1.
The Cloisters
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The Cloisters is a museum in Upper Manhattan, New York City specializing in European medieval architecture, sculpture and decorative arts. Its early collection was built by the American sculptor, art dealer and collector George Grey Barnard, Rockefeller extended the collection and in 1931 purchased the site at Washington Heights and contracted the design for a new building that was to become the Cloisters. The museum today is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its architectural and artistic works are largely from the Romanesque and Gothic periods. Its four cloisters, the Cuxa, Bonnefont, Trie and Saint-Guilhem cloisters, were sourced from French monasteries, between 1934 and 1939 they were excavated and reconstructed in Washington Heights, in a large project overseen by the architect Charles Collens. They are surrounded by a series of chapels and rooms grouped by period and source location. The design, layout and ambiance of the building is intended to evoke in visitors a sense of the Medieval European monastic life through its distinctive architecture, the area around the buildings contains reconstructed early medieval gardens. Barnards collection was purchased along with a pieces from Rockefellers holdings and these became the foundation and core of the Cloisters collection. The Cloisters and the adjacent 4 acres gardens are situated in Fort Tryon Park, construction took place over a five-year period beginning in 1934. He also bought several hundred acres of the New Jersey Palisades and this land is now part of the Palisades Interstate Park. Rockefeller was impacted by the depression of the early 1930s. The Cloisters building was designed by Charles Collens, and incorporated elements from the five cloistered abbeys of Catalan, Occitan, in 1988, the Treasury Gallery within the Cloisters, containing objects used for liturgical celebrations, personal devotions, and secular uses, was renovated. Other galleries were refurbished in 1998 and 1999, the Cloisters is a well-known New York City landmark and has been used as a filming location. In 1948, the filmmaker Maya Deren used its ramparts as a backdrop for her experimental film Meditation on Violence, in the same year, German director William Dieterle used the Cloisters as the location for a convent school in his film Portrait of Jennie. The 1968 film Coogans Bluff used the sites pathways and lanes for a motorcycle chase. The museum contains architecture elements and settings relocated mostly from four French medieval abbeys, between 1934 and 1939 they were transported, reconstructed and integrated with new buildings, in a project overseen by the architect Charles Collens. The exterior building is influenced by and contains elements from the 13th century church at Saint-Geraud at Monsempron, France and it was primarily designed by Collins, who took influence from Bernards original Cloisters Museum. The exterior contains stone from a number of European sources, and was built from 1935, primarily from limestone and it includes four Gothic windows from the refectory at Sens, and nine arcades from a priory at Firiory. The bulbous Fuentidueña Chapel was especially difficult to fit into the area, the Cuxa Cloisters are located on the south side of the building and structurally and thematically are the museums centerpiece
2.
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
3.
Catalan language
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Catalan is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin and named after the medieval Principality of Catalonia, in northeastern modern Spain and adjoining parts of France. It is the national and only language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands. It also has status in the commune of Alghero, situated on the northwestern coast of the island of Sardinia. All these territories are often called Catalan Countries. 4% with Catalan and 47. 5% only Spanish, in order to integrate newcomers, the Generalitat de Catalunya spends part of its annual budget on the promotion of the use of Catalan in Catalonia and in other territories. Catalan evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees, during the Low Middle Ages it saw a golden age as the literary and dominant language of the Crown of Aragon, and was widely used all over the Mediterranean. The union of Aragon with the territories of Spain in 1479 marked the start of the decline of the language. In 1659 Spain ceded Northern Catalonia to France, and Catalan was banned in both states in the early 18th century, 19th-century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, which culminated in the 1913 orthographic standardization, and the official status of the language during the Second Spanish Republic. However, the Francoist dictatorship banned the use of Catalan in schools and in the public administration, there is no parallel in Europe for such a large, bilingual, non-state speech community. Catalan dialects are relatively uniform, and are mutually intelligible and they are divided into two blocks, Eastern and Western, differing mostly in pronunciation. The terms Catalan and Valencian are two varieties of the same language, there are two institutions regulating the two standard varieties, the Institute of Catalan Studies in Catalonia and the Valencian Academy of the Language in the Valencian Community. Catalan shares many traits with its neighboring Romance languages, thus, the similarities are naturally most notable with eastern Occitan. Nouns have two genders, and two numbers, pronouns additionally can have a neuter gender, and some are also inflected for case and politeness, and can be combined in very complex ways. Verbs are split in several paradigms and are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, in terms of pronunciation, Catalan has many words ending in a wide variety of consonants and some consonant clusters, in contrast with many other Romance languages. The word Catalan derives from the territory of Catalonia, itself of disputed etymology, in English, the term referring to a person first appears in the mid 14th century as Catelaner, followed in the 15th century as Catellain. It is attested a language name since at least 1652, Catalan can be pronounced as /ˈkætəlæn/, /kætəˈlæn/ or /ˈkætələn/. The endonym is pronounced /kə. təˈɫa/ in the Eastern Catalan dialects, in the Valencian Community, the term valencià is frequently used instead. The names Catalan and Valencian are two names for the same language, see also status of Valencian below. By the 9th century, Catalan had evolved from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the end of the Pyrenees, as well as the territories of the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis to the south
4.
