LaurieAnnie's photos with the keyword: mountain

Innsbruck is a city in western Austria, and the capital of the federal state of Tyrol. It is located in the Inn valley at the junction with the Wipptal (Sill River) which provides access to the Brennerpass, just about 30 km south of Innsbruck. Located in the broad valley between tall mountains, the Nordkette (Hafelekar, 2334m) in the north, Patscherkofel (2246m) and Serles (2403m) in the south, it is an internationally renowned winter sports centre. From Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innsbruck

The nearby Marienbrücke (Mary's Bridge) over Pöllat Gorge, named after Marie of Prussia, provides a view of one of Neuschwanstein's façades. Text from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marienbr%c3%bccke

Neuschwanstein Castle (German: Schloss Neuschwanstein, lit. New Swan Stone palace) is a 19th-century Bavarian palace on a rugged hill near Hohenschwangau and Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as an homage to Richard Wagner, the King's inspiring muse. Although public photography of the interior is not permitted, it is the most photographed building in Germany and is one of the country's most popular tourist destinations. Ludwig himself named it Neue Hohenschwangau; the name Neuschwanstein was coined after his death. The reclusive Ludwig did not allow visitors to his castles, which he intended as personal refuges, but after his death in 1886 the castle was opened to the public (in part due to the need to pay off the debts Ludwig incurred financing its construction). Since that time over 50 million people have visited the Neuschwanstein Castle. About 1.3 million people visit annually, with up to 6,000 per day in the summer. The palace has appeared in several movies, and was the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty Castle (1955) at both Disneyland Park and Hong Kong Disneyland. In 1923 Crown Prince Rupprecht gave the palace to the state of Bavaria, unlike nearby Hohenschwangau Castle which was transferred to the private Wittelsbach Trust (Wittelsbacher Ausgleichfonds), which is administered on behalf of the head of the house of Wittelsbach, currently Franz, Duke of Bavaria. The Free State of Bavaria has spent more than €14.5 million on Neuschwanstein's maintenance, renovation and visitor services since 1990. Text excerpted from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein

Landscape surrounding Paestum in Campania, in Italy.

Monreale (contraction of monte-reale, so-called from a palace built here by Roger I of Sicily) is a small city in the province of Palermo, in Sicily, Italy, on the slope of Monte Caputo, overlooking the beautiful and very fertile valley called "La Conca d'oro" (the Golden Shell), famed for its orange, olive and almond trees, the produce of which is exported in large quantities. The town has approximately 30,000 and is located 15 km (12 mi) south of Palermo. The town, which for long was a mere village, owed its origin to the founding of a large Benedictine monastery, with its church, the seat of the metropolitan archbishop of Sicily. Text from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monreale

Giardini Naxos is a comune in Messina province on the island of Sicily in Italy. Today it is a popular seaside-resort. Founded by Thucles the Chalcidian in 734 BCE, it was never a powerful city, but its temple of Apollo Archegetes, protecting deity of all the Greek colonies, gave it prominence in religious affairs. Leontini and Catania were both colonized from here. Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela, captured it in 494 BCE. Its opposition to Syracuse ultimately led to its capture and destruction in 403 BCE at the hands of Dionysius the tyrant, after it had supported Athens during that city's disastrous Sicilian Expedition. Though the site continued to be inhabited, most activity shifted to neighbouring Tauromenium. Today Giardini Naxos is a successful tourist destination. It is known for its beautiful beaches and crystal clear waters of the Ionian Sea. It has a small, but prosperous fishing port. There are many hotels and restaurants and the town is ten minutes away from another of Sicily's most important tourist destinations Taormina. Text from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giardini_Naxos

A miniature imitation of the Matterhorn featuring a bobsled ride is one of the attractions at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Matterhorn Bobsleds opened in 1959 and is a 1/100 scale replica (147 feet in height) of the actual mountain in the Swiss Alps, although not exact. The attraction was one of the first E ticket rides in Disneyland Park, with the Submarine Voyage being the first in the same summer. The Matterhorn is said to be the first roller coaster with metal tracks. It is rumoured that there is a basketball field (or a baseball field) inside the ride. The field is said to create a loophole in the California building height restrictions law (because the law does not apply to sports buildings). Text from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matterhorn

