Arian Baptistery

The Arian Baptistery is a late-antique octagonal brick structure built in Ravenna in the late 5th century under Theoderic the Great, when Arian Christianity — condemned as heresy at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE — served as the official religion of the Ostrogothic court. Its interior dome carries a striking mosaic program: the Baptism of Christ at the center, flanked by the twelve Apostles processing on a gold background, a composition deliberately echoing the older Orthodox Baptistery across the city but rendered with notably less ornamental elaboration. After the Byzantine reconquest of Ravenna in 540 CE, the building was converted to Orthodox use, and its relatively austere decoration is thought to reflect the theological marginalization that followed. Part of the UNESCO World Heritage ensemble of Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna, it is open year-round with seasonal hours and remains one of the few intact monuments to Arian ecclesiastical architecture anywhere in the world.