Tourism and travel guide about destinations, attractions, tips, activities.
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.
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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. . . .”
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May 10th, 2009 traveler
The railways powerfully contributed to the fusion of North and South, after the historical dissolution, so long resisted, of the Pontifical State. But it was easy for the Italians to find one another; the obstacle had been there a long time, it is true, but it was artificial. For foreigners, however, the result was the very opposite; the railways — and later, the rapidity of the automobile — made it less easy for them to enter into any real relation with Italian life, with the mental and spiritual life of ideas not only in the great cities, but in the quiet smaller cities of the country-side, and the provinces. After the advent of the railways, books appeared by foreigners, often full of beauty, on the Greek ruins in Calabria, on Milan or on Venice, on art in Sicily or in the Uffizi at Florence; but we no longer found among us a Goethe, a Stendhal, a Browning, a Shelley, wandering about among the contadini and humble folk.
In boyhood I had discovered at home, to my delight, some old guide-books of Italy of the eighteenth century, and I have never forgotten the emotion that I received from a Guida di Viaggio in Italia per un Gentiluomo Polacco, and its appendix, in four columns, of Conver sazione in italiano, latino, francese e polacco. There was a little of everything, both in the book and in the “Conversazione”, and almost everything was dealt with together as in life: archaeology and cookery, music and women, high roads and receptions. It is a great contrast to those famous Sensations d’Italie in which Paul Bourget goes into ecstasies before Sienese pictures of the second class, and which seems like a cemetery of ideas that have been embalmed. One feels that authors of this kind can never really have lived in Italy, that, driven by the contracts with the publishers, they are only thinking of the magnificent pages they will build up from the notes scribbled in their pocket-books, and for this very reason there utterly escapes them that integration of the ancient and the actual which alone allows us to understand a living nation.
The Italian — and above all, the Italian of the people — is so complex and yet at the same time so simple that one can only smile at the foreigners who think they have discovered the key to the Italian character after passing a year or two in the peninsula.
It seems like a paradox, but I believe it is easier to understand the complexity of the Italian than his simplicity. How can a contadino or an Italian artisan be anything but complex when he is such an infallible judge of the moral character of the “foreigner”, of the “signore” with whom he has to deal? Woe to the new proprietor of a podere or of a villa, woe to the foreigner who has rented a house or apartment for three years, if the people around him sum him up as “proud” or “overbearing”; very soon there will be an emptiness about him and he will obtain nothing from anyone, even though he is ready to pay double what other foreigners are paying — “forestieri” and “signori” who are recognized as “gentile” and “alla mano”.
To understand a people, a foreign nation : that is a business in which intelligence and culture only serve if they are enlivened by human sympathy.
What makes the traveller is not the distance of the country visited but the capacity to see, to immerse himself in the spirit of the country to which he has travelled. I have seen the standardized traveller in Mongolia, and real travellers on the Lombard plain and in the villages of the Var. The capacity to understand is not to be acquired by literary experience, it is bought with our very life. The French who, wishing to penetrate beyond the museums, come to Italy saturated with Stendhal, and the Germans who come down with a Goethe in their hands, remind me of certain Oriental converts to Catholicism, who read in one of our Cathedrals the same Massbook as the ordinary crowd of the faithful : they read, but their emotion is not the same.
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May 10th, 2009 traveler
A useful starting point for the study of the surface of Italy is a consideration of three main types of relief: mountain, hill and plain. Fig. 2.1 shows the distribution of these elements, the definition of which is based broadly on altitude, the mountain areas being mainly above 1,000 metres, though containing many valleys below this level, the plains consisting of level or gently sloping land below about 300 metres, whether coastal or interior, and the hill country comprising the intermediate areas. The land classified as plain (pianura) occupies a little over one-fifth of the total surface of Italy while hill country (collina) accounts for over two-fifths and the mountain country (montagna) for somewhat less than two-fifths.
