The Seven Wonders of the World Of Antiquity and Middle Ages

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.

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The climate of Italy

The climate of Italy may be described as temperate, as the winter, owing to the low latitude, is not too severe and the summer is not too hot, owing to the wide expanse of sea around. At the same time the several provinces differ greatly in climate, as might be expected in a country extending through ten degrees of latitude, with the high land of the Alps at one end and dry Africa in the neighbourhood of the other. We may divide Italy into four sections in regard to climate: 1st, Upper Italy as far as 45° 30′ N. lat., with a minimum temperature of 14° F., 2nd, Central Italy to 41° 30′, the region of olive, lemon and orange trees, where the winter is seldom severe, though snow falls as a rule on the mountains, with a minimum of 21.2 F., 3rd, Lower Italy to 39° N. lat. where the lowest is 26.6° F., and 4th, Sicily, where the temperature does not fall below the freezing point.

The Apennines have a great influence on the climate, as they keep off the north and north-east winds from the parts of the country lying to the west, so that the Adriatic coasts have more severe winters and hotter summers than the Tyrrhenian. The plain of Lombardy obviously depends on the Alps in regard to its climate, and in the sharper contrast between summer and winter it is stamped with a more continental character than any other part of Italy.

Observations on the temperature, the barometer, the rainfall, and the winds have been taken in various places since the beginning of the nineteenth century, especially at the observatories, but also occasionally by private persons. They were first organized and unified in 1866 when twenty-one stations for weather observations were established and placed in regular telegraphic communication with Florence, the then capital, so that it has become possible to make forecasts of the weather. This central institution was removed to Rome in 1880 after the transference of the capital, and united with the officio centrale mateorologico e geodinamico, the number of stations being at the same time doubled.

Weather, temperature, and rainfall are dependent on the winds. In Italy the north wind coming over the Apennines is called Tramontano. It is a cold wind bringing clear dry weather, but it is not liked in Southern Italy, as the temperature falls and people begin to freeze. Even in Naples thin ice is formed by the Tramontano in clear winter nights. A north-east wind (Greco), the Bora of Dalmatia and Istria, is much dreaded; it frequently covers the Apennines with masses of snow in March or at the end of February, and this snow extends on the western slope of the range to Campania and the environs of Rome. This is unusual, as the Bora usually brings only a cold rain in these districts, and this the Italian of the south designates “neve,” and finds very unpleasant. The east wind is called Levante, and is a warm current. For the south and south-east winds the designation Sirocco is used, to indicate a hot current of air, producing fatigue and sleepiness, which is much dreaded. The sky is cloudy, of a grey or yellow, or even of a red colour, the temperature is high, the force of the wind generally sufficient to raise great waves at sea. On the east coast of Sicily the Sirocco is often accompanied on the north coast by a dampness in the air, without actual rain; it seems hot and dry, and if it succeeds in reaching Naples over the Tyrrhenian Sea comes as a sultry rainy wind, producing high waves on the Gulf, and often bringing violent rain or storms. The Sirocco is a frequent wind, setting in every month in Sicily, and lasting for weeks in October and November, while in the north-east of the Adriatic Sea it often blows for a third of the winter.

The west winds are called Libeccio, and are the prevailing winds in Sicily ( Palermo). A very peculiar phenomenon, perhaps reminding us of the “Sea-bear” of the German coasts, is the Marobbio of Sicily. It is a sudden gust of wind accompanied by an unusually violent disturbance of the sea, disappearing as quickly as it came. This may possibly be connected with local depressions of the atmosphere, which also influence the surface of the sea.

On the Ligurian coast, as in neighbouring Provence, prevails the Mistral (Maestro). This blows from the north or north-west, and is a wind of descent directed upon the Tyrrhenian Sea, which appears with great regularity at a certain time. Its principal haunt is the valley of the Rhone, but it occurs as far as the head of the Gulf of Genoa. The winds of the Lombard Lakes have special names, e.g. on Lago Maggiore the north-west wind is Mergozzo, the south-east Inverna, the east-south-east Marenco. On Lake Como the north is Tivano, the south Breva. These are for the most part mountain currents blowing in the direction of the lakes.

