Typical places
Tower of Pisa
The Tower of pisa (better acquaintance as The sloping Tower of Pisa) is the belfry of the cathedral of Pisa. It was constructed so that it was remaining in vertical position but he began to incline as soon as its construction began in August, 1173. The height of the tower is from 55,7 to 55,8 meters from the base, its weight is estimated in 14.700 tons and the inclination of approximately 4 ° spreading 3,9 m of the vertical one. The tower has 8 levels: a base of blind arches with 15 columns, 6 levels with an external colonnade and it finishes off in a belfry. The internal stairs in spiral has 294 steps.
The government of Italy requested help on February 27, 1964 to prepare its destruction, and on January 7, 1990 it was closed to the public like accident control measure. Recently a reconstruction work was realized to try to reduce the inclination angle. It turned to allow the entry to the public on June 16, 2001, after the ending of 10 years of work.
Coliseum of Rome
The Coliseum of Rome (Colosseum in the original Latin; Colosseo in the current Italian) is a big amphitheater of the epoch of the Roman Empire, constructed in the Ist century in the center of the city of Rome. Originally Flavio (Amphitheatrum Flavium) was named an Amphitheater, in honor to the Dynasty emperors’ Flavia who constructed it, and happened to be called Colosseum by a big statue located along with him, the Colossus of Nerón, not preserved at present. For its architectural characteristics, the state of conservation and history, the Coliseum is one of the most famous monuments of the classic antiquity.
In the antiquity it was possessing a capacity for 50.000 spectators, with eighty bleachers lines. Those who were c lose to the sand were the Emperor and the senators, and as it was promoted the low strata of the society were located. In the Coliseum gladiators’ struggles and public spectacles took place. It was constructed just to the east of the Roman Forum, and the works started between 70 A.D. and 72 A.D., under order of the emperor Vespasiano. The amphitheater, which was the biggest never constructed in the Roman Empire, was completed in 80 A.D. by the emperor Tito, and was modified during the reign of Domiciano.
The Coliseum was used for almost 500 years, the last games of the history being celebrated in the VIth century, enough later than the traditional date of the fall of the Roman Empire of Occident in 476 A.D. As well as the gladiators’ fights, many other public spectacles t ook place here, how naumaquias, fighter of animals, executions, recreations of famous battles, and stage plays based on the classic mythology. The building stopped being used for these intentions in the High Middle Age. Later, it was re-used like refuge, factory, head office of a religious order, fortitude and quarry. From its ruins abundant material was extracted for the construction of other buildings, until it was turned into Christian sanctum, in honor to the prisoners martyred during the first years of the Christianity. This measurement helped to stop its pillaging and to try its conservation.
Although the structure is damaged seriously due to the earthquakes and the stonecutters, the Coliseum ha s been always seen like an icon of the Imperial Rome and it is one of the better preserved examples of the Roman architecture. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions of the modern Rome and it is still much tied to the Roman Catholic Church, for what the Pope heads the Way of the Cross up to the amphitheater every Holy Friday.
On July 7, 2007, it was recognized like one of the piece of news seven marvels of the world.
Description
The Amphitheater Flavio is an enormous oval building 189 meters long for 156 wide one, and 48 meters high, with a perimeter of the 524 meters elliptical one. It usually say that this building has been a model for the modern sports enclosures, since it has an ingenious design and effective solutions to current problems.
Gardens of Bomarzo
Bomarzo is a comune (municipality or commune) of the province of Viterbo in the region of Latium, in Italy.
Its current name supposes that it comes from the Polymartium of the Roman age (of uncertain meaning). It was a historical fief of the family Orsini, whose castle is in the rim of the city densely built, until Marzio sold it to the family Lante in 1645.
Altar Pacis
The Altar Pacis (Altar of the Peace) is a commemorative monument of the epoch of the Roman Empire. It is in Rome and it was constructed between 13 and 9 B.C. by decision of the Senate, in thanksgiving by the return of the August emperor after its victorious campaigns in Hispania and Gaul, and the peace that this one had imposed. It is dedicated to the goddess of the Peace and raised in Rome, in the field of Mars, where every year there had to sacrifice themselves a ram and two oxen.
