The Gold Coast is a coastal city in the Australian state of Queensland 66 kilometres south-southeast of the state capital Brisbane and north of the border with New South Wales. With a estimated population of 679,127, at June 2018, the Gold Coast is the sixth-largest city in Australia, making it the largest non-capital city, Queensland's second-largest city. Gold Coast is a major tourist destination with its sunny subtropical climate and has become known for its surfing beaches, high-rise dominated skyline, theme parks and rainforest hinterland; the city is part of the nation's entertainment industry with television productions and a major film industry. The city hosted the 2018 Commonwealth Games which ran from 4 to 15 April 2018; the Gold Coast is the ancestral home of a number of Indigenous clans of the Yugambeh people, including the Kombumerri and Tulgi-gi-gin clans. Lieutenant James Cook became the first European to note the region when he sailed along the coast on 16 May 1770 in HMS Endeavour.

Captain Matthew Flinders, an explorer charting the continent north from the colony of New South Wales, sailed past in 1802. Escaped convicts from the Moreton Bay penal settlement hid in the region; the region remained uninhabited by Europeans until 1823 when explorer John Oxley landed at Mermaid Beach, named after seeing a cutter named Mermaid. The hinterland's red cedar supply attracted people to the area in the mid-19th century. A number of small townships developed in the hinterland; the western suburb of Nerang was surveyed and established as a base for the industry and by 1870 a town reserve had been set aside. By 1873, the town reserve of Burleigh Heads had been surveyed and successful land sales had taken place. In 1875, the small settlement opposite the boat passage at the head of the Nerang River, known as Nerang Heads or Nerang Creek Heads, was surveyed and renamed Southport, with the first land sales scheduled to take place in Beenleigh. Southport grew a reputation as a secluded holiday destination for wealthy Brisbane residents.

After the establishment of the Surfers Paradise Hotel in the late 1920s, the Gold Coast region grew significantly. The Gold Coast was known as the South Coast. However, inflated prices for real estate and other goods and services led to the nickname of "Gold Coast" from 1950. South Coast locals considered the name "Gold Coast" derogatory. However, soon the "Gold Coast" became a convenient way to refer to the holiday strip from Southport to Coolangatta; the Town of South Coast was formed through the amalgamation of Town of Coolangatta and Town of Southport along with the coastal areas from the Shire of Nerang on 17 June 1949 with the effect of having the present-day Gold Coast coastal strip as a single local government area. As the tourism industry grew into the 1950s, local businesses began to adopt the term Gold Coast in their names, on 23 October 1958 the Town of South Coast was renamed Town of Gold Coast; the area was proclaimed a city less than one year on 16 May 1959. The area boomed in the 1980s as a leading tourist destination.

In 1994, the City of Gold Coast local government area was expanded to include the Shire of Albert, becoming the second most populous local government area in Australia after the City of Brisbane. In 2007, the Gold Coast overtook the population of Newcastle, New South Wales, to become the sixth largest city in Australia and the largest non-capital city; the Gold Coast hosted the 2018 Commonwealth Games. The Gold Coast is half covered by forests of various types; this includes small patches of near-pristine ancient rainforest, mangrove-covered islands, patches of coastal heathlands and farmland with areas of uncleared eucalyptus forest. Of the plantation pine forests that were planted in the 1950s and 1960s, when commercial forest planting for tax minimisation was encouraged by the Commonwealth government, tiny remnants remain. Gold Coast City lies in the southeast corner of Queensland, to the south of Brisbane, the state capital; the Albert River separates the Gold Coast from a suburban area of Brisbane.

Gold Coast City stretches from the Albert River and Southern Moreton Bay to the border with New South Wales 56 km south, extends from the coast west to the foothills of the Great Dividing Range in World Heritage listed Lamington National Park. The southernmost town of Gold Coast City, includes Point Danger and its lighthouse. Coolangatta is a twin city with Tweed Heads located directly across the NSW border. At 28.1667°S 153.55°E / -28.1667. From Coolangatta forty kilometres of holiday resorts and surfing beaches stretch north to the suburb of Main Beach, further on Stradbroke Island; the suburbs of Southport and Surfers Paradise form the Gold Coast's commercial centre. The major river in the area is the Nerang River. Much of the land between the coastal strip and the hinterland were once wetlands drained by this river, but the swamps have been converted into man-made waterways and artificial islands covered in upmarket homes; the developed coastal strip sits on a narrow barrier sandbar between these waterways and the sea.

