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Cimitero Monumentale di Milano
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The Cimitero Monumentale is one of the two largest cemeteries in Milan, Italy, the other one being the Cimitero Maggiore. It is noted for the abundance of artistic tombs and monuments, designed by the architect Carlo Maciachini, it was planned to consolidate a number of small cemeteries that used to be scattered around the city into a single location. The Civico Mausoleo Palanti designed by the architect Mario Palanti is a built for meritorious Milanesi. The cemetery has a section for those who do not belong to the Catholic religion. Near the entrance there is a permanent exhibition of prints, photographs and it includes two battery-operated electric hearses built in the 1920s. The section, planned by Carlo Maciachini, was opened in 1872 as a substitute for the Jewish cemeteries of Porta Tenaglia and it is located east of the catholic cemetery and has a separate entrance. The area is the result of an enlarging of 1913 which added a zone in the southern and eastern direction, the central building was originally the entrance to the cemetery. The numbering of the tombs is repeated because the cemetery is subdivided into 6 fields, there are also three common fields one of which for children, with burials between 1873 and 1894, with small gravestones with name, surname and date of death in the ground. The monuments, built between 1866 and our days, are located along the walkways, there are also family shrines, two of which planned by Maciachini, columbariums and ossuaries on the northern and western walls and burials in the central building. The burials are 1778, some of which are in memory of people killed by the nazis in concentration camps or in the lake Maggiore, there are many monuments of artistic value built by important architects and sculptors, described in the guide book by Giovanna Ginex and Ornella Selvafolta. The central building was enriched in May 2015 with artistic windows representing the 12 Israel tribes by artist Diego Pennacchio Ardemagni, signals located throughout the cemetery point visitors to several of the most remarkable tombs and monuments. C. Certosa di Bologna, the site of the monumental cemetery Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno
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Italians
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Italians are a nation and ethnic group native to Italy who share a common culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a native tongue. The majority of Italian nationals are speakers of Standard Italian. Italians have greatly influenced and contributed to the arts and music, science, technology, cuisine, sports, fashion, jurisprudence, banking, Italian people are generally known for their localism and their attention to clothing and family values. The term Italian is at least 3,000 years old and has a history that goes back to pre-Roman Italy. According to one of the common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The Etruscan civilization reached its peak about the 7th century BC, but by 509 BC, when the Romans overthrew their Etruscan monarchs, its control in Italy was on the wane. By 350 BC, after a series of wars between Greeks and Etruscans, the Latins, with Rome as their capital, gained the ascendancy by 272 BC, and they managed to unite the entire Italian peninsula. This period of unification was followed by one of conquest in the Mediterranean, in the course of the century-long struggle against Carthage, the Romans conquered Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. Finally, in 146 BC, at the conclusion of the Third Punic War, with Carthage completely destroyed and its inhabitants enslaved, octavian, the final victor, was accorded the title of Augustus by the Senate and thereby became the first Roman emperor. After two centuries of rule, in the 3rd century AD, Rome was threatened by internal discord and menaced by Germanic and Asian invaders. Emperor Diocletians administrative division of the empire into two parts in 285 provided only temporary relief, it became permanent in 395, in 313, Emperor Constantine accepted Christianity, and churches thereafter rose throughout the empire. However, he moved his capital from Rome to Constantinople. The last Western emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed in 476 by a Germanic foederati general in Italy and his defeat marked the end of the western part of the Roman Empire. During most of the period from the fall of Rome until the Kingdom of Italy was established in 1861, Odoacer ruled well for 13 years after gaining control of Italy in 476. Then he was attacked and defeated by Theodoric, the king of another Germanic tribe, Theodoric and Odoacer ruled jointly until 493, when Theodoric murdered Odoacer. Theodoric continued to rule Italy with an army of Ostrogoths and a government that was mostly Italian, after the death of Theodoric in 526, the kingdom began to grow weak
3.
