1.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
2.
Perspective (graphical)
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Perspective in the graphic arts is an approximate representation, on a flat surface, of an image as it is seen by the eye. If viewed from the spot as the windowpane was painted. Each painted object in the scene is thus a flat, scaled down version of the object on the side of the window. All perspective drawings assume the viewer is a distance away from the drawing. Objects are scaled relative to that viewer, an object is often not scaled evenly, a circle often appears as an ellipse and a square can appear as a trapezoid. This distortion is referred to as foreshortening, Perspective drawings have a horizon line, which is often implied. This line, directly opposite the viewers eye, represents objects infinitely far away and they have shrunk, in the distance, to the infinitesimal thickness of a line. It is analogous to the Earths horizon, any perspective representation of a scene that includes parallel lines has one or more vanishing points in a perspective drawing. A one-point perspective drawing means that the drawing has a vanishing point, usually directly opposite the viewers eye. All lines parallel with the line of sight recede to the horizon towards this vanishing point. This is the standard receding railroad tracks phenomenon, a two-point drawing would have lines parallel to two different angles. Any number of vanishing points are possible in a drawing, one for each set of lines that are at an angle relative to the plane of the drawing. Perspectives consisting of parallel lines are observed most often when drawing architecture. In contrast, natural scenes often do not have any sets of parallel lines, the only method to indicate the relative position of elements in the composition was by overlapping, of which much use is made in works like the Parthenon Marbles. Chinese artists made use of perspective from the first or second century until the 18th century. It is not certain how they came to use the technique, some authorities suggest that the Chinese acquired the technique from India, oblique projection is also seen in Japanese art, such as in the Ukiyo-e paintings of Torii Kiyonaga. This was detailed within Aristotles Poetics as skenographia, using flat panels on a stage to give the illusion of depth, the philosophers Anaxagoras and Democritus worked out geometric theories of perspective for use with skenographia. Alcibiades had paintings in his house designed using skenographia, so this art was not confined merely to the stage, Euclids Optics introduced a mathematical theory of perspective, but there is some debate over the extent to which Euclids perspective coincides with the modern mathematical definition
3.
Pieter Jansz. Saenredam
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Saenredam was a painter of the Dutch Golden Age, known for his distinctive paintings of whitewashed church interiors. Saenredam was born in Assendelft, the son of the Northern Mannerist printmaker, in 1612 Saenredam moved permanently to Haarlem, where he became a pupil of Frans de Grebber. In 1614 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, a painting in the British Museum by his friend Jacob Van Campen shows him to be very short and hunch backed. He was a contemporary of the painter-architects Jacob van Campen, Salomon de Bray, Saenredam specialized in the representation of church interiors. These pictures were based on measurements of the building and meticulously-rendered sketches, done on site, in pencil, pen. Painting took place in the studio, often years after the studiee were made, started to create his paintings, often after a delay of many years. Unlike de Wittes, Saenredams views are usually aligned with a main axis of the church. Although Utrecht was the centre of the remaining Catholic population of the mainly Calvinist United Provinces, the drawing for Saenredam’s Interior of St. Martins Cathedral, Utrecht is typical. As a Catholic church the Cathedral had been highly decorated, then, in the Dutch Revolt the church fell into Protestant hands, it was ‘cleaned’ of Catholic influences. The altarpieces and statuary were removed, and the walls and ceiling were white washed, in any case, Saenredam wanted to record this time of change by documenting the country’s buildings. Many artists before him had specialized in imaginary and fanciful architecture, according to the J. Paul Getty Trust Saenredam’s church paintings…owe their poetry to his remarkable blend of fact and fiction. He began by making drawings of buildings that record measurements. This meticulous preparation helped him to create accurate and enchanting paintings. The measurements aided him in using scientific linear perspective, just like Andrea Pozzo and he was able to use his measurements to create a realistic image with depth. There are a number of his works in British collections. In 2000-2001 the Centraal Museum at Utrecht held an exhibition of his drawings and paintings. Perhaps his best known works are a pair of oil paintings both titled Interior of the Buurkerk, Utrecht. One hangs in Londons National Gallery, the other in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, in their simplicity and semi-abstract formalism, they foreshadow more modern works such as those of Mondrian and Feininger
4.