Catalan counties
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The Catalan counties were the administrative divisions of the eastern Carolingian Marca Hispanica and southernmost part of the March of Gothia created after its Frankish conquest. The various counties roughly defined what came to be known as the Principality of Catalonia, in 778, Charlemagne led the first Frankish expedition into Hispania to create the Marca Hispanica, a buffer zone between the Umayyad Moors of Al-Andalus and the Frankish Kingdom of Aquitaine. The territory that he subdued was the kernel of Catalonia and these counties were originally feudal entities ruled by a small military elite. Originally, counts were appointed directly by and owed allegiance to the Carolingian emperor, the appointment to heirs could not be taken for granted. This trend resulted in the counts becoming de facto independent of the Carolingian crown under Borrell II in 987, the reconquista from the Moors by the Franks began in 785. In 785, Rostany was made Count of Girona, the first of the Catalan counties to be established, besalú and Empúries were originally part of Girona. In 797, in the greatest military triumph of his career, the young Louis took Barcelona. When Urgell and Cerdanya were subdued around 798, they were made counties. He took an active part in the subsequent conquest of Osona in 799. He was made count of Osona in 799, perhaps as a reward for his services, in 801, the greatest of the counties, Barcelona, was established under Bera. In 812, Count Odilo of Girona died and the county passed to Bera. In 804 and 805, Borrell participated in the expeditions to Tortosa, but not in the subsequent campaigns of 807,808, on Borrells death in 820, Osona was given to Rampon and Urgell and Cerdanya went to Aznar Galíndez. Also in 820, Bera went into political disfavour and lost the countships of Barcelona and Girona, around 813, Empúries became a separate county under Ermenguer, and in 817, it was united to the County of Roussillon. From 835 to 844, Sunyer I was count of Empúries and Peralada while Alaric I was count of Roussillon, besalú was made a separate county in 878 for Radulf on the condition that it pass to the heirs of Wilfred the Hairy on his death. It went to Miro I the Younger in 912, Barcelona soon overshadowed the other counties in importance, especially during the reign of Wilfred the Hairy in the late 9th century. At that time, the power of the Carolingians was waning and the neglected Hispanic march was practically independent of royal authority. In the early 11th century, Berenguer Ramon I, Count of Barcelona, was able to submit to Sancho III of Navarre as his suzerain, even though he was still legally a vassal of Robert II of France. With the accession of Roberts father, Hugh Capet, the first non-Carolingian king, in 987, over the next century, most of the Catalan counties would come into the hands of the counts of Barcelona
5.
County of Pallars
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It roughly corresponded with the historic region of Catalonia called Pallars. The early history of Pallars, which was the easternmost extent of Basque settlement, is linked to that of its western neighbour, Ribagorza. Both territories, nominally lands of the Moors, came under the sway of the count of Toulouse perhaps as early as 781 and they formed in turn a new province attached to Toulouse and therefore became Carolingian vassals. A widely circulated monkish account of 1078 from Alaó contains the earliest foundation myth of any of the counties of the Hispanic March. Written at a time when the independence of Pallars and Ribagorza was threatened by the recently created by the personal union of the Kingdom of Navarre. The revival of monasticism was largely associated with non-Frankish and especially Visigothic clergymen, charlemagne himself, however, attached Pallars and Ribagorza ecclesiastically to the diocese of Urgell. In 817, Pallars and Ribagorza were made a part of the Kingdom of Aquitaine bestowed on the young Pepin, throughout the ninth century, the aprisio had increasingly become a principal form of land division and ownership in Pallars, which was not yet feudalised. Louis the Pious forbade the holding in beneficium of church property and by the end of the century, most aprisiones in Pallars had been converted into allods. The local population — Basque, Visigothic, and Hispano-Roman — rejected the rule of the house of Toulouse, in 833, one Aznar Galíndez, already Count of Urgell and Cerdagne, usurped the pagi of Pallars and Ribagorza. Opposition to Toulousain suzerainty remained, however, while the Toulousain counts governed Pallars through viscounts, in Pallars, vicars were not employed, rather a minor official beneath the viscount called the centenarius was used. The men of Pallars and Ribagorza took the opportunity to regain their independence from Toulouse, the loss of Pallars and Ribagorza to Frankish suzerainty was the first step in the gradual weakening of the ties between Catalonia and the Francia. The reign of Raymond I began with overtures of peace and alliance with the Muslim governors of nearby Huesca and Zaragoza, but to no avail, by the end, a policy of Reconquista had been adopted. The reign also saw a proliferation of turres in Pallars and Ribagorza, castles such as Leovalles, Castellous, Raymond also consolidated his de facto independence from any superior authority by creating a new diocese of Pallars, enabling himself to control the local church. Raymond, a Basque himself, established an alliance with the Jiménez dynasty in Navarre and he lost much of Ribagorza to Huesca in 907 and thereafter ruled mainly just Pallars, which had always been his political base. Pallars was inherited by his two youngest sons, Isarn and Lope I of Pallars, the history of Pallars in the tenth century is obscure. It was ruled by brothers of the dynasty, which had married into the Bellonid dynasty ruling in Barcelona. By late in the century, the counts of Pallars, still refusing to recognise any authority higher than themselves. At the same time, an advance was made in the borderlands
6.