To the west, the city borders a part of the Great Dividing Range referred to as the Gold Coast hinterland. A 206 km2 section of the mountain range is protected by Lam

Daniel Gordon is a British documentary film director best known for a series of documentaries from North Korea. His most recent film is the award-winning documentary examining racism in Australia, The Australian Dream. Gordon worked for Sky Sports and Chrysalis, he founded VeryMuchSo productions based in Sheffield. He wrote two books on Sheffield Wednesday FC. In December 2001, he was nominated for a BAFTA for producing and directing Darren Gough’s Cricket Academy. In 2002, Gordon worked with Nicholas Bonner of Koryo Tours to bring the seven surviving members of the 1966 North Korea national football team to Britain; the resulting film, The Game of Their Lives won the 2003 Royal Television Society award for best sports documentary. The 1966 North Korean football team competed in the World Cup. Daniel was nominated Best Newcomer at the 2003 Grierson Awards; the film received a nomination for Best Documentary at the British Independent Film Awards. It won first prize at the Seville Film Festival. Gordon and Bonner continued their collaboration to make A State of Mind, about two North Korean gymnasts preparing for the Pyongyang mass games, Crossing the Line, about James Joseph Dresnok, the American soldier who defected to North Korea in 1962.

The latter film, narrated by actor Christian Slater, was shown at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. Gordon and Bonner were featured on a 60 Minutes report about Dresnok that broadcast on 28 January 2007 in the United States, included footage from their film. In 2012, Gordon directed a documentary for ESPN's 30 for 30 series entitled 9.79* about the 1988 Olympic Men's 100m final and the Ben Johnson doping Scandal. In 2019 he directed The Australian Dream, which won the AACTA Award for best feature documentary in the 2019 series; the film looked at the part played by racism in the demonising of Australian Rules football-player Adam Goodes, an Aboriginal Australian, was written by award-winning Aboriginal journalist Stan Grant. Daniel Gordon on IMDb Kino page on A State of Mind filmmakers 60 Minutes page about James Joseph Dresnok and Crossing the Line

Villa del Priorato di Malta or Magistral Villa, located on the Aventine Hill in Rome, is one of the two institutional seats of the government of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Along with Magistral Palace, the estate is granted extraterritorial status by Italy, it hosts the Grand Priory of Rome and the embassy of the Sovereign Order of Malta to Italy. The site, on a rise directly overlooking the Tiber and access to the Roman Pons Sublicius, was a fortified Benedictine monastery in the tenth century; the monastery passed to the Templars and after the destruction of their order, to the Knights Hospitallers, predecessors of the present Order of Malta. Radical rebuilding was undertaken in the 15th through 17th centuries; the villa was granted extraterritoriality in 1869. On the piano nobile is an assemblage of portraits of the Grand Masters of the Order; the site is reached by Via Santa Sabina, which ends in the small, picturesque Piazza dei Cavallieri di Malta enclosed on two sides by the cypresses of the garden of the Benedictines backing the fantasy screen of obelisks and stele constructed in 1765 to designs by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, one of the few executed designs by this etcher of Roman views who prided himself on being an architect.

Ahead rises the Neo-Romanesque campanile of the Church of San Anselmo attached to the international Benedictine seminary. At the northern side of the square the monumental entrance screen is located designed by Piranesi under commission from Cardinal Carlo Rezzonico, nephew of Pope Clement XIII; the Villa is arguably best known for a small keyhole in the arch-headed central portone, through which the copper-green dome of Saint Peter's Basilica, the center of Roman Catholicism, can be viewed at the end of a garden allée framed in clipped cypresses. The parterre garden links the villa with the Order's Church of Santa Maria del Priorato, an ancient church redesigned by Piranesi in 1765, affording the earliest example in Rome of Neoclassical architecture, its facade is capped with a low pediment. Media related to Villa del Priorato dei Cavalieri di Malta at Wikimedia Commons