Although the basis for the division into three main types of relief is altitude, both relative relief and slope conditions are broadly related to altitude. In the mountain regions relative relief is greatest, reaching as much as 3,000 metres between valley floors and adjoining mountain summits in the Alps, and 2,000 metres in the highest parts of the Apennines. In the hill country it may reach several hundred metres in places. The mountain areas, too, tend to be the most rugged, having the steepest slopes, though gently sloping areas do of course occur. Much of the hill country is however also greatly dissected and is characterised by steep slopes, even though relative relief is not great; on the other hand, some hill country consists of gently sloping low plateaux. In the plains, naturally, slopes are generally gentle and relative relief slight.
The Alps, the Apennines and the mountains of Sicily form an almost continuous belt of mountain country of varying width, extending in the form of an S some 1,300 miles in length from the extreme north-east of Italy, first west, then curving round to Liguria and extending south-east and then south through the Peninsula and finally running from east to west across northern Sicily. There are other small mountain areas both in the Peninsula detached from the main range of the Apennines as in Tuscany, and in the island of Sardinia.
Italy has only one large area of plain, the North Italian Lowland, which lies between the Alps and the Northern Apennines, but there are many smaller plains in the Peninsula and Islands, some at or little above sea level along the coasts, others at a considerable altitude, forming small interior basins.
Almost everywhere hill country intervenes between the mountains and the plains, as around the North Italian Lowland, and between the mountains and the coast, as in the Peninsula and Islands. The most extensive areas of hill are in Central Italy but like both mountain and plain this form of relief occurs in almost every region. In almost any sizable part of Italy, indeed, a bewildering variety of relief conditions may be found, but a contrast between the North and the Peninsula should be noted. In the North, a series of roughly north-south sections shows the same general sequence of mountain-hill-plain-hill-mountain. On the other hand, roughly south-west-north-east sections across the Peninsula, while almost invariably crossing some mountain and hill and usually some plain, differ appreciably in the arrangement of these elements at different places along the Peninsula.
Italy has been divided into complicated physiographic regions by more than one geographer and it should be appreciated that no single system of regions satisfies everyone, since the result depends on the emphasis given to such varying criteria as altitude, age of rock, type of rock or predominant type of land form. For example, a convenient break in altitude in the Apennines, separating two high mountain areas, does not necessarily coincide with a geological or structural change.
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May 10th, 2009 traveler
Within historical times, that is a length of time varying in different parts of Italy from 2,000-3,000 years, changes in the physical environment have of course been gradual and limited. Some may be suggested, however, since they have affected man’s activities in the historical period, even if only locally and to a limited extent. In the first place there has been considerable volcanic activity. Pompei and Herculaneum were completely destroyed by Vesuvius in A.D. 79; the former by an ash fall and the latter by a mud flow up to 20 metres thick, which was much harder than the pumice ash. Four volcanoes are still active. Associated in some cases with volcanic activity but generally with other movements in the earth’s crust have been numerous earthquakes of varying degrees of intensity.
Virtually every part of Italy is susceptible to tremors but very serious earthquakes are more limited in occurrence. Apart from a few areas in the Alps and Liguria the worst earthquakes have nearly all occurred in the interior of the Peninsula and in eastern Sicily. Three very serious earthquakes of the 20th century are noted on the map and in 1962 the Irpinia area was again affected. The epicentre of the Messina earthquake in 1908 was in the Strait of Messina facing the town. It brought destruction or serious damage to almost every building in Messina and Reggio Calabria and caused the death of almost 100,000 persons in these two provinces alone. The widespread earthquake activity testifies to the youthful state of the landscape in which tectonic relief dominates in parts of the Peninsula.
Other activity that has changed the physical environment in historical times has affected both the coasts and many interior localities. There is a marked tendency for many Italian rivers to build deltas. Some, including the Po, Arno and Tiber, have pushed seawards many miles. Inland, usually with the help of man, lakes have been drained or reduced. In the Alps steep slopes are widespread and avalanches frequently occur, and in the Apennines, as already noted, landslides occur widely in clay areas. Partly at least as a result of the removal of woodland and excessive ploughing of steep slopes, gullying has also been widespread in Peninsular Italy and Sicily and much land has been rendered permanently useless or made suitable only for gradual reclamation by afforestation.
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May 10th, 2009 traveler
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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