Tourism and travel guide about destinations, attractions, tips, activities.
July 5th, 2010 traveler
The Mediterranean Sea was the heart of the Old World; the important lands of the early history of civilization were grouped about its richly indented shores, generally decreasing in respect of culture as they receded from it. The northeastern part of the Mediterranean, because of its many islands, having an even greater proportionate coast-line, was the centre of the countries ennobled by Hellenic civilization. Separating and uniting at once, like all the waters of the earth, the Aegean Sea formed the boundary between the two chief races of Greek intellectual life–the Dorians and the Ionians; while it was, at the same time, the favoring medium of exchange for the productions of their genius. European Greece, with its predominating Doric population, and the almost exclusively Ionic coasts of Asia Minor, equally looked upon this sea as their own, traversing it with thousands of ships, and gaining more from the trackless waters before them than from the interior lands of the immense continents whose seaboard alone they were content to occupy. In Asia the Greeks were restricted to the countries upon its uttermost western border; in European Greece the development was chiefly directed towards the eastern coast, paying even less attention to their own shores on the Adriatic than to the early colonized ports of Magna – Graecia and Sicily. The Archipelago itself provided convenient strongholds and outposts in every direction. The numerous harbors and anchoring – places of its many islands offered protection against the notorious treachery of the Aegean main–a protection imperatively necessary for the primitive seafarers of antiquity. But, as in the history of all civilization, the currents of Greek intellectual and artistic progress moved distinctly from east to west. The European (Doric) culture was in itself less calculated to influence Asia than the Asiatic (Ionic) to affect the younger continent. It was, as decided by nature, upon European soil, upon Attica–the most advanced promontory of European Greece–that the two branches of the Greek race united, and bore in Athens that double fruit at which we marvel. The Dorians, displaced, in some measure, by the rapid growth of Ionic Asia and Europe, turned still farther westward, and settled upon the shores of Sicily and the Gulf of Tarention, where imposing monuments still attest the extent of their power.
Ionic Order Art Print
Abraham Swan
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The legends of the wanderings of Hellenic tribes, and especially of the so-called Doric migration, were based upon the busy currents of intercourse between Asia and Europe, over seas and straits, and between the European continent and the Morea, the Island of Pelops. The relations and the quarrels of Hellenic and semi-barbaric peoples upon each side of the Aegean are illustrated by the tales of the Argonauts and their voyage, and of the Trojan War, both of which bear the stamp of a certain piratical rivalry. The fatal lack of unity, resulting from the separate development of neighboring districts, could not be more distinctly characterized than by the fact that the Greek races, although they felt themselves divided from other nations — from barbarians — by an impassable gulf, and were aware of their own absolute intellectual superiority, yet lacked any comprehensive designation for themselves: the name Greeks, or Hellenes, is of comparatively recent origin.
Posted in Asia, Athens | No Comments »
June 23rd, 2010 traveler
London Stretched Canvas Print
Laliberte, Andrea
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Vintage Travel Advertisements Stretched Canvas Prints – London Vintage Travel Ad Painting Canvas Print – Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Rain and a Girl with Umbrella in London – Sepia Tones Classic European Travel Advertisement Canvas Art
Posted in London, Vintage Travel Ads | No Comments »
June 21st, 2010 traveler
Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament Art Print
Libra, Pawel
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Black & White Photo of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in London, UK. European Travel Prints – London, United Kingdom BW Travel Photography Art
Posted in Art Print, London, Travel Posters | No Comments »
May 12th, 2009 traveler
The outermost ring of France consists of young Alpine ranges. These are represented by three units, the Pyrenees on the south, and the Alps and Jura on the east. The high mountain meadows of the lofty Pyrenees are used for cattle in summer. On their northern flank and passing over into the Aquitaine Basin, a succession of tremendous alluvial fans forms a foreland which can be regarded as part of the Garonne Basin.
The Alps to the cast of the Rhone show a young rugged topography, while the high parts are covered with glaciers. Here, as elsewhere, several subdivisions stand out. The Massif of the Maures along the coast of the Riviera, belongs geologically with the Pyrenees. The Alpine chains themselves can be divided, as in Switzerland, into the High Alps and the Pre-Alps separated by the longitudinal upper valleys of the Isère and the Durance. Finally, the Jura is an Alpine offshoot, the regular limestone folds of which mark the boundary between France and Switzerland.
