reet).

[Illustration: THE CLOISTER OF S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA]

Undoubtedly the greatest monument which the sixteenth century has left
us in Ravenna is the church of S. Maria in Porto. This was built by
the Canons Regular of the Lateran, the most ancient community of
canons still extant, in the year 1553, when for about fifty years they
had been compelled to abandon the church of S. Maria in Porto fuori
outside the city, in the marsh. They not only furnished their new
church, but to a considerable extent built it, out of the materials of
S. Lorenzo in Cesarea, which they thus destroyed.

[Illustration: Colour Plate PORTA SERRATA]

S. Maria in Porto as we see it has suffered from restoration, and the
facade is a work of the eighteenth century, but the church itself
remains a noble sixteenth-century building divided within into three
naves by huge pilasters and columns and covered at the crossing with a
great octagonal cupola. There is, however, little that is very
precious to be seen, a few fine marbles and the beautiful marble
relief of the Madonna in prayer in the transept, called the Madonna
Greca, a Byzantine work probably brought to Ravenna, according to Dr.
Ricci, at the time of the crusades. It was originally in S. Maria in
Porto fuori. The noble choir should also be noticed and the beautiful
ciborio.

Close by the church is the Monastero of the Canons, within which there
remains the lovely cloister which should be compared with those at S.
Vitale and S. Giovanni Evangelista of the same period. This of S.
Maria in Porto, however, is the finest, having doubled storied logge.
Above all the exquisite Loggia del Giardino should not be missed. It
was built in 1508, and looks on to a piece of the sixth-century wall
of Ravenna.

Not far away in the Via Girotto Guaccimanni near the Hotel Byron is
the church of S. Maria delle Croci, founded in the tenth century, but
entirely rebuilt in the sixteenth. The rose in terracotta of the
facade is a work of this time, as is the exquisite baldacchino over
the high altar within, upheld by two pilasters and two columns of
Greek marble. The picture, too, of the Assumption over the altar is by
a master, perhaps Gaspare Sacch' of Imola, of the sixteenth century.
Of the same period is the massive Porta Serrata at the north end of
the Corso Garibaldi.

The best monument of later times left in Ravenna is the fine Palazzo
Rasponi in Via S. Agnese (No. 2) built in or about 1700.