Castel Nuovo
Castel Nuovo called Maschio Angioino, is a medieval castle located in front of Piazza Municipio and the city hall in central Naples, Italy. Its scenic location and imposing size makes the castle, first erected in 1279, one of the main architectural landmarks of the city, it was a royal seat for kings of Naples and Spain until 1815. It is the headquarters of Neapolitan Society of Homeland History and of the Naples Committee of the Institute for the History of the Italian Risorgimento. In the complex there is the civic museum, which includes the Palatine Chapel and the museum paths on the first and second floors; the construction of its former nucleus -today re-emerged following restoration and archaeological exploration work- is due to the initiative of Charles I of Anjou, who in 1266, defeated the Hohenstaufens, ascended to the throne of Sicily and established the transfer of the capital from Palermo to the city of Naples. The presence of an external monarchy had set the town planning of Naples around the center of the royal power, constituting an alternative urban core, formed by the port and by the two main castles adjacent to it, Castel Capuano and Castel dell'Ovo.
This relationship between the royal court and town planning had manifested itself with Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, who in the 13th century, in the Swabian statute had concentrated greater attention on castles neglecting the city walls. To the two existing castles the Anjevins added the main, Castel Nuovo, not just a fortification but above all his magnificent palace; the royal residence of Naples had been until the Castel Capuano, but the Norman ancient fortress was judged as inadequate to the function and the king wanted to build a new castle near the sea. The project was designed by the French architect Pierre de Chaulnes, the construction of the Castrum Novum started in 1279 to finish just three years a short time considering the techniques of construction of the period and the overall size of the work. However, the king never lived there: following the War of the Sicilian Vespers, which cost to the House of Anjou the crown of Sicily, conquered by Peter III of Aragon and other events, the new palace remained unused until 1285, the year of the death of Charles I.
The new king Charles II of Naples moved with his family and the court to the new residence, which he enlarged and embellished. During his reign the Holy See was linked to the House of Anjou, in a turbulent relationship, which in the following years will be marked by pressure and continuous ruptures. On December 13 of 1294 the Main Hall of the Castel Nuovo was the scene of the famous abdication of Pope Celestine V, from the papal throne, called by Dante Alighieri the great refusal and the following December 24, in the same hall the board of cardinals elected Benedetto Caetani, who assumed the name of Pope Boniface VIII and moved its headquarters to Rome to avoid the interference of the Anjevin family. With the ascent to the throne of Robert, King of Naples, in 1309, the castle, which he renovated and expanded, became a remarkable center of culture, because to his patronage and his passion for the arts and literature: the Castel Nuovo hosted important personalities of the culture of the time, such as the writers Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio in their Neapolitan stays, while the most famous painters of the time that they were called to paint its walls: Pietro Cavallini, Montano d'Arezzo, above all Giotto, who in 1332 painted the Palatine Chapel.
From 1343 it was the residence of Joanna I of Naples, who in 1347, fleed to France, abandoned it to the assaults of the army of the King Louis I of Hungary. He had come to avenge the death of his brother Andrew, the Giovanna's husband, killed by a palace plot that the queen herself was suspected of instigating it; the castle was looted and on its return the queen was forced to a radical restructuring. During the second expedition of Louis against Naples the castle, where the queen had found refuge, resisted the assaults. In the following years the fortress underwent other attacks: on the occasion of the taking of Naples by Charles III of Naples and that of Louis II of Naples, who subtracted it from the son of Charles III, Ladislaus of Naples; the latter, regained the throne in 1399, lived there until his death in 1414. Joanna II of Naples succeeded his brother Ladislaus and ascended the throne as the last Anjevin dynasty; the queen, depicted as a dissolute, bloody woman, would have hosted in her alcove lovers of all kinds and social backgrounds rounded up by her emissaries among young, handsome people.
