tridimensional and perspective effects.

In the IV century the mosaics began to be used in the churches. Often they represented scenes of Bible and were an instrument for instructing the faithfulls. In some places of cult the tesserae cover almost all the walls and the vaults.

These that were defined the "masterpieces of the christian mosaic" could be admired in Ravenna, in the churches of S.Apollinare new, S.Vitale, Mausoleo of Galla Placidio, S.Apollinare in Classe.