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The Douglas C-54 Skymaster is a four-engined transport aircraft used by the United States Army Air Forces in World War II and the Korean War. Like the Douglas C-47 Skytrain, the C-54 Skymaster was derived from a civilian airliner, the Douglas DC-4. Besides transport of cargo, the C-54 also carried presidents, prime ministers, and military staff. Dozens of variants of the C-54 were employed in a wide variety of non-combat roles such as air-sea rescue, scientific and military research, and missile tracking and recovery. During the Berlin Airlift it hauled coal and food supplies to West Berlin. After the Korean War it continued to be used for military and civilian uses by more than 30 countries. This was one of the first aircraft to carry the President of the United States.
With the entry of the United States into World War II, in June 1941 the War Department took over the provision orders for the airlines for the Douglas DC-4 and allocated them to the United States Army Air Forces with the designation C-54 Skymaster. The first, a C-54, flew from Clover Field in Santa Monica, California on 14 February 1942.
To meet military requirements the first civil production aircraft had four additional auxiliary fuel tanks in the main cabin which reduced the passenger seats to 26. The following batch of aircraft, designated C-54A, were built with a stronger floor and a cargo door with a hoist and winch. The first C-54A was delivered in February 1943. The C-54B, introduced in March 1944, had integral fuel tanks in the outer wings, allowing two of the cabin tanks to be removed. This change allowed 49-seats (or 16 stretchers) to be fitted. The C-54C, a hybrid for Presidential use, had a C-54A fuselage with four cabin fuel tanks and C-54B wings with built in tanks to achieve maximum range.
The most common variant was the C-54D, which entered service in August 1944. Based on the C-54B, it was fitted with more powerful R-2000-11 engines. With the C-54E, the last two cabin fuel tanks were moved to the wings which would allow more freight or 44 passenger seats.
Aircraft transferred to the United States Navy were designated Douglas R5D. With the introduction of the Tri-Service aircraft designation system in 1962, all R5Ds were re-designated C-54.
The thunderstorms and smoke from the wildfires created some pretty wild light on this morning at Crater Lake.
The 2019 Armed Forces Wrestling Championship held at the Soto Physical Fitness Center at Fort Bliss, Texas from 23-24 February featuring the top wrestlers in the United States from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard. (U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class J.E. Veal)
Culzean Castle is located near Maybole on the Ayrshire coast of Scotland. It is the former home of the Marquess of Ailsa, the chief of Clan Kennedy, but is now owned by the National Trust for Scotland. The clifftop castle lies within the Culzean Castle Country Park and is opened to the public since 1987 An illustration of the castle has featured on the reverse side of five pound notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland.
In 1945, the Kennedy family gave the castle and its grounds to the National Trust for Scotland (thus avoiding inheritance tax). In doing so, they stipulated that the apartment at the top of the castle be given to General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower in recognition of his role as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during the Second World War. The General first visited Culzean Castle in 1946 and stayed there four times, including once while President of the United States
Special Forces Unit: Reaper Squad
“Their sacrifice lay the first stone in the foundation, worthy of his return. There is still work to be done.”
— Agent Amus
Reaper Squad, was an Imperial special forces commando unit. Commando units such as Reaper Squad (and the treacherous Inferno Squad), was commissioned during the Galactic Civil War. These commando units usually consisted of four commando troopers with various specialties, such as demolitions and weaponry, slicing, infiltration, sabotage etc. Reaper Squad was created by the former Imperial Triumvirate leader, Grand Prince Serion, who named the squad as a tribute to the downfall of his homeworld. Reaper Squad was one of many Imperial Triumvirate forces that joined the Stygian Remnant, and continued to report to Lord Amus.
Reaper Squad from left to right:
Cpt. (ISB) Fell Vreach (stealth/melee), Cdr. (Navy) Raath Hagar (leader, multi), Sr. Lt. (Army) Sin Veruna (sharpshooter), Cpt. (Navy) Rai Morku (pilot/tech)
Former membes:
Cpt. Joral Avan (multi). KIA during a mission on Ossus
Brac T’renth (heavy weaponry), KIA by Pyerce troops during a mission to Fondor
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Some of my protagonists for many of my mocs. Here's an update.
The Milky Way shines brightly above the lava lake in Halema'uma'u Crater. I even caught a meteor in there for bonus splendor! Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
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Airmen from the 321st Contingency Response Wing from Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., try to attach a sling load to a Mississippi Army National Guard medical evacuation UH-60 Black Hawk at Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center, Miss., during exercise Turbo Distribution Oct. 29, 2015. The U.S. Transportation Command exercise tested the Joint Task Force-Port Opening's ability to deliver and distribute cargo during humanitarian relief operations. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Marianique Santos)
Bruhel Point, California
Bruhel Point Rocks, one of the more recognizable features of the national monument, can be viewed from the CalTrans’ Mendocino Coastal Trails Vista Point. The exposed reef provides the habitat for a large colony of Harbor Seals that are very visible from the trail. Black Oystercatchers, a very vocal shorebird, may be seen and heard moving around the reef. Gulls and cormorants are usually present, as well.
Frankreich / Elsass - Hohkönigsburg
The Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg (French: [ʃɑto dy o kœniɡsbuʁ]; German: Hohkönigsburg), sometimes also Haut-Kœnigsbourg, is a medieval castle located in the commune of Orschwiller in the Bas-Rhin département of Alsace, France. Located in the Vosges mountains just west of Sélestat, situated in a strategic area on a rocky spur overlooking the Upper Rhine Plain, it was used by successive powers from the Middle Ages until the Thirty Years' War when it was abandoned. From 1900 to 1908 it was rebuilt at the behest of the German kaiser Wilhelm II. Today it is a major tourist site, attracting more than 500,000 visitors a year.
History
The Buntsandstein cliff was first mentioned as Stofenberk (Staufenberg) in a 774 deed issued by the Frankish king Charlemagne. Again certified in 854, it was then a possession of the French Basilica of St Denis and the site of a monastery.
Middle Ages
It is not known when the first castle was built. However, a Burg Staufen (Castrum Estufin) is documented in 1147, when the monks complained to King Louis VII of France about its unlawful construction by the Hohenstaufen Duke Frederick II of Swabia. Frederick's younger brother Conrad III had been elected King of the Romans in 1138, to be succeeded by Frederick's son Frederick Barbarossa in 1152, and by 1192 the castle was called Kinzburg (Königsburg, "King's Castle").
In the early thirteenth century, the fortification passed from the Hohenstaufen family to the dukes of Lorraine, who entrusted it to the local Rathsamhausen knightly family and the Lords of Hohenstein, who held the castle until the fifteenth century. As the Hohensteins allowed some robber barons to use the castle as a hideout, and their behaviour began to exasperate the neighbouring rulers, in 1454 it was occupied by Elector Palatine Frederick I and in 1462 was set ablaze by the unified forces of the cities of Colmar, Strasbourg, and Basel.
In 1479, the Habsburg emperor Frederick III granted the castle ruins in fief to the Counts of Thierstein, who rebuilt them with a defensive system suited to the new artillery of the time. When in 1517 the last Thierstein died, the castle became a reverted fief and again came into the possession of the Habsburg emperor of the day, Maximilian I. In 1633, during the Thirty Years' War in which Catholics forces fought Protestants, the Imperial castle was besieged by Protestant Swedish forces. After a 52-day siege, the castle was burned and looted by the Swedish troops. For several hundred years it was left unused, and the ruins became overgrown by the forest. Various romantic poets and artists were inspired by the castle during this time.
19th century renovation
The ruins had been listed as a monument historique of the Second French Empire since 1862 and were purchased by the township of Sélestat (or Schlettstadt) three years later. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871 the region was incorporated into the German Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine, and in 1899 the citizens granted what was left of the castle to the German emperor Wilhelm II. Wilhelm wished to create a castle lauding the qualities of Alsace in the Middle Ages and more generally of German civilization stretching from Hohkönigsburg in the west to (likewise restored) Marienburg Castle in the east. He also hoped the restoration would reinforce the bond of Alsatians with Germany, as they had only recently been incorporated into the newly established German Empire. The management of the restoration of the fortifications was entrusted to the architect Bodo Ebhardt, a proven expert on the reconstruction of medieval castles. Work proceeded from 1900 to 1908. On May 13, 1908, the restored Hohkönigsburg was inaugurated in the presence of the Emperor. In an elaborate re-enactment ceremony, a historic cortege entered the castle, under a torrential downpour.
Ebhart's aim was to rebuild it, as near as possible, as it was on the eve of the Thirty Years' War. He relied heavily on historical accounts but, occasionally lacking information, he had to improvise some parts of the stronghold. For example, the Keep tower is now reckoned to be about 14 metres too tall. Wilhelm II, who regularly visited the construction site via a specially built train station in nearby Saint-Hippolyte, also encouraged certain modifications that emphasised a Romantic nostalgia for Germanic civilization. For example, the main dining hall has a higher roof than it did at the time, and links between the Hohenzollern family and the Habsburg rulers of the Holy Roman Empire are emphasized. The Emperor wanted to legitimise the House of Hohenzollern at the head of the Second Empire, and to assure himself as worthy heir of the Hohenstaufens and the Habsburgs.
The castle today
After World War I, the French state confiscated the castle in accordance with the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.
It has been listed since 1862 and classified since 1993 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2007, ownership was transferred to the Bas-Rhin département. Today, it is one of the most famous tourist attractions in the region.
For many years it was considered fashionable in France to sneer at the castle because of its links to the German emperor. Many considered it to be nothing more than a fairy tale castle similar to Neuschwanstein. However, in recent years many historians have established that, although it is not a completely accurate reconstruction, it is at least interesting for what it shows about Wilhelm II's romantic nationalist ideas of the past and the architect's work. Indeed, Bodo Ebhardt restored the castle following a close study of the remaining walls, archives and other fortified castles built at the same period.
Parts of the 1937 film La Grande Illusion by Jean Renoir were shot at Haut-Koenigsbourg.
Château de l'Oedenbourg
Located just below Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg is the ruin of Château de l'Oedenbourg, which is also known as Petit-Koenigsbourg and is a historical monument in its own right. Construction of Château de l'Oedenbourg was started somewhere in the middle of the thirteenth century.
Copy in Malaysia
A copy of the castle has been built in the Berjaya Hills, 60 km north-east of Kuala Lumpur 3.404167°N 101.839155°E. A copy of the historic Alsatian city of Colmar is located next to it.
(Wikipedia)
Le château du Haut-Koenigsbourg — parfois Haut-Kœnigsbourg — est un château fort alsacien du XIIe siècle, profondément remanié au XVe siècle et restauré avant la Première Guerre mondiale sous le règne de Guillaume II. Le château se dresse sur le ban de la commune française d'Orschwiller, dans la circonscription administrative du Bas-Rhin et sur le territoire de la collectivité européenne d'Alsace.
Dénomination
Le nom actuel — le château du Haut-Koenigsbourg — est le résultat de l'adaptation du nom allemand Hohkönigsburg qui se traduit par « haut-château du roi ».
Situation géographique
Le château est situé dans le massif des Vosges à une altitude de 757 m à 12 km à l'ouest de Sélestat d'où il est visible. Il se trouve également à 26 km au nord de Colmar d'où il est également visible par temps clair et à 55 km au sud de Strasbourg.
Historique
Les Hohenstaufen
En 774, Charlemagne fait don du Stophanberch ou Staufenberg (nom du col où le Haut-Koenigsbourg a été construit) et des terres attenantes au prieuré de Lièpvre, dépendant de la basilique Saint-Denis.
En 1079, Frédéric Ier de Souabe — dit Frédéric l'Ancien — est nommé duc de Souabe par l'Empereur du Saint-Empire romain germanique Henri IV. Il fait construire le château Stauf sur le mont Hohenstaufen près de Göppingen, d'où le nom de la famille.
Afin de renforcer le pouvoir des Hohenstaufen en Alsace, Frédéric le Borgne crée une ligne de défense et pour cela, il fait construire de nombreux châteaux et certains d'entre eux sur des terres qui ne lui appartiennent pas. On dit de lui qu'il a constamment un château accroché à la queue de son cheval. Il aurait fait construire en toute illégalité le château du Haut-Koenigsbourg sur les terres confiées aux moines de l'abbaye de Lièpvre.
En 1147, Eudes de Deuil, moine de Saint-Denis, presse Louis VII d'intervenir auprès du roi Conrad III de Hohenstaufen afin de réparer cette injustice. C'est la première mention du château dans un document écrit. À cette date, le site comportait déjà deux tours permettant de surveiller la route d'Alsace du nord au sud, l'une appartenant à Conrad III de Hohenstaufen, l'autre à son neveu Frédéric Ier de Hohenstaufen, futur empereur du Saint-Empire romain germanique. Le nom de Königsburg (château du roi) apparaît dès 1157.
Les ducs de Lorraine
Dans la première moitié du XIIIe siècle, profitant de l'affaiblissement des Hohenstaufen, les ducs de Lorraine auraient pris possession du château. Celui-ci est confié aux sires de Rathsamhausen puis aux Hohenstein qui y règnent jusqu'au XVe siècle.
Devenu un repaire de chevaliers brigands, le château est conquis et incendié en 1462 par une coalition regroupant les villes de Colmar, Strasbourg et Bâle, fortes de 500 hommes et de pièces d'artillerie.
Les Thierstein
Les restes du Haut-Koenigsbourg sont alors confiés à la famille de Thierstein. Ils font bâtir, sur le côté ouest, un bastion formé de deux tours d'artillerie et d'un mur-bouclier, dotés de murs puissants. La basse cour est protégée par deux tours en fer à cheval et des courtines avec des murs épais. Le château est entouré d'un premier mur de protection afin de gêner la mise en batterie de l'artillerie ennemie.