Genre painting
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Genre painting, also called genre scene or petit genre, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known member of his family. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist, because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class. Genre subjects appear in many traditions of art and these were part of a pattern of Mannerist inversion in Antwerp painting, giving low elements previously in the decorative background of images prominent emphasis. The generally small scale of these paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. Often the subject of a painting was based on a popular emblem from an Emblem book. The merry company showed a group of figures at a party, other common types of scenes showed markets or fairs, village festivities, or soldiers in camp. In Italy, a school of painting was stimulated by the arrival in Rome of the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer in 1625. He acquired the nickname Il Bamboccio and his followers were called the Bamboccianti, whose works would inspire Giacomo Ceruti, Antonio Cifrondi, jean-Baptiste Greuze and others painted detailed and rather sentimental groups or individual portraits of peasants that were to be influential on 19th-century painting. Spain had a tradition predating The Book of Good Love of social observation and commentary based on the Old Roman Latin tradition, practiced by many of its painters and illuminators. More than a later, the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya used genre scenes in painting and printmaking as a medium for dark commentary on the human condition. His The Disasters of War, a series of 82 genre incidents from the Peninsular War, with the decline of religious and historical painting in the 19th century, artists increasingly found their subject matter in the life around them. In French art this was known as the Troubador style, in the second half of the century interest in genre scenes, often in historical settings or with pointed social or moral comment, greatly increased across Europe. Other 19th-century English genre painters include Augustus Leopold Egg, George Elgar Hicks, William Holman Hunt, scotland produced two influential genre painters, David Allan and Sir David Wilkie. Wilkies The Cottars Saturday Night inspired a work by the French painter Gustave Courbet. Famous Russian realist painters like Vasily Perov and Ilya Repin also produced genre paintings, in Germany, Carl Spitzweg specialized in gently humorous genre scenes, and in Italy Gerolamo Induno painted scenes of military life. Subsequently the Impressionists, as well as such 20th-century artists as Pierre Bonnard, Itshak Holtz, Edward Hopper, other notable 19th-century genre painters from the United States include George Caleb Bingham, William Sidney Mount, and Eastman Johnson
5.
Alkmaar
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Alkmaar is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. Alkmaar is well known for its cheese market. For tourists, it is a cultural destination. The earliest mention of the name Alkmaar is in a 10th-century document, as the village grew into a town, it was granted city rights in 1254. The oldest part of Alkmaar lies on an ancient sand bank that afforded protection from inundation during medieval times. Even so, it is only a couple of metres above the surrounding region, in 1573 the city underwent a siege by Spanish forces under the leadership of Don Fadrique, son of the Duke of Alva. Some of his dispatches fell into the hands of Don Fadrique, and, with the beginning to rise. It was a point in the Eighty Years War and gave rise to the expression Bij Alkmaar begint de victorie. The event is celebrated every year in Alkmaar on 8 October. In 1799, during the French revolutionary wars, an Anglo-Russian expeditionary force captured the city but was defeated in the Battle of Castricum. The French victory was commemorated on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris as Alkmaer, the North Holland Canal, opened in 1824, was dug through Alkmaar. In 1865 and 1867 the railways between Alkmaar and Den Helder and between Alkmaar and Haarlem were built respectively, in the second half of the 20th century, Alkmaar expanded quickly with development of new neighbourhoods. On 1 October 1972, the town of Oudorp and the portions of Koedijk. The municipality of Alkmaar consists of the cities, towns, villages and/or districts, Alkmaar, Koedijk, Overdie, Oudorp. These once separate villages are now all linked together by the suburban sprawl of buildings that arose between the late 1970s and early 1990s, during this time, the population of Alkmaar almost doubled. On 1 January 2015 the municipalities of Graft-De Rijp and Schermer were merged into Alkmaar, there are direct trains to Den Helder, Hoorn, Zaandam, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Ede, Arnhem, Nijmegen, s-Hertogenbosch, Eindhoven, Maastricht and Haarlem. For exact details see Alkmaar railway station, Alkmaar has two railway stations, Alkmaar Alkmaar Noord The waterway Noordhollandsch Kanaal, which opened in 1824, runs through Alkmaar. Alkmaar has many buildings that are still intact, most notably the tall tower of the Grote of Sint-Laurenskerk
6.