The prevailing directions of the wind in Italy are south in the winter, north in summer, east and west in spring and autumn. Change of wind is dependent on depressions and their displacement, and indeed eddies often occur over Liguria, the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas, either together or close upon one another. Over the plain of Upper Italy runs an atmospheric draught passage for the Atlantic cyclones leading from Brittany over Central France and the Southern Alps, and separating into three parts at the Adriatic, one arm turning south-east along the Apennines. Eight times a year on an average storms traverse this route with a velocity of 250 miles an hour, under a mean barometric pressure of 29.4 inches. The summer is usually free from them. According to the chart of mean atmospheric pressures in the Mediterranean region given by Hann a depression located in the Ligurian Bay in December passes slowly in the spring over Corsica, Sardinia, and the Tyrrhenian Sea in a southeasterly direction towards the North African coast, reaching its maximum in July and August, and then commencing its return.

In general, as is natural, the mean temperature increases from north to south. The sharpest contrasts prevail in the plain of Lombardy, while the islands show a uniform climate. In Milan the average temperature in January is somewhat over 33° F., that of July 75°, about; for Rome the number is 45° and 76°, for Naples 46.8° and 74.9°, for Palermo 51.6° and 76.6°. In Upper Italy the appearance of winter is like that in Central Europe; there is frost every year in Milan, and the snow often remains on the ground for a week or more. In the same way the Apennines of Bologna are covered almost every year with such deep snow that traffic on the railways is often interrupted. On the other hand, the summer is hot in the valley of the Po; the monthly averages for Milan in June, July, and August are nearly the same as those of Palermo, and on the Apennines a frightful drought prevails, so that the rivers are almost entirely dried up.

There and in Southern Italy the tree blossoms are often injured in March by sudden returns of cold, often accompanied by deep falls of snow, and the foreigner who has been enjoying warm or even hot days must take extra precautions against catching cold. In March there is, as a rule, the weather of a German April, sudden alternations of rain and blue sky, and as we call April “fickle,” so the Italians say “Marzo pazzo” (Mad March). April and May are warm, beautiful months in Florence and Rome, further south May is often very hot, and every one in the towns who can do so tries to escape. The heat rises in Rome during July and August to 99° and 100°, as also in Naples, but there the sea always generates a cool and refreshing breeze towards evening. During the hot midday hours all life ceases in the streets and does not re-awaken till the cooling begins, when it goes on till late in the warm night. Radiation of heat follows the intense absorption with some rapidity, and from half an hour to an hour after sunset a feeling of cold is experienced, in spite of the high temperature of the air. This is avoided as much as possible by the inhabitants as threatening infection of fever. Spring in Sicily, where the temperature never sinks below freezing point, begins in February. The average temperature in Palermo for March is about the same as that in Naples for April, and in the hot months, especially July, occur maxima of 104°, with a mean temperature of 77° in July and August, As no rain falls during this time, all vegetation, with the exception of evergreens, dries up, for which reason the harvest takes place in June, and there is no resurrection of the vegetable world till the end of September, after the first rainfall. Malta possesses a very equable climate. Sardinia likewise shows but slight difference between the mean temperatures of summer and winter.

Local conditions often require us to make exceptions from these general rules. The southern slope of the Alps has a milder average climate than the plain of the Po, in the narrow valleys open to the south and protected against the north wind. From this result, on the one hand, the fact that southern plants such as the lemon and the olive can winter in the open air, and on the other the use of these districts as winter resorts for invalids from the north. The same holds for the corresponding slopes of the Ligurian Apennines which, turned to the south through several degrees of longitude and lying close upon the sea, show yet more favourable, conditions, the mean temperature in winter being between 48° and 50°, some 10° higher than at Milan. For the like cause Catania is warmer than Palermo, which opens northward to the sea, and on this account the summer heat in Palermo is not so unendurable as in Catania and Syracuse, while the winter temperatures are nearly the same.

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Italy Geology and Structure

Although rocks of no great age, geologically speaking, outcrop over much of the surface of Italy, almost every geological period is represented somewhere in the country. A great variety of different types of rock is also to be found, and it is the nature of these rocks and the way in which they have been formed and now outcrop rather than their age, that help to account for present land forms.

Lower Paleozoic rocks appear at the surface only in a few localities, being most extensive in the southern half of Sardinia, where they include limestones and are highly folded, but old rocks occur also in the Alps. The Carboniferous rocks of Italy differ markedly from those further north in Europe in having very few coal deposits, because conditions were less favourable for their formation. During Carboniferous and Permian times Italy, like areas further north, was affected by the Hercynian earth movements, and mountains were formed in the same general area that in Tertiary times became the Alps. Hercynian massifs were also formed in Calabria and northeast Sicily as well as in Sardinia.