To protect her good name, Joanna II would not hesitate to get rid of them as soon as she satisfied her cravings. For this purpose it has been narrated for centuries that the queen had a secret trapdoor inside the castle: her lovers, having exhausted their task, were thrown into this well and devoured by sea monsters. According to a legend, it would have been a crocodile from the Africa to the castle's dungeons after crossing the Mediterranean Sea, the perpetrator of the horrendous death of the Joanna's lovers. In 1443 Alfonso V of Aragon, who had conquered the throne of Naples, established a court in the castle, such as to compete with the Florentine court of Lorenzo de' Medici and the fortress was rebuilt in its present form, maintaining its function as the center of royal power. King Alfonso V entrusted the restructuring of the Angevin fortress-palace to the Majorcan architect Guillem Sagrera, who rebuilt it in Catalan-Majorcan-Gothic style; the five round towers, four of which incorporated the previous Anjevin construction with a square plan, sui
Maria of Castile, Queen of Aragon
Maria of Castile was Queen consort of Aragon and Naples as the spouse of Alfonso V of Aragon. Maria acted as the regent of Aragon during the reign of her spouse, as he was absent during most of his reign, she was briefly Princess of Asturias in her own right as the heir presumptive to the throne of Castile. Maria was the eldest child of King Henry III of Catherine of Lancaster, her godmother was her mother's aunt, Maria de Ayala, a nun and illegitimate daughter of King Peter of Castile. She grew up in an Castilian household in which she lived until her marriage, unusual for a royal daughter destined to marry a foreign prince, her education was supervised by the Great Steward, Pedro González de Mendoza, while her governess was Inés de Ayala y Toledo, 3rd Lady de Casarrubios del Monte. As the King's eldest child, Maria was granted the title of Princess of Asturias, the title reserved for the first-in-line to the throne, her father had her formally recognised as heiress presumptive at the Cortes of Toledo on 6 January 1402.
At the same time, she was bethrothed to her first cousin, the son of her paternal uncle Ferdinand, as a way to strengthen her status. However, the birth of her brother John displaced the Princess in the line of succession, her childhood was quite happy by all accounts. Her father died when she was four, leaving the crown to her only brother, John II, making her heiress presumptive again, her mother, Queen Catherine, governed the Crown of Castile as regent during King John II's minority and the Infanta was able to observe her mother's statesmanship. The queen mother's political actions would make Maria aware of her own responsibilities and prerrogatives as a queen and as a regent. Mother and daughter were close and remained in frequent correspondence after the latter's marriage; the engagement of Maria and Alfonso was not formalised until she was seven, but it had been reconfirmed by King Henry III's last will and testament. By the same arrangement, Maria's brother John was to marry Alfonso's sister Maria and Maria's sister Catherine was to marry Alfonso's brother Henry.
The marriage of Maria and Alfonso was celebrated in the Cathedral of Valencia on 12 June 1415. The couple was wedded by Antipope Benedict XIII who had provided a dispensation for their marriage. Maria was given a splendid dowry in form of land and revenues, while Alfonso was raised to the rank of infante of Castile, her brother would complain that the dowry was too large and that it was in fact the largest dowry given to an infanta of Castile. Family squabbles were frequent due to the politics of her father-in-law and mother-in-law, Eleanor of Alburquerque; the Infantes of Aragon, her brothers-in-law, Henry and the meddlesome John would prove problematic and pertinent to Maria's regency. Maria had a delicate health. A bout of smallpox left her permanently unattractive, she did not have her first menstrual period until she was sixteen and the consummation of the marriage had to be delayed. Her marriage was a political alliance; the few moments of marital happiness occurred during the early years of the marriage.