Geometry
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Geometry is a branch of mathematics concerned with questions of shape, size, relative position of figures, and the properties of space. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a geometer, Geometry arose independently in a number of early cultures as a practical way for dealing with lengths, areas, and volumes. Geometry began to see elements of mathematical science emerging in the West as early as the 6th century BC. By the 3rd century BC, geometry was put into a form by Euclid, whose treatment, Euclids Elements. Geometry arose independently in India, with texts providing rules for geometric constructions appearing as early as the 3rd century BC, islamic scientists preserved Greek ideas and expanded on them during the Middle Ages. By the early 17th century, geometry had been put on a solid footing by mathematicians such as René Descartes. Since then, and into modern times, geometry has expanded into non-Euclidean geometry and manifolds, while geometry has evolved significantly throughout the years, there are some general concepts that are more or less fundamental to geometry. These include the concepts of points, lines, planes, surfaces, angles, contemporary geometry has many subfields, Euclidean geometry is geometry in its classical sense. The mandatory educational curriculum of the majority of nations includes the study of points, lines, planes, angles, triangles, congruence, similarity, solid figures, circles, Euclidean geometry also has applications in computer science, crystallography, and various branches of modern mathematics. Differential geometry uses techniques of calculus and linear algebra to problems in geometry. It has applications in physics, including in general relativity, topology is the field concerned with the properties of geometric objects that are unchanged by continuous mappings. In practice, this often means dealing with large-scale properties of spaces, convex geometry investigates convex shapes in the Euclidean space and its more abstract analogues, often using techniques of real analysis. It has close connections to convex analysis, optimization and functional analysis, algebraic geometry studies geometry through the use of multivariate polynomials and other algebraic techniques. It has applications in areas, including cryptography and string theory. Discrete geometry is concerned mainly with questions of relative position of simple objects, such as points. It shares many methods and principles with combinatorics, Geometry has applications to many fields, including art, architecture, physics, as well as to other branches of mathematics. The earliest recorded beginnings of geometry can be traced to ancient Mesopotamia, the earliest known texts on geometry are the Egyptian Rhind Papyrus and Moscow Papyrus, the Babylonian clay tablets such as Plimpton 322. For example, the Moscow Papyrus gives a formula for calculating the volume of a truncated pyramid, later clay tablets demonstrate that Babylonian astronomers implemented trapezoid procedures for computing Jupiters position and motion within time-velocity space
7.
Guild of Saint Luke
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The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the saint of artists. One of the most famous such organizations was founded in Antwerp and it continued to function until 1795, although by then it had lost its monopoly and therefore most of its power. In most cities, including Antwerp, the government had given the Guild the power to regulate defined types of trade within the city. Guild membership, as a master, was required for an artist to take on apprentices or to sell paintings to the public. Similar rules existed in Delft, where members could sell paintings in the city or have a shop. The guild of Saint Luke not only represented painters, sculptors, and other artists, but also—especially in the seventeenth century—dealers, amateurs. In traditional guild structures, house-painters and decorators were often in the same guild, however, as artists formed under their own specific guild of St. Luke, particularly in the Netherlands, distinctions were increasingly made. In general, guilds also made judgments on disputes between artists and other artists or their clients, in such ways, it controlled the economic career of an artist working in a specific city, while in different cities they were wholly independent and often competitive against each other. Although it did not become an artistic center until the sixteenth century, Antwerp was one of, if not the first. It is first mentioned in 1382, and was given privileges by the city in 1442. The registers, or Liggeren, from the guild exist, cataloging when artists became masters, who the dean for each year was, what their specialities were, and the names of any students. Perhaps because of this link, for a period they had a rule that all miniatures needed a tiny mark to identify the artist, only under special privileges, such as court artist, could an artist effectively practice their craft without holding membership in the guild. Membership also allowed members to sell works at the guild-owned showroom, Antwerp, for example, opened a market stall for selling paintings in front of the cathedral in 1460, and Bruges followed in 1482. Guilds of St. Luke in the Dutch Republic began to reinvent themselves as cities there changed over to Protestant rule, many St. Luke guilds reissued charters to protect the interests of local painters from the influx of southern talent from places like Antwerp and Bruges. Many cities in the republic became more important artistic centres in the late sixteenth. Amsterdam was the first city to reissue a St. Lukes charter after the reformation in 1579, and it included painters, sculptors, engravers, for example, Gouda, Rotterdam, and Delft, all founded guilds between 1609 and 1611. On the other hand, these distinctions did not take effect at that time in Amsterdam or Haarlem, in the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, however, a strict hierarchy was attempted in 1631 with panel painters at the top, though this hierarchy was eventually rejected
8.