After the Hercynian earth movements in the latter part of the Paleozoic era the general area of Italy was covered by the sea for long periods and on account of the absence of land nearby, limestones are therefore typical of Permian, as well as of the Mesozoic era (Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous). Most of Italy’s limestone areas are of Jurassic or Cretaceous origin, as in the limestone Alps and Pre-Alps of Lombardy and Veneto, the Central Apennines and the mountains and hill country of Apulia. Towards the end of the Mesozoic era and during the Tertiary era before the great period of Alpine mountain building, gravels, sands and clays as well as limestones and marls were being deposited, and Eocene, Oligocene and Miocene sandstones and clays form a large proportion of the present Northern and Southern Apennines and Sicily, while the earlier clays of late Cretaceous times (argille scagliose) are characteristic particularly of the Northern Apennines.

Italy to a large extent owes its present general form and outstanding physical features to the mountain building that took place in the Miocene period and led to the formation of the Alps and Apennines structurally roughly as they are today, though the ranges have of course been greatly reduced by erosion and later uplifted since their original formation. Intrusive rocks were formed widely and volcanic activity was widespread. Existing sedimentary rocks were drastically folded and faulted and in many areas were thrust laterally great distances, with older strata in some places finally ending up resting upon younger strata. In the north-west or crystalline Alps the thrust was roughly from south to north while in the Apennines it was from the Tyrrhenian side towards the Adriatic side. The direction of fold lines was often determined by the distribution of pre-existing resistant blocks. The Tyrrhenian and Adriatic areas formed troughs. The formation of nappes is characteristic of both the Italian Alps and the Northern Apennines, but although the process also occurred further south in the Peninsula, the result of earth movements here was more to block fault the widespread limestones, leaving upstanding blocks and intervening basins. The mountains of the northern half of Italy tend to have such a complicated evolution and consist of so many different types of rock that present relief bears little relationship to underlying structure and rock types. In the southern half of the country, on the other hand, where tectonic relief is common, there is clearly a closer relationship, as in the limestone areas of the Central Apennines and Apulia, and in the crystalline massifs of Calabria.

Towards the end of Tertiary times, after the termination of the more drastic Alpine earth movements, Italy had already assumed very broadly its present shape. What are now the mountain areas then stood above the sea but, except in Sardinia, most areas that are now hill country and plain had not yet been formed. During the Pliocene period, gravels, sands and clays were deposited around the coasts of the land of that time and also in numerous small basins within the Peninsula itself, and Pliocene deposits are today found flanking both sides of the Apennines in many places, reaching as high as several hundred metres, and forming hill country.
One final brief but extremely important phase in the evolution of Italy has followed the Pliocene, the glacial period in the Pleistocene. During this period there were at least four main onsets of glaciation and these profoundly influenced the land forms of the Italian Alps and also affected limited high areas in many parts of the Apennines. Glaciers from the Alps spread far into the lowland to the south and during and after the glacial period an enormous amount of material was deposited in the North Italian Lowland. When sea level was at its lowest during the last glaciation what is now roughly the northern half of the Adriatic was land, and almost everywhere along the coasts of the Peninsula and Islands the land also extended further than it does now. The North Italian Lowland, therefore, is Quaternary or recent, and along the coasts of the rest of Italy there are also many smaller deposits of this time, some of the most recent actually at sea level, others at certain commonly found moderate elevations above sea level.

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Historical Origins of the Italians

Passing over the uncertain mysteries of the Stone Age and the Age of Bronze, it is no exaggeration to assert that already in the Greek civilization of Southern Italy one can divine the origin of some of the essential characteristics of the Italian of today.

Three or four centuries before Christ the way of life and of thought of the Siciliots and the Italic peoples, descendants of those Greeks who long before them had passed into Sicily and into the south of the peninsula, was entirely analogous to that of Hellas itself. The Polis, the city state, constituted the sole base of every political and social organism. One might say the same of Etruria, where between the Arno and the Tiber there was, until the Roman conquests, just a federation of twelve cities, a federation with extremely strict religious ties, but with a wide autonomy for each city.

When the dominion of Rome was extended over all Italy, things changed but little morally and socially; the civitas continued to be the base and the key to the life of all Italians. There is no other nation whose traditions, legends and popular epic are compelled so constantly to look to the city for their origin. Even in the Middle Ages while in France they sang the deeds of Roland, Italian poetry sang that Rome came from Alba Longa, Alba Longa from Lavinium and Lavinium from Troy through Aeneas. The perennial popular glory of Virgil among the Italians has depended upon this fact, that he sang the origins of their country in the one and only manner that they delighted in, that is, as the genealogy of the city state.