The lack of children affected their marriage and Alfonso's reign. Their relationship began visibly deteriorating in 1423, after Alfonso's return from Naples. Maria learned about her husband's Italian mistress, Giraldona Carlino, who would give birth to a son, Ferdinand, in 1425. Hurt by his infidelity, she falsely informed him that his mother had died in order to inflict pain on him. Divorce was not an option and the couple remained together out of convenience. Less than one year on 1 April 1416, King Ferdinand I died, leaving the crown to Maria's husband and making her Queen of Aragon. Illness prevented her from attending her mother's funeral. Like all queens of Aragon except for only five, Maria was never crowned queen. There is no evidence that the politically active Queen Eleanor prepared her daughter-in-law for her role, as would have been customary, she was overshadowed by her formidable mother-in-law who continued to exercise strong political influence after her husband's death. The young Queen appeared in public only when it was necessary and refrained from taking part in politics, instead deferring to Eleanor.
Maria moved into the public eye only. In 1420, Alfonso left Aragon to pursue his claim to the throne of Naples, he was unwilling to leave the regency to any of his ambitious and untrustworthy brothers who caused war between Castile and Aragon on several occasions. Instead, he declared Maria his regent. Before departing, he issued a document granting her authority second only to his own and the right to govern as if she were him; as the King was absent from Aragon his entire reign, the Queen was the de facto ruler of the kingdom, holding the formal title of Lieutenant-General. While her personal retinue included many Castilians, Maria strategically appointed only Catalans to the offices during her regency, which contributed to her popularity and the smooth functioning of her court, her first tenure as regent lasted from 1420 until 1423, her second from 1432 until her husband's death in 1458. As such, she was forced to handle the conflicts with the burghers and the peasants which broke out during her husband's reign.
When Alfonso was captured after his defeat at Ponza in Italy in 1435, she organised
Renaissance
The Renaissance is a period in European history, covering the span between the 14th and 17th centuries and marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. The traditional view focuses more on the early modern aspects of the Renaissance and argues that it was a break from the past, but many historians today focus more on its medieval aspects and argue that it was an extension of the middle ages; the intellectual basis of the Renaissance was its version of humanism, derived from the concept of Roman Humanitas and the rediscovery of classical Greek philosophy, such as that of Protagoras, who said that "Man is the measure of all things." This new thinking became manifest in art, politics and literature. Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe: the first traces appear in Italy as early as the late 13th century, in particular with the writings of Dante and the paintings of Giotto.
As a cultural movement, the Renaissance encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, in science to an increased reliance on observation and inductive reasoning. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man"; the Renaissance began in the 14th century in Italy. Various theories have been proposed to account for its origins and characteristics, focusing on a variety of factors including the social and civic peculiarities of Florence at the time: its political structure, the patronage of its dominant family, the Medici, the migration of Greek scholars and texts to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks.
Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Milan and Rome during the Renaissance Papacy. The Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and, in line with general scepticism of discrete periodizations, there has been much debate among historians reacting to the 19th-century glorification of the "Renaissance" and individual culture heroes as "Renaissance men", questioning the usefulness of Renaissance as a term and as a historical delineation; the art historian Erwin Panofsky observed of this resistance to the concept of "Renaissance": It is no accident that the factuality of the Italian Renaissance has been most vigorously questioned by those who are not obliged to take a professional interest in the aesthetic aspects of civilization – historians of economic and social developments and religious situations, most natural science – but only exceptionally by students of literature and hardly by historians of Art. Some observers have called into question whether the Renaissance was a cultural "advance" from the Middle Ages, instead seeing it as a period of pessimism and nostalgia for classical antiquity, while social and economic historians of the longue durée, have instead focused on the continuity between the two eras, which are linked, as Panofsky observed, "by a thousand ties".
The word Renaissance meaning "Rebirth", first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word occurs in Jules Michelet's 1855 work, Histoire de France; the word Renaissance has been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Beginning in Italy, spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in literature, art, politics, science and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, searched for realism and human emotion in art. Renaissance humanists such as Poggio Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries the Latin literary and oratorical texts of Antiquity, while the Fall of Constantinople generated a wave of émigré Greek scholars bringing precious manuscripts in ancient Greek, many of which had fallen into obscurity in the West.