En 1517, le dernier des Thierstein, croulant sous les dettes, s'éteint. La famille n'ayant pas de descendance, Maximilien Ier rachète le château. Ni l'empereur ni les propriétaires successifs ne feront face aux coûts d'entretien, d'autant que le premier ne finance pas les seconds pour ces réalisations.
Destruction
En 1633, durant la guerre de Trente Ans, qui a vu, entre autres, les Suédois opposés à l'Autriche, l'Alsace est ravagée. En juillet, les Suédois assiègent le Haut-Koenigsbourg qui n'est plus qu'une forteresse délabrée, est commandée par le capitaine Philippe de Liechtenau. Forts de canons et de mortiers, ils prennent le château après cinquante-deux jours de siège. Peu de temps après, la forteresse est détruite par un incendie. Le château est alors laissé à l'abandon.
Acquisition par la commune de Sélestat
Classé monument historique en 1862, le site et ses ruines sont rachetés trois ans plus tard à divers propriétaires par la commune de Sélestat.
Cadeau au Kaiser et reconstruction
Depuis 1871 et le traité de Francfort, l'Alsace est devenue allemande. Le 4 mai 1899, le château, alors en ruine, et les terres sommitales l'entourant sont offerts par la ville de Sélestat à l'empereur Guillaume II de Hohenzollern. Il souhaite y créer un musée promouvant la germanité de l'Alsace et, plus généralement, le monde germanique. La municipalité conserve la centaine d’hectares de forêt, économiquement rentables.
La direction de la restauration de ce château fort est confiée en 1900 à Bodo Ebhardt, architecte et archéologue berlinois âgé de 35 ans. Il commence par le déblaiement du site et les relevés des anciennes constructions. La restauration s'étalera de 1901 à 1908. L'objectif de Bodo Ebhardt est de le restaurer tel qu'il se présentait aux alentours de l'an 1500. En l’absence d’indices archéologiques, d’archives ou d’éléments de comparaison avec d’autres monuments contemporains, « la part d’interprétation, inévitable en pareille circonstance a été réduite au minimum et elle n’est en aucune façon l’objet d’un quelconque détournement ludique » (François Loyer, cf. bibliographie ci-dessous). Guillaume II vient régulièrement visiter le chantier, il est logé dans la gare de Saint-Hippolyte reconstruite spécialement pour l'accueillir en 1903.
Le nouvel édifice du Haut-Koenigsbourg est inauguré le 13 mai 1908, mais les finitions et achats de collections se poursuivirent jusqu'en 1918.
Pour le Kaiser, ce château marquait la limite occidentale de l'Empire allemand, comme le château de Marienbourg, aujourd'hui en Pologne, en marquait la limite oriental.
De nos jours
À l'issue de la Première Guerre mondiale en 1919, le château, bien privé de l'ancien empereur assimilé à une propriété de l'Empire allemand, entre en possession de l'État français lors de la restitution de l'Alsace-Lorraine, en application de l'article 56 du traité de Versailles.
Cependant, le blason de Guillaume II est toujours visible au sein du château. Il reste ainsi un des symboles en Alsace de la présence allemande entre 1871 et 1918, partagé entre la restauration majoritairement crédible de l'architecte et la vision romantique du Moyen Âge de Guillaume II.
Bâtiment civil - palais national en 1919, ses abords sont classés par arrêté du 16 février 1930. Mais alors que les ruines avaient été classées dès 1862, il faudra attendre le 10 septembre 1991 pour voir l’inscription de la station de pompage (ou pavillon de la source) construite en 1903, puis le 11 février 1993 pour qu’un arrêté ministériel procède au classement au titre des monuments historiques de l'intégralité du monument, y compris les parties restituées. Les ruines du château de l'Oedenbourg ou Petit-Koenigsbourg bénéficieront, elles aussi, d’une inscription puis du classement aux mêmes dates.
Dans le même temps, une attention particulière était portée à l’amélioration de l’accueil du public au château du Haut-Koenigsbourg, dont la priorité a été l’assainissement et l’alimentation en eau.
La propriété du château du Haut-Koenigsbourg est transférée de l'État au conseil général du Bas-Rhin en janvier 2007. Il s'agit du premier bien patrimonial transféré par l'État à une collectivité territoriale parmi une liste de 176 biens transférables arrêtée en 2004.
Le 16 décembre 2011, la toiture du château du Haut-Koenigsbourg subit des dommages lors du passage de la tempête Joachim.
Ce monument historique bénéficie d'une très forte fréquentation touristique, avec près de 550 000 visiteurs annuel.
Controverse sur une restauration
Cette cession historique à Guillaume II et les intentions de ce dernier — se légitimer comme successeur des Hohenstaufen et des Habsbourg et montrer la germanité de l'Alsace — sont sans doute, en partie, à l'origine des polémiques autour de cette restauration engagée sous la direction de Bodo Ebhardt.
Si aujourd'hui la reconstitution de Bodo Ebhardt est admise comme plausible, la rénovation du château était néanmoins sujette à polémique à l'époque. Les détracteurs de la reconstruction, préférant de loin le charme des ruines au château reconstruit, notèrent que certains éléments furent imaginés par l'architecte, car ils étaient complètement détruits. De nombreux ensembles étaient alors considérés comme fantaisistes :
le donjon carré. En effet dans une gravure ancienne, il est présenté comme rond mais les fondations prouvent bien que la vision de l'architecte était exacte ;
la salle du Kaiser et ses dimensions originelles non restituées. En effet, l'architecture en pierre et la présence du poêle et de la cheminée montrent qu'à l'origine cette pièce était composée de deux étages et plusieurs pièces. L'état actuel de cette pièce était une exigence de Guillaume II pour montrer la force et l'importance de l'État allemand ;
l'escalier d'honneur hexagonal — avec ses sculptures —, considéré comme trop décoré pour un élément du Moyen Âge ;
la porte d'honneur, entrée du château, et ses bas-reliefs. Lors de la restauration du château, cette porte était complètement détruite et absente ;
la présence du moulin à vent sur une tour d'artillerie et de la forge dans la cour basse.
Cependant, aujourd'hui, on considère que Bodo Ebhardt, au travers de cette restauration « est en tout cas resté dans les limites de la vraisemblance, ayant toujours eu le souci de s'inspirer des nombreux édifices qu'il avait étudiés avant d'élaborer son projet ».
Les caricaturistes de l'époque s'en donnèrent à cœur joie comme Henri Zislin ou Jean-Jacques Waltz qui réalisa plusieurs planches sur ce sujet. Elles sont actuellement visibles au musée de Hansi à Riquewihr.
Il y a cent ans, le restaurateur se permettait de traiter un monument comme une œuvre d’imagination, et il pouvait rêver d’un Moyen Âge idéal et d’une pureté de style tout à fait théorique. Dès lors s’affrontaient déjà deux conceptions. D’une part celle de Viollet-le-Duc, imprimant la marque de l’architecte-artiste à l’édifice, qui devait recevoir un fini parfait et « si nécessaire être corrigé et complété », quitte à être falsifié. D’autre part celle de Luca Beltrami, au château des Sforza à Milan, Bodo Ebhardt, au château impérial de Haut-Koenigsbourg, Conrad Steinbrecht, au château du grand-maître des chevaliers teutoniques à Malborg (Forteresse teutonique de Marienbourg). Cette seconde démarche constituait un pas décisif vers la restauration scientifique. Elle est plus proche des conceptions d’Arcisse de Caumont, qui demandait déjà au milieu du XIXe siècle que soit respecté le monument, que soit définie une doctrine scientifique. Si les nouveaux restaurateurs vers 1900 cherchent à intégrer toutes les époques, ils ne résistent pas à l’envie de remonter tous les murs même si certains de ceux-ci avaient été détruits anciennement lors de transformations intentionnelles.
Cependant, malgré ces critiques, on peut considérer, comme François Loyer que «… le souci archéologique est bien réel, la reconstitution crédible et les détails fondés. C’est même, probablement, la plus exacte des restitutions qui aient été jamais tentées ».
On regrette beaucoup de ne pas pouvoir distinguer plus aisément les parties reconstituées. Cependant, Bodo Ebhardt marque les parties restaurées par un signe distinctif ou travaille la pierre différemment. De plus, il faut louer ce restaurateur et ses contemporains d’avoir œuvré pour une très grande lisibilité et la plus exacte possible des plans généraux, de l’articulation des volumes et de la fonction des détails.
Visite
Le château a été construit sur un éperon rocheux orienté ouest-est. Les murailles, qui épousent les formes des rochers, ont une structure irrégulière. D'ouest en est, on trouve successivement :
les bastions - dont l'énorme grand bastion - destinés à protéger le château contre des tirs d'artillerie à partir d'emplacements plus à l'ouest sur l'éperon rocheux ;
le jardin supérieur, qui masque le logis plus à l'est de ces éventuels tirs d'artillerie ;
le logis avec les pièces d'habitation et le donjon ;
le bastion en étoile aux murs moins hauts protège le château seulement contre des tirs d'artillerie à partir d'emplacements plus à l'est, donc obligatoirement en contrebas de l'éperon rocheux.
Entrée
L'entrée est située en contrebas. La porte est surmontée d'un bas relief avec le blason de la famille Thierstein. Sur la droite se trouve un mur d'enceinte de faible épaisseur (XVe – XXe siècle) et, sur l'éperon rocheux à gauche, le logis sud (XIIe – XXe siècle).
Porte principale
On débouche sur une petite cour, où la porte principale équipée d'une herse donne accès au château. Au-dessus de la porte d'entrée, on trouve les armoiries des Hohenzollern et de Charles-Quint, rappelant que le château fut restauré par l'empereur Guillaume II. Sur le site avaient été retrouvés des restes d'armoiries originales dont il s'estimait l'héritier.
Cour basse
La cour basse est entourée de communs et de locaux de service (écurie). Un bâtiment attenant est surmonté d'un moulin à vent. Elle comprend en son milieu la copie d'une fontaine du XVe siècle conservée à Eguisheim, la forge et une maison alsacienne.
Un four à pain est attesté dans la basse-cour.
Entrée dans le logis et porte des Lions
Un escalier avec de grandes marches irrégulières permettent d'accéder au logis. Une dernière défense est constituée d'un pont-levis au niveau de la porte des Lions.
Cour intérieure et escalier hexagonal
Au sommet, une cour intérieure est surmontée de galeries en bois, ainsi qu'une citerne avec une margelle carrée et un toit surmonté d'une sculpture de sirène.
Un escalier hexagonal en hélice permet d'accéder aux étages supérieurs ; chaque étage a un balcon décoré de fresques de chevaliers donnant sur la cour.
Le puits, profond de 62,50 mètres, a été fortifié pour ne pas se trouver séparé du logis par une attaque d'artillerie.
Par la galerie, on accède aux cuisines et au cellier, dont la longueur indique la largeur de l'éperon rocheux sur lequel est construit le château.
Donjon
Le donjon repose sur une base carrée préexistante de 17 mètres. Il a été exhaussé d'autant lors de la restauration et protégé par une toiture.
Salle du Kaiser
La salle du Kaiser est la salle d'honneur du château. Pour disposer d'une grande hauteur de plafond, l'étage supérieur présent au Moyen Âge n'a pas été restauré afin d'en faire une salle de prestige pour son usage moderne. Il n'est visible que dans la mezzanine des musiciens. La principale décoration est une peinture d'aigle impériale au plafond, réalisée par Léo Schnug, avec la devise Gott mit uns (Dieu avec nous). Sur les ailes se trouvent les armoiries des électeurs du Saint-Empire romain germanique et sur son cœur celles des Hohenzollern. Sur le mur, de chaque côté de la cheminée, se trouve représentée une joute entre deux chevaliers. Les convives pouvaient prendre part à une réception autour d'une grande table surmontée de lustres décorés.
Chambre lorraine
Créée pour rappeler l'annexion de la Moselle, dénommée alors Lorraine, comme part de la région historique éponyme, elle présente une décoration et un mobilier typiquement lorrains : le plafond boisé et la cheminée de pierre rappellent l'architecture médiévale de la ville de Metz, reconstituée au musée de la Cour d'Or. Dans cette même idée, un Graoully, dragon du folklore de Metz, est suspendu au milieu de la pièce. Il est inspiré de celui présent dans la crypte de la cathédrale de Metz.
Jardin supérieur
Le jardin supérieur fait le lien entre le logis situé au centre et le Grand Bastion situé à l'ouest. Il est entouré par un chemin de ronde couvert et comporte un puits. C'est dans cette partie du château que se situaient les bains. La pièce était chauffée par un poêle.
L'existence d'un four à pain dans ce secteur est également attestée.
Grand bastion
Le grand bastion est la partie la plus fortifiée : il devait pouvoir s'opposer à de l'artillerie installée plus à l'ouest sur l'éperon rocheux et il est séparé du jardin par un pont-levis. Y sont conservés des copies de canons des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Il était dépourvu de toit au XVIe siècle.
Dans la fiction
Roman et bande dessinée
En hommage au cinéma et par fascination pour le lieu, Jacques Martin a choisi d'installer le décor de la première série des aventures de Guy Lefranc autour du château. Cette bande-dessinée s'intitule : La Grande Menace, et aussi dans le 4e opus des voyages de Jhen avec Yves Plateau au dessin (ISBN 9782203066588)
L'illustrateur canadien John Howe s'est inspiré du château du Haut-Koenigsbourg pour illustrer la citadelle de Minas Tirith dans le livre Le Seigneur des anneaux écrit par Tolkien, plus tard adapté en film.