Subtropical agriculture is typical of the Riviera, the Mediterranean coast of this Alpine section. Fields of early vegetables, winter flowers for perfumes, and groves of oranges, lemons, and figs reflect the mild winter and warm summers. Olives and grapes invade the mountain valleys. The dry summers, however, are not favorable for cattle, and goats are the most common domestic animals. On the higher slopes the forest prevails. Farther north the use of the land changes. The broad valleys, well protected climatically, are used for grain, especially wheat, while fruit trees grow on the lower slopes. Higher up cattle-raising is the main source of income, a result of lower temperature and more abundant summer rains. In Savoie, the French province south of Lake Geneva, dairying is carried on as intensively as in similar parts of Switzerland. The Jura is also important as a dairy region, but here forests cover a great deal of the ranges and limit the meadows to the valleys and the high summits.
Posted in Europe, france | No Comments »
May 10th, 2009 traveler
The legendary national hero of Switzerland, whose deeds are based on a Teutonic myth of widespread occurrence in northern Europe.
Fable has it that Tell was the champion of the Swiss in the War of Independence against the Emperor Albert I (slain 1308). Tell refused to salute the cap of Gessler, the imperial governor, and for this act of independence was sentenced to shoot with his bow and arrow an apple from the head of his own son. Tell succeeded in this dangerous skill-trial, but in his agitation dropped an arrow from his robe. The governor insolently demanded what the second arrow was for, and Tell fearlessly replied, “To shoot you with, had I failed in the task imposed upon me.” Gessler now ordered him to be carried in chains across the lake and cast into Küssnacht castle, a prey “to the reptiles that lodged there.” He was, however, rescued by the peasantry, and having shot Gessler, freed his country from the Austrian yoke.
This legend is the subject of Lemierre tragedy Guillaume Tell ( 1766), Schiller Wilhelm Tell ( 1804), Knowles’ William Tell ( 1840) and Rossini opera, William Tell ( 1829).
Saxo Grammaticus tells nearly the same story respecting the Danish Toki, who killed Harald, and similar tales are told of the Scandinavian Egil and King Nidung, of Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, William of Cloudesley and Henry IV, Olaf and Eindridi, etc.
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May 10th, 2009 traveler
The Seven Wonders of the World Of Antiquity:
(1) The Pyramids of Egypt.
(2) The Gardens of Semiramis at Babylon.
(3) The statue of Zeus at Olympia, the work of Phidias.
(4) The Temple of Diana at Ephesus.
(5) The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.
(6) The Colossus at Rhodes.
(7) The Pharos of Egypt, the Walls of Babylon or the Palace of Cyrus.
The Seven Wonders of the World Of the Middle Ages:
(1) The Coliseum of Rome.
(2) The Catacombs of Alexandria.
(3) The Great Wall of China.
(4) Stonehenge.
(5) The Leaning Tower of Pisa.
(6) The Porcelain Tower of Nankin.
(7) The Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople.
The palace of the Escurial has sometimes been called the eighth wonder, a name which has also been given to a number of works of great mechanical ingenuity, such as the dome of Chosroes in Madain, St. Peter’s of Rome, the Menai suspension bridge, the Eddystone lighthouse, the Suez Canal, the railway over Mont Cenis, the Atlantic cable, etc.
Posted in Africa, Asia, Egypt and Pyramides, Europe, Italy, Middle East, Rome | No Comments »
May 10th, 2009 traveler
Stonehenge
The great prehistoric (Neolithic or early Bronze Age) monument on Salisbury Plain, originally consisting of two concentric circles of upright stones, enclosing two rows of smaller stones, and a central block of blue marble, 18 feet by 4 feet, known as the Altar Stone. Many theories as to its original purpose and original builders have been propounded. It was probably used, if not built by the Druids, and from its plotting, which, it is certain, had an astronomical basis, it is thought to have been the temple of a sun god and to have been built about 1680 B. C.
The -henge of the name seems to refer to something hanging (A.S. hengen) in, or supported in, the air, viz., the huge transverse stones; but Geoffrey of Monmouth connects it with Hengist, and says that Stonehenge was erected by Merlin to perpetuate the treachery of Hengist in falling upon Vortigern and putting him and his 400 attendants to the sword. Aurelius Ambrosius asked Merlin to devise a memento of this event, whereupon the magician transplanted from Killaraus, in Ireland, the “Giant’s Dance,” stones which had been brought thither from Africa by a race of giants and all of which possessed magic properties.
Posted in Europe | No Comments »
May 10th, 2009 traveler
Until the victory of the Left in 1876 the Ministers who governed Italy were almost all Northerners, who considered the Southerners as lively, witty and eloquent beings but politically immature. In truth, the only immaturity was to be found in the heads of the “Piedmontese”, as was said at Naples after 1860, when they sat themselves down to serve out judgments on their brothers of the South. Only Cavour had foreseen the importance of an understanding with the South, but he died too soon.