It is in their new focus on literary and historical texts that Renaissance scholars differed so markedly from the medieval scholars of the Renaissance of the 12th century, who had focused on studying Greek and Arabic works of natural sciences and mathematics, rather than on such cultural texts. In the revival of neo-Platonism Renaissance humanists did not reject Christianity. However, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion, reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were brought back from Byzantium to Western Europe and engaged Western scholars for the first time since late antiquity; this new engagement with Greek Christian works, the return to the original Greek of the Ne
Castel dell'Ovo
Castel dell'Ovo is a seaside castle in Naples, located on the former island of Megaride, now a peninsula, on the Gulf of Naples in Italy. The castle's name comes from a legend about the Roman poet Virgil, who had a reputation in the Middle Ages as a great sorcerer and predictor of the future. In the legend, Virgil put a magical egg into the foundations to support the fortifications. Had this egg been broken, the castle would have been destroyed and a series of disastrous events for Naples would have followed; the castle is located between the districts of San Ferdinando and Chiaia, facing Mergellina across the sea. The Castel dell'Ovo is the oldest standing fortification in Naples; the island of Megaride was where Greek colonists from Cumae founded the original nucleus of the city in the 6th century BC. Its location affords it an excellent view of the surrounding area. In the 1st century BC the Roman patrician Lucius Licinius Lucullus built the magnificent villa Castellum Lucullanum on the site.
Fortified by Valentinian III in the mid-5th century, it was the site to which the last western Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was exiled in 476. Eugippius founded a monastery on the site after 492; the remains of the Roman-era structures and fortifications were demolished by local residents in the 9th century to prevent their use by Saracen raiders. The first castle on the site was built by the Normans in the 12th century. Roger the Norman, conquering Naples in 1140, made; the importance of the Castel dell'Ovo began to decline when king Charles I of Anjou built a new castle, Castel Nuovo, moved his court there. Castel dell ` Ovo became the seat of the State Treasury, it served as a prison. In 1191, Empress Constance of the Holy Roman Empire, daughter of Roger, was captured during her struggle with her nephew Tancred, King of Sicily for the crown of Sicily, Sicilian Chancellor Matthew d'Ajello wrote to Tancred persuading him to lock Constance in the island Castel dell'Ovo to be better-guarded and secluded from people, wrote to nobleman Aligerno Cottone in charge of defending Naples ordering him to "ut imperatricem in Castro Salvatoris ad mare benè custodiat".
However, Constance was released the next year and became Queen of Sicily. In 1268, King Conradin was imprisoned here before his execution. In 1381, Queen Joanna I of Naples was imprisoned there for a time after forced to surrender to her enemy Charles of Durazzo, the future Charles III of Naples, before her assassination; the current appearance dates from the Aragonese domination. It was struck by Spanish artillery during the Italian Wars. After a long period of decay the site got its current appearance during an extensive renovation project started in 1975. In the 19th century a small fishing village called Borgo Marinaro, still extant, developed around the castle's eastern wall, it is now known for its marina and restaurants. The castle is rectangular in plan 200 by 45 metres at its widest, with a high bastion overlooking the causeway that connects it to the shore. Inside the castle walls are several buildings that are used for exhibitions and other special events. Behind the castle there is a long promontory once used as a docking area.