Artist Wang Fu (Chinese, 1362–1416) Title/Object Name Joys of the Fisherman Culture China Period Ming dynasty (1368–1644) Date ca. 1410 Medium Handscroll; ink on paper Dimensions Image: 10 5/8 x 22 ft. 7 1/8 in. (27 x 688.7 cm) Overall with mounting: 10 15/16 in. x 38 ft. 3 11/16 in. (27.8 x 1167.6 cm) Credit Line Ex coll.: C. C. Wang Family, Edward Elliott Family Collection, Purchase, The Dillon Fund Gift, 1982 Accession Number 1982.2.3 Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/asian_... and A twelfth-century couplet inscribed on the wall of a tavern characterized the lives of the fisherman and the scholar-official: Right and wrong reach not where men fish; Glory and disgrace dog the official riding his horse. To painters living in the tumultuous days of the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, the theme of the fisherman symbolized a perfect escape from their strife-torn world. Wang Fu, a fellow townsman of Ni Zan (1306-1374), returned to Wuxi in 1401, after twenty years of exile at the desolate northern outpost of Datong, Shanxi Province; like Ni Zan, he had been a wanderer in his native land. In this long scroll Wang echoes Wu Zhen’s (1280-1354) treatment of the fisherman theme. Poised between descriptive realism and calligraphic abstraction, Wang’s painting exemplifies the Ming- and Qing- dynasty scholar-artists’ practice of expressing themselves through the brush idioms of the Song and Yuan masters. Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.

The archaeological site of Morgantina is located in east central Sicily, at 37° 26.035' N 14° 28.928' E. It is sixty kilometres (forty miles) from the coast of the Ionian Sea, in the province of Enna. The closest modern town is Aidone, two kilometres southwest of the site. The site consists of a two-kilometre long ridge running southwest–northeast, known as Serra Orlando, and a neighboring hill at the northeast called Cittadella. Morgantina was inhabited in several periods. The earliest major settlement was made at Cittadella and lasted from about 1000/900 to about 450 BCE. The other major settlement was located on Serra Orlando, and existed from about 450 BCE to about 50 CE. Morgantina has been the subject of archaeological investigation since the early 20th century. According to Strabo, Morgantina was founded by a pre-Roman Italian group known as the Morgeti. Dionysos of Halikarnassos wrote that the Morgetes were led by a king named Morges. The earliest historical date associated with Morgantina is 459 BCE, when Douketios, leader of the indigenous Sikel population of central Sicily, attacked the city and captured it. Morgantina was probably still under Douketios' control when he was defeated at Nomai by Syracuse in 449 BCE. No further mention of Morgantina is made until Thucydides lists it as part of the terms of a truce in the war of 427–424 BCE between Syracuse and the Dorian cities of Sicily on one side, and Kamarina, the Khalkidian cities of Sicily, the Sikels, and Athens on the other side. Thucydides says that Syracuse agreed at the Congress of Gela to give Morgantina to Kamarina in return for payment of an indemnity. Kamarina was destroyed in 405 by the Carthaginians. Morgantina therefore must have been independent from at least this date, although it was soon re-captured by Dionysios of Syracuse in 396. Syracuse retained (occasionally more nominal than actual) control of Morgantina until the Second Punic War. In 317, Morgantina received the tyrant Agathokles, then in exile, and offered him help in returning to Syracuse. He was elected praetor at Morgantina, and later dux. As part of the Syracusan kingdom of Hieron II, Morgantina fell under the hegemony of Rome when Hieron became a Roman vassal in 263. In 214, Morgantina switched its allegiance from Rome to Carthage. Morgantina remained autonomous until 211, when it became the last Sicilian town to be captured by the Romans. It was given as payment by Rome to a group of Spanish mercenaries. In 133, Morgantina was the place where Eunus, the leader of the slave rebellion known as the First Servile War died. In the Second Servile War, Morgantina was besieged and taken by slaves. The final mention of Morgantina comes again from Strabo, who notes that in his own time, the first century CE, the city had ceased to exist. A few literary sources describe Morgantina and its economy. Most famous of these are the references to the vitis murgentina, a strain of grape mentioned by Cato, Columella, and Pliny the Elder. These grapes were prized for their wine — Pliny called it "the very best among all those that come from Sicily" — and had been transplanted from Sicily to mainland Italy by the 2nd century BCE. Text from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantina

Piazza IX Aprile – It is a gracious piazza with a balcony overlooking the sea and offering wonderful views over the bay and across to Mount Etna. On the other sides are the bare façade of the Chiesa di San Giuseppe, (17th century), S. Agostino, now a library, and the Torre dell’Orologio. The piazza serves as a meeting-place, then crowded with people happy to while away the time at one of the bars with tables outside. Text from: www.sicilyweb.com/english/messina/taormina.htm

Piazza IX Aprile – It is a gracious piazza with a balcony overlooking the sea and offering wonderful views over the bay and across to Mount Etna. On the other sides are the bare façade of the Chiesa di San Giuseppe, (17th century), S. Agostino, now a library, and the Torre dell’Orologio. The piazza serves as a meeting-place, then crowded with people happy to while away the time at one of the bars with tables outside. Text from: www.sicilyweb.com/english/messina/taormina.htm

Is it Greek or Roman? This is a question that has always been open to debate among experts and critics. All their disputes would end if they remembered Taormina's origins as a Greek "Polis" and the fact that each and every ancient Greek city had its own Theatre where they performed tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and comedies by Aristophanes, just to name the most famous authors. The Theatre in Taormina is the second-largest in Sicily after the one in Siracusa. All the Romans did later, in accordance with their well-known ostentatious nature, was enlarge the theatre as it was very small. And it apparently took decades to build. It is fifty metres wide, one hundred and twenty metres long and twenty metres high, which means that about 100,000 cubic metres of stone had to be removed. Further evidence that the Theatre is of Greek origin is in the well-cut biocks of Taormina stone (similar to marble) below the scene of the Theatre; these are a typical example of the ancient Greek building technique. The theatre is divided into three main sections: the scene, the orchestra and the cavea. The scene is opposite the cavea and is obviously where the actors used to perform. There is now a large ten-metre long portion missing in the centre of the scene, supposedly caused by attacks during the wars. This serious damage to the theatre makes it nevertheless even more evocative due to the magnificent panorama (the bay of Naxos and Mount Etna) which can now be seen. According to reconstructions by experts, the scene was decorated with two series of columns of the Corinthian order, recognizable due to the shape of the capitals and their acanthus leaf design; the acanthus is a wild Mediterranean plant. The orchestra of the theatre was the flat clearing in the centre which separated the scene from the cavea. This area was for the musicians, but the choruses and dancers also performed there. The word "orchestra", nowadays meaning a musical band, comes from this part of the Greek theatre. The cavea on the other hand is the series of steps, from the lowest to the highest ones at the top, where the spectators were seated. The first and last semicircular steps were 62 and 147.34 metres long respectively. The steps were carved out of the rock and, in places where there was none, they were built in masonry. The cavea was divided into five areas called "diazòmata" by the Greeks and "praecinctiones" by the Romans, both meaning enclosed zones. And these were where the audience used to sit. The theatre is thought to have been able to seat about 5,400 spectators. No one is sure of when the Theatre was actually erected. Those who believe it was built by the Greeks say it must have been around the middle of the third century B.C., when Hiero was the tyrant of Siracusa. But due to the theatre's structural characteristics, some say it was erected by Roman engineers to be used exclusively by the Greeks. This wouid explain all the Greek inscriptions inside the theatre. Nowadays the ancient Theatre is still one of Taormina's main attractions. As it is still practicable, the theatre seated the audiences of the most important Italian cinematographic event, the "David di Donatello" award, for many years; now an international festival entitled "Taormina Art", lasting the whole summer period, is held there with cinema, theatre, ballet and symphonic music reviews. Text from: www.taormina-ol.it/taormina/taormina_04.htm