Istanbul, Ravenna & Venice: The Byzantine Legacy

Written and with photographs by Dr Kathleen Olive

In this photo-essay, Kathleen reflects on her recent impressions of leading our Istanbul, Ravenna and Venice tour. This residential-style itinerary focuses on the glittering achievements of the Byzantine Empire in the Middle Ages, from capitals at Constantinople/Istanbul and Ravenna, to the most spectacular “daughter” of the Empire, Venice.

Piecing together the puzzle

Limelight Arts Travel’s tour to Istanbul, Ravenna and Venice brings together a number of elements that I love: a residential-style tour is always fun to lead, for example, because you can avoid the worst of the crowds, settle in without constant packing and unpacking, and really get a sense of what makes a place tick. When you’re in a cosmopolitan capital like Istanbul or – the world’s most romantic city – Venice, it’s a particular joy to dive beneath the surface.

I also love an itinerary that follows a strong theme: as a tour leader, it means you’re with a group that shares your close interests. On this occasion, we were looking at the mosaics, frescoes, architecture, sculpture and culture of arguably the most sophisticated power in the Middle Ages, the Byzantine Empire. Given that its best-preserved artefacts are located in precisely these three places, there was a lot of grist for our mill.

And there were some very special experiences in store too, including a private after-hours visit exclusive to our group at both Istanbul’s Archaeological Museum and St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, as well as stand-out meals inside Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar and on Venetian Torcello. Throw in a private cruise up the Bosphorus and some very friendly felines in Istanbul, and this crazy cat lady was in seventh heaven!

The rise of Constantinople

We started in Istanbul, together with our passionate and knowledgeable local guide Bülent, by uncovering the city’s meteoric rise after Constantine the Great established a capital there. This included visits to the Basilica Cisterns – I could hear the theme music to From Russia With Love in my head! – and the Hippodrome, the latter the scene of Emperor Justinian’s risky triumph in the Nike Revolt and the original location for significant war loot, such as Venice’s proud bronze horses. Those of us who had visited Hagia Sophia (with its distinctive green carpets, above) before its 2020 retransformation into a mosque had an even better opportunity to meditate on the impact of this one building: church, mosque, museum, and now a hybrid of the latter two.

A personal highlight for me was our visit to a small but elegant mosque, constructed by Justinian as a church dedicated to Saints Sergius and Bacchus. Its finely drilled capitals and architraves (above), still with a dedicatory inscription to Justinian and his wife Theodora, offer an impression in miniature of how Hagia Sophia was itself constructed. And as it’s exactly coeval with that other great church of Justinian and Theodora’s reign, San Vitale in Ravenna, it was fascinating to be able to make the comparisons in person.

There’s nothing like an attendant opening a museum just for you: there were many spine-tingling moments for me on our private after-hours visit of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, but coming face-to-face with a giant head of the poet Sappho (above) and extensive collections of ancient jewellery would be at the top of my list.

Constantinople in the Middle Ages: Rome’s legacy preserved by Byzantium

I think many of us too easily associate the Byzantine Empire, with its capital in Constantinople, with complicated or torturous affairs, thanks to the modern usage of the word “byzantine”. In reality, this political system, and the culture that it fostered, was the direct heir of the Roman Empire and for one thousand years was responsible, together with various Arab cultures, for the preservation of much of Rome’s systems, technologies, learning and aesthetics. This was particularly the case in the Middle Ages, when Constantinople was by far the largest city of Christendom, and the style-setter for Western Europe’s tastes in everything from luxury fabrics to sumptuous mosaic decoration and eating with forks!

At the newly-restored St Saviour in Chora, now both mosque and museum, we had the opportunity to admire complete cycles of mosaics and fresco (above) that are exactly contemporary with Giotto’s work in Padua’s Scrovegni Chapel. I thought of my late colleague, Robert Veel, when reminded of Venice’s participation in the Fourth Crusade, and the impact of its war booty back in the lagoon city – we always sent one another a photo of Enrico Dandolo’s grave if we visited Hagia Sophia. This venerable Venetian doge, who led the maritime assault on Constantinople in 1204, was buried inside the very church so looted and desecrated by Crusaders during the ignominious Sack of Constantinople.

It’s hard not to reflect on the ways that the Fourth Crusade weakened Constantinople, and consequently the Byzantine Empire, for good. In 1453 the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, ushering in a period of reorganisation but also renewal, as is clear in the limpid Iznik tiles of Istanbul’s Rustem Paşa Mosque (above) and in the textile collection of the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum. A few of us went on a mission to the Grand Bazaar to find robes as beautiful as those in that collection (above), but I had to settle for a pair of embroidered slippers.