Cathedral Santa Maria Asunta:
The cathedral of Santa Maria Asunta is placed in the city of Ventimiglia, Imperial in Italy. It belongs to the diocese of Ventimiglia-San Remo. Its construction initiated about the year 1100.
According to some historical sources the cathedral was erected between the XIth and XIIth centuries on the ruins of a previous church of the Carolingian epoch. The last one as they affirm the local traditions, was constructed in the place where formerly a pagan temple dedicated to Juno was erected; the inscription in which this tradition is testified survives still today inside the cathedral.
Tito’s arch
Tito’s Arch is an arch of victory, placed in the Sacred Route, I joust to the Southeast of the Forum in Rome. It was constructed shortly after the death of the emperor Tito (born in 41 A.D. and emperor between the 79s and 81s A.D.).
Tito’s arch recalls Tito’s victories over the Jews. The figures that adorn it move between the real thing and the divine thing, melting in the same composition. In one of the represented scenes a personage appears with helmet (the goddess Rome); in another scene there appears a “victory”, which is a being with wings who places the kudos crown to the emperor.
Cá Rezzonico is an ancient palace of the XVIIth century where at present there stay the collections of the called Museum of the Venetian XVIIIth century. It is in the Dorsoduro sestiere.
History as palace
The palace was constructed by Baldassare Longhena in the XVIIth century and some years later it was acquired by the family Rezzonico. In the year 1888 it was acquired by the English poet Robert Browning, who died in the palace one year later.
In this palace wonderful fresh air identical with the roof can be contemplated by Gianbattista Tiépolo, between which he emphasizes the fresh air of wedding Allegory entrusted in the wedding of Lodovico Rezzonico with Faustina Savorgnan in 1758. About 1906 there moved to this palace diverse fresh air of a son of the above mentioned artist, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, proceeding from the familiar town of Zianigo. Also they emphasize the works of art of Pietro Longhi.
History as museum
From the year 1934 diverse and interesting temporary exhibitions are exhibited. In the later years it was rehabilitated and it turned to open the public containing approximately 300 works of art; also it is possible to contemplate a drugstore of the epoch.
Caves of Catulo
The “caves of Catulo” (Grotte di Catullo in Italian) are the ruins of an ancient Roman town. Until the XIXth century, the ruins were covered by many vegetation and that’s why the colonnades were looking alike to caves and they took the name of “Caves of Catulo”, although it was already known that the ruins were of an ancient Roman town. Since it was known that in Sirmione the Latin poet had lived through Key Valerio Catulo, they them named by this poet, who was preserved a lthough, in the XXth century, the archaeologists realized that the town was more recent than the Latin poet. In conclusion, we can say that, in spite of its name, the “caves of Catulo” are not even caves, do not even belong to Catulo. Nevertheless, it is a question of one of the remains of the Antigua Rome more important than the north of Italy, where there can be visited the ruins of the ancient town and the archaeological museum.
Customs or Traditions
The culture of Italy is the set of the cultural events produced in Italian territory. Italy is recognized by its art, its culture and its most numerous monuments, between them the tower of Pisa and the Roman Coliseum; as well as for its gastronomy (famous Italian plates are the pizza and the pasta), its wine, its life style, its painting, its design, movies, theater, literature and music, in particular, the opera.