Philippe Matter, Mini-Loup et le château fort, Éditions Hachette Jeunesse, 2008 (ISBN 978-2-01-224411-5)
Jacques Fortier, Sherlock Holmes et le mystère du Haut-Koenigsbourg, Le Verger éditeur, 2009, 192 pages
Roger Seiter (scénariste) et Giuseppe Manunta (dessinateur), Sherlock Holmes et le mystère du Haut-Koenigsbourg, bande dessinée d'après le roman de Jacques Fortier, Le Verger éditeur, 2013, 54 planches
Cinéma et animation
Certaines scènes du film Le Petit Roi de Julien Duvivier ont été tournées au château du Haut-Koenigsbourg en 1933.
Le film La Grande Illusion de Jean Renoir a été tourné, pour les extérieurs, au château du Haut-Koenigsbourg en 1937.
Le château a également servi de décor au film Les Aventures d'Arsène Lupin de Jacques Becker (1956) et à Agent trouble de Jean-Pierre Mocky (1987).
Dix films ont été réalisés en 1991 à l’initiative du Conseil régional pour la promotion de l’Alsace. Ils portent sur la cathédrale de Strasbourg, le château du Haut-Koenigsbourg, les Ribeaupierre, les châteaux et les mines d’argent, le musée Unterlinden de Colmar ; mais ils abordent aussi des thèmes comme : les musées techniques de Mulhouse, la Décapole, les routes militaires, romanes, des châteaux et des orgues.
Le château du Haut-Koenigsbourg a également inspiré le réalisateur Hayao Miyazaki pour son film d'animation Le Château ambulant sorti en 2004.
(Wikipedia)
Die Hohkönigsburg (früher auch sowie umgangssprachlich Hochkönigsburg, französisch Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg – manchmal auch Haut-Kœnigsbourg – [okønɪgzˈbuʀ]) ist eine zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts rekonstruierte Burg bei Orschwiller (Orschweiler) im Elsass (Département Bas-Rhin), gut 10 km westlich von Sélestat (Schlettstadt). Sie ist mit jährlich etwa 500.000 Besuchern die meistbesuchte Burg der Region und einer der am häufigsten frequentierten Touristenorte ganz Frankreichs.
Lage
Die 260 m lange Anlage thront als Kammburg in 757 m Höhe am Ostrand der Vogesen auf einem mächtigen Buntsandsteinfelsen hoch über der Oberrheinischen Tiefebene und ist eine der höchstgelegenen Burgen im Elsass. Zusammen mit der am gegenüberliegenden Ende des Bergrückens gelegenen, etwa 200 m entfernten Ruine der Ödenburg (Petit-Kœnigsbourg) bildet sie eine Burgengruppe.
Der Ausblick reicht weit über die Rheinebene bis zum Kaiserstuhl und auf mehrere benachbarte Burgruinen (unter anderem Ortenberg, Ramstein, Frankenburg, Kintzheim, Hohrappoltstein). Bei günstigen Sichtverhältnissen sind im Süden die knapp 200 Kilometer entfernten und rund vier Kilometer hohen Berner Alpen zu sehen, deren Gipfel wegen der Erdkrümmung ungefähr auf dem geometrischen Horizont von Hohkönigsburg liegen.
Geschichte
Mittelalter
Der Stophanberch (Staufenberg), auf welchem die Burg liegt, wird bereits 774 (als Schenkung Karls des Großen) und 854 beurkundet und befand sich ursprünglich im Besitz der Abtei Saint Denis.
Die Burg wurde in der ersten Hälfte des 12. Jahrhunderts als staufische Reichsburg erbaut und 1147 als Castrum Estufin erstmals urkundlich erwähnt. Von der Burg aus konnten die Orte und Handelswege in diesem Teil des Oberrheingrabens beherrscht werden. 1147 tauchte erstmals der Name Burg Staufen auf, die von Herzog Friedrich, dem Vater des deutschen Königs Friedrich Barbarossa, gegründet sein soll. Aus staufischer Zeit sind unter anderem eine vermauerte Fensterarkade und ein Löwenrelief erhalten. Ab 1192 wurde der Name Kinzburg (Königsburg) verwendet.
Im 13. Jahrhundert wurde der Herzog von Lothringen Eigentümer der Burg, der sie als Lehen den Grafen von Werd gab. 1359 verkauften die Grafen von Oettingen die Burg an den Bischof von Straßburg. 1454 eroberte der pfälzische Kurfürst Friedrich der Siegreiche die Burg, 1462 wurde sie wegen Raubritterei zerstört. 1479 gab Kaiser Friedrich III. die Burg als Lehnsgut an den Schweizer Grafen Oswald von Thierstein († 1488) und dessen Bruder Wilhelm.
Niedergang in der Neuzeit
1517 starben die Grafen von Thierstein aus; deshalb fiel die Burg an Kaiser Maximilian I. und somit an die Habsburger zurück. Während des Dreißigjährigen Krieges wurde sie 52 Tage von den Schweden belagert, am 7. September 1633 erobert und in Brand gesetzt. Zwischen 1648 und 1865 hatte die Ruine verschiedene Eigentümer. 1865 wurde sie Eigentum der Stadt Schlettstadt. In der Romantik wurde die Ruine wiederentdeckt. Christian Moritz Engelhardt beschrieb sie in seinen Reiseskizzen durch die Vogesen (1821). Ludwig Adolf Spach, der Präsident der Gesellschaft zur Erhaltung der historischen Monumente des Elsass, schlug schon eine Restaurierung vor.
Neuaufbau 1901 bis 1908
Infolge des Deutsch-Französischen Krieges wurde das Elsass, das zwischenzeitlich zu Frankreich gehört hatte, 1871 an das Deutsche Reich abgetreten. Im Jahre 1899 schenkte die Stadt Schlettstadt die Burg Kaiser Wilhelm II., der sie in den Jahren 1901–1908 durch den Berliner Architekten und Burgenforscher Bodo Ebhardt restaurieren ließ. Der Bau kostete über zwei Millionen Mark, die zum großen Teil von Elsass-Lothringen bezahlt werden mussten. Der Kaiser selbst finanzierte die ersten Arbeiten mit 100.000 Mark aus seiner Privatschatulle. Die Arbeiten wurden mit modernsten Mitteln durchgeführt. Vom Steinbruch zur Ruine wurde die ca. 2 km lange Feldbahn der Hohkönigsburg gebaut, die Lokomotive musste mit Pferden den Berg empor gezogen werden. Eine Dampfmaschine trieb einen Generator an, der elektrischen Strom für die Beleuchtung und zwei elektrische Kräne erzeugte.
Am 13. Mai 1908 fand im Rahmen einer großen Feier mit festlicher Musik und historischen Kostümen bei Regenwetter die Einweihung statt. Viktoria Luise von Preußen, die Tochter Kaiser Wilhelms II., schilderte von dieser in ihren Lebenserinnerungen:
„Die Hohkönigsburg, an der zahlreiche Erinnerungen deutscher Geschichte haften, war meinem Vater bei einem Besuch von Schlettstadt vom Bürgermeister als Geschenk geboten worden. Er hatte es angenommen und eine umfassende Restaurierung in die Wege geleitet. Rund zehn Jahre danach standen wir dann an einem Maitag zur Einweihung an der mächtigen Burg. Unser Blick glitt über die weite Ebene des Rheintals, hinüber zu den langgestreckten Höhen des Schwarzwaldes und bis zu der in der Ferne schimmernden Alpenkette. In seiner Ansprache wies mein Vater auf die ereignisreiche Vergangenheit hin: ‚Die Geschichte nennt uns eine ganze Reihe von Namen aus erlauchten Fürstenhäusern und edlen Geschlechtern als Eigentümer, Pfandbesitzer und Lehensträger, zuvörderst die Kaiser aus dem Hause Hohenstaufen und dem Hause Habsburg, dann die Herzöge von Lothringen und Unterelsaß, die Landgrafen von Werd, die Herren von Rathsamhausen, von Oettingen und von Berckheim, die Grafen von Thierstein, deren großartiger Bau nun wieder erstanden ist, die Ritter von Sickingen, deren Einzug in die Burg uns heute so trefflich vorgeführt ist, und die Freiherren von Bollweiler und Fugger. Nun ist die Burg wieder Eigentum des Deutschen Kaisers geworden.‘ Dann sagte er: ‚Möge die Hohkönigsburg hier im Westen des Reiches, wie die Marienburg im Osten, als ein Wahrzeichen deutscher Kultur und Macht bis in die fernsten Zeiten erhalten bleiben.‘“
Zwei Jahre später wurden an der Grenze zu Polen das Residenzschloss Posen sowie im Norden Deutschlands, nahe der Grenze zu Dänemark, die nach dem symbolträchtigen Vorbild der Marienburg geschaffene Marineschule Mürwik, das sogenannte Rote Schloss am Meer, vom Kaiser eingeweiht.
Der elsässische Künstler Jean-Jacques Waltz, der als frankophiler Elsässer kein Freund der deutschen Vereinnahmung der elsässischen Geschichte war, veröffentlichte kurze Zeit nach der Einweihung der Hohkönigsburg eine Serie von Bildern Die Hohkönigsburg im Wasgenwald und ihre Einweihung, die sich über den deutschtümelnden Pomp lustig machte, die Texte dazu soll ein Prof. Dr. Knatsche (Waltz selbst), verfasst haben.
Nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg bis heute
Seit 1919 ist die Hohkönigsburg Eigentum des französischen Staates, seit Januar 2007 des Départements Bas-Rhin. Heute gilt sie als die bedeutendste Burg der Region und ist das einzige im Elsass gelegene französische Nationaldenkmal (Monument national).
Anlage
Der Wiederaufbau durch Bodo Ebhardt ging mit der erhaltenen Bausubstanz für die damalige Zeit relativ rücksichtsvoll um, sodass sich die Burg immer noch als eine über die Jahrhunderte gewachsene Anlage zu erkennen gibt. Die verhältnismäßig kleine stauferzeitliche Kernburg mit unregelmäßigem Grundriss auf höchster Stelle des Felsplateaus hat einen durch Ebhardt wiederaufgemauerten quadratischen Bergfried (Donjon) mit südlich anschließendem Palas (Logis Seigneurial), an dem sich eine bereits im Spätmittelalter vermauerte Rundbogenarkade mit Würfelkapitellen erhalten hat. Nach 1479 wurde die Burg zu einer starken Festung ausgebaut. Westlich und östlich wurde die Kernburg gegen die aufkommende Artillerie durch mächtige Bollwerke verstärkt, die in Anlehnung an die stauferzeitliche Anlage in Buckelquadern ausgeführt wurden. Die von Ebhardt über alten Kragsteinen aufgemauerten Wehrgänge waren ursprünglich wahrscheinlich in Holz ausgeführt; nur an einem Turm im östlichen Burghof hat Ebhardt einen hölzernen Wehrgang rekonstruiert. Um die Hauptburg zieht sich eine Zwingermauer mit elf halbrunden Schalentürmen. An der Ostseite ist eine Vorburg (Tiergarten) mit zackenförmigem Abschluss vorgelagert. Von Ebhardt durch Weglassung einer Zwischendecke neu geschaffen wurde der repräsentative Festsaal, an dessen Kamingitter der Kommentar Wilhelms II. zum Ersten Weltkrieg zu lesen ist: „Ich habe es nicht gewollt!“ Ein eigens eingerichteter Saal zeigt kaiserliche Jagdtrophäen.
Hoch über dem Eingangsportal und unter dem Schutz des Adlers prangt das Wappen der letzten Herren der Burg.
Das eigentliche Schloss erreicht man über die Zugbrücke, der bewohnte Bereich kann durch das Löwentor betreten werden. Die Gemächer der Schlossherrin und der Ritter, die Schlosskapelle und der Rittersaal sind heute noch mit Möbeln aus dem 15–17. Jahrhundert ausgestattet und können besichtigt werden.
Etwa 200 m westlich liegt die Ruine der Ödenburg aus dem 13. Jahrhundert. Erhalten sind vor allem die Schildmauer aus Buckelquadern und die Fassade des Wohnbaues. Im Dreißigjährigen Krieg nahmen die Schweden von hier aus die Nachbarburg unter Artilleriebeschuss.
Rezeption
In Malaysia, 60 km nordöstlich von Kuala Lumpur, steht in den Berjaya Hills eine – sehr freie – Nachbildung der Burg als Luxushotel. Nicht weit entfernt wurde ein Teil der Colmarer Altstadt nachgebaut.
Bodo Ebhardts phantasiereiche Rekonstruktion der Burganlage inspirierte John Howe in seiner Arbeit als Illustrator der Werke J. R. R. Tolkiens.
(Wikipedia)
34046 'Braunton' passes Monkton Combe with 1Z46, 05:56 Three Bridges to Bath Spa Saphos Trains tour on 9 December, 2024. Bath’s popular Christmas Market brought no fewer than six steam-hauled trains to the city, plus two diesel-hauled excursions and numerous GWR extra services formed of DMUs.
AB FAV for today…
www.facebook.com/groups/1148438991917313/
The Menin Gate Memorial to the ‘Missing’ is a war memorial in Ypres, Belgium dedicated to the commemoration of British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres Salient of World War I and whose graves are unknown.
It is a place where you become still... the sadness AND madness hits me each time...
Another big, unanswered WHY...what was it all for?
"All Wars Arise For The Possession Of Wealth" (Plato)
Following the Menin Gate Memorial opening in 1927, the citizens of Ypres wanted to express their gratitude towards those who had given their lives for Belgium's freedom. As such, every evening at 20:00, buglers from the local fire brigade close the road which passes under the Memorial and sound the Last Post. Except for the occupation by the Germans in World War II when the daily ceremony was conducted at Brookwood Military Cemetery, in Surrey, England, this ceremony has been carried on uninterrupted since 2 July 1928. On the very evening that Polish forces liberated Ypres in the Second World War, the ceremony was resumed at the Menin Gate despite the fact that heavy fighting was still taking place in other parts of the town.