Cerdanya
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Cerdanya, often la Cerdanya, is a natural comarca and historical region of the eastern Pyrenees divided between France and Spain. Historically it was one of the counties of Catalonia, Cerdanya has a land area of 1,086 km2, divided almost evenly between Spain and France. In 2001 its population was approximately 26,500, of whom 53% lived on Spanish territory and its population density is 24 residents per km². The only urban area in Cerdanya is the urban area of Puigcerdà-Bourg-Madame. The area enjoys an annual amount of sunshine – around 3,000 hours per year. The first inhabitants of Cerdanya probably spoke a related to the old Basque language. Many place names testify to this, in the first millennium BC came the Iberians from the south. In Cerdanya they probably mixed with the inhabitants, and the resulting people were known as the Kerretes, from the native word ker or kar, meaning rock, related to old Basque karri. The Kerretes were probably essentially of Basque and Aquitanian-related stock, as the Iberian clans who mixed with the inhabitants can have comprised only small numbers of people. The main oppidum of the Kerretes, commanding the whole country, was called Kere and was built on the hill above the village of Llívia. Later the Kerretes came under Roman rule, and the Romans renamed the oppidum Julia Lybica, during the Roman Empire, the area of Cerdanya was a pagus known as pagus Liviensis, part of the province of Hispania Tarraconensis. The pagus Liviensis was itself divided in two, the part around Julia Lybica was known as Cerretania Julia, while the western part was known as Cerretania Augusta. The name Cerdanya comes from Cerretania, itself coming from the old name of the inhabitants, as for Julia Lybica, the name evolved into Julia Livia and then Llívia. The Kerretes seem to have kept their old language until very late, romanization in the area was extremely slow, even though eventually the native language gave way, and the people in Cerdanya ended up speaking Catalan, a language derived from Latin. At the end of the Roman Empire, Julia Lybica entered a period of decadence, devastated by the Vandals and other Germanic tribes, Cerdanya was part of the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse and later Toledo, until eventually it was conquered by the Muslims. However, Uthman ibn Naissa came next under Umayyad attack and the Berber lord was defeated, during Abd al-Rahman I´s military campaign across the Ebro region, the Cordovan commander received the submission of Ibn Belaskut, or Galindo Belascotenes, in Cerdanya. Under Carolingian pressure, Cerdanya became a Frankish vassal about 785, County of Cerdanya The county of Cerdanya has its origin in the Spanish Marches established by Charlemagne. In the 9th century Cerdanya was one of the lordships united in the person of the counts of Barcelona, wilfred the Hairy had three sons and established the youngest, Miron, as Count of Cerdanya, a sovereign state
7.
