The Domus dei Tappeti di Pietra is one of the most important Italian archaeological sites discovered in recent decades. Inaugurated by the President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in October 2002, it was awarded the Bell’Italia 2004 Prize and the Francovich 2017 Prize. Of the complex stratigraphic situation of the Domus, the part relating to the splendid floors of a small Byzantine palace from the fifth-sixth century A.D. has been brought to light and enhanced, the only case in Ravenna of a building for private use at that time.
To admire the Tappeti di Pietra (Stone Carpets), as Federico Zeri happily called them, you have to cross the small eighteenth-century church of Santa Eufemia, which is the entrance to the Domus, and go down into a modern underground room, situated three metres below street level, which preserves over four hundred square metres of polychrome mosaics and marble. Inside you can admire the vast and splendid floors decorated with geometric, floral and figurative mosaic elements that are considered unique, as in the case of the Dance of the Genies of the Seasons – a very rare representation that shows the genies dancing in a circle to the sound of a syringe – or as for the figure of the Good Shepherd, in a different version from the usual Christian representation.