Even today the names of the Italian regions that we think so real, Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria. . . do not belong to the natural use of the people. The native of a town, for instance, of that Ligurian bow that is bent from the French frontier along the sea to Genoa, and from Genoa to the south as far as the Magra, will never call his region Liguria, he will call it rather Genoa or perhaps Genovesato. It was always thus, contrary to what obtained in Gaul, where most often the name of the city is lost and that of the region has taken its place. Lutetia, the capital of the Parisii, became Paris, Avaricum of the Biturgi, Bourges, and so it is with Amiens, Reims, Rennes, and many other cities of France.

This voluntary binding of the peasant to the city, that exists almost everywhere in Italy, is one of the permanent strands of the Italian social fabric. In no other country is patriotism in its normal, healthy and fruitful form — not in the baseness of racialism and nationalism — so fundamentally bound to the city, to the town, as in Italy. Francesco De Sanctis in a speech to the Neapolitans in 1874 declared: “Italy is not an abstraction. She is the home (casa), the family, the commune, the province, the region. They who feel themselves bound to these, are the best Italians. . . I say to you: If you want to be good Italians begin by being good Neapolitans. Woe to those who only see an Italy of the Academies or Schools.”

Thus, fifty years before the Fascist adventure, De Sanctis condemned one of the most widespread, trumped-up and artful of Fascist devices: the attack on the ancient tradition of local patriotism. That attack ought to have been enough to expose how contrary all Fascist action was to the Italian character.

The secular bonds which bind our Italian generations were created by the city and the town. The history of the Italian cities is so long and tenacious that it often leads us back not only to Rome but to pre-Roman Italy. The small jealousies still alive today between Milan and Pavia, between Crema and Cremona, and the differences in the dialects, go back to traditions beyond the Roman Empire. When Rome succeeded in imposing her dominion upon all Italy, almost every municipiam from the Alps to Sicily had to cede a part of its territory to a Latin colony which created around itself a circle of influences, imposing its own customs, its own manners, its own language, in such a way that the majority of the natives learned to speak in Latin, although they preserved their native accent. And even today, if you go from Rome to Florence, to Piacenza and on to Milan, you will find, in dialects very different, the notes never obliterated of ancient Gentes differing one from another.

This is not so north of the Alps in the Germanic countries. The frequent immigration of tribes without cities, the absence of precise frontiers between the regions they occupied, did not allow the formation of countrysides with characteristics of their own.

Under Republican Rome, Italy in reality was only an immense federation of cities, each free to administer itself in its own way within its own territory; something which reminds us of the British Empire in its most recent form, when the democratic term Commonwealth has been substituted for the haughty term Empire. The beginning of the decadence of the cities appeared in the Roman Empire in the time of Hadrian. Until then the municipia and coloniae had been governed by that wealthy and active citizen class out of which came the Fabii. The decemviri elected from among the notables (people with very large incomes) carried out the administration from the Tribunal — the high court of Justice. But with Hadrian the officers of the Imperial administration progressively made themselves masters of all local affairs; and under Diocletian the Totalitarian State (as one might say today) was completely established. The ancient courts, freely elected by the citizens, became corporations bound by numerous restrictions; they quickly lost all vitality; even the defensor civitatis became no more than a functionary to whom men looked — though it was but a pretence — for a denunciation of the errors of his superiors. And soon, whether by encroachment of the military or by reason of the distrust of the citizens, there remained only prefectures entrusted to comites sent from the Capital. Under the Emperors of the East these comites, become even more corrupt, were called duces, whence came the title Doge which was for centuries the name of the head of the aristocratic Republics of Venice and Genoa. Thus, already under Diocletian, the Barbarians had invaded Italy; a work of the military anarchy of the third century rather than of certain starving tribes descending from Germany; out of which German vanity, and the desire of the Italians to attribute their ills to a foreign cause, have later made “the invaders” and their uncontrollable onrush.The old and empty German boast became an official dogma under Nazism, which imposed on the schools of the Reich that to the new generation they should insist on the “fundamental part which the German emigrations had in diffusing the new civilization of the Middle Age, in northern Italy, in France and in England”.One might well ask what the few young Germans who seriously studied history thought, if they thought at all, when they discovered:

1. That the Goths did not know how to make their dominion in Italy last more than sixty years.

2. That in Spain they were defeated by those Semites who were the Arabs, and lost everything in a single day.

3. That the Lombards, although invited into Italy by a part of the population, never succeeded in occupying the coasts, never dared to measure themselves with the young and growing defences of Venice, nor with the ancient walls of Rome, and that their dominion ended in confusion and contempt.