Visual arts
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The visual arts are art forms such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photography, video, filmmaking, literature, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines involve aspects of the arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design. Current usage of the visual arts includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts. The increasing tendency to painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes, training in the visual arts has generally been through variations of the apprentice and workshop systems. Visual arts have now become a subject in most education systems. Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a variety of tools. Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used, the main techniques used in drawing are, line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman, drawing goes back at least 16,000 years to Paleolithic cave representations of animals such as those at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus, often depicting people, were used as models for painting or sculpture, drawings on Greek vases, initially geometric, later developed to the human form with black-figure pottery during the 7th century BC. Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier, like drawing, painting has its documented origins in caves and on rock faces. The finest examples, believed by some to be 32,000 years old, are in the Chauvet, in shades of red, brown, yellow and black, the paintings on the walls and ceilings are of bison, cattle, horses and deer. Paintings of human figures can be found in the tombs of ancient Egypt, in the great temple of Ramses II, Nefertari, his queen, is depicted being led by Isis. The Greeks contributed to painting but much of their work has been lost, one of the best remaining representations are the hellenistic Fayum mummy portraits. Another example is mosaic of the Battle of Issus at Pompeii, Greek and Roman art contributed to Byzantine art in the 4th century BC, which initiated a tradition in icon painting. Apart from the manuscripts produced by monks during the Middle Ages
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Industrial design
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Industrial design is a process of design applied to products that are to be manufactured through techniques of mass production. This distinguishes industrial design from craft-based design, where the form of the product is determined by the creator at the time of its creation. The role of a designer is to create and execute design solutions for problems of form, function, usability, physical ergonomics, marketing, brand development, sustainability. The division of labour that underlies the practice of design did have precedents in the pre-industrial era. The use of drawing to specify how something was to be constructed later was first developed by architects and shipwrights during the Italian Renaissance. The emergence of industrial design is linked to the growth of industrialisation and mechanisation that began with the industrial revolution in Great Britain in the mid 18th century. The first use of the industrial design is often attributed to the industrial designer Joseph Claude Sinel in 1919. Christopher Dresser is considered among the first independent industrial designers, Industrial designs origins lie in the industrialization of consumer products. The earliest use of the term may have been in The Art Union, the Practical Draughtsmans Book of Industrial Design by Jacques-Eugène Armengaud was printed in 1853. The subtitle of the work explains, that it wants to offer a course of mechanical, engineering. The study of those types of drawing, according to Armengaud. This work paved the way for a big expansion in the drawing education in France, the United Kingdom. Robert Lepper helped to establish one of the countrys first industrial design programs at Carnegie Institute of Technology. Product design and industrial design overlap in the fields of user interface design, information design, except for certain functional areas of overlap between industrial design and engineering design, educational programs in the U. S. Most industrial designers complete a design or related program at a school or university. Diplomas and degrees take two to four years of study, the study results in a Bachelor of Industrial Design, Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Fine Arts. Afterwards, the programme can be extended to postgraduate degrees such as Master of Design, Master of Fine Arts. Industrial design studies function and form—and the connection between product, user, and environment, generally, industrial design professionals work in small scale design, rather than overall design of complex systems such as buildings or ships
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Modernism
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Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief, the poet Ezra Pounds 1934 injunction to Make it new. Was the touchstone of the approach towards what it saw as the now obsolete culture of the past. In this spirit, its innovations, like the novel, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and abstract art. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, others focus on modernism as an aesthetic introspection. While J. M. W. Art critic Clement Greenberg describes the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as proto-Modernists, There the proto-Modernists were, of all people, the Pre-Raphaelites actually foreshadowed Manet, with whom Modernist painting most definitely begins. They acted on a dissatisfaction with painting as practiced in their time, rationalism has also had opponents in the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and later Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom had significant influence on existentialism. A major 19th-century engineering achievement was The Crystal Palace, the huge cast-iron, Glass and iron were used in a similar monumental style in the construction of major railway terminals in London, such as Paddington Station and Kings Cross Station. These technological advances led to the building of structures like the Brooklyn Bridge. The latter broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be and these engineering marvels radically altered the 19th-century urban environment and the daily lives of people. Arguments arose that the values of the artist and those of society were not merely different, but that Society was antithetical to Progress, the philosopher Schopenhauer called into question the previous optimism, and his ideas had an important influence on later thinkers, including Nietzsche. Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty and the idea of human uniqueness, in particular, the notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as lower animals proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx argued that there were fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system, historians, and writers in different disciplines, have suggested various dates as starting points for modernism. Everdell also thinks modernism in painting began in 1885–86 with Seurats Divisionism, the poet Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, and Flauberts novel Madame Bovary were both published in 1857. In the arts and letters, two important approaches developed separately in France, the first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors. Impressionist paintings demonstrated that human beings do not see objects, the school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners, and became increasingly influential. A significant event of 1863 was the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention
6.
