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Exterior view of the Church of the Holy Archangels, within the complex of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, in Vagharshapat (Etchmiadzin), the holy city and the religious center of Armenia.
© All rights reserved. You may not use this photo in website, blog or any other media without my explicit permission.
Tugendhat Villa - UNESCO World Heritage Site
Please accept an invitation to visit a 1:1 replica of the RL building – the Villa Tugenhdat, which is considered a masterpiece of a German-born American architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
The Villa Tugendhat, built in 1930 in Brno in today's Czech Republic, is one of the most famous examples of functionalism.
Mies van den Rohe designed also all furniture in this house and pieces like Barcelona chair, Brno chair or Tugendhat chair have become icons of the ‘modern classical’ style and are still in production.
slurl.com/secondlife/Czechoslovakia2/91/154/23
By: Rivo Miles
Nymphaea nouchali, often known by its synonym Nymphaea stellata, or by common names blue lotus, star lotus, red and blue water lily, blue star water lily or manel flower is a water lily of genus Nymphaea. It is said that when Buddha died, lotus flowers blossomed everywhere he had walked in his lifetime.
The Jagiellonian Clock, incorporates the Jagiellonian Globe. The Globus Jagellonicus or Jagiellonian globe, made in France and dated to around 1510, is by some considered to be the oldest existing globe to show the Americas.
The Hieronymites' Monastery [Mosteiro dos Jerónimos], Lisbon - the most visited monument in Portugal, over 1.1 million visitors in 2017. UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983.
Wiltshire, England
June 19, 2015
©Dale Haussner
"Stonehenge is probably the most important prehistoric monument in the whole of Britain and has attracted visitors from earliest times. It stands as a timeless monument to the people who built it.
The stonehenge that we see today is the final stage that was completed about 3500 years ago, but first let us look back 5000 years.
The first Stonehenge was a large earthwork or Henge, comprising a ditch, bank, and the Aubrey holes, all probably built around 3100 BC. The Aubrey holes are round pits in the chalk, about one metre wide and deep, with steep sides and flat bottoms. They form a circle about 284 feet in diameter. Excavations have revealed cremated human bones in some of the chalk filling, but the holes themselves were probably made, not for the purpose of graves, but as part of the religious ceremony. Shortly after this stage Stonehenge was abandoned, left untouched for over 1000 years.
The second and most dramatic stage of Stonehenge started around 2150 BC. Some 82 bluestones from the Preseli mountains, in south-west Wales were transported to the site. It is thought these stones, some weighing 4 tonnes each were dragged on rollers and sledges to the headwaters on Milford Haven and then loaded onto rafts. They were carried by water along the south coast of Wales and up the rivers Avon and Frome, before being dragged overland again to near Warminster in Wiltshire. The final stage of the journey was mainly by water, down the river Wylye to Salisbury, then the Salisbury Avon to west Amesbury.
This astonishing journey covers nearly 240 miles. Once at the site, these stones were set up in the centre to form an incomplete double circle. ( During the same period the original entrance of the circular earthwork was widened and a pair of Heel Stones were erected. Also the nearer part of the Avenue was built, aligned with the midsummer sunrise.)
The third stage of Stonehenge, about 2000 BC, saw the arrival of the Sarsen stones, which were almost certainly brought from the Marlborough Downs near Avebury, in north Wiltshire, about 25 miles north of Stonehenge. The largest of the Sarsen stones transported to Stonehenge weigh 50 tonnes and transportation by water would have been impossible, the stones could only have been moved using sledges and ropes. Modern calculations show that it would have taken 500 men using leather ropes to pull one stone, with an extra 100 men needed to lay the huge rollers in front of the sledge.
These were arranged in an outer circle with a continuous run of lintels. Inside the circle, five trilithons were placed in a horseshoe arrangement, whose remains we can still see today.
The final stage took place soon after 1500 BC when the bluestones were rearranged in the horseshoe and circle that we see today. The original number of stones in the bluestone circle was probably around 60, these have long since been removed or broken up. Some remain only as stumps below ground level.
For more info, see:
Listening to ancient stories at the Al-Khazneh at night with illuminating lights that looked like candles was an amazing experience to have.