Delft
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Delft is a city and a municipality in the Netherlands. It is located in the province of South Holland, to the north of Rotterdam, the city of Delft came into being aside a canal, the Delf, which comes from the word delven, meaning delving or digging, and led to the name Delft. It presumably started around the 11th century as a landlord court, from a rural village in the early Middle Ages, Delft developed to a city, that in the 13th century received its charter. The towns association with the House of Orange started when William of Orange, nicknamed William the Silent, at the time he was the leader of growing national Dutch resistance against Spanish occupation, known as the Eighty Years War. By then Delft was one of the cities of Holland. An attack by Spanish forces in October of that year was repelled, after the Act of Abjuration was proclaimed in 1581, Delft became the de facto capital of the newly independent Netherlands, as the seat of the Prince of Orange. When William was shot dead in 1584, by Balthazar Gerards in the hall of the Prinsenhof, therefore, he was buried in the Delft Nieuwe Kerk, starting a tradition for the House of Orange that has continued to the present day. The Delft Explosion, also known in history as the Delft Thunderclap, occurred on 12 October 1654 when a gunpowder store exploded, over a hundred people were killed and thousands were wounded. About 30 tonnes of gunpowder were stored in barrels in a magazine in a former Clarissen convent in the Doelenkwartier district, cornelis Soetens, the keeper of the magazine, opened the store to check a sample of the powder and a huge explosion followed. Luckily, many citizens were away, visiting a market in Schiedam or a fair in The Hague, Delft artist Egbert van der Poel painted several pictures of Delft showing the devastation. Historical buildings and other sights of interest include, Oude Kerk, buried here, Piet Hein, Johannes Vermeer, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek. Nieuwe Kerk, constructed between 1381 and 1496 and it contains the Dutch royal familys burial vault, which between funerals is sealed with a 5,000 kg cover stone. A statue of Hugo Grotius made by Franciscus Leonardus Stracké in 1886 and this is the only remaining gate of the old city walls. The Gemeenlandshuis Delfland, or Huyterhuis, built in 1505, which has housed the Delfland regional water authority since 1645, the Vermeer Centre in the rebuilt Guild house of St. Luke. Windmill De Roos, a mill built c.1760. Restored to working order in 2013, another windmill that formerly stood in Delft, Het Fortuyn, was dismantled in 1917 and re-erected at the Netherlands Open Air Museum, Arnhem, Gelderland in 1920. Delft is well known for the Delft pottery ceramic products which were styled on the imported Chinese porcelain of the 17th century, the city had an early start in this area since it was a home port of the Dutch East India Company. It can still be seen at the pottery factories De Koninklijke Porceleyne Fles, the painter Johannes Vermeer was born in Delft
9.