Franks
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Some Franks raided Roman territory, while other Frankish tribes joined the Roman troops of Gaul. In later times, Franks became the rulers of the northern part of Roman Gaul. The Salian Franks lived on Roman-held soil between the Rhine, Scheldt, Meuse, and Somme rivers in what is now Northern France, Belgium, the kingdom was acknowledged by the Romans after 357 CE. Following the collapse of Rome in the West, the Frankish tribes were united under the Merovingians, who succeeded in conquering most of Gaul in the 6th century, which greatly increased their power. The Merovingian dynasty, descendants of the Salians, founded one of the Germanic monarchies that would absorb large parts of the Western Roman Empire, the Frankish state consolidated its hold over the majority of western Europe by the end of the 8th century, developing into the Carolingian Empire. This empire would gradually evolve into the state of France and the Holy Roman Empire, in the Middle Ages, the term Frank was used in the east as a synonym for western European, as the Franks were then rulers of most of Western Europe. The Franks in the east kept their Germanic language and became part of the Germans, Dutch, Flemings, the Franconian languages, which are called Frankisch in Dutch or Fränkisch in German, originated at least partly in the Old Frankish language of the Franks. Nowadays, the German and Dutch names for France are Frankreich and Frankrijk, respectively, the name Franci was originally socio-political. To the Romans, Celts, and Suebi, the Franks must have seemed alike, they looked the same and spoke the same language, so that Franci became the name by which the people were known. Within a few centuries it had eclipsed the names of the tribes, though the older names have survived in some place-names, such as Hesse. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English and it has been suggested that the meaning of free was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation. It is traditionally assumed that Frank comes from the Germanic word for javelin, there is also another theory that suggests that Frank comes from the Latin word francisca meaning. Words in other Germanic languages meaning fierce, bold or insolent, eumenius addressed the Franks in the matter of the execution of Frankish prisoners in the circus at Trier by Constantine I in 306 and certain other measures, Ubi nunc est illa ferocia. Feroces was used often to describe the Franks, contemporary definitions of Frankish ethnicity vary both by period and point of view. According to their law and their custom, writing in 2009, Professor Christopher Wickham pointed out that the word Frankish quickly ceased to have an exclusive ethnic connotation. North of the River Loire everyone seems to have considered a Frank by the mid-7th century at the latest. Two early sources describe the origin of the Franks are a 7th-century work known as the Chronicle of Fredegar. Neither of these works are accepted by historians as trustworthy, compared with Gregory of Tourss Historia Francorum, the chronicle describes Priam as a Frankish king whose people migrated to Macedonia after the fall of Troy
8.
Toulouse
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Toulouse is the capital city of the southwestern French department of Haute-Garonne, as well as of the Occitanie region. The city lies on the banks of the River Garonne,150 kilometres from the Mediterranean Sea,230 km from the Atlantic Ocean and it is the fourth-largest city in France with 466,297 inhabitants in January 2014. The Toulouse Metro area is, with 1312304 inhabitants as of 2014, Frances 4th metropolitan area after Paris, Lyon and Marseille and ahead of Lille and Bordeaux. Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, the Galileo positioning system, the SPOT satellite system, the Airbus Group, ATR and the Aerospace Valley. The city also hosts the European headquarters of Intel and CNESs Toulouse Space Centre, thales Alenia Space, and Astrium Satellites, Airbus Groups satellite system subsidiary, also have a significant presence in Toulouse. The University of Toulouse is one of the oldest in Europe and, with more than 103,000 students, is the fourth-largest university campus in France, after the Universities of Paris, Lyon and Lille. The air route between Toulouse Blagnac and Paris Orly is the busiest in Europe, transporting 2.4 million passengers in 2014, according to the rankings of LExpress and Challenges, Toulouse is the most dynamic French city. It is now the capital of the Occitanie region, the largest region in metropolitan France, sernin, the largest remaining Romanesque building in Europe, designated in 1998 because of its significance to the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route. Toulouse is in the south of France, north of the department of Haute-Garonne, the city is traversed by the Canal de Brienne, the Canal du Midi and the rivers Garonne, Touch and Hers-Mort. Toulouse has a subtropical climate which can be qualified as submediterranean due to its proximity to the Mediterranean climate zone. The Garonne Valley was a point for trade between the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic since at least the Iron Age. The historical name of the city, Tolosa, it is of unknown meaning or origin, possibly from Aquitanian, or from Iberian, Tolosa enters the historical period in the 2nd century BC, when it became a Roman military outpost. After the conquest of Gaul, it was developed as a Roman city of Gallia Narbonensis. In the 5th century, Tolosa fell to the Visigothic kingdom and became one of its cities, in the early 6th century even serving as its capital. From this time, Toulouse was the capital of Aquitaine within the Frankish realm, in 721, Duke Odo of Aquitaine defeated an invading Umayyad Muslim army at the Battle of Toulouse. Odos victory was an obstacle to Muslim expansion into Christian Europe. Charles Martel, a later, won the Battle of Tours. The Frankish conquest of Septimania followed in the 750s, and a quasi-independent County of Toulouse emerged within the Carolingian sub-kingdom of Aquitaine by the late 8th century
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