When it was built, in 2004, I was still living in Marina di Ravenna and I was an eighteen-years-old girl waiting for her driving license, so my transfers were still quite limited to the coast and the old town. I remember the first time I saw it I thought: "From where does that come??"
Yes, because Ardea Purpurea can't leave you emotionless. If you get to this part of the city just outside the ancient walls it will catch your attention for sure.

Ardea Purpurea is beautiful. Slender, light and harmonious, it is the monumental fountain created by the  master Marco Bravura, a well-knownd mosaicist of Ravenna.
Ardea Purpurea is not only a tribute to the art of mosic ancient and modern at the same time, but also a symbol of rebirth and evolution.
What I love about this work is above all the way it brings the mosaic outside the churches, in the streets, into everyday life, in the midst of people. As Bravura sais: "We must abandon the idea that art should last forever: a sort of  "consumerism " is needed. Artworks are enhanced by including them within the city, along the streets, at the entrances of the city ​​itself: so you realize that you are in the city of mosaics ".

The basic idea  of this artwork was born several years earlier, in 1999, thanks to Ravenna Festival that promoted during the event The Roads of Friendship the realization in Beirut of a fountain similar to the one you see in Ravenna.
The fountain was then duplicated in July 2004 to enhance with its beauty the mosaic symbol of our city.

Ardea Purpurea is one of the names given to Arabah phoenix rising from its ashes. It was a symbol of hope for the Beirut trying to recover from the war, and even here in Ravenna, located in Piazza della Resistenza (Resistance Square), carries symbols of rebirth, hope and integration.
We are many pieces of a mosaic, all of us, each one with its own story, customs, ethnic group.
The mosaic, in which material shatters and comes together in a continuous search for harmony, is the perfect technique to fill sculpture with colour and, at the same time, communicate concepts that go beyond the artistic beauty.
The shape of the fountain, upright, dynamic, can communicate evolution, rebirth, and whatever each person wants to see: are those the wings of the phoenix that unfold in flight? a DNA chain? Or maybe a burning flame?