Without the decomposition provoked by the Empire when fallen on the one hand into a military anarchy and on the other into a bureaucratic despotism, the German tribes would never have succeeded in establishing themselves here at all. The Italian cities would have opposed a sufficient resistance if the Empire had not broken their vitality.

Under Constantine, on the eve of the catastrophe, one might believe for a moment that the overflowing barbarism could have been dammed. The cities appeared about to renew themselves with fresh life, since they had acquired under other forms a certain autonomy chiefly through the action of the Bishops, elected, as they were, by the citizens; indeed, the nomination of a Bishop by acclamation was generally the result of an authentic popular movement. But it was too late. With their suffocating taxation and with foreign military chiefs, the Emperors had taken away every possibility of hope from the Italian cities. They had become indeed Dead Cities, as the great capitals of the East appeared to our fathers of the nineteenth century, those for example of Turkey and of Persia; Istanbul and Teheran were once metropolises not less rich and not less fair than Milan and Naples in the Middle Age. There was a Turkish art and even more surely a Persian art. But the cities were without municipal liberty, without autonomous life and therefore servile. If Byzantium before becoming Istanbul succeeded in conserving a little of its life, it was because under its Basileus the municipal tradition was not utterly destroyed, as was that of the Italian cities by the Caesars. The demi — comparable to the “contrade” of Siena — remained in Byzantium the focal points of municipal life as corporations, such as they are described to us in the Libro del Prefetto of the tenth century, with their relative freedom. The demi and the autonomous corporations offer us the keys of the real life of Byzantium, of its unexpected resistance and of its revolutions. But Byzantium remains an unique case, in the East; all the other metropolises, notwithstanding their occasional splendours, have been, if not inert masses, over disciplined, without an atom of the vitality that animated the anarchic Athens of Aristophanes even in its worst moments.

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Rome Low Cost Sightseeings

The Colosseum, of course, which charges no admission for entrance to its ground floor, and no admission at all to visit any part of the ruins on Sundays. . . . Following that, drive out as far as you have time to go along the ancient Appian Way. . . . It’s here that you’ll pass the several largest Christian Catacombs. Most interesting and significant of these are the Catacombs of Saint Sebastiano (once the burial place of both St. Peter and St. Paul), which are the second catacombs you’ll pass as you proceed along the Appian route.

The Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel are also musts. Remember that they are at the rear of the Vatican, a long walk from the front of St. Peter’s. . . . Downstairs in St. Peter’s a number of glass-sided coffins containing bodies of the Popes, are on view. . . . The figures inlaid on the floor of St. Peter’s show the lengths of other famous cathedrals, thus giving you an indication of the enormous size of St. Peter’s. In the Borghese Gardens, you won’t want to miss the fabulous Villa Borghese (sometimes called the “Galleria Borghese“), with its treasures of paintings, sculpture and furnishings. On the first floor, there are works by the great sculptor Bernini (his famous Rape of Persephone is here); on the second floor is Raphael’s “Descent from the Cross,” together with several Botticelli’s and a whole array of paintings by my own favorite, the master Caravaggio.

Finally, the grandest sight in Rome, to my mind, is the “Campidoglio” (Capitoline Hill), the sight of which has caused many a tourist actually to weep over its sheer beauty. The steps and approaches were designed by Michelangelo; the plaza holds one of the few classic bronze statues in existence-the Emperor Marcus Aurelius on horseback-which was discovered several centuries ago on the bottom of the Tiber, where it had been thrown by Roman-hating barbarians. When Michelangelo was asked to design a pedestal for the statue, he answered, “I am not worthy.”

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Terme Di Caracalla – Baths of Caracalla

Open air opera at Baths of Caracalla, in Rome, is one of the great summer events of Europe. The opera stage is set amid the gigantic ruins of the former Roman bath house, and the setting is spectacular-for certain productions, the ruins are actually employed as part of the scenery. Performances are scheduled almost nightly, the latter being perfectly satisfactory. Try, of course, to get to any of the performances, but if a production of “Aida” is scheduled, then rise from a sick bed to be attendance, because you’ll see a spectacle that’s equalled by no other opera company. A near-army of extras fills the stage during the triumphal march of the second act, and an elephant or else a brace of horses comes charging in at the climax. With all this, the voices may seem overlooked, but the overall effect is stupefying.

For summer concerts in Rome, you’ll want to be at the periodic recitals of the renowned Santa Cecilia Orchestra, performed at the Basilica of Massenzio (entrance on the Via de Fori Imperiale, with the background setting being the Roman Forum). But take nothing better than some Euros seats-only the crowd from the Hotel Excelsior goes for higher-priced variety.

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