Amsterdam
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Amsterdam is the capital and most populous municipality of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its status as the capital is mandated by the Constitution of the Netherlands, although it is not the seat of the government, which is The Hague. Amsterdam has a population of 851,373 within the city proper,1,351,587 in the urban area, the city is located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. The metropolitan area comprises much of the part of the Randstad, one of the larger conurbations in Europe. Amsterdams name derives from Amstelredamme, indicative of the citys origin around a dam in the river Amstel, during that time, the city was the leading centre for finance and diamonds. In the 19th and 20th centuries the city expanded, and many new neighborhoods and suburbs were planned, the 17th-century canals of Amsterdam and the 19–20th century Defence Line of Amsterdam are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered a world city by the Globalization. The city is also the capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters there, and seven of the worlds 500 largest companies, including Philips and ING, are based in the city. In 2012, Amsterdam was ranked the second best city to live in by the Economist Intelligence Unit and 12th globally on quality of living for environment, the city was ranked 3rd in innovation by Australian innovation agency 2thinknow in their Innovation Cities Index 2009. The Amsterdam seaport to this day remains the second in the country, famous Amsterdam residents include the diarist Anne Frank, artists Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the oldest stock exchange in the world, is located in the city center. After the floods of 1170 and 1173, locals near the river Amstel built a bridge over the river, the earliest recorded use of that name is in a document dated October 27,1275, which exempted inhabitants of the village from paying bridge tolls to Count Floris V. This allowed the inhabitants of the village of Aemstelredamme to travel freely through the County of Holland, paying no tolls at bridges, locks, the certificate describes the inhabitants as homines manentes apud Amestelledamme. By 1327, the name had developed into Aemsterdam, Amsterdam is much younger than Dutch cities such as Nijmegen, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. In October 2008, historical geographer Chris de Bont suggested that the land around Amsterdam was being reclaimed as early as the late 10th century. This does not necessarily mean there was already a settlement then, since reclamation of land may not have been for farming—it may have been for peat. Amsterdam was granted city rights in either 1300 or 1306, from the 14th century on, Amsterdam flourished, largely from trade with the Hanseatic League
10.
Gerard de Lairesse
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Gerard or Gérard Lairesse was a Dutch Golden Age painter and art theorist. His broad range of talent included music, poetry, and theatre, De Lairesse was influenced by the Perugian Cesare Ripa and French classicist painters as Charles le Brun, Simon Vouet and authors as Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. His importance grew in the following the death of Rembrandt. His treatises on painting and drawing, Grondlegginge der teekenkonst, based on geometry, De Lairesse was born in Liège and was the second son of painter Renier de Lairesse. He studied art under his father and from 1655 under Bertholet Flemalle and he worked in Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle for Maximilian Henry of Bavaria in 1660. In 1664 De Lairesse fled from Liège after an affair with two sisters, his models, went wrong and he traveled north with a girl named Marie Salme and married her in Visé. The couple settled in Utrecht, where a son was baptized in April 1665, when his talent was discovered by the art dealer Gerrit van Uylenburgh, he moved quickly to Amsterdam. De Lairesse arrived with his violin, with which he impressed Jan van Pee, in 1667 De Lairesse became a poorter, living on Nieuwmarkt. In 1670 a son Abraham was born, the engraver Abraham Blooteling, with whom he collaborated, was the witness, another son was baptized in 1673. In 1671, when Van Uylenburgh tried to sell 13 paintings to Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, Fromantiou claimed the paintings were copies of Italian ones, and he could point out the originals in Holland. Included in the 51 people involved in the expertise, was De Lairesse, at some time De Lairesse moved to Spinhuissteeg, he became a member of the literary society Nil Volentibus Arduum, which seems to have gathered in his house from 1676 till 1681. In 1682 he sold copied of sheet music, composed by Lully, in May 1684 he rented the nearby house of Caspar Barlaeus. His pupils Philip Tideman and Louis Abry lived there too, De Lairesse produced paintings for the decoration of Soestdijk Palace between 1676 and 1683. In 1684 he moved to the Hague and worked there for a year, in the Binnenhof he decorated a hall, which is named after him, with an Allegory of Justice. In 1685 he painted works for the Loo Palace, in 1687 he was visited by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger. On 27 November 1693, Abraham de Lairesse, from Amsterdam, painter,27 years old, achterburgwal, assisted by his mother Maria Salme, was legally engaged to Johanna van Bevere, from Amsterdam. In 1697 he sold sheet music for his son Abraham who also sold paper, within a few years De Lairesse would change environment again and move to Prinsengracht, closer to his son. At first, De Lairesse was highly influenced by Rembrandt, the French even nicknamed him the Dutch Poussin, but he was also influenced by Pierre Mignard and Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy
11.