Art of Italy
Origins of the Italian paintings
The origins of the Roman painting make a mistake with those of its sculpture and of such a way they are in the art Hellenist that even the copies that of her the best preserve, especially, assume today to Greek hand although the school will come finally to romanizarse. The procedures used in this painting should have been the encausto, the tempering and the fresh air. Its genres, the decorative one of chinas and walls and the historical and mythological one in the wall pictures. And although the overdrafts up to the present offer more that real pictorial compositions become the whole decorative character and it is judged by foundation that there were also others from independent painting to resemblance of the current ones of table or of trestle. There were cultivated by the above mentioned wall decorative character the scenery, the caricature, the portrait, the pictures of customs, the architectural imitations and the fantastic combinations of natural objects constituting with the above mentioned the genre that the artists of the Renaissance called grotesque, found in Tito’s ancient Spa and that served to famous Rafael like inspiration source to decorate the Lodges of the Vatican. He emphasized also the pictorial art of the Roman civilization in the procedure of the mosaic, no t limited as till then, to simple pavings decorations but extended to pictures pensiles as it is revealed by some copies that keep in the museums and embracing in one and another case, matters and historical compositions. The miniature on parchment was another genre that was much in vogue between the Roman bibliophiles of the epoch of August, but of her there neither have been discovered nor survive copies previous to the IIIrd century of our age.
Origins of the Italian sculptures
The sculpture in the Antigua Rome, the same as the architecture, it is original in the spirit of its purpose, but in her they weigh very much the Etruscan and Greek formal contributions (helenísticas), being a good part de facto of the Roman sculptural production it copies of Greek originals.
There survive many Roman sculptures done preferably in marble and in less measurement in bronze or other materials (ivory, etc.), although her part is damaged, with broken parts. There are frequent the portrait and the narrative historical relief, in that the Romans were big creators. There are also many sculptures of Roman emperors.
Origins of the Music
Opera
The first work considered an opera, in the sense commonly understood, dates approximately of the year 1597. This was Dafne, (it acts at present eliminated) written by Jacopo Peri for a circle of learned humanists Florentines known as Camerata de Bardi of Dafne it was an attempt for re-living through the classic Greek tragedy, like part of the wide reappearance of the antiquity that it characterized to the Renaissance.
The Neapolitan song
The Neapolitan song is a particular genre of Naples and its region. With roots in the popular music, it knew a big heyday during the XIXth century and good part of the XXth century.
Origins of the architecture
The Roman architecture is probably a significant testimony of the Roman civilization. It is characterized by the grand of the buildings, and its soundness that has allowed many of them to last until our days. The organization of the Roman Empire normalized the constructive skills so that some of others they can see constructions very similar to thousands of kilometers.
Origin of the literature
The Italian literature is all that literature that has been written in the Italian language. The political configuration of Italy and its unification as the only state was in the XIXth century, moment in which the dialect is adopted toscano like official language with the denomination of Italian language; this decision was taken fundamentally owed in the long run literary tradition and to the big figures of the literature that had used the above mentioned language previously. For it, there are considered to be authors in Italian all those that should have used the above mentioned language, independently of that in its epoch Italy already existed like the only independent state with proper official language.
The gastronomy
The gastronomy of Italy is extremely varied: the country was unified in the year 1861, and its kitchens reflect the cultural variety of its regions as well as the diversity of its history. The Italian kitchen is included inside her named gastronomías Mediterranean and is imitated, as well as practised in the whole world. It is very current that knows each other to the gastronomy of Italy for its m ost famous plates that are the pizza and the pasta, but the true thing is that it is a kitchen where there coexist the abundant aromas and the flavors of the Mediterranean one.
The language
The Italian is a Romance language. There exists a big number of regional languages (those of the north belong to a branch different from the tree of the Romance languages) and of dialects of the Italian (that they speak to themselves in the central regions).
The movies.
The history of Italian cinema began only some months after the brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière had discovered the way, when pope Leo XIII was filmed for some seconds while it was blessing the camera.
More well-known persons
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco was born on January 5, 1932 in Alexandria, Italy. He is a famous philosopher and writer. He got doctor’s degree on Philosophy in the University of Turin.
This Italian writer emphasizes for studies of symptomatology and linguistics that he has written 5 novels: The mysterious flame of the Queen Loana (2004) The island of the day of earlier (1994) Baudolino (2000) The pendulum of Foucault (1988) The name of the rose (1980)