After 1876 many of the most important Ministers were often from the South, but they belonged to the Left whose habit and rôle had been to criticize, not to govern, and that remained for long the victim of a reverential respect for high functionaries, who were honest but incapable of understanding new problems; people for whom going to the South as prefects or magistrates was worse than a punishment, almost a dishonour. The few Ministers of the Left who took office, like Nicotera, violated the law; and this increased the diffidence of the Direttori generali in regard to them.
For the rest, never in our history has there been a constant passing to and fro between the North and the South, nor do Northerners go to live in the South and vice versa. Only one of our ancient classical writers knew and loved the South: Boccaccio. One of our delights in reading Dante is to discover at every moment a verse which describes with an unforgettable touch the most varied aspects and landscapes of our country; but there is not a single one of the South; for Dante never described what he had not seen.
Petrarch never went to the South, nor Ariosto, Machiavelli nor Manzoni. Leopardi was in Naples, but he was ill; Mazzini was there as a prisoner.
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May 10th, 2009 traveler
Why such a separation? The difference between North and South is not greater in Italy than in France or in the United States; and it is less than in Germany. But in Italy the actual division is perhaps more clear cut; which would explain how the French of Charles VIII could sing: “Nous conquerons les Ralies . . .” But if the division is sharper it has nothing to do with pretended differences of “race”, that is to say, of Greek influences in the South and Germanic or Celtic in the North. The reasons are historical and incidental: namely, that the States of the Church dividing the peninsula in two, separated the Neapolitan Kingdom from the rest of Italy in a more radical way than the division between Piedmont and Lombardy or between Liguria and Tuscany.
The full material reunion of the whole peninsula was the result of the railways. One day, in a dream à la Rousseau, Napoleon imagined that Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia were moved towards the coasts of Latium and Tuscany, swelling out an Italy too elongated for his taste as a collector of cannon-fodder. One of the principal merits of the Liberal governments from 1860 to 1890 was the creation of a vast net of rapid communications from the Cenis to Trapani, and they did this with a series of bridges, galleries and other engineering feats more complicated and costly than in any other country of Europe.
It was probably the long period of the isolation of the “Kingdom ” — as the country from Velletri southward is called — that made of our South an island of philosophers and thinkers, from Giordano Bruno and Campanella to Vico and Benedetto Croce. Among the philosophers of Northern Italy in the first half of the nineteenth century, such as Rosmini or Gioberti, foreign influences are very visible. It is not so in the South, where Benedetto Croce himself has only taken from Hegel a certain amount of material for the elaboration of a new way of thought.
Those who, half astonished and half disgusted, are saddened by the haughty attitude that certain Northerners assume towards the Southerners, ought to feel rather pity than anger. It is everywhere thus; a stupid industrial of Flanders thinks that he is better than the most intelligent Provençal; a merchant of Barcelona laughs at the poetical vein that makes life in Andalusia so charming; a fat Prussian grumbles at the beer-house: “The Bavarians are the link between a man and an Austrian. . . .”
It is for us Italians of the North to remember and to cause to be remembered that it is the South which has given to Italy the purest champions of the things of the mind — to begin with the anatomists of the School of Salerno, who first in Europe braved the fury of the ignorant by going in the darkness of the night to the cemetery to steal the corpses by which they might learn the secrets of life; that it is the South which has given us the earliest and most devoted martyrs of our Risorgimento, among them those who were hanged under the Republic of 1799; that from their ashes arose, as avengers, the Spaventa, the Settembrini, the De Sanctis and all the rest. For my part, if it were not that my stay between Bari, Salerno and Naples was made longer by a far too slow military tactic for which Italy had to pay with cities destroyed, due to the blindness and fixed ideas of certain foreign governments, I could bless heaven that I remained for two years in the midst of a civilization far more refined than our own. I do not believe that there was in any other spot in Italy a refuge like that of my house at San Pasquale a Chiaia, a refuge from which, through idleness, I did not descend into the shelters even during the most violent bombardment, but in which I had to pass a night in which I had the responsibility of the life of Croce, for two days my guest at Naples; we went down, the shelter was full of people — doctors, professors, lawyers, the typical Neapolitan middle classes — and Croce began to tell anecdotes of the time of Ferdinand II and then to discourse on Belli and Porta, of whom his hearers knew little; and when the alert ceased, all said: “What a pity ! Let us hope for tomorrow evening. . . .”
Posted in Europe, Italy | No Comments »