The ceremony is a solemn occasion.. it cannot leave you untouched! The echo bouncing off the thousands of names, all young men, who had no life, they gave it for us... so that we could have today our biggest treasure, FREEDOM! Let's not forget.
Reginald Blomfield's triumphal arch, designed in 1921, is the entry to the barrel-vaulted passage for traffic through the mausoleum that honours the Missing, who have no known graves. The patient lion on the top is the lion of Britain but also the lion of Flanders. It was chosen to be a memorial as it was the closest gate of the town to the fighting, and so Allied Troops would have marched past it on their way to fight. Actually, most troops passed out of the other gates of Ypres, as the Menin Gate was too dangerous due to shellfire.
Its large Hall of Memory contains names on stone panels of 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Salient but whose bodies have never been identified or found. On completion of the memorial, it was discovered to be too small to contain all the names as originally planned. An arbitrary cut-off point of 15 August 1917 was chosen and the names of 34,984 UK missing after this date were inscribed on the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing instead.
The Menin Gate Memorial does not list the names of the missing of New Zealand and Newfoundland soldiers, who are instead honoured on separate memorials.
People are still coming from all over the world every day, to look for and honour the names of long lost relatives, just to see the engraved name and try and stick a poppy next, just to say: you are not forgotten...
I thank you, Magda.
For more of my other work visit here: www.indigo2photography.com
IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN (BY LAW!!!) TO USE ANY OF MY image or TEXT on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
Visual expression of "Heart" for Advanced Lighting assignment. I chose to focus on the Eshu and Shakti charms i normally wear around my neck.
This image also appears as part of a trans-formed work by my flickr friend Trans-formation.
In addition to the work of Essomba72 seen below, LouisCypher has offered up a mod of this image in his photostream.
This image was taken at Cape Solandar about 30 minutes south of Sydney Australia. I had the pleasure of leading a group of 10 seascape photographers from the Focus group -www.focusphotographers.org
This image was processed entirely in PS CC with some new techniques and this time I've focussed on the pastels. Shot on my Nikon D810 using a very long exposure,
Brendan is a amateur photographer based in Sydney Australia who loves exploring and shooting sea/andscapes/nightscapes in different areas sometimes with good mates other times by himself to improve his skills. I'm always after followers so don't be afraid to follow me on my photographic adventures.
A United States Armed Forces flight crew member onboard a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter observes the area as they fly to the Meza Mackavici Training Area during Exercise CLAYMORE SOARING, as part of Operation REASSURANCE on March 27, 2018.
Photo: Cpl Desiree T. Bourdon, Task Force Latvia
RP16-2018-0029-097
~
Un membre de l’équipage de bord des forces armées américaines en route vers le secteur d’entraînement de Meza Mackavici à bord d’un hélicoptère Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk observe le secteur au cours de l’exercice CLAYMORE SOARING, dans le cadre de l’opération REASSURANCE, le 27 mars 2018.
Photo : Cpl Desiree T. Bourdon, Force opérationnelle de Lettonie
RP16-2018-0029-097
Man trifft sie überall und sie kämpfen für unseren Frieden .. wir sind stolz auf euch! 😎🙏
You meet them everywhere and they fight for our peace... we are proud of you! 😎🙏
The Canadian Forces Snowbirds (431 Air Demonstration Squadron) is a Canadian icon comprised of serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces. Their pilots and technicians work as a team to bring thrilling performances to the North American public. Serving as Canadian ambassadors, the Snowbirds demonstrate the Skill, Professionalism and Teamwork inherent in the women and men of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and the Canadian Armed Forces. (Best viewed by clicking on the image)
Not sure if you remember this, but here is it's allied counterpart. We have the marines dodging bullets & dead comrades on the beaches of Iwo Jima, the ETO soldier fighting in the streets of France, The British paratrooper crossing the Rhine into allied occupied Holland and the member of the 101st Airborne trekking through the snow in Bastogne. 4 Interconnectable vignettes into one large 16x16. Weapons by brickarms, headgear by Sluban/Oxford & Brickforge
Damascus
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For other uses, see Damascus (disambiguation).
Damascus
دمشق Dimashq
View of Damascus from a bank of Barada river.
Nickname(s): (Al-Fayhaa) The Fragrant City
Damascus
Coordinates: 33°30′47″N 36°17′31″E / 33.51306°N 36.29194°E / 33.51306; 36.29194
Country Syria
Governorates Damascus Governorate, Capital City
Government
- Governor Bishr Al Sabban
Area
- City 573 km2 (221.2 sq mi)
- Metro 1,200 km2 (463.3 sq mi)
Elevation 600 m (1,969 ft)
Population (2007)[citation needed]
- City over 4 million
- Metro 6,500,000
Time zone EET (UTC+2)
- Summer (DST) EEST (UTC+3)
Area code(s) Country code: 963, City code: 11
Demonym Damascene
Damascus (Arabic: دمشق, transliteration: Dimashq, also commonly known as الشام ash-Shām) is the capital and largest city of Syria. It is one of the the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and its current population is estimated at about 4,000,000[citation needed]. The city is a governorate by itself, and the capital of the governorate of Rif Dimashq ("Rural Damascus").
Etymology
In Arabic, the city is called دمشق الشام (Dimashq ash-Shām), although this is often shortened to either Dimashq or ash-Shām by the citizens of Damascus, of Syria and other Arab neighbors. Ash-Shām is an Arabic term for north and for Syria (Syria—particularly historical Greater Syria—is called Bilād ash-Shām—بلاد الشام, "land of the north"—in Arabic.) The etymology of the ancient name "Damascus" is uncertain, but it is suspected to be pre-Semitic. It is attested as Dimašqa in Akkadian, T-ms-ḳw in Egyptian, Dammaśq (דמשק) in Old Aramaic and Dammeśeq (דמשק) in Biblical Hebrew. The Akkadian spelling is the earliest attestation, found in the Amarna letters, from the 14th century BCE. Later Aramaic spellings of the name often include an intrusive resh (letter r), perhaps influenced by the root dr, meaning "dwelling". Thus, the Qumranic Darmeśeq (דרמשק), and Darmsûq (ܕܪܡܣܘܩ) in Syriac.[1][2]
History
Ancient City of Damascus*
UNESCO World Heritage Site
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
State Party Syria
Type Cultural
Criteria i, ii, iii, iv, vi
Reference 20
Region** Arab States
Inscription history
Inscription 1979 (3rd Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List.
** Region as classified by UNESCO.
Ancient history
Excavations at Tell Ramad on the outskirts of the city have demonstrated that Damascus has been inhabited as early as 8,000 to 10,000 BC. It is due to this that Damascus is considered to be among the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world. However, Damascus is not documented as an important city until the coming of the Aramaeans, Semitic nomads who arrived from Mesopotamia. It is known that it was the Aramaeans who first established the water distribution system of Damascus by constructing canals and tunnels which maximized the efficiency of the Barada river. The same network was later improved by the Romans and the Umayyads, and still forms the basis of the water system of the old part of Damascus today. It was mentioned in Genesis 14 as existing at the time of the War of the Kings.
According to the 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in his twenty-one volume Antiquities of the Jews, Damascus (along with Trachonitis), was founded by Uz, the son of Aram. Elsewhere, he stated:
Nicolaus of Damascus, in the fourth book of his History, says thus: "Abraham reigned at Damascus, being a foreigner, who came with an army out of the land above Babylon, called the land of the Chaldeans: but, after a long time, he got him up, and removed from that country also, with his people, and went into the land then called the land of Canaan, but now the land of Judea, and this when his posterity were become a multitude; as to which posterity of his, we relate their history in another work. Now the name of Abraham is even still famous in the country of Damascus; and there is shown a village named from him, The Habitation of Abraham.
Damascus is designated as having been part of the ancient province of Amurru in the Hyksos Kingdom, from 1720 to 1570 BC. (MacMillan, pp. 30–31). Some of the earliest Egyptian records are from the 1350 BC Amarna letters, when Damascus-(called Dimasqu) was ruled by king Biryawaza. In 1100 BC, the city became the center of a powerful Aramaean state called Aram Damascus. The Kings of Aram Damascus were involved in many wars in the area against the Assyrians and the Israelites. One of the Kings, Ben-Hadad II, fought Shalmaneser III at the Battle of Qarqar. The ruins of the Aramean town most probably lie under the eastern part of the old walled city. After Tiglath-Pileser III captured and destroyed the city in 732 BC, it lost its independence for hundreds of years, and it fell to the Neo-Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar starting in 572 BC. The Babylonian rule of the city came to an end in 538 BC when the Persians under Cyrus captured the city and made it the capital of the Persian province of Syria.
Greco-Roman
Damascus first came under western control with the giant campaign of Alexander the Great that swept through the near east. After the death of Alexander in 323 BC, Damascus became the site of a struggle between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. The control of the city passed frequently from one empire to the other. Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander's generals, had made Antioch the capital of his vast empire, a decision that led Damascus' importance to decline compared with the newly founded Seleucid cities such as Latakia in the north.
In 64 BC, the Roman general Pompey annexed the western part of Syria. The Romans occupied Damascus and subsequently incorporated it into the league of ten cities known as the Decapolis because it was considered such an important center of Greco-Roman culture. According to the New Testament, St. Paul was on the road to Damascus when he received a vision, was struck blind and as a result converted to Christianity. In the year 37, Roman Emperor Caligula transferred Damascus into Nabataean control by decree.[citation needed] The Nabataean king Aretas IV Philopatris ruled Damascus from his capital Petra. However, around the year 106, Nabataea was conquered by the Romans, and Damascus returned to Roman control.
Damascus became a metropolis by the beginning of the second century and in 222 it was upgraded to a colonia by the Emperor Septimius Severus. During the Pax Romana, Damascus and the Roman province of Syria in general began to prosper. Damascus's importance as a caravan city was evident with the trade routes from southern Arabia, Palmyra, Petra, and the silk routes from China all converging on it. The city satisfied the Roman demands for eastern luxuries.
Little remains of the architecture of the Romans, but the town planning of the old city did have a lasting effect. The Roman architects brought together the Greek and Aramaean foundations of the city and fused them into a new layout measuring approximately 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) by 750 metres (2,500 ft), surrounded by a city wall. The city wall contained seven gates, but only the eastern gate (Bab Sharqi) remains from the Roman period. Roman Damascus lies mostly at depths of up to five meters (16.4 ft) below the modern city.
The old borough of Bab Tuma was developed at the end of the Roman/Byzantine era by the local Eastern Orthodox community. According to the Acts of the Apostles, Saint Paul and Saint Thomas both lived in that neighborhood. Roman Catholic historians also consider Bab Tuma to be the birthplace of several Popes such as John V and Gregory III.
Islamic Arab period
The Umayyad Mosque
Alsayyida Zaynab shrine domeDamascus was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate during the reign of Umar by forces under Khaled ibn al-Walid in 634 CE. Immediately thereafter, the city's power and prestige reached its peak when it became the capital of the Umayyad Empire, which extended from Spain to India from 661 to 750. In 744, the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan II, moved the capital to Harran in the Jazira,[3] and Damascus was never to regain the political prominence it had held in that period.
After the fall of the Umayyads and the establishment of the Abbasid caliphate in 750, Damascus was ruled from Baghdad, although in 858 al-Mutawakkil briefly established his residence there with the intention of transferring his capital there from Samarra. However, he soon abandoned the idea. As the Abbasid caliphate declined, Damascus suffered from the prevailing instability, and came under the control of local dynasties.
In 970, the Fatimid Caliphs in Cairo gained control of Damascus. This was to usher in a turbulent period in the city's history, as the Berber troops who formed the backbone of the Fatimid forces became deeply unpopular among its citizens. The presence in Syria of the Qaramita and occasionally of Turkish military bands added to the constant pressure from the Bedouin. For a brief period from 978, Damascus was self-governing, under the leadership of a certain Qassam and protected by a citizen militia. However, the Ghouta was ravaged by the Bedouin and after a Turkish-led campaign the city once again surrendered to Fatimid rule. From 1029 to 1041 the Turkish military leader Anushtakin was governor of Damascus under the Fatimid caliph Al-Zahir, and did much to restore the city's prosperity.
It appears that during this period the slow transformation of Damascus from a Graeco-Roman city layout - characterised by blocks of insulae — to a more familiar Islamic pattern took place: the grid of straight streets changed to a pattern of narrow streets, with most residents living inside harat closed off at night by heavy wooden gates to protect against criminals and the exactions of the soldiery.
Seljuks and Crusader rule
The statue of Saladin in front of Damascus citadel.
Azem Palace.
Damascus WallsWith the arrival of the Seljuk Turks in the late 11th century, Damascus again became the capital of independent states. It was ruled by a Seljuk dynasty from 1079 to 1104, and then by another Turkish dynasty - the Burid Emirs, who withstood a siege of the city during the Second Crusade in 1148 . In 1154 Damascus was conquered from the Burids by the famous Zengid Atabeg Nur ad-Din of Aleppo, the great foe of the Crusaders. He made it his capital, and following his death, it was acquired by Saladin, the ruler of Egypt, who also made it his capital. Saladin rebuilt the citadel, and it is reported that under his rule the suburbs were as extensive as the city itself. It is reported by Ibn Jubayr that during the time of Saladin, Damascus welcomed seekers of knowledge and industrious youth from around the world, who arrived for the sake of "undistracted study and seclusion" in Damascus' many colleges.
