[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.
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