Futurism
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Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized speed, technology, youth, and violence, and objects such as the car, the aeroplane, although it was largely an Italian phenomenon, there were parallel movements in Russia, England, Belgium and elsewhere. It glorified modernity and aimed to liberate Italy from the weight of its past, Cubism contributed to the formation of Italian Futurisms artistic style. Important Futurist works included Marinettis Manifesto of Futurism, Boccionis sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, to some extent Futurism influenced the art movements Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism, Dada, and to a greater degree Precisionism, Rayonism, and Vorticism. Futurism is a movement founded in Milan in 1909 by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. He was soon joined by the painters Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini, Marinetti expressed a passionate loathing of everything old, especially political and artistic tradition. We want no part of it, the past, he wrote, publishing manifestos was a feature of Futurism, and the Futurists wrote them on many topics, including painting, architecture, religion, clothing and cooking. The founding manifesto did not contain an artistic programme, which the Futurists attempted to create in their subsequent Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting. This committed them to a universal dynamism, which was to be represented in painting. The motor bus rushes into the houses which it passes, the Futurist painters were slow to develop a distinctive style and subject matter. In 1910 and 1911 they used the techniques of Divisionism, breaking light and color down into a field of stippled dots and stripes, which had been originally created by Giovanni Segantini and others. Later, Severini, who lived in Paris, attributed their backwardness in style and method at this time to their distance from Paris, the centre of avant-garde art. Severini was the first to come into contact with Cubism and following a visit to Paris in 1911 the Futurist painters adopted the methods of the Cubists, Cubism offered them a means of analysing energy in paintings and expressing dynamism. They often painted modern urban scenes, carràs Funeral of the Anarchist Galli is a large canvas representing events that the artist had himself been involved in, in 1904. The action of an attack and riot is rendered energetically with diagonals. His Leaving the Theatre uses a Divisionist technique to render isolated, Boccionis The City Rises represents scenes of construction and manual labour with a huge, rearing red horse in the centre foreground, which workmen struggle to control. The Futurists aimed through their art thus to enable the viewer to apprehend the inner being of what they depicted, Boccioni developed these ideas at length in his book, Pittura scultura Futuriste, Dinamismo plastico. Ballas Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash exemplifies the Futurists insistence that the world is in constant movement
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Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
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Filippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian poet, editor, art theorist, and founder of the Futurist movement. He was associated with the utopian and Symbolists artistic and literary community Abbaye de Créteil between 1907 and 1908, Marinetti is best known as the author of the first Futurist Manifesto, which was written and published in 1909. Emilio Angelo Carlo Marinetti spent the first years of his life in Alexandria, Egypt, enrico was a lawyer from Piedmont, and his mother was the daughter of a literary professor from Milan. They had come to Egypt in 1865, at the invitation of Khedive Ismail Pasha and his love for literature developed during the school years. His mother was a reader of poetry, and introduced the young Marinetti to the Italian and European classics. At age seventeen he started his first school magazine, Papyrus and he first studied in Egypt then in Paris, obtaining a baccalauréat degree in 1894 at the Sorbonne, and in Italy, graduating in law at the University of Pavia in 1899. He decided not to be a lawyer but to develop a literary career and he experimented with every type of literature, signing everything Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. The Abbaye de Créteil was a community founded in the autumn of 1906 by the painter Albert Gleizes. The movement drew its inspiration from the Abbaye de Thélème, a creation by Rabelais in his novel Gargantua. It was closed down by its members early in 1908, Marinetti is known best as the author of the Futurist Manifesto, which he wrote in 1909. It was published in French on the front page of the most prestigious French daily newspaper, Le Figaro, in The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, Marinetti declared that Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice. Georges Sorel, who influenced the political spectrum from anarchism to Fascism. Futurism had both anarchist and Fascist elements, Marinetti later became a supporter of Benito Mussolini. Marinetti, who admired speed, had a car accident outside Milan in 1908 when he veered into a ditch to avoid two cyclists. He referred to the accident in the Futurist Manifesto, the Marinetti who was helped out of the ditch was a new man, determined to end the pretense and decadence of the prevailing Liberty style. Together, he wrote, We will glorify war—the worlds only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for. The Futurist Manifesto was read and debated all across Europe, in April, the opening night of his drama Le Roi bombance, written in 1905, was interrupted by loud, derisive whistling by the audience. And by Marinetti himself, who thus introduced another element of Futurism, Marinetti did, however, fight a duel with a critic he considered too harsh
8.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
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Hans Christian Andersen
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Hans Christian Andersen (/ˈhɑːnz ˈkrɪstʃən ˈændərsən/, Danish, often referred to in Scandinavia as H. C. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersens popularity is not limited to children, his stories, called eventyr in Danish, express themes that transcend age and nationality. Some of his most famous fairy tales include The Emperors New Clothes, The Little Mermaid, The Nightingale, The Snow Queen, The Ugly Duckling, Thumbelina and his stories have inspired ballets, animated and live-action films and plays. Hans Christian Andersen was born in the town of Odense, Denmark, Andersens father, also Hans, considered himself related to nobility. His paternal grandmother had told his father that their family had in the past belonged to a social class. A persistent theory suggests that Andersen was a son of King Christian VIII. Andersens father, who had received an education, introduced Andersen to literature. Andersens mother, Anne Marie Andersdatter, was uneducated and worked as a washerwoman following his fathers death in 1816, she remarried in 1818. Andersen was sent to a school for poor children where he received a basic education and was forced to support himself, working as an apprentice for a weaver and, later. At 14, he moved to Copenhagen to seek employment as an actor, having an excellent soprano voice, he was accepted into the Royal Danish Theatre, but his voice soon changed. A colleague at the theatre told him that he considered Andersen a poet, taking the suggestion seriously, Andersen began to focus on writing. Jonas Collin, director of the Royal Danish Theatre, felt a great affection for Andersen and sent him to a school in Slagelse. Andersen had already published his first story, The Ghost at Palnatokes Grave, though not a keen pupil, he also attended school at Elsinore until 1827. He later said his years in school were the darkest and most bitter of his life, at one school, he lived at his schoolmasters home. There he was abused and was told that it was to improve his character and he later said the faculty had discouraged him from writing in general, causing him to enter a state of depression. A very early fairy tale by Andersen, called The Tallow Candle, was discovered in a Danish archive in October 2012, the story, written in the 1820s, was about a candle who did not feel appreciated. It was written while Andersen was still in school and dedicated to a benefactor, in 1829, Andersen enjoyed considerable success with the short story A Journey on Foot from Holmens Canal to the East Point of Amager. Its protagonist meets characters ranging from Saint Peter to a talking cat, Andersen followed this success with a theatrical piece, Love on St. Nicholas Church Tower, and a short volume of poems
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New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
11.