In the years following Saladin's death in 1193, there were frequent conflicts between different Ayyubid sultans ruling in Damascus and Cairo. Damascus was the capital of independent Ayyubid rulers between 1193 and 1201, from 1218 to 1238, from 1239 to 1245, and from 1250 to 1260. At other times it was ruled by the Ayyubid rulers of Egypt. Damascus steel gained a legendary reputation among the Crusaders, and patterned steel is still "damascened". The patterned Byzantine and Chinese silks available through Damascus, one of the Western termini of the Silk Road, gave the English language "damask".
Mamluk rule
Ayyubid rule (and independence) came to an end with the Mongol invasion of Syria in 1260, and following the Mongol defeat at Ain Jalut in the same year, Damascus became a provincial capital of the Mamluk Empire, ruled from Egypt, following the Mongol withdrawal.
Timurlane
In 1400 Timur, the Turco-Mongol conqueror, besieged Damascus. The Mamluk sultan dispatched a deputation from Cairo, including Ibn Khaldun, who negotiated with him, but after their withdrawal he put the city to sack. The Umayyad Mosque was burnt and men and women taken into slavery. A huge number of the city's artisans were taken to Timur's capital at Samarkand. These were the luckier citizens: many were slaughtered and their heads piled up in a field outside the north-east corner of the walls, where a city square still bears the name burj al-ru'us, originally "the tower of heads".
Rebuilt, Damascus continued to serve as a Mamluk provincial capital until 1516.
The Ottoman conquest
Khan As'ad Pasha was built in 1752In early 1516, the Ottoman Turks, wary of the danger of an alliance between the Mamluks and the Persian Safavids, started a campaign of conquest against the Mamluk sultanate. On 21 September, the Mamluk governor of Damascus fled the city, and on 2 October the khutba in the Umayyad mosque was pronounced in the name of Selim I. The day after, the victorious sultan entered the city, staying for three months. On 15 December, he left Damascus by Bab al-Jabiya, intent on the conquest of Egypt. Little appeared to have changed in the city: one army had simply replaced another. However, on his return in October 1517, the sultan ordered the construction of a mosque, taqiyya and mausoleum at the shrine of Shaikh Muhi al-Din ibn Arabi in al-Salihiyah. This was to be the first of Damascus' great Ottoman monuments.
The Ottomans remained for the next 400 years, except for a brief occupation by Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt from 1832 to 1840 . Because of its importance as the point of departure for one of the two great Hajj caravans to Mecca, Damascus was treated with more attention by the Porte than its size might have warranted — for most of this period, Aleppo was more populous and commercially more important. In 1560 the Taqiyya al-Sulaimaniyya, a mosque and khan for pilgrims on the road to Mecca, was completed to a design by the famous Ottoman architect Sinan, and soon afterwards a madrasa was built adjoining it.
The destroyed Christian quarter of Damascus, 1860.Perhaps the most notorious incident of these centuries was the massacre of Christians in 1860, when fighting between Druze (most probably supported by foreign countries to weaken the economical power) and Maronites in Mount Lebanon spilled over into the city. Several thousand Christians were killed, with many more being saved through the intervention of the Algerian exile Abd al-Qadir and his soldiers (three days after the massacre started), who brought them to safety in Abd al-Qadir's residence and the citadel. The Christian quarter of the old city (mostly inhabited by Catholics), including a number of churches, was burnt down. The Christian inhabitants of the notoriously poor and refractory Midan district outside the walls (mostly Orthodox) were, however, protected by their Muslim neighbours.
American Missionary E.C. Miller records that in 1867 the population of the city was 'about' 140,000, of whom 30,000 where Christians, 10,000 Jews and 100,000 'Mohammedans' with less than 100 Protestant Christians.[4]
Rise of Arab nationalism
In the early years of the twentieth century, nationalist sentiment in Damascus, initially cultural in its interest, began to take a political colouring, largely in reaction to the turkicisation programme of the Committee of Union and Progress government established in Istanbul in 1908. The hanging of a number of patriotic intellectuals by Jamal Pasha, governor of Damascus, in Beirut and Damascus in 1915 and 1916 further stoked nationalist feeling, and in 1918, as the forces of the Arab Revolt and the British army approached, residents fired on the retreating Turkish troops.
Modern
The Turkish Hospital in Damascus on 1 October 1918, shortly after the entry of the 4th Australian Light Horse Regiment.
Damascus in flames as the result of the French air raid on October 18, 1925.On 1 October 1918, the forces of the Arab revolt led by Nuri as-Said entered Damascus. The same day, Australian soldiers from the 4th and 10th Light Horse Regiments reinforced with detachments from the British Yeomanry Mounted Division entered the city and accepted its surrender from the Turkish appointed Governor Emir Said (installed as Governor the previous afternoon by the retreating Turkish Commander)[1][2]. A military government under Shukri Pasha was named. Other British forces including T. E. Lawrence followed later that day, and Faisal ibn Hussein was proclaimed king of Syria. Political tension rose in November 1917, when the new Bolshevik government in Russia revealed the Sykes-Picot Agreement whereby Britain and France had arranged to partition the Arab east between them. A new Franco-British proclamation on 17 November promised the "complete and definitive freeing of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks." The Syrian Congress in March adopted a democratic constitution. However, the Versailles Conference had granted France a mandate over Syria, and in 1920 a French army commanded by the General Mariano Goybet crossed the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, defeated a small Syrian defensive expedition at the Battle of Maysalun and entered Damascus. The French made Damascus capital of their League of Nations Mandate of Syria.
When in 1925 the Druze revolt in the Hauran spread to Damascus, the French suppressed it brutally, bombing and shelling the city. The area of the old city between Al-Hamidiyah Souq and Medhat Pasha Souq was burned to the ground, with many deaths, and has since then been known as al-Hariqa ("the fire"). The old city was surrounded with barbed wire to prevent rebels infiltrating from the Ghouta, and a new road was built outside the northern ramparts to facilitate the movement of armored cars.
On 21 June 1941, Damascus was captured from the Vichy French forces by the Allies during the Syria-Lebanon campaign.
In 1945 the French once more bombed Damascus, but on this occasion British forces intervened and the French agreed to withdraw, thus leading to the full independence of Syria in 1946 . Damascus remained the capital. With the influx of Iraqi refugees beginning in 2003, and funds from the Persian Gulf, Damascus has been going through an economic boom ever since.
Geography
Damascus in spring seen from Spot satelliteDamascus lies about 80 km (50 mi) inland from the Mediterranean Sea, sheltered by the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. It lies on a plateau 680 metres (2,200 ft) above sea-level.
The old city of Damascus, enclosed by the city walls, lies on the south bank of the river Barada which is almost dry(3 cm left). To the south-east, north and north-east it is surrounded by suburban areas whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages: Midan in the south-west, Sarouja and Imara in the north and north-west. These districts originally arose on roads leading out of the city, near the tombs of religious figures. In the nineteenth century outlying villages developed on the slopes of Jabal Qasioun, overlooking the city, already the site of the al-Salihiyah district centred around the important shrine of Sheikh Muhi al-Din ibn Arabi. These new districts were initially settled by Kurdish soldiery and Muslim refugees from the European regions of the Ottoman Empire which had fallen under Christian rule. Thus they were known as al-Akrad (the Kurds) and al-Muhajirin (the migrants). They lay two to three kilometres (2 mi) north of the old city.
From the late nineteenth century on, a modern administrative and commercial centre began to spring up to the west of the old city, around the Barada, centred on the area known as al-Marjeh or the meadow. Al-Marjeh soon became the name of what was initially the central square of modern Damascus, with the city hall on it. The courts of justice, post office and railway station stood on higher ground slightly to the south. A Europeanised residential quarter soon began to be built on the road leading between al-Marjeh and al-Salihiyah. The commercial and administrative centre of the new city gradually shifted northwards slightly towards this area.
In the twentieth century, newer suburbs developed north of the Barada, and to some extent to the south, invading the Ghouta oasis. From 1955 the new district of Yarmouk became a second home to thousands of Palestinian refugees. City planners preferred to preserve the Ghouta as far as possible, and in the later twentieth century some of the main areas of development were to the north, in the western Mezzeh district and most recently along the Barada valley in Dummar in the northwest and on the slopes of the mountains at Berze in the north-east. Poorer areas, often built without official approval, have mostly developed south of the main city.
Damascus used to be surrounded by an oasis, the Ghouta region (الغوطة al-ġūṭä), watered by the Barada river. The Fijeh spring, west along the Barada valley, used to provides the city with drinking water. The Ghouta oasis has been decreasing in size with the rapid expansion of housing and industry in the city and it is almost dry. It has also become polluted due to the city's traffic, industry, and sewage.
Climate
Damascus' climate is semi arid, due to rain shadow effect of Anti-Lebanon mountain. Summers are hot with less humidity. Winters are cool and rainy or snowy. January Maximum & Minimum Temperatures are 11 °C (52 °F) and 0 °C (32 °F), lowest ever recorded are −13.5 °C (8 °F), The summer August Maximum & Minimum Temperature are 35 °C (95 °F) and 17 °C (63 °F), Highest ever recorded are 45.5 °C (113.9 °F), Annual rainfall around 20 cm (8 in), occur from November to March.[5]
Weather averages for Damascus
Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year
Average high °C (°F) 11
(53) 13
(57) 17
(64) 23
(74) 28
(84) 33
(92) 36
(96) 36
(96) 33
(91) 27
(81) 19
(67) 13
(56) 24
(76)
Average low °C (°F) 0
(33) 2
(36) 4
(40) 7
(46) 11
(52) 14
(58) 16
(62) 17
(63) 13
(57) 9
(49) 4
(40) 1
(35) 8
(48)
Precipitation cm (inches) 3
(1.5) 3
(1.3) 2
(0.9) 1
(0.5) 0
(0.2) 0
(0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 0
(0) 1
(0.4) 2
(1) 4
(1.7) 19
(7.6)
Source: Weatherbase[5] 2008
Demographics
People
Three Damascene women; lady wearing qabqabs, a Druze, and a peasant, 1873.The majority of the population in Damascus came as a result of rural-urban migration. It is believed that the local people of Damascus, called Damascene, are about 1.5 million. Damascus is considered by most people to be a very safe city. Haggling is common, especially in the traditional souks. Corruption is widespread, but in the past few years there have been aims at combating it, by both the government and non-governmental organizations. Tea, Mate (popular caffeinated beverage made from Yerba mate), and Turkish Coffee are the most common beverages in Damascus.
Religion
The majority of the inhabitants of Damascus—about 75%—are Sunni Muslims. It is believed that there are more than 2,000 mosques in Damascus, the most well-known being the Umayyad Mosque. Christians represent the remaining 15% and there a number of Christian districts, such as Bab Tuma, Kassaa, and Ghassani, with many churches, most notably the ancient Chapel of Saint Paul.
Historical sites
House of Saint AnaniasDamascus has a wealth of historical sites dating back to many different periods of the city's history. Since the city has been built up with every passing occupation, it has become almost impossible to excavate all the ruins of Damascus that lie up to 8 feet (2.4 m) below the modern level. The Citadel of Damascus is located in the northwest corner of the Old City. The Street Called Straight (referred to in the conversion of St. Paul in Acts 9:11), also known as the Via Recta, was the decumanus (East-West main street) of Roman Damascus, and extended for over 1,500 metres (4,900 ft). Today, it consists of the street of Bab Sharqi and the Souk Medhat Pasha, a covered market. The Bab Sharqi street is filled with small shops and leads to the old Christian quarter of Bab Tuma (St. Thomas's Gate). Souk Medhat Pasha is also a main market in Damascus and was named after Medhat Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Syria who renovated the Souk. At the end of the Bab Sharqi street, one reaches the House of Ananias, an underground chapel that was the cellar of Ananias's house. The Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Grand Mosque of Damascus, is one of the largest mosques in the world, and one of the oldest sites of continuous prayer since the rise of Islam. A shrine in the mosque is said to contain the head of Husayn ibn Ali and the body of St. John the Baptist. The mausoleum where Saladin was buried is located in the gardens just outside the mosque. Sayyidah Ruqayya Mosque, the shrine of the yongest daughter of Husayn ibn Ali, can also be found near the Umayyad Mosque. Another heavily visited site is Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque, which is the tomb of Zaynab bint Ali.
The walls and gates of Damascus
v • d • eOld City of Damascus
Azm PalaceDamascus
CitadelUmayyad Mosque
Gates
al-Jabiya · al-Saghir · Kisan · Sharqi · Tuma · al-Salam · Faradis
The Old City of Damascus is surrounded by ramparts on the northern and eastern sides and part of the southern side. There are seven extant city gates, the oldest of which dates back to the Roman period. These are, clockwise from the north of the citadel:
Bab al-Saghir (The Small Gate)
Bab al-Faradis ("the gate of the orchards", or "of the paradise")
Bab al-Salam ("the gate of peace"), all on the north boundary of the Old City
Bab Tuma ("Touma" or "Thomas's Gate") in the north-east corner, leading into the Christian quarter of the same name,
Bab Sharqi ("eastern gate") in the east wall, the only one to retain its Roman plan
Bab Kisan in the south-east, from which tradition holds that Saint Paul made his escape from Damascus, lowered from the ramparts in a basket; this gate is now closed and a chapel marking the event has been built into the structure,
Bab al-Jabiya at the entrance to Souk Midhat Pasha, in the south-west.
Other areas outside the walled city also bear the name "gate": Bab al-Faraj, Bab Mousalla and Bab Sreija, both to the south-west of the walled city.
Churches in the old city
The Minaret of the Bride, Umayyad Mosque in old Damascus.
Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque
Sayyidah Ruqayya MosqueCathedral of Damascus.
Virgin Mary's Cathedral.