A large round tower stands outside the castle walls to the southeast. Underwater archaeologists have discovered what appears to be a 2500-year-old harbor associated with the origins of the first Greek settlement of Paleopolis in the sea next to the castle. Four tunnels, a 10-foot-wide street demonstrating furrows consistent with cart traffic, a trench, built as a defensive structure for soldiers were discovered submerged adjacent to the castle; the discovery was announced in March 2018, after the September 2017 identification of the original port of Neapolis. Di Maggio, Patrizia. Angelillo, Fiorella, ed. I castelli di Napoli. Elio De Rosa. p. 15. Media related to Castel dell'Ovo at Wikimedia Commons
Kingdom of Sardinia
The Kingdom of Sardinia was a state in Southern Europe from the early 14th until the mid-19th century. When it was acquired by the Duke of Savoy in 1720, it was a former Iberian state as well as a member of the Council of Aragon. However, the Savoyards united it with their possessions on the Italian mainland and, by the time of the Crimean War in 1853, had built the resulting kingdom into a strong power; the composite state under the rule of Savoy in this period may be called Savoy-Sardinia or Piedmont-Sardinia, or the Kingdom of Piedmont to emphasise that the island of Sardinia had always been of secondary importance to the monarchy. The formal name of the entire Savoyard state was the "States of His Majesty the King of Sardinia", its final capital was the capital of Savoy since the mid 16th century. The kingdom consisted of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, sovereignty over both of, claimed by the Papacy, which granted them as a fief, the regnum Sardiniae et Corsicae, to King James II of Aragon in 1297.
Beginning in 1324, James and his successors conquered the island of Sardinia and established de facto their de jure authority. In 1420, after the Sardinian-Catalan War, the last competing claim to the island was bought out. After the union of the crowns of Aragon and Castile, Sardinia became a part of the burgeoning Spanish Empire. In 1720, the island was ceded by the Habsburg and Bourbon claimants to the Spanish throne to Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. While in theory the traditional capital of the island of Sardinia and seat of its viceroys was Cagliari, the Piedmontese city of Turin was the de facto capital of Savoy; when the mainland domains of the House of Savoy were occupied and annexed by Napoleonic France, the king of Sardinia made his permanent residence on the island for the first time in its history. The Congress of Vienna, which restructured Europe after Napoleon's defeat, returned to Savoy its mainland possessions and augmented them with Liguria, taken from the Republic of Genoa.
In 1847–48, through the "Perfect Fusion", the various Savoyard states were unified under one legal system with their capital in Turin, granted a constitution, the Statuto Albertino. There followed the annexation of Lombardy, the central Italian states and the Two Sicilies and the Papal States. On 17 March 1861, to more reflect its new geographic extent, the Kingdom of Sardinia changed its name to the Kingdom of Italy, its capital was moved first to Florence and to Rome; the Savoy-led Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia was thus the legal predecessor of the Kingdom of Italy, which in turn is the predecessor of the present-day Italian Republic. In 238 BC Sardinia became, along with a province of the Roman Empire; the Romans ruled the island until the middle of the 5th century, when it was occupied by the Vandals, who had settled in north Africa. In 534 AD it was reconquered by the Romans, but now from Byzantium, it remained a Byzantine province until the Arab conquest of Sicily in the 9th century. After that, communications with Constantinople became difficult, powerful families of the island assumed control of the land.
Facing Arab attempts to sack and conquer, while having no outside help, Sardinia utilized the principle of translatio imperii and continued to organize itself along the ancient Roman and Byzantine model. The island was not the personal property of the ruler and of his family, as was the dominant practice in western Europe, but rather a separate entity and during the Byzantine Empire, a monarchical republic, as it had been since Roman times. Starting from 705–706, Saracens from north Africa harassed the population of the coastal cities. Information about the Sardinian political situation in the following centuries is scarce. Due to Saracen attacks, in the 9th century Tharros was abandoned in favor of Oristano, after more than 1800 years of occupation. There is a record of another massive Saracen sea attack in 1015–16 from the Balearics, commanded by Mujāhid al-ʿĀmirī; the Saracen attempt to invade the island was stopped by the Judicates with the support of the fleets of the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa, free cities of the Holy Roman Empire.
