Short stop in Padua or stretch to Ravenna?

As you've seen, trains to Ravenna are almost 4 hours with a change in the huge Bologna station, train to Padua is less than half an hour. Seems to me like you'd want to save Ravenna for another Italy trip. Where does you tour leave you? Maybe Ravenna could be at the end of you trip if, say, your tour ends in Bologna. Make your buffer time after landing be just in Venice airport hotel IF needed, Padua if everything goes well and you don't need the buffer.

The Scrovegni chapel is my favorite painting in the whole world, so that may be biasing my recommendation! Easy to stay near the Padua train station and walk to the chapel!

I did a daytrip to Ravenna from Bologna and an overnight in Padua last October. I found both very worthwhile despite my limited time.
Which appeals to you more -- the mosaics in Ravenna churches or Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua? Both were truly amazing for me so I would be hard pressed to choose.

For your Padua option, the RS tour book has a self guided walking tour that should be fine for sleepy sightseeing. It is not very long or extensive and it gives you an overview. Then, reserve Scrovegni Chapel tickets for day 2 (assuming that interests you). You would still have time for some additional sightseeing.

I think your Ravenna option would also work fine. You could visit most if not all of the churches with mosaics on Day 2 with a little time on day 3 if you want a slower pace. However, I would definitely reserve the 5 site combo ticket for the Ravenna mosaics in advance. If any parts of the combo are booked up and not available, that is probably a sign of a cruise ship crowd day and then you might choose Padua instead. I was fortunate to have a very uncrowded day with no waits or time limits at any of the sites. But the day before and the day after I was there, the sites were much more booked. Some other tourists I met who had spread their visitsover 2 days were advised at a ticket office to try to see everything that day because the next day would be mobbed.

We’re planning the Venice to Ravenna trip; of course, for the magnificent mosaics. I found the train journey is 2hr 22 min - with one change in Ferrara. Using the Trenìt! App. Have used the app several times with past travels.

If you go to Padua you could also visit Vicenza. The Chapel in Padua is great but I prefer Vicenza. Ravenna.... a favorite of mine... been a dozen times at least. The mosaics are great of course in the churches but I really like the museum and the old roman house museum also. Streets are so fun to walk around

Venice airport code is VCE

If you go to Ravenna (that would be my choice)
Change trains in Ferrara not Bologna
It’s quicker and a much easier station to travel through

OK, changing my vote if you can get the fast train that changes in Ferrara! I did not see that one. Because it's so much quicker and easier than the Bologna change and you are more interested in Ravenna!

Just a few details: If you are going to take the train to either destination, remember that the train does not go to the Venice airport so you will need transportation to the rail station at Mestre. There is a bus.

If you are going to Padua (Padova), there is the option of catching the train at Mestre, but there is also a bus that goes from the airport to Padua.

I’ve stayed in all of the cities you’ve mentioned. If Ravenna is important to you (and I love Ravenna), I would suggest taking the train to Ferrara upon your arrival. Take the direct train there - about an hour. There’s a castle in the center of Ferrara, and a nice piazza so you can walk off some of your jet lag in Ferrara and enjoy the city.

Take the earliest train to Ravenna the next morning. Usually I wake up early anyway because of the time difference. But this will give you the chance to go into the Basilica of San Vitale, first, before it’s crowded with people. I did this exact plan with my daughter in 2022, and what is usually a busy site was such a serene experience for 15 minutes until others began to come. (I’ve been there twice.). Then go see the other sites with mosaics on the ticket that you have purchased on-line ahead of time.

Enjoy the rest of the afternoon at Ravenna, or take the train back earlier to Ferrara, and you could go to their wonderful museum of items uncovered from Spina. Spend the night in Ferrara, and you’re just a quick 1-hour train back to Venezia S. Lucia train station. Depending on how early you get up, you could just take the early train back, arriving at 6:20 or 7:20am. And I would ask the tour ahead of time if they are willing to meet you at the train station vs. the airport which isn’t as handy.

Thanks for all of these responses! A few additional details... The tour ends in Ljubljana and I intend to spend a day then fly home from there.

Another forum thread had a link to a Ravenna cruise schedule and it looks like my Day 2 would feature a cruise departing at 6pm with 2850 passengers and my Day 3 with a stop for 2500 passengers. This makes me realize that I don't have a sense of whether this is a lot of people... but I've definitely read that people departing on a cruise are less likely to do sightseeing stops, so it may be okay.

Also the Ravenna combo ticket (and, for the record, the Scrovegni chapel too) only currently offer tickets through August, which means that I'll have to commit to a flight itinerary before being able to use ticket availability to suss out crowds (good idea, though, CD in DC!).

The question about whether I prefer mosaics or frescoes was apt... I've been wanting to see the mosaics since I was a student and I doubt I'll find myself closer to Ravenna than Venice. I'm thinking I could buy plane tickets and plan for Option 2, and then if it turns out not to work, I could do Padua + one of the others like Vicenza or Ferrara.

What if you flew into Bologna instead of into Venice? Then Ravenna is only an hour away.

I have no experience with places where cruise ships land (except Venice), but my experience with everywhere in Italy that is heavily touristed is that sites don't start to heave with crowds until 10:00am. In Sicily in March, we saw the mosaics in Monreale, in the Palazzo dei Normanni in Palermo, and at the Villa Romana, and in all cases, the first hour or so the sites opened was not busy at all. You could prioritize which sites in Ravenna you visit first by how popular they are or by how much you want to see particular mosaics. And you know what? Even when really crowded, you can see see them --- we stayed in all three places in Sicily until well after they were stuffed to the gills. Worth it.

It doesn't look like I can fly to Bologna easily from the US, but thank you for the reminder that there are limits to how far I should go to avoid crowds or other people! I'm currently working on a version of my Ravenna plan.

I've been lucky on my two visits to Ravenna (2015 and 2022) not to encounter crowds anywhere, but I'm sure only a few of the mosaic sites are busy even on the busiest days. Ravenna has about 2 days' worth of sights, most of them mosaic-related, so there's lots to enjoy there.

I would stop in both Ravenna and Padua. In your option 2, either take the evening train from Ravenna and sleep in Padua on the second night, or if you mainly want to see the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, you can also simply stop over for a couple of hours en route back to Venice on Day 3. The Scrovegni Chapel is open most evenings in October, so getting a time slot should not be too difficult. (However, European school holidays in October could unexpectedly cause crowds in some places, so book as soon as you have dates.)

In Ravenna, the top sightsare open 9:00 to 19:00. The only two sites requiring time-slot reservations are the Mausoleum of Galla Placida and the Neonian Baptistry -- for the other sites, you only need to specify the day of the visit. I would try to book the Mausoleum first thing in the morning and the baptistery late afternoon (or even for the evening before).

Tour groups are a pain but they tend to move on fairly quickly. Some of the guides are worth listening to, so try and think of it as a free tour. For the mosaics you have to look up anyway, groups can't really block them.