House of Saint Ananias.
Chapel of Saint Paul.
The Roman Catholic Cathedral in Zaitoon (Olive) Alley.
The Damascene Saint Johan church.
Saint Paul's Laura.
Saint Georgeus's sanctuary.
Islamic sites in the old city
Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque
Sayyidah Ruqayya Mosque
Bab Saghir cemetery
Umayyad Mosque
Saladin Shrine.
Madrasas
Al-Adiliyah Madrasa.
Az-Zahiriyah Library.
Nur al-Din Madrasa.
Old Damascene houses
Azm Palace
Bayt al-Aqqad (Danish Institute in Damascus)
Maktab Anbar
Beit al-Mamlouka (Boutique Hotel)
Khans
Khan Jaqmaq
Khan As'ad Pasha
Khan Sulayman Pasha
Threats to the future of the old City
Due to the rapid decline of the population of Old Damascus (between 1995-2005 more than 20,000 people moved out of the old city for more modern accommodation), a growing number of buildings are being abandoned or are falling into disrepair. In March 2007, the local government announced that it would be demolishing Old City buildings along a 1,400-metre (4,600 ft) stretch of rampart walls as part of a redevelopment scheme. These factors resulted in the Old City being placed by the World Monuments Fund on its 2008 Watch List of the 100 Most Endangered Sites in the world. It is hoped that its inclusion on the list will draw more public awareness to these significant threats to the future of the historic Old City of Damascus.
Current state of old Damascus
In spite of the recommendations of the UNESCO World Heritage Center:[3]
Souk El Atik, a protected buffer zone, was destroyed in three days in November 2006;
King Faysal Street, a traditional hand-craft region in a protected buffer zone near the walls of Old Damascus between the Citadel and Bab Touma, is threatened by a proposed motorway.
In 2007, the Old City of Damascus and notably the district of Bab Tuma have been recognized by The World Monument Fund as one of the most endangered sites in the world.[4]
Subdivisions
The ancient city of Damascus around the Omayyad Mosque
Azmeh Square in downtown DamascusDamascus is divided into many districts. Among them there are:
Abbasiyyin
Abou Rummaneh
Amara
Bahsa
Baramkah
Barzeh
Dummar
Jobar
Kafar Souseh
Malki
Mazraa
Mezzeh
Midan
Muhajreen
Qanawat
Rukn Eddeen
Al-Salihiyah
Sarouja
Sha'alan
Shaghoor
Tijara
ducation
Damascus is the main center of education in Syria. It is home to Damascus University, which is the oldest and by far the largest university in Syria. After the enactment of legislation allowing private secondary institutions, several new universities were established in the city and in the surrounding area.
Universities
Damascus National Museum.Damascus University
Syrian Virtual University
International University for Science and Technology
Higher Institute of Business Administration (HIBA)
Higher Institute for Applied Science and Technology (HIAST)
University of Kalamoon
Arab European University
National Institute of Administration
Transportation
Al-Hijaz StationThe main airport is Damascus International Airport, approximately 20 km (12 mi) away from the city center, with connections to many Asian, Europe, African, and recently, South American cities. Streets in Damascus are often narrow, mostly in the older parts of the city, and speed bumps are widely used to limit the speed.
Public transport in Damascus depends extensively on minibuses. There are about one hundred lines that operate inside the city and some of them extend from the city center to nearby suburbs. There is no schedule for the lines, and due to the limited number of official bus stops, buses will usually stop wherever a passenger needs to get on or off. The number of buses serving the same line is relatively high, which minimizes the waiting time. Lines are not numbered, rather they are given captions mostly indicating the two end points and possibly an important station along the line.
Al-Hijaz railway station, lies in the city center. Currently this station is closed, and railway connections with other cities take place in a suburb.
In 2008, the government announced a plan to construct an underground system in Damascus with opening time for the green line scheduled for 2015 Damascus Metro
Culture
Damascus was the 2008 Arab Capital of Culture.
Museums
National Museum of Damascus
Azem Palace
Military Museum
Museum of Arabic Calligraphy
Leisure activities
Damascus by night, pictured from Jabal Qasioun; the green spots are minarets
Parks and gardens
Tishreen Park is by far the largest park in Damascus. It is home to the yearly held Damascus Flower Show. Other parks include Aljahiz, Al sibbki, Altijara and Alwahda. Damascus' Ghouta (Oasis) is also a popular destination for recreation.
Cafe culture
Cafes are popular meeting spots for Damascene, where Arghilehs (water pipes) and popular beverages are served. Card games, Tables (backgammon variants), and chess are common in these cafes.
Sports
Popular sports include football, basketball, swimming and table tennis. Damascus is home to many sports clubs, such as:
Al Jaish
Al Wahda
Al Majd
Barada
Nearby attractions
Madaya
Bloudan
Zabadani
Maaloula
Saidnaya
Born in Damascus
Hadadezer King of Aram Damascus and leader of the coalition the 12 kings coalition that fought against Shalmaneser III
Nicolaus of Damascus (historian and philosopher)
John of Damascus (676-749) Christian saint
Ananias (Christian disciple involved in healing and preaching to Paul the Apostle)
Sophronius (Patriarch of Jerusalem)
Abd ar-Rahman I, Founder of Omayyad dynasty in Cordoba.
Izzat Husrieh, A renowned journalist and founder of the Syrian labor unions.
Khalid al-Azm, Former prime minister of Syria.
Shukri al-Quwatli, Former Syrian president and co-founder of the United Arab Republic.
Muna Wassef ( A Movie Star, and a United Nations Goodwill ambassador.)
Damascius (Byzantine philosopher)
Yasser Seirawan (chess player)
Ahmed Kuftaro (former grand mufti of Syria)
Ikram Antaki (Mexican writer)
Ghada al-Samman (novelist)
Nizar Qabbani (poet)
Michel Aflaq (political thinker and co-founder of the Baath Party)
Salah al-Din al-Bitar (political thinker and co-founder of the Baath Party)
Constantin Zureiq (academic and Arab nationalist intellectual)
Zakaria Tamer (writer)
Professor Aziz Al-Azmeh (academic, PhD in Oriental Studies)
Nazir Ismail (Artist)
Sheik Bashir Al Bani (Grand Sheik in Syria)
Mehdi Mourtada (Famous journalist and founder of WAS News Agency.
After German Forces invaded the French Lunar Territories the Allied Armies declared war, with fighting soon spreading to the Red Planet, previously occupied by the Soviets.
The 1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment (French: 1er Régiment de Parachutistes d'Infanterie de Marine, 1er RPIMa) is one of three regiments (1er RPIMa, 13e Régiment de Dragons Parachutistes (13e RDP), 4e RHFS) in the French Army Special Forces Brigade (BFST).
The 1er RPIMa is one of Europe's most experienced special forces units, and has been constantly operationally deployed right from the beginning of its new role over thirty years ago.
It takes advantage of an exceptional location in Bayonne, in South Western France, which enables all sort of training (amphibious, mountain…), and the proximity of dedicated assets of the French Army's 4th Special Forces Helicopter Regiment (4e RHFS) and airborne school (ETAP), two establishments that are essential for its training and operations.
The list of its recent operational deployments indicates a worldwide commitment that ranges from Afghanistan, to Africa and the Balkans. The acknowledged expertise of the Regiment is such that in recent years, many prominent European countries[who?] have entrusted it with the evacuation of their nationals in war-torn countries. The trust these countries have has never been misplaced and the 1er RPIMa has safely whisked out of harm's way hundreds of EU and foreign nationals in recent years.
Similarly, from the beginning of its involvement in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, first in 2001 and again from 2003 onwards, the Regiment has won high praises. The commitment of its members has been rewarded several times by the American forces in the form of Bronze Stars, Army Commendations and Army Achievement Medals.[citation needed]
The high level of expertise attained by the 1er RPIMa also makes it a highly sought-after partner in the development of Special Forces units abroad and the Regiment constantly receives requests for assistance in that specific field from sister units around the world.[citation needed]
Always the first to be deployed, the 1er RPIMa is at the forefront of France's defence. It is constantly on the lookout for new solutions and opportunities and thereby remains faithful to the motto of its SAS (Special Air Service) ancestors, "Who Dares Wins".
Denbigh Castle and town walls were built to control the lordship of Denbigh after the Conquest of Wales by Edward I of England in 1282. The lands were granted to Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, who began to build a new walled town, colonised by immigrants from England, protected by a substantial castle and surrounded by deer parks for hunting. The work had not been completed by 1294, when the Welsh temporarily seized the castle during the Madog ap Llywelyn revolt. The defences continued to be improved, although the castle was not completely finished by the time of Henry's death in 1311.
The castle passed between various owners in the first half of the 14th century, before coming under the control of the Mortimer family. Meanwhile, the walled town had proved impractical to live in, and a newer, much larger, settlement developed outside the defences. In 1400, the walled town was raided during the Glyndŵr Rising, although the castle itself remained secure throughout the rebellion. During the Wars of the Roses, Denbigh was attacked by Lancastrian forces; the walled town was attacked and burnt. In the aftermath, the old town was largely abandoned by its inhabitants, the walled area becoming an extension of the castle's defences.
During the First English Civil War, Denbigh was held by the Royalists until it was captured by Parliamentarian forces in October 1646. The castle was seized by pro-Royalist soldiers in 1659, after which General George Monk ordered it to be slighted, with various parts of the walls and towers being demolished. The site deteriorated further over the years and the old walled town remained almost deserted. In the middle of the 19th century, the town created a committee to manage the ruins and carried out restoration work. The Office of Works assumed responsibility for the fortifications in 1914, with the site ultimately passing into the control of the Welsh Cadw heritage agency.
Denbigh Castle is dominated by a triangle of three octagonal towers that forms its main entrance, considered by the historian John Goodall to be "the most architecturally sophisticated gatehouse of the thirteenth century". Eight mural towers protect the rest of its curtain wall, further protected by barbicans and a mantlet of defensive terraces and walls. The castle connects to the town walls, which remain largely intact and stretch for around 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) around the old town. The town walls were once protected by four towers and two gatehouses, although only one of the gatehouses still survives. The castle and town's gatehouse were constructed of decorative stonework, intended to symbolise royal authority and civic pride.
Denbigh Castle was constructed within what was originally the Welsh patrimony of Perfeddwlad. The patrimony controlled the pastoral farming lands on the Denbigh Moors and formed a royal residence, llys, for the Welsh princes. Perfeddwlad was strategically located along the Welsh border but its ownership was disputed and the territory was fought over by the Normans and Welsh many times during the 11th and 12th centuries.
In 1277, the Welsh prince Dafydd ap Gruffudd was granted Perfeddwlad by the English king, Edward I, who at the time was allied with Dafydd in his struggle against his brother Prince Llywelyn. Dafydd rebuilt the existing residence, creating a substantial castle. It is uncertain what form it took or exactly where on the current castle site it was located, but it included a bakehouse, buttery, chapel and a hall, and it became Dafydd's main stronghold. The Welsh called the settlement Dinbych, an abbreviation of Dinas Fechan, meaning "little fortress".
In 1282, Dafydd and Llywelyn rebelled against the King. Edward invaded North Wales with a huge army; after a month long siege, Dinbych fell to his forces in October 1282. The King created a new lordship to govern the district around Dinbych, which he renamed Denbigh and granted these lands to Henry de Lacy, the Earl of Lincoln.[3] With the help of James of St George, the King's master mason, Edward and Henry made plans for the construction of a new castle to govern the area, symbolically placed on top of the former llys.
Edward continued into Snowdonia, leaving Henry to continue the work at Denbigh, using local labourers and possibly men brought from Henry's estates in England. The western and southern sides of the castle and the new town walls were built first, in order to protect the construction teams and by 1285, Henry gave the new town its first charter. Work on the rest of the defences continued for several years. The castle and town formed part of a wider landscape controlled by de Lacey, including a nearby manor, a dovecote, barn and fishponds, which were all important symbols of lordship during the period. He similarly established three parks around the castle, stocked with deer from England.
The town walls enclosed an area approximately 9.5 acres (3.8 ha) in size and held 63 burgesses in 1285, each of which promised to provide an armed man to help protect the settlement. The townsfolk were English, many from Henry's estates in northern England and were reinforced by further English colonists who acquired large areas of rural land around the region. From the earliest days of the new settlement; the inhabitants began to spread out beyond the walls onto the flatter ground further down the hill, spurred on by the limited space and poor water supply in the inner town. This was unusual compared to the experience of other walled towns established in Wales at the time and within fifty years the external villa mercatoria had come to cover around 57 acres (23 ha).
The building work on Denbigh Castle had not been completed by September 1294, when a Welsh revolt broke out, led by Madog ap Llywelyn. The castle was taken by Welsh forces, despite efforts by Henry to relieve it and the fortification was not recaptured until December. The castle's defences continued to be improved, although it was not completely finished, possibly because the project was disrupted by the death of Henry's eldest son in an accident at the castle.
Henry de Lacy's daughter, Alice, inherited Denbigh Castle on his death in 1311. Alice was the wife of Thomas, the Earl of Lancaster, and the castle continued to be developed until Thomas was executed for treason in 1322. The following years were politically unstable and the castle was passed between several, short-lived, owners - Hugh Despenser, the Earl of Winchester and then Roger Mortimer, the Earl of March - before being held for a period by William Montagu. Work on the castle and the town walls continued throughout this period.
The Mortimer family reacquired the lordship in 1355 and carried out repairs over the next fifty years to the castle's stonework and timber. In 1400, Owain Glyndŵr led a revolt against the Crown and raided the town of Denbigh. Since Edmund Mortimer was only eight years old, King Henry IV placed Henry Percy in charge of Denbigh, until Percy defected to the rebels in 1403. Despite being isolated, Denbigh remained in royal hands through to the end of the rebellion in 1407. Edmund continued to hold the castle until he died, childless, in 1425, when ownership passed to Richard, the Duke of York.