On to Ravenna and the Venetian Lagoon

Thanks to direct flights with Turkish Airlines, we bid farewell to Bülent and our week in Istanbul and travelled to Ravenna via Marco Polo airport. There was a brief stop en route at Pomposa Abbey, an important Benedictine complex in northern Italy, where monk Guido d’Arezzo is said to have ‘invented’ modern Western musical notation ca 1025! Again, its frescoes and opus tessellatum mosaic floors (above) are roughly contemporary with both St Saviour in Chora and Giotto’s work in the Scrovegni Chapel, as we discovered when we had this splendid church entirely to ourselves.

On to Ravenna, at various times an administrative capital for the Romans, Ostrogoths, Byzantines and Lombards. The silting-up of its canals – as Ravenna was also once a lagoon city – and the rise of nearby Venice led to a decline for Ravenna from the Middle Ages… but in some ways, that’s to modern visitors’ advantage, as churches such as San Vitale, the Orthodox Baptistery (both above) and the jewel-like Mausoleum of Galla Placidia are all exceptionally well-preserved. Byzantine mosaics, stuccoes, marble flooring and architecture are all on view at Ravenna, along with the tomb of none other than Dante and a fantastic gastronomic scene. A day trip is not enough to appreciate these riches, but two nights showed us the wealth of Byzantium here.

We travel to Venice via Padua, in order to admire Giotto’s most complete fresco cycle in the Scrovegni Chapel. Once we arrive in Venice, we begin with a survey of Byzantine influences in the far north of the lagoon. For a variety of reasons, Venice’s earliest ties were to Constantinople in the East, rather than to Rome in the West, so we headed out to Torcello to visit its magnificent churches (and to enjoy a fantastic seafood lunch). As you can see from my photo above, being in Italy always cheers my soul – just don’t remind me that sitting on Attila’s Throne in Torcello, as I am here, is supposed to result in a pregnancy!

A wealth of art and architecture in Venice

It’s impossible to avoid the debate about Venice as one of the world’s over-touristed destinations. But if you take the time to unpack your bags, as our group did for a week, you can certainly avoid the pitfalls of ill-considered tourism – and you’ll receive a warm welcome from locals who appreciate your love of their extraordinary city. Venice is so much more than a traveller’s Disneyland, given its thousand-year history as a powerful maritime empire!

We began with a guided visit of the Palazzo Ducale (its gilded and painted rooms above), a perfect opportunity to understand how Venice’s political system was inspired by that of the Byzantine Empire, as well as a place to admire paintings by Carpaccio, Veronese, Tintoretto et al. We would meet all of these great artists again at the Gallerie dell’Accademia. Venetian architecture reaches a pinnacle, at least in my opinion, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as you can see in the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli (its interior enlightened by luminous marbles above) or at the Scuola Grande di San Marco, now Venice’s hospital and with a facade of polychrome fantasy in white, grey, yellow, red and green marbles (above).

The Venetian Empire was a cosmopolitan place, hosting diplomats, merchants and visitors from the Middle East, Ottoman Empire and all of Europe. Medieval Venetians had regular contact with all and sundry, including Greeks, Jews, Dalmatians and Armenians, as we learned on guided walking tours focused on these communities. The modern Jewish and Armenian communities, while diminished in number in respect to the Middle Ages, are still an important presence, as we discovered on our guided visit of the Armenian monastery island of San Lazzaro (above).

Moments of personal reflection
One of the privileges of leading a tour is the opportunity for personal moments of beauty and delight. I love the dawn call to prayer when I’m in Istanbul, but likewise the organised chaos of a surprisingly tidy metropolis, such as the proliferation of traders, shoppers and cats in the Spice Bazaar, as seen from the Rustem Paşa Mosque in the video above.

I always get a kick out of arriving in Venice by water taxi – Thomas Mann famously said that coming to Venice by train, admittedly my usual private mode of transport, is like arriving through the back door – but when I’m with a group, there is nothing that can equal a private after-hours visit of St Mark’s Basilica. You’re ushered in, wondering how you’re going to admire the 8,000 square metres of mosaic in the gloom but, after you’re invited to sit, the lights are slowly turned up on what must be the crowning artistic achievement of La Serenissima’s proud history.

I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of introducing this year’s group of Limelight Arts Travellers to Istanbul, Ravenna and Venice, and to drawing out the myriad connections between these key Byzantine capitals of culture. It was a tough call to pass this tour on to art historian Dr Louise Marshall to lead for us in October 2025, but I look forward to hearing from her about her own tour highlights, as well as those of the fortunate participants who will benefit from her enthusiasm and expertise.