Lego
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Lego is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by The Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. The companys flagship product, Lego, consists of interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures. Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in ways, to construct objects, vehicles, buildings. Anything constructed can then be taken again, and the pieces used to make other objects. The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949, since then a global Lego subculture has developed. Supporting movies, games, competitions, and six Legoland amusement parks have developed under the brand. As of July 2015,600 billion Lego parts had been produced, in February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finances worlds most powerful brand. The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, in 1934, his company came to be called Lego, derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means play well. In 1947, Lego expanded to begin producing plastic toys, in 1949 Lego began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now familiar interlocking bricks, calling them Automatic Binding Bricks. These bricks were based in part on the Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, Lego modified the design of the Kiddicraft brick after examining a sample that they received from the supplier of an injection-molding machine that Lego purchased. The bricks, originally manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of the traditional wooden blocks of the time. The Lego Groups motto is det bedste er ikke for godt which means only the best is the best. This motto, which is used today, was created by Ole Kirk to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality. Although a common sentiment, Lego toys seem to have become a significant exception to the dislike of plastic in childrens toys, by 1954, Christiansens son, Godtfred, had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with a buyer that led to the idea of a toy system. In 1958, the brick design was developed, however, it took another five years to find the right material for it. The modern Lego brick design was patented on 28 January 1958, in 1978, Lego produced the first minifigures, which have since become a staple in most sets. The results will be shared with schools as part of an educational project, in May 2013, the largest model ever created was displayed in New York and was made of over 5 million bricks, a 1,1 scale model of an X-wing fighter
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Ulm
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Ulm is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at almost 120,000, founded around 850, Ulm is rich in history and traditions as a former Free Imperial City. Today, it is an economic centre due to its varied industries, internationally, Ulm is primarily known for having the church with the tallest steeple in the world, the Gothic minster, and as the birthplace of Albert Einstein. Ulm lies at the point where the rivers Blau and Iller join the Danube, at an altitude of 479 m above sea level. Most parts of the city, including the old town, are situated on the bank of the Danube, only the districts of Wiblingen, Gögglingen, Donaustetten. Across from the old town, on the side of the river, lies the twin city of Neu-Ulm in the state of Bavaria, smaller than Ulm and, until 1810. Except for the Danube in the south, the city is surrounded by forests and hills rise to altitudes of over 620 metres. South of the Danube, plains and hills finally end in the edge of the Alps. The city of Ulm is situated in the part of the North Alpine Foreland basin. The Turritellenplatte of Ermingen is a famous site of Burdigalian age. On the right side of Danube and Iller there is the district town Neu-Ulm. On the left side Ulm is almost completely surrounded by the Alb-Danube district, nine districts that were integrated during the latest municipality reform in the 1970s. They have own local councils which acquire an important consulting position to the city council concerning issues that are related to the prevailing districts. But at the end, final decisions can only be made by the city council of the city of Ulm. The oldest traceable settlement of the Ulm area began in the early Neolithic period, settlements of this time have been identified at the villages of Eggingen and Lehr, today districts of the city. In the city area of Ulm proper, the oldest find dates from the late Neolithic period, the earliest written mention of Ulm is dated 22 July 854 AD, when King Louis the German signed a document in the Kings palace of Hulma in the Duchy of Swabia. The city was declared an Imperial City by Friedrich Barbarossa in 1181, at first, Ulms significance was due to the privilege of a Königspfalz, a place of accommodation for the medieval German kings and emperors on their frequent travels. Later, Ulm became a city of traders and craftsmen, one of the most important legal documents of the city, an agreement between the Ulm patricians and the trade guilds, dates from 1397