Pope Benedict VIII requested aid from the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa in the struggle against the Arabs. After the Great Schism, Rome made many efforts to restore Latinity to the Sardinian church and society, to reunify the island under one Catholic ruler, as it had been for all of southern Italy, when the Byzantines had been driven away by Catholic Normans; the title of "Judge" was a Byzantine reminder of the Greek church and state, in times of harsh relations between eastern and western churches. Before the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica, the Archons or, in Latin, who reigned in the island from the 9th or 10th century until the beginning of the 11th century, can be considered real kings of all Sardinia though nominal vassals of the Byzantine emperors. Of these sovereigns only two names are known: Turcoturiu and
Barcelona
Barcelona is a city in Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within city limits, its urban area extends to numerous neighbouring municipalities within the Province of Barcelona and is home to around 4.8 million people, making it the sixth most populous urban area in the European Union after Paris, Madrid, the Ruhr area and Milan. It is one of the largest metropolises on the Mediterranean Sea, located on the coast between the mouths of the rivers Llobregat and Besòs, bounded to the west by the Serra de Collserola mountain range, the tallest peak of, 512 metres high. Founded as a Roman city, in the Middle Ages Barcelona became the capital of the County of Barcelona. After merging with the Kingdom of Aragon, Barcelona continued to be an important city in the Crown of Aragon as an economic and administrative centre of this Crown and the capital of the Principality of Catalonia.
Barcelona has a rich cultural heritage and is today an important cultural centre and a major tourist destination. Renowned are the architectural works of Antoni Gaudí and Lluís Domènech i Montaner, which have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites; the headquarters of the Union for the Mediterranean are located in Barcelona. The city is known for hosting the 1992 Summer Olympics as well as world-class conferences and expositions and many international sport tournaments. Barcelona is one of the world's leading tourist, trade fair and cultural centres, its influence in commerce, entertainment, fashion and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major global cities, it is a major cultural and economic centre in southwestern Europe, 24th in the world and a financial centre. In 2008 it was the fourth most economically powerful city by GDP in the European Union and 35th in the world with GDP amounting to €177 billion. In 2012 Barcelona had a GDP of $170 billion. In 2009 the city was ranked one of the world's most successful as a city brand.
In the same year the city was ranked Europe's fourth best city for business and fastest improving European city, with growth improved by 17% per year, the city has been experiencing strong and renewed growth for the past three years. Since 2011 Barcelona has been a leading smart city in Europe. Barcelona is a transport hub, with the Port of Barcelona being one of Europe's principal seaports and busiest European passenger port, an international airport, Barcelona–El Prat Airport, which handles over 50 million passengers per year, an extensive motorway network, a high-speed rail line with a link to France and the rest of Europe; the name Barcelona comes from the ancient Iberian Barkeno, attested in an ancient coin inscription found on the right side of the coin in Iberian script as, in ancient Greek sources as Βαρκινών, Barkinṓn. Some older sources suggest that the city may have been named after the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, supposed to have founded the city in the 3rd century BC, but there is no evidence that Barcelona was a Carthaginian settlement, or that its name in antiquity, had any connection with the Barcid family of Hamilcar.
During the Middle Ages, the city was variously known as Barchinona, Barçalona and Barchenona. Internationally, Barcelona's name is wrongly abbreviated to'Barça'. However, this name refers only to the football club; the common abbreviated form used by locals is Barna. Another common abbreviation is'BCN', the IATA airport code of the Barcelona-El Prat Airport; the city is referred to as the Ciutat Comtal in Catalan, Ciudad Condal in Spanish, owing to its past as the seat of the Count of Barcelona. The origin of the earliest settlement at the site of present-day Barcelona is unclear; the ruins of an early settlement have been found, including different tombs and dwellings dating to earlier than 5000 BC. The founding of Barcelona is the subject of two different legends; the first attributes the founding of the city to the mythological Hercules. The second legend attributes the foundation of the city directly to the historical Carthaginian general, Hamilcar Barca, father of Hannibal, who named the city Barcino after his family in the 3rd century BC, but there is no historical or linguistic evidence that this is true.