Petra originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu or Raqēmō, is a historic and archaeological city in southern Jordan. Famous for its rock-cut architecture and water conduit system, Petra is also called the "Rose City" because of the colour of the sandstone from which it is carved; it was famously called "a rose-red city half as old as time" in a poem of 1845 by John Burgon. It is adjacent to the mountain of Jabal Al-Madbah, in a basin surrounded by mountains forming the eastern flank of the Arabah valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. Access to the city is through a famously picturesque 1.2-kilometre-long (3⁄4 mi) gorge called the Siq, which leads directly to the Khazneh (treasury).
Cliffs near Petra, View over Wadi Arabah
The area around Petra has been inhabited from as early as 7000 BC, and the Nabataeans might have settled in what would become the capital city of their kingdom as early as the 4th century BC. Archaeological work has only discovered evidence of Nabataean presence dating back to the second century BC, by which time Petra had become their capital. The Nabataeans were nomadic Arabs who invested in Petra's proximity to the incense trade routes by establishing it as a major regional trading hub.
The trading business gained the Nabataeans considerable revenue and Petra became the focus of their wealth. Unlike their enemies, the Nabataeans were accustomed to living in the barren deserts and were able to repel attacks by taking advantage of the area's mountainous terrain. They were particularly skillful in harvesting rainwater, agriculture, and stone carving. Petra flourished in the 1st century AD, when its Al-Khazneh structure, possibly the mausoleum of Nabataean king Aretas IV, was constructed, and its population peaked at an estimated 20,000 inhabitants. They developed a complex system of cisterns, channels, and dams to collect and store rainwater, allowing them to thrive in the arid desert environment. Most of the famous rock-cut buildings, which are mainly tombs, date from this and the following period. Much less remains of the free-standing buildings of the city.
Although the Nabataean kingdom became a client state of the Roman Empire in the first century BC, it was only in 106 AD that it lost its independence. Petra fell to the Romans, who annexed Nabataea and renamed it as Arabia Petraea. Petra's importance declined as sea trade routes emerged, and after an earthquake in 363 destroyed many structures. In the Byzantine era, several Christian churches were built, but the city continued to decline and, by the early Islamic era, it was abandoned except for a handful of nomads. It remained unknown to the western world until 1812, when Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt rediscovered it.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra
The goddess Mut, wife of Amun, in her human form - detail. Mut took on the dual identity of the goddesses Hathor and Sekhmet. The figures were carved with a bas-relief technique in the main chamber; elsewhere, they were simply cut into the rock. (Hand-held camera, by torchlight)
South wall: Relief depicting a bare-footed deified king walking a lion on a leash. In the lower register is a frieze depicting sheep.
The Acropolis (which means "high city") is a flat-topped rock that rises nearly 500 feet above sea level, with a surface area of about 3 hectares.
If you are interested in additional images from the Acropolis, some can be found in my album at www.flickr.com/photos/36791099@N08/sets/72157628141776535.
If you are interested in additional images of Athens, some can be found in my album at www.flickr.com/photos/36791099@N08/sets/72157628141789851.
