We booked a private guided tour of Ravenna, arranging everything over email. Responses to our requests were received very promptly and when we arrived by train from Bologna we were met at the railway station by Chiara, who guided us round the UNESCO sites and Ravenna itself. She was so knowledgeable, friendly and engaging that the time flew by. We had plenty of time in each location to take pictures and learned far more from Chiara about the mosaics, buildings and history than we would have done if we had tried to do the same trip on our own with a guidebook. It was an excellent experience and we thoroughly recommend booking Chiara or one of the other Il Papavero guides to anyone else planning a trip to Ravenna.

The tour that I had on Saturday with Silvia was an excellent experience. I found it very educational, interesting and entertaining. Thank you for making it all very very enjoyable.

Ravenna has so much to offer that it is difficult to figure out how to go about it. Without good advice you could miss some great sites. The guide service was excellent: we were taken to the most important sites and given pointers on what to see next and most importantly what restaurants to visit! Our guide Chiara Rubboli was well informed, pleasant, spoke very good English and was very accommodating of our needs.

These are the authorized guides for visiting Ravenna. It's well worth it to hire them since they will give you a better visit to the city's mosaics than you can get from a guidebook. Guides are knowledgeable about the methods for making mosaics, the history of politics and church at the time (5th & 6th century) as well as the symbolism of the figures represented in the mosaics. They offer 3 hour tours for 100 euros and at my request gave me the itinerary in advance so I could visit other, less complicated sites, on my own. Together we saw the Galla Placidia, San Vitale and St. Appollinaire Nuovo, plus Dante's tomb (about which there's an interesting story) and finally we visited a mosaic studio (definitely not any sales pitch, professionals who were producing major pieces of art) where we briefly watched an artisan cutting the glass using the ancient methods. They will do tour in any language that suits your group. My fabulous guide was Manuela. Book through their website. I came from Bologna for the day on the very slow milk train--1-1/2 hours each way. These mosaics are not to be missed. The best preserved from this era. And if you have extra time Ravenna is a great small city for people watching and shopping. You can get almost everywhere on foot or bike. It's definitely a cycling town and you can rent near the train station. Besides the fee for the guide you need to buy the 9.5 euro combo ticket that gets you into 5 sites.