In about 15 BC, the Romans redrew the town as a castrum centred on the "Mons Taber", a little hill near the contemporary city hall. Under the Romans, it was a colony with the surname of Faventia, or, in full, Colonia Faventia Julia Augusta Pia Barcino or Colonia Julia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcino. Pomponius Mela mentions it among the small towns of the district as it was eclipsed by its neighbour Tarraco, but it may be gathered from writers that it grew in wealth and consequence, favoured as it was with a beautiful situation and an excellent harbour, it enjoyed immunity from imperial burdens. The city minted its own coins. Important Roman vestiges are displayed in Plaça del Rei underground, as a part of the Barcelona City History Museum; some remaining fragments of the Roman walls have been incorporated into the cathedral. The cathedral known as the Basilica La Seu, is said to have been founded in 343; the city
Dynasty
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family in the context of a feudal or monarchical system, but sometimes appearing in elective republics. Alternative terms for "dynasty" may include "family" and "clan", among others; the longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, otherwise known as the Yamato dynasty, whose reign is traditionally dated to 660 BC. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a "noble house", which may be styled as "royal", "princely", "ducal", "comital" etc. depending upon the chief or present title borne by its members. Historians periodize the histories of numerous nations and civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties; as such, the term "dynasty" may be used to delimit the era during which a family reigned, to describe events and artifacts of that period. The word "dynasty" itself is dropped from such adjectival references; until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty: that is, to expand the wealth and power of his family members.
Prior to the 20th century, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. In nations where it was permitted, succession through a daughter established a new dynasty in her husband's ruling house; this has changed in some places in Europe, where succession law and convention have maintained dynasties de jure through a female. For instance, the House of Windsor will be maintained through the children of Queen Elizabeth II, as it did with the monarchy of the Netherlands, whose dynasty remained the House of Orange-Nassau through three successive queens regnant; the earliest such example among major European monarchies was in the Russian Empire in the 18th century, where the name of the House of Romanov was maintained through Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna. In Limpopo Province of South Africa, Balobedu determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mother's dynasty when coming into her inheritance.
Less a monarchy has alternated or been rotated, in a multi-dynastic system – that is, the most senior living members of parallel dynasties, at any point in time, constitute the line of succession. Not all feudal states or monarchies were/are ruled by dynasties. Throughout history, there were monarchs. Dynasties ruling subnational monarchies do not possess sovereign rights; the word "dynasty" is sometimes used informally for people who are not rulers but are, for example, members of a family with influence and power in other areas, such as a series of successive owners of a major company. It is extended to unrelated people, such as major poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team; the word "dynasty" derives from Latin dynastia, which comes from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to "power", "dominion", "rule" itself. It was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, "power" or "ability", from dýnamai, "to be able". A ruler from a dynasty is sometimes referred to as a "dynast", but this term is used to describe any member of a reigning family who retains a right to succeed to a throne.
For example, King Edward VIII ceased to be a dynast of the House of Windsor following his abdication. In historical and monarchist references to reigning families, a "dynast" is a family member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchy's rules still in force. For example, after the 1914 assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his morganatic wife Duchess Sophie von Hohenberg, their son Duke Maximilian was bypassed for the Austro-Hungarian throne because he was not a Habsburg dynast. Since the abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Duke Maximilian and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position; the term "dynast" is sometimes used only to refer to agnatic descendants of a realm's monarchs, sometimes to include those who hold succession rights through cognatic royal descent. The term can therefore describe distinct sets of people. For example, David Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon, a nephew of Queen Elizabeth II through her sister Princess Margaret, is in the line of succession to the British crown.
On the other hand, the German aristocrat Prince Ernst August of Hanover, a male-line descendant of King George III of the United Kingdom, possesses no legal British name, titles or styles. He was born in the line of succession to the British throne and was bound by Britain's Royal Marriages Act 1772 until it was repealed when the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 took effect on 26 March 2015. Thus, he requested and obtained formal permission from Queen Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco in 1999. Yet, a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time, stipulating that dynasts who
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