Synagogue
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A synagogue, also spelled synagog, is a Jewish house of prayer. Synagogues have a hall for prayer, and may also have smaller rooms for study and sometimes a social hall. Some have a room for Torah study, called the beith midrash beis medrash —בית מדרש. Synagogues are consecrated spaces used for the purpose of prayer, Tanakh reading, study and assembly, halakha holds that communal Jewish worship can be carried out wherever ten Jews assemble. Worship can also be carried out alone or with fewer than ten people assembled together, however, halakha considers certain prayers as communal prayers and therefore they may be recited only by a minyan. The synagogue does not replace the long-since destroyed Temple in Jerusalem, israelis use the Hebrew term beyt knesset. Jews of Ashkenazi descent have traditionally used the Yiddish term shul in everyday speech, Sephardi Jews and Romaniote Jews generally use the term kal. Spanish Jews call the synagogue a sinagoga and Portuguese Jews call it an esnoga, persian Jews and some Karaite Jews also use the non-Hebrew term kenesa, which is derived from Aramaic, and some Arab Jews use kenis. Reform and some Conservative Jews use the word temple, the Greek word synagogue is used in English, to cover the preceding possibilities. The all-day Yom Kippur service, in fact, was an event in which the congregation both observed the movements of the kohen gadol as he offered the days sacrifices and prayed for his success. During the Babylonian captivity the Men of the Great Assembly formalized and standardized the language of the Jewish prayers, prior to that people prayed as they saw fit, with each individual praying in his or her own way, and there were no standard prayers that were recited. Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, one of the leaders at the end of the Second Temple era and this contributed to the continuity of the Jewish people by maintaining a unique identity and a portable way of worship despite the destruction of the Temple, according to many historians. A synagogue dating from between 75 and 50 BCE has been uncovered at a Hasmonean-era winter palace near Jericho, more than a dozen Second Temple era synagogues have been identified by archaeologists. Any Jew or group of Jews can build a synagogue, there is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. In fact, the influence from local religious buildings can often be seen in synagogue arches, domes. Historically, synagogues were built in the architectural style of their time. Thus, the synagogue in Kaifeng, China looked very like Chinese temples of that region and era, with its outer wall, the styles of the earliest synagogues resembled the temples of other sects of the eastern Roman Empire. The surviving synagogues of medieval Spain are embellished with mudéjar plasterwork, the surviving medieval synagogues in Budapest and Prague are typical Gothic structures
12.
National Library of Latvia
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The National Library of Latvia is a national cultural institution under the supervision of the Latvian Ministry of Culture. The National Library of Latvia was formed in 1919 after the independent Republic of Latvia was proclaimed in 1918, the first supervisor of the Library was Jānis Misiņš, a librarian and the founder of the Latvian scientific bibliography. Today the Library plays an important role in the development of Latvias information society, providing Internet access to residents and supporting research and lifelong education. One of the cornerstones of the NLL, which characterizes every national library, is the formation of the collection of national literature, its eternal storage. The NLL is a centre of research and practical analyses of the activities of Latvian libraries. Since the very outset, its main concern has been the national bibliography, the massive union catalogue Ancient Prints in Latvian 1525 -1855, received Spīdola Prize in 2000 and was awarded The Beautiful Book of the Year 99. The NLL includes several collections of posters, digitising collections at the NLL started in 1999. At present the Latvian National Digital Library Letonica, which was formed in 2006, holds digitized collections of newspapers, pictures, maps, books, sheet-music, in 2008 NLL launched two major digital projects. Periodika. lv is the NLLs collection of digitized historical periodicals in Latvian with the possibility to read full texts, Latvia has a tradition of Song and Dance Festivals organized every four years. The historical materials from the first Song Festival in 1864 till the Latgale Song Festival in 1940 can be explored in another collection of the National Library of Latvia. One of the architects is Gunārs Birkerts. It opened its doors to visitors in 2014, today the NLL building is a dominant landmark on the Riga cityscape. It is used for a variety of purposes and hosted a debate chaired by the BBCs Jonathan Dimbleby on 14 March 2016
