8968
💬🌳🏛🖼️📜 Quotes, nature, architecture, art and history about our homeland, Europe.
Austrian National Library (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek), State Hall
Читать полностью…
The Roman Tower of Centum Cellas, Belmonte, Portugal.
Located in the municipality of Colmeal da Torre in Portugal, is one of the most enigmatic monuments from the Roman period to be found in the country. These majestic ruins were part of a large Roman villa from the first century AD, situated on the road that linked Augusta Emerita (Mérida) to Bracara Augusta (Braga).
This rectangular building, made of pink granite blocks, appears to have had three levels with openings of various dimensions. It was thought that it was once a temple, a prison with a hundred cells (hence the name), or possibly a praetorium (the headquarters of a Roman camp), and a building part of Roman villa.
The tower appears to be the best-preserved part of what was the villa of Lucius Caecilius (according to a dedicatory altar found on the site), a wealthy Roman citizen and tin trader who built his villa here at the beginning of the first century AD, under the supervision of a qualified architect who knew Vitruvius‘ building techniques.
Reinheimen National Park, Norway
The Reinheimen National Park is in the next largest area lacking major infrastructure in southern Norway, and wilderness best characterises this very varied mountain area. The highest mountains in the park tower more than 2000 m above sea level, while the lowest point in the protected area, at the foot of Trollveggen, is about 130 m a. s.l.
Much of the original alpine ecosystem, including wild reindeer, wolverines, golden eagles, gyr falcons and ptarmigans, is still intact. Reinheimen has numerous cultural heritage traces from the former hunting of wild reindeer, including pitfalls, mass trapping systems, bowman’s hides and habitations where the hunters lived.
"Blind Man’s Bluff (Blíndekuh)". Adolph Menzel
Читать полностью…
Uniform and Sword of General Jacques-Zacharie Destaing of the French Army dated between 1801-1802 on display at the Musée de l'Armée in Paris
Destaing spent his early army career fighting in Europe first in the National Guard in Aurillac, Auvergne (1789) and then going on to fight in Spain and Italy (1793-96). But it was when he joined the Army of the Orient in 1798 led by the Consul Napoleon Bonaparte to fight the Mamluks in Egypt.
It was during this campaign he led soldiers in the Battle of the Pyramids where the the French Republic destroyed the Mamluk and the Ottoman armies. On the battlefield he was promoted to General of Brigade by the First Consul Napoleon himself.
“Most people would rather die than think and many of them do!”
— Bertrand Russell
"The shepherdess" — Edward Frederick Brewtnall (1846-1902)
Читать полностью…
The Moszna Castle, located in the small village of Moszna, Poland
Читать полностью…
“Those who do not look upon themselves as a link, connecting the past with the future, do not perform their duty to the world.”
— Daniel Webster
A marble Roman toilet decorated with a cart wheel 211-224 AD
Perhaps one of a set, each painted in the colour of a Faction (team). Pavonazzetto marble, from the baths of Caracalla, Rome.
📸 British Museum
The corpses of King Charles I and his heir after the Lisbon Regicide, Portugal, 1908
Читать полностью…
A gold hairnet, Greece, 3rd century BCE. In the centre is a relief of Artemis.
📸 National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Balilla (boys) and Piccole Italiane (girls) of the youth italian organization "Opera Nazionale Balilla" (ONB), 1926-1938.
Читать полностью…
"Three suits of armor and two helmets". Adolph Menzel. 1866.
Читать полностью…
Vessel shaped like a Polish Eagle from tableware of King John II Casimir.
Made by Heinrich Mannlich in Augsburg c. 1666. Now in Wawel Royal Castle, Kraków.
Artemis Brauronia. Marble relief
350 B.C.
A family of worshippers has just reached the sanctuary to sacrifice a goat to Artemis. The goddess with her favorite deer, is seated on a rock wearing a long chiton and sandals. A servant is bearing a box on her head.
"The apple tree, as far as I know, does not despise the vine, nor the palm the cedar. Everyone clings to the strongest, but does not confuse their roots. And thus it saves its form and its essence since it is a question of an invaluable capital which must not be bastardised."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Advertising card from about 1899-1903 depicting elephants of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, called by the Tarentins to help fighting against the Romans.
Pyrrhus landed in southern Italy in 281 BC with a large Hellenistic army. For the Romans, their ensuing fight with Pyrrhus would be the first time they had ever faced elefants, these unpredictable tanks of ancient warfare on the battlefield.
Following his first victories against the romans (in Heraclea and Ausculum), Pyrrhus found himself without many of the key officers and soldiers who had ventured with him from Epirus barely two years earlier – men whose quality could not be matched by his allies in southern Italy. When Pyrrhus’s comrades congratulated him on his victory, the Epirote king sombrely replied: “Another such victory and we shall be utterly ruined.”
Thus originated the term “Pyrrhic victory”, a victory won, but at a crippling price.
"After First Communion", Carl Frithjof Smith (Norwegian), 1892
Читать полностью…
Etruscan Faliscan Commanders Crested Helmet 8th century BCE.
📸 The Penn Museum
Helmet all'Antica, attrobuted to Filippo Negroli. Milan, Italy, ca. 1532-1535
A fabulously embossed parade helmet crowned with a laurel of oak leaves, possibly made for the della Rovere of Urbino.
📸 Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Sham Castle, Bath, Somerset
It is a screen wall with a central pointed arch flanked by two 3-storey circular turrets, which extend sideways to a 2-storey square tower at each end of the wall.
It was probably designed around 1755 by Sanderson Miller and built in 1762 by Richard James, master mason for Ralph Allen, "to improve the prospect" from Allen's town house in Bath.
Other 18th-century so-called "sham castles" exist at Hagley Hall, Clent Grove, Castle Hill, Filleigh and two at Croome Court (Dunstall and Pirton castles).
Beryl intaglio with portrait of Julia Domna, wife of the Emperor Septimius Severus (A.D. 193–211) and mother of Emperor “Caracalla”.
Circa 200 AD. Dimensions: H. 15/16 in. (2.4 cm)
📸 Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Allegory of sadness”, detail of Frederick V's sarcophagus, work by Johannes Wiedewelt (1731-1802), Roskilde Cathedral (Domkirke), 12th-13th century, (UNESCO World Heritage List, 1995), Denmark.
Читать полностью…
"The first boatman", Franz Caucig (Slovene), 1810.
Читать полностью…
Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes, Greece
Originally built on the foundations of the Temple of Sun God (Helios), whose cult was much spread in Rhodes in the antiquity, this palace was the residence of the governor and administrative center in the Medieval times. Constructed in the 14th century by the Knights of Saint John, it distinguishes for the spherical towers and the arched gate.
The palace was enormous in size. It had 158 rooms that have antique furniture of the 16th and the 17th century, exquisite multi-colored marbles, sculptures, carpets, and fine Oriental vases. On the first floor, there are the official rooms as well as the private quarters of the Grand Master. On the ground floor, the auxiliary rooms are found. The most important rooms are the Grand Reception Hall, the Waiting Room, the impressive ballroom and the elegant Music Room, while not to miss is the Medusa Mosaic.