During the Wars of the Roses, Denbigh was fought over by the rival Lancastrian and Yorkist factions. Jasper Tudor, the Earl of Pembroke and a Lancastrian supporter, was declared the constable of the castle by Henry VI in 1457 but the fortification remained in the hands of the Yorkists. After the Lancastrian victory at the Battle of Ludford Bridge, Jasper was able to force the garrison to surrender and finally took possession of the castle in 1460. The war then turned in favour of the Yorkists and despite the castle's new garrison holding out for several months under Roger Puleston, it was recaptured by Sir Richard Herbert in late 1461. The new Yorkist regime made William Herbert, Jasper's rival to the title of Earl of Pembroke, the constable and steward of Denbigh in 1467.
Jasper returned to Denbigh in 1468 and although he could not take the castle, he burnt the interior of the walled town. The attack spurred an exodus from the walled town to the newer suburbs. By the end of 16th century the inner area had been largely abandoned, coming to form part of the external defences of the castle and the Burgess Gate on the town walls became the town gaol. In 1586, the antiquarian William Camden could observe that the "old town is now deserted".
Much of the castle had fallen into decline by 1530 but six years later the castle became the centre for administrating the new county of Denbighshire, with the great gatehouse and nearby towers being used as a courthouse, prison and associated buildings by the county authorities. The remainder of the castle had fallen into ruin by 1561. Robert Dudley, later made the Earl of Leicester, was granted a lease of the castle in 1563, partially because the Crown was trying to reduce the costs of maintaining the dilapidated property.
During Dudley's tenure, Denbigh Castle was used as a place of imprisonment for those considered traitors by the officials of the Crown, including many dissidents towards the Elizabethan religious settlement. The most famous such prisoner was the Welsh poet and underground Catholic schoolmaster Richard Gwyn, who was imprisoned at Denbigh Castle from September 1581 to the Spring of 1582.
After Gwyn's execution on 15 October 1584, his head and one of his quarters were spiked upon Denbigh Castle. The other three quarters were similarly displayed at Wrexham, Ruthin Castle, and Holt Castle.
On 25 October 1970 Pope Paul VI presided over the canonization ceremony in Rome for St. Richard Gwyn, as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
The Catholic Church in England commemorates Gwyn with a feast day together with all the 284 canonized and beatified martyrs of the English Reformation on 4 May. The Catholic Church in Wales commemorates him on the feast day of the Six Welsh Martyrs: priests Philip Evans and John Lloyd, John Jones, David Lewis, John Roberts, the layman Richard Gwyn, and their companions, every year on 25 October.
During his rule, Dudley also built a large Anglican parish church in the walled town, possibly intending it to become a cathedral and carried out some minor repairs to the castle but little other work was completed before his death in 1588.
When the First English Civil War broke out in August 1642, North Wales was solidly Royalist, and Denbigh Castle was held by a garrison of 500 under Colonel William Salesbury, who made repairs to the defences. By late 1645, the war had turned against the Royalists, and Charles I spent three days at the castle after his defeat at Rowton Heath in September.
The following month, a Royalist army under the command of Sir William Vaughan gathered at Denbigh Green, close to the ruins of Denbigh Friary, intending to march to Chester to relieve the forces under siege there. Before this, Vaughan was attacked and defeated by a force commanded by Sir Thomas Mytton, and some of the Royalist soldiers retreated into the castle in the aftermath. Mytton took the outer parts of Denbigh but could not break into the walled town or the castle.
Mytton returned the next year with additional equipment and placed the castle and the walled town under a close siege in April 1646, erecting earthwork bastions for his guns along the eastern site of Denbigh. The Goblin Tower along the town walls, which contained the garrison's main well, was bombarded with artillery and Mytton placed more guns on nearby Galch Hill to attack the south-western side of the walls. With only one artillery piece of his own and no Royalist reinforcements likely, Salesbury's position appeared hopeless but he held on, arguing that he had given assurances to the King that he would not surrender the castle. Finally, Charles I sent Salebsury a message, personally ordering him to give up Denbigh; after negotiations, Salesbury agreed to surrender on good terms on 26 October.
After Salesbury departed, Parliament installed a small garrison in the castle, under the command of Colonel George Twistleton, the new governor. It was used as a prison for political prisoners, including David Pennant, the High Sheriff of Flintshire and there was an abortive Royalist attempt in 1648 to break into the castle to rescue the inmates.
In 1659, Sir George Booth led an uprising of Royalist and Presbyterian leaders against the Commonwealth government. A group of Royalist soldiers seized Denbigh Castle in August and took the garrison prisoner. After Booth's defeat at the Battle of Winnington Bridge a few weeks later, the rebels surrendered and the government retook the castle. General George Monck then ordered it to be slighted, put beyond military use. The republican politician John Carter demolished parts of the curtain walls and two towers over the course of six weeks. The site fell further into ruin over the remainder of the century, with its stone being reused to build houses in the town. When granted briefly in 1696 to William Bentinck, the Earl of Portland, complaints were made in Parliament and it reverted to the Crown.
Denbigh Castle remained ruined, although a new grammar school was built in the walled town in 1726 and a bowling green was established around 1769. Castle House, a large private dwelling, was also constructed there in either the second quarter or the middle of the century, using stone taken from the castle ruins and Leicester's church. In the middle of the 19th century, the historian John Williams observed that the walled town remained otherwise deserted, with only three irregular rows of cottages, holding a total of 163 inhabitants; these dwellings attracted complaint from the writer Samuel Lewis, who argued that they "materially diminished the interest excited by the ruins". The western tower of the Burgess Gate was then being used as a private house, as had the eastern tower until a few years before.
In the middle of the 19th century, the town created a "Castle Committee" to maintain the ruins; the Crown leased the committee control of the castle and in 1879 lent them £300 to fund repairs to the ruins. The Crown reclaimed control of the Burgess Gate from its occupants and carried out conservation work, before then leasing the gatehouse to the committee in 1908. In 1914, the central government's Office of Works took over responsibility for the site and during the late 1950s, its successor organisation, the Ministry of Works, first bought and then demolished various later buildings along the walls to clear the area for research and visitors.
In the 21st century, Denbigh Castle and the town walls are maintained by the Welsh heritage agency Cadw. The castle is open to visitors, receiving 10,154 in 2015 and parts of the extant walls are also open to visitors. £600,000 was invested by Cadw in the castle and walls during the mid-2010s, financing the construction of a new visitors' centre. The site is protected under UK law as a scheduled ancient monument and the castle as a grade I listed building.
Denbigh Castle is located on a naturally defensible, rocky outcrop above the Clywd valley, with the walled town just beneath it to the north. The castle comprises a large gatehouse, with a curtain wall and mural towers encircling an inner area approximately 350 by 260 feet (107 by 79 m) across. The historian John Goodall considers the fortification to be "one of the outstanding architectural creations of the Welsh conquest".
The Great Gatehouse is formed by a triangle of octagonal towers around a central octagonal hall, protected by a barbican. The gatehouse was built using decorative bands of masonry in different colours, intended to symbolise Edward I's royal authority and displayed a statue, probably of Edward II, over the main entrance. The complex was defended with a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide ditch, a drawbridge, murder holes and a portcullis. The three towers making up the gatehouse have individual names: the Porter's Lodge and Prison towers face outwards and the Badnes Tower, possibly named after an early constable of the castle, lies to the rear. Goodall considers the building to be "the most architecturally sophisticated gatehouse of the thirteenth century" and notes that the architectural ideas were later "reworked to brilliant effect" at Knaresborough.
To the east of the gatehouse is the site of the Queen's Chapel, since destroyed and the castle well, which is over 50 feet (15 m) deep. The hexagonal, three-storey Great Kitchen Tower and the White Chamber Tower, which was slighted after the English Civil War, flank the foundations of the Great Hall. Further south is the Pitcher House Tower, probably used for storing water during the summer months and the Green Chambers, so called because of the colour of their Gwespyr stonework. The chambers have basements specially designed for the storage of meat and wine and the upper storeys originally contained exceptionally fine accommodation.
At the southern end of the castle, the Postern Tower, originally three storeys high, links the castle to one end of the town walls. The adjacent Upper Gate and the Postern Gate formed a rear entrance to the castle, protected by another barbican, drawbridges and a steep passageway.
A mantlet of defensive terraces and cross-walls stretches around the south and eastern sides of the castle and originally prevented the undermining of the mural towers and thinnest stretches of the curtain wall. This side of the castle was protected by the Treasure House Tower, which held the Treasure House; the Tower-next-Treasure House; the Bishop's Tower, containing a sally port and the octagonal Red Tower, named after the red sandstone used in its construction, which linked to the other end of the town wall circuit. Stables, a blacksmith's workshop and storehouses once ran along the inside of the south-western corner of the castle.
The town walls stretch for around 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) from the north edge of the castle to its southeastern tip and mostly remain intact. The walls were built in the 13th century and originally protected by four mural towers, positioned in a disorderly pattern; the two gatehouses and the defences along the eastern salient were added in the 14th century.
Only the foundations of the Exchequer Gate on the western side of the walls remain but the gatehouse would originally have been protected by two circular towers, with a rectangular glacis base to prevent undermining. The walls between the Exchequer and Burgess Gate at the north-west corner of the circuit are intact. The Burgess Gate has two circular towers protecting a vaulted passage way, again with a distinctive glacis base. The gatehouse is built from white limestone and yellow sandstone, with the stonework forming a chequered design; this was a common decorative approach at the time and would have symbolised local civic pride. Although the top courses have been lost, the gatehouse might originally have stood up to 60 feet (18 m) tall. The section of the walls to the east of the Burgess Gate has been lost.
The walled circuit recommences in the north-east corner of the town, where the walls survive up to 15 feet (4.6 m) high, further protected by the two-storey tall North-Eastern Tower. On the eastern side of the walls, the original defences had been set back from the edge of a rocky salient, protected by the Countess Tower, an angular, two-storey building with two towers. The defences were adapted to follow the outer edge of the salient, with the Goblin Tower built on the outermost point, overlooking the edge of the cliffs. The Goblin Tower is a hexagonal, two-storey tower, protecting a deep well that formed the only reliable source of water for the defences during the summer.
The walled circuit continues south, meeting the Bastion Tower in the south-east corner.[88] The Bastion Tower was originally three storeys tall and was decorated with chequered sandstone and limestone in a similar fashion to the Burgess Gate.
Denbigh is a market town and a community in Denbighshire, Wales. Formerly the county town of the historic county of Denbighshire until 1888, Denbigh's Welsh name (Dinbych) translates to "Little Fortress"; a reference to its historic castle. Denbigh lies near the Clwydian Hills.
Denbigh Castle, together with its town walls, was built in 1282 (742 years ago) by order of King Edward I. The Burgess Gate, whose twin towers adorn the symbol on Denbigh's civic seal, was once the main entrance into the town. The first borough charter was granted to Denbigh in 1290, when the town was still contained within the old town walls. It was the centre of the Marcher Lordship of Denbigh. The town was involved in the revolt of Madog ap Llywelyn in 1294–1295; the castle was captured in the autumn and, on 11 November 1294, a relieving force was defeated by the Welsh rebels. The town was recaptured by Edward I in December. Denbigh was also burnt in 1400 during the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr.
During the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), the town was largely destroyed, subsequently moving from the hilltop to the area of the present town market.
Leicester's Church is an unfinished church. In 1579, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, who was also Baron of Denbigh, planned for there to be a cathedral. His intention was to move the status of city from neighbouring St Asaph. The project ran out of money and, when Robert Dudley died, it was left as ruins; it is now in the care of Cadw.
In 1643, during the English Civil War, Denbigh became a refuge for a Royalist garrison. Surrendering in 1646, the castle and town walls eventually fell into ruin.
The town grew around the textile industry in the 1600s, hosting specialist glovers, weavers, smiths, shoemakers, saddlers, furriers and tanners. Denbigh has been an important location for the agricultural industry throughout its history.
Denbigh railway station once served the town on the former London and North Western Railway, later part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway.
It was a junction for the Vale of Clwyd Railway line, which lead north to St Asaph and Rhyl, and the Mold and Denbigh Junction Railway. The former was closed in 1955, leaving Denbigh on a lengthy branch running from Chester to Ruthin, via Mold, which subsequently closed in 1962. A southern continuation beyond Ruthin, linking up with the Great Western Railway at Corwen, had closed in 1952.
The station site has been redeveloped since into a small retail park; however, remains of a platform can still be seen beside the road leading to the Home Bargains store, Aldi Supermarket and two charity shops.
At one time, the majority of the population sought employment at the North Wales Hospital, which, dating back to the 1840s, cared for people with psychiatric illnesses. The hospital closed in 1995 and has since fallen into disrepair. In October 2008, a special series of episodes of Most Haunted, titled Village of the Damned, was broadcast from the North Wales Hospital over 7 days. As of October 2018, the derelict building has passed into the ownership of Denbighshire County Council.
Denbigh had a town cinema on Love Lane. It opened as the Scala in 1928, before being re-branded as the Wedgwood Cinema in the late 1970s. It closed in October 1980, then reopened by Lewis Colwell in 1982 and renamed the Futura Cinema. The cinema closed again in the 1990s, but the building remained open as a video rental store. In 1995, Peter Moore reopened the cinema for a short period before being arrested and convicted of the murder of four men. The video rental store closed and the building is now in ruin awaiting redevelopment. Denbigh has no permanent cinema, though Denbigh Film Club regularly operates in Theatr Twm o'r Nant.