The largest known cave system in the world, the Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System, as of 2022, has 426 miles of documented passages, and sits beneath the ground in Mammoth Cave National Park, established in 1941, and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981, the only designation in the state of Kentucky. The park is also an International Biosphere Reserve, designated in 1990, and an International Dark Sky Park, designated in 2021. The Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave System formed in Mississippian Limestone rock underneath a Big Clifty Sandstone cap, which has formed several stable arched passages of varying sizes from the intrusion of water into the rock layers, with the less porous sandstone cap preventing water intrusion at most locations, which have kept the caverns beneath intact and stable for eons. The water that passes through the cave system drains into the adjacent Green River, and has continuously eroded deeper into the rock along with the river. The cave is home to endemic species of organisms that have adapted to the dark conditions within the cave system. The cave system was known to indigenous people, whom mined gypsum from the walls of the caves and explored the caves, with human remains, signs of human activity, and artifacts from their presence in the cave. The cave became known to European settlers in the 1790s, and it started being mined by Valentine Simon for saltpeter to create gunpowder in 1798, with the mining activities intensifying around the time of the War of 1812, and becoming an industrial-scale operation under the ownership of Charles Wilkins and Hyman Gratz, whom used slave labor to exploit the cave’s resources. In 1838, with the decline in value of saltpeter, the cave was sold to Franklin Gorin, whom operated the cave as a tourist attraction, but was sold to Doctor John Croghan the following year. Under Gorin and Croghan, Black slaves served as tour guides for visitors, with Stephen Bishop being the most notable of these guides. Bishop made many maps of the caves during the 1840s and 1850s, and was the first known person to cross Bottomless Pit and discover the River Styx and Mammoth Dome on the other side. Croghan attempted to run a Tuberculosis Hospital within the cave in 1842-1843, believing the stable temperatures and air would assist patients, but this was short lived. In 1886, the Mammoth Cave Railroad was built between Park City and the historic Mammoth Cave Hotel, which operated until 1931. The caves were mapped more accurately by German visitor Max Kämper in 1908, whom mapped the surface topography and used instruments to document the cave, allowing for the opening of new entrances to the caverns from the surface and being the most accurate maps of the caves until the 1960s. Sadly, this was not appreciated by the Croghan family, whose historic cavern entrance was threatened in status by these maps, and Kämper returned to Germany, where he died as a soldier during World War I’s Battle of the Somme in 1916. Starting in the 1920s, the land around the caves was purchased by the private Mammoth Cave National Park Association, with the park being officially authorized in 1926. Between 1933 and 1942, the park’s landscape was reforested and infrastructure was constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), part of the New Deal. Between 1954 and 1972, the cave system was further explored, culminating in the connection between the longer Flint Ridge System and wider Mammoth Cave being found, making it the longest known cave system in the world. Today, the park sees about half a million visitors annually, and contains the majority of the Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave system, with some portions of the system extending east of the park’s boundaries under privately-owned land.
December 28, 2018 - I saw this cat at the outdoor terrace at The Basin Restaurant. I just wanted to pick this cat up and take it home with me! however our guide in Israel told us not to pet any of cats that we come across on the trip so I kept my distance.
Meer met lotussen en karstbergen die weerspiegeld worden in het water
World Heritage
Deze regio in Zuid-China is een van de meest spectaculaire voorbeelden van een vochtig tropisch tot subtropisch karstlandschap. Het gebied is 176228 hectare groot, bestaand uit 12 plekken verspreid over de provincies Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan en Chongqing. De meest kenmerkende soorten karstformaties komen er voor zoals torens, pieken en kegels. Het stenen woud Shilin (steenbos) bij de stad Kunming bestaat uit bijzondere kalkstenen pieken en rotsen met uiteenlopende vormen en veranderende kleuren. De kegel- en torenvormige kalkstenen rotsen in Libo zijn wereldberoemd vanwege het prachtige landschap dat ze vormen. De karstregio kent nog andere spectaculaire kenmerken zoals natuurlijke bruggen, ravijnen en grote grotsystemen. Bijvoorbeeld in Wulong waar ook reuzen-dolines (komvormige verzakkingen) voorkomen.
Summer scenery on the Seceda mountain (2519m), in the Odle (needles) group, part of the Dolomites, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated within the Puez-Odle Nature Park, South Tyrol, northern Italy.
© All rights reserved. You may not use this photo in website, blog or any other media without my explicit permission.
June 2007.
Long weekend based in Lisbon.
The Pena National Palace, a Romanticist palace, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Wonders of Portugal.
King Ferdinand transformed the remains of an old monastery into a palace that would serve as a summer residence for the Portuguese royal family between 1842–1854. The last queen of Portugal, Queen Amélia, spent her last night here before leaving the country in exile.
Kings Tableland overlooks Jamison Valley on the right. Wentworth Falls and Rocket Point are on the left.
Views down onto the red roofs of Kotor below, the cruise ship in the harbour and across the whole Bay of Kotor.
An informative notice put up at Darjeeling station describing the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway and declaring its World Heritage status, an honour conferred by the UNESCO in 1999. The certification ran into a spot of turbulence when some of the services were dieselized shortly afterwards, but now all is quiet again, Some services are still behind steam. (May 2009)