The population at the 2001 Census was 8,783,[10] increasing to 8,986 in the 2011 census., reducing in the 2021 census to 8,669.
Attractions in the town include Denbigh Library, Denbigh Castle and the castle walls, Cae Dai 1950s museum, Theatr Twm o'r Nant, medieval parish church St Marcella's, and a small shopping complex. Denbigh Boxing Club is located on Middle Lane. Denbigh Community Hospital was established in 1807. Denbigh Town Hall is a Grade II* listed building.
Denbigh Cricket Club is one of the oldest cricket clubs in Wales having been established in 1844. The club plays at the Ystrad Road ground and plays in the North Wales Cricket League. The 1st XI play in the Premier Division having won the Division 1 championship in 2010 with the 2nd XI in Division 3.
For over 50 years, a barrel rolling competition has been held on Boxing Day in the town square.
There are a number of places to stay in Denbigh, including Tyn Yr Eithin, a caravan, camping, and glamping site based on the edge of the town which has been hosting tourists since 1986.
There are three secondary schools located in Denbigh. Denbigh High School is the larger of the two, consisting of nearly 600 pupils and approximately 60 staff. The current headmaster is Glen Williams.
St Brigid's is a Catholic voluntary aided school on Mold Road on the outskirts of the town which caters for pupils between the ages of 3 – 19. There is a strict admissions policy and until 2009 the school only accepted girls. The schools current headteacher is Leah Crimes.
Myddleton College is the former Howell's Preparatory School and is an independent co-educational day and boarding school.
All 3 of these High Schools in Denbigh, along with Ysgol Brynhyfryd (Ruthin), Ysgol Glan Clwyd (St Asaph), Denbigh College, and Llysfasi College (Deeside) have joined to offer a combined 6th form under the title 'The Dyffryn Clwyd Consortium'.
Crest Mawr Wood (alt. - Crêst) is a Site of Special Scientific Interest to the north west, adjoining Denbigh Golf Club and the Tarmac Quarry, an historic and ancient deciduous woodland. This woodland is endangered due to environmental pressure and competing land use in the area.
Denbigh hosted the National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1882, 1939, 2001 and 2013.
Notable people
Rhoda Broughton (1840–1920), novelist
Elizabeth Casson (1881–1954) doctor and occupational therapy pioneer.
Shefali Chowdhury (born 1988), actor, notably in the Harry Potter films
CDawgVA (born 1996), YouTuber and podcaster, presenter of Trash Taste
Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (1532–1588), also known as Baron of Denbigh
Thomas Gee (1815–1898), a Welsh Nonconformist preacher, journalist and publisher.
David Griffith (1800–1894), known as "Clwydfardd" a Welsh poet and Archdruid of the National Eisteddfod of Wales.
Dr Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), visited friends and relation in Denbigh many times and has an urn memorial in his honour in the woods nearby.
Professor Edward Taylor Jones FRSE (1872–1961), physicist
Eirian Llwyd (1951–2014), printmaker and wife of former Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones
Humphrey Llwyd (1527–1568), a Welsh cartographer, author, antiquary and MP.
Sir Hugh Myddleton (1560–1631), royal jeweller, goldsmith and entrepreneur.
Thomas Myddelton (1550–1631) a Welsh merchant, Lord Mayor of London & MP
Twm o'r Nant (1739–1810), playwright, real name Thomas Edwards
Beatrix Potter (1866–1943), spent summers with her aunt and uncle at Gwaenynog Hall between 1895 and 1913 and used their large garden as inspiration for The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Susan Reynolds (1929–2021) a medieval historian
Kate Roberts (1891–1985), Welsh language writer.
Several members of the Salusbury Family, who represented Denbigh over the years.
Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904), a journalist and explorer
Mark Webster (born 1983) Welsh darts international, winner of the BDO World Darts Championship 2008
Bryn Williams (born 1977), TV chef who won the Great British Menu BBC TV programme.
Denbighshire is a county in the north-east of Wales. It borders the Irish Sea to the north, Flintshire to the east, Wrexham to the southeast, Powys to the south, and Gwynedd and Conwy to the west. Rhyl is the largest town, and Ruthin is the administrative centre. Its borders differ from the historic county of the same name.
Denbighshire has an area of 326 square miles (840 km2) and a population of 95,800, making it sparsely populated. The most populous area is the coast, where Rhyl (25,149) and Prestatyn (19,085) form a single built-up area with a population of 46,267. The next-largest towns are Denbigh (8,986), Ruthin (5,461), and Rhuddlan (3,709). St Asaph (3,355) is a city. All of these settlements are in the northern half of the county; the south is even less densely populated, and the only towns are Corwen (2,325) and Llangollen (3,658).
The geography of Denbighshire is defined by the broad valley of the River Clwyd, which is surrounded by rolling hills on all sides except the north, where it reaches the coast. The Vale of Clwyd, the lower valley, is given over to crops, while cattle and sheep graze the uplands. The Clwydian Range in the east is part of the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
This part of Wales contains the country's oldest known evidence of habitation – Pontnewydd (Bontnewydd-Llanelwy) Palaeolithic site has Neanderthal remains of some 225,000 years ago. The county is also home to several medieval castles, including Castell Dinas Brân, Denbigh, and Rhuddlan, as well as St Asaph Cathedral. Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod takes place in the town each July.
The main area was formed on 1 April 1996 under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, from various parts of the county of Clwyd. It includes the district of Rhuddlan (formed in 1974 entirely from Flintshire), the communities of Trefnant and Cefn Meiriadog from the district of Colwyn (entirely Denbighshire) and most of the Glyndŵr district. The last includes the former Edeyrnion Rural District, part of the administrative county of Merionethshire before 1974, covering the parishes of Betws Gwerfil Goch, Corwen, Gwyddelwern, Llangar, Llandrillo yn Edeirnion and Llansanffraid.
Other principal areas including part of historical Denbighshire are Conwy, which picked up the remainder of 1974–1996 Colwyn, the Denbighshire parts of 1974–1996 Aberconwy, and Wrexham, which corresponds to the pre-1974 borough of Wrexham along with most of Wrexham Rural District and several parishes of Glyndŵr. Post-1996 Powys includes the historically Denbighshire parishes of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, Llansilin and Llangedwyn, which formed part of Glyndŵr district.
Researchers have found signs that Denbighshire was inhabited at least 225,000 years ago. Bontnewydd Palaeolithic site is one of the most significant in Britain. Hominid remains of probable Neanderthals have been found, along with stone tools from the later Middle Pleistocene.
In 2021 February, archaeologists from Aeon Archaeology announced a discovery of over 300 Stone Age tools and artifacts in Rhuddlan. They revealed scrapers, microliths, flakes of chert (a hard, fine-grained, sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz), flints and other rudimentary tools. An expert, Richard Cooke, believes the lithic remains belonged to ancient peoples, who while passing through the area, made camp by the river more than 9,000 years ago.
The eastern edge of Denbighshire follows the ridge of the Clwydian Range, with a steep escarpment to the west and a high point at Moel Famau (1,820 ft (555 m)), which with the upper Dee Valley forms an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley – one of just five in the Wales. The Denbigh Moors (Mynydd Hiraethog) are in the west of the county and the Berwyn Range adjacent to the southern edge. The River Clwyd has a broad fertile Vale running from south–north in the centre of the county. There is a narrow coastal plain in the north which much residential and holiday-trade development. The highest point in the historic county was Cadair Berwyn at 832 m or 2,730 ft), but the boundary changes since 1974 make Cadair Berwyn North Top the highest point. Denbighshire borders the present-day principal areas of Gwynedd, Conwy County Borough, Flintshire, Wrexham County Borough, and Powys.
Rhyl and Prestatyn form a single built-up area in the north of the county, with a population of 46,267. They are immediately adjacent to the Kinmel Bay and Abergele built-up area in neighbouring Conwy, and at the eastern end of series of coastal resorts which that also includes Colwyn Bay and Llandudno further west.
According to the 2021 United Kingdom census, Denbighshire's population was approximately 95,800. According to previous censuses, the population of Denbighshire was 93,734 in 2011 and 93,065 in 2001. The largest towns on the coast are Rhyl (2001 population c. 25,000) and Prestatyn (2001 population c. 18,000). According to the 2011 Census returns, 24.6 per cent stated they could speak Welsh.
Since the 20th-century demise of the coal and steel industries in the Wrexham area, there is no heavy industry in the county. Although most towns have small industrial parks or estates for light industry, the economy is based on agriculture and tourism. Much of the working population is employed in the service sector. The uplands support sheep and beef cattle rearing, while in the Vale of Clwyd dairy farming and wheat and barley crops predominate. Many towns have livestock markets and farming supports farm machinery merchants, vets, feed merchants, contractors and other ancillaries. With their incomes on the decline, farmers have found opportunities in tourism, rural crafts, specialist food shops, farmers' markets and value-added food products.
The upland areas with their sheep farms and small, stone-walled fields are attractive to visitors. Redundant farm buildings are often converted into self-catering accommodation, while many farmhouses supply bed and breakfast. The travel trade began with the arrival of the coast railway in the mid-19th century, opening up the area to Merseyside. This led to a boom in seaside guest houses. More recently, caravan sites and holiday villages have thrived and ownership of holiday homes increased. Initiatives to boost the economy of North Wales continue, including redevelopment of the Rhyl seafront and funfair.
The North Wales Coast Line running from Crewe to Holyhead is served by Transport for Wales and Avanti West Coast services. Trains leaving Crewe to pass through Chester, cross the River Dee into Wales, and continue through Flint, Shotton, Holywell Junction (closed in 1966), Prestatyn, Rhyl, and stations to Bangor and Holyhead, which has a ferry service to Ireland.
There are no motorways in Denbighshire. The A55 dual carriageway runs from Chester through St Asaph to the North Wales coast at Abergele, then parallel to the railway through Conwy and Bangor to Holyhead. The A548 run from Chester to Abergele through Deeside and along the coast, before leaving the coast and terminating at Llanrwst. The main road from London, the A5, passes north-westwards through Llangollen, Corwen and Betws-y-Coed to join the A55 and terminate at Bangor. The A543 crosses the Denbigh Moors from south-east to north-west, and the A525 links Ruthin with St Asaph.
There are local bus services between the main towns. Several services by Arriva Buses Wales run along the main coast road between Chester and Holyhead, linking the coastal resorts. Another route links Rhyl to Denbigh.
Denbighshire is represented in the House of Commons by three MPs. The Welsh Labour Party lost to the Welsh Conservatives in the 2019 general election for the first time.
The following MPs were elected from Denbighshire in 2019:
Simon Baynes (Welsh Conservatives) in Clwyd South, first elected in 2019.
David Jones (Welsh Conservatives) in Clwyd West, first elected in 2005.
James Davies (Welsh Conservatives) in Vale of Clwyd, first elected in 2019.
Denbighshire is also represented in the Senedd by three members elected in 2021:
Ken Skates (Welsh Labour) in Clwyd South, first elected in 2011
Darren Millar (Welsh Conservatives) in Clwyd West, first elected in 2007
Gareth Davies (Welsh Conservatives) in Vale of Clwyd, first elected in 2021.
In 2019, research by UnHerd in association with the pollster FocalData showed that most people across the county support the British monarchy.
Iraqi Forces Battle ISIS Jihadists During an Ongoing Military Operation in the Al-Intisar Area of Eastern Mosul
Iraqi forces in the Al-Intisar area in eastern Mosul in an ongoing military operation against Islamic State (IS) group jihadists, on January 1, 2017..Iraqi forces have retaken more than 60 percent of eastern Mosul from the Islamic State group since the battle for the city began in mid-October.
Photos: Ahmad Al-Rubye
Due to some recent storms the Salt Flats were a little wetter than usual. Normally this area is not covered with water. Its usually the most desolate, barren and corrosive place I know. This whole area is just a salty crust that stretches on for miles. Its so flat that you can actually see the curvature of the earth.
The 1st Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment (French: 1er Régiment de Parachutistes d'Infanterie de Marine, 1er RPIMa) is one of three regiments (1er RPIMa, 13e Régiment de Dragons Parachutistes (13e RDP), 4e RHFS) in the French Army Special Forces Brigade (BFST).
The 1er RPIMa is one of Europe's most experienced special forces units, and has been constantly operationally deployed right from the beginning of its new role over thirty years ago.
It takes advantage of an exceptional location in Bayonne, in South Western France, which enables all sort of training (amphibious, mountain…), and the proximity of dedicated assets of the French Army's 4th Special Forces Helicopter Regiment (4e RHFS) and airborne school (ETAP), two establishments that are essential for its training and operations.
The list of its recent operational deployments indicates a worldwide commitment that ranges from Afghanistan, to Africa and the Balkans. The acknowledged expertise of the Regiment is such that in recent years, many prominent European countries[who?] have entrusted it with the evacuation of their nationals in war-torn countries. The trust these countries have has never been misplaced and the 1er RPIMa has safely whisked out of harm's way hundreds of EU and foreign nationals in recent years.
Similarly, from the beginning of its involvement in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, first in 2001 and again from 2003 onwards, the Regiment has won high praises. The commitment of its members has been rewarded several times by the American forces in the form of Bronze Stars, Army Commendations and Army Achievement Medals.[citation needed]
The high level of expertise attained by the 1er RPIMa also makes it a highly sought-after partner in the development of Special Forces units abroad and the Regiment constantly receives requests for assistance in that specific field from sister units around the world.[citation needed]
Always the first to be deployed, the 1er RPIMa is at the forefront of France's defence. It is constantly on the lookout for new solutions and opportunities and thereby remains faithful to the motto of its SAS (Special Air Service) ancestors, "Who Dares Wins".