High Street is a metonym for the concept of the primary business street of towns or cities in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth of Nations. To distinguish it from "centres" of nearby places it is preceded unofficially by the name of its settlement. In a town it implies the focal point for business shops and street stalls in town and city centres; as a generic shorthand presupposed upon linear settlements it may be used to denote more precise concepts such as the urban retail sector, town centre sectors of employment, all small shops and services outlets and wider concepts taking in social concepts. The number of High Streets reached a peak in Victorian Britain. Since the 20th century, the prosperity of High Streets has been in decline, forcing many shop closures and prompting the UK government to consider initiatives to reinvigorate and preserve the High Street. High Street is the most common street name in the UK, which according to a 2009 statistical compilation has 5,410 High Streets, 3,811 Station Roads and 2,702 Main Streets.

The smallest High Street in Britain is located in the small market town of Holsworthy in Devon. The street itself consists of only three shops. In Middle English the word "high" denoted a meaning of excellence or superior rank. "High" applied to roads as they improved: "highway" was a new term taken up by the church and their vestries during the 17th century as a term for all public roads between settlements. From the 19th century, which saw a proliferation in the number of public roads, in countries using the term motorway, the term highway fell out of common speech and was supplanted by the legal definition, denoting any public road, as in the Highway Code, thus the term "High Street" assumed a different meaning. In Britain, the term, ` High Street', has both a specific meaning. People refer to shopping on the high street when they mean the main retail precinct, but refer to shopping on the High Street when they mean a specific street carrying the name of High Street or one of its variants.

Many British colonies, including Canada and New Zealand, adopted the term to refer to the main retail shopping precinct in a given city or town. In Britain, some 3,000 streets called "High Street" and about 2,300 streets with variations on the name have been identified, giving a grand total of 5,300. Of these, more than 600 High Streets are located in London's boroughs. Following the Great Fire of London, the city of London was rebuilt. New planning laws, governing rebuilding, designated four types of street based on the size of their carriageways and the types of buildings. Shops were permitted in the principal street or'high street', but not in the by-lanes or back streets; this may have been based on the need for high visibility in order to regulate retail trade, as well as to avoid congestion in the narrow lanes and back streets. Accordingly, from the 17th-century, the term "High Street" assumed a narrower meaning and came to describe thoroughfares with significant retail in large villages and towns.

In the late 17th and 18th-centuries, the number of High Streets increased markedly. The 19th-century was a "golden era" for High Street shops; the rise of the middle class in Victorian England contributed to a more favourable attitude to shopping and consumption. Shopping centres became the places to see and be seen - places for recreational shopping and promenading. By the 20th century, the viability of high streets began to decline. In the second half of the 20th-century, traditional British High Street precincts came under pressure from out-of-town shopping malls, with the balance shifting towards the latter. In the late 20th-century and mortar retailers confronted another major threat - from online retailers operating in a global marketplace. To confront this threat, High Street precincts have been forced to evolve - some have become smaller as shops shut their doors, others have become more like social spaces with a concentration of retail services including cafes and entertainment venues while yet others have positioned themselves as more up-market shopping precincts with a preponderance of stores selling luxury branded goods.

In the United Kingdom geographic concentration of goods and services has reduced the share of the economy contributed to by workers in the high street. High street refers to only a part of commerce; the town centre in many British towns combines a group of outdoor shopping streets, with an adjacent indoor shopping centre. High Streets through the centuries Initiatives to preserve the traditional British High Street are evident. Research into the customer's shopping preferences and patterns reveals that the continued vitality of towns is predicated on a number of different variables. Research has highlighted the ongoing challenges faced by towns and cities and suggested that "he town centre serves not only social, utilitarian or hedonic shopping purposes but supports out-of-hours entertainment and leisure services; the way that consumers perceive and use town centres has fundamentally changed." In order to address the issues threatening the sustainability of towns it is important to consider consumer behaviour and customer experience.

This is in line with research that proposes that for high street retail to thrive in spit

The Cathedral museum of Prato, Italy was founded in 1967 in a few rooms of the Bishop's residence and in 1976 grew to include items from both the Cathedral of Saint Stephen and the diocesan territory. The small courtyard that precedes the bishop's residence provides the entrance to the museum which opened in 1967 in the first two rooms. In 1976 the museum was enlarged to accommodate works from the entire diocese including the prestigious reliefs from the pulpit of Donatello; the collection is set up as a diocesan museum. In 1980 the vaults under the cathedral's transept were added to the museum's space, other areas were included between 1993-1996, beginning work, only concluded, to reconnect the various sections into one single itinerary that passes through a few rooms in the old Palazo dei Proposti, around the harmonious Romanesque cloister, concluding under the cathedral. A reorganization of the museum space began in 2007, plans include the preparation of the Renaissance rooms. An established itinerary guides the visitor through six rooms containing numerous and varied works of art, passes through an archeological section and the Romaesque cloister, finishes with the Antiquarium and the vaults.

This room houses important sculptures and paintings from the 13th to the early 15th centuries from Prato, along with liturgical items from the same era, including: Head of Christ, part of an imposing Crucifixione, in polychrome wood, by an anonymous sculptor from Arezzo. The adjoining room contains items used during liturgical services among which are: four gradual illuminations: il Corale D shows decoration made by Rossello di Jacopo Franchi e Matteo Torelli; this room is dedicated to works associated with devotion to a precious Marian relic, the Sacred Belt, venerated in Prato from the 12th century: The Virgin Mary, assumed into heaven, giving her belt to Saint Thomas the apostole who passes the belt to a priest, a relief in white marble made for a publit, by the Sienese artist Niccolò del Mercia. The excavation allowed for the recovery of various archeological items, which attest to the habitation of the area from the Etruscans to the Lombards. Of great historical interest: fragments of Etruscan ceramics, in particular urns and jars.

From the archaeological area the visitor can go up into a 15th-century structure, which contains works from the 15th and 16th centuries. Of particular interest: Trinity, wood with pinnacles and a background of gold, by Andrea di Giusto Manzini; the room takes its name from the celebrated balcony pulpit made by Donatello for an outside corner of the facade of the cathedral for the solemn showing of the relic of the Sacred Belt: the parapet of the external pulpit of the cathedral, made b

A riser known as a feeder, is a reservoir built into a metal casting mold to prevent cavities due to shrinkage. Most metals are less dense as a liquid than as a solid so castings shrink upon cooling, which can leave a void at the last point to solidify. Risers prevent this by providing molten metal to the casting as it solidifies, so that the cavity forms in the riser and not the casting. Risers are not effective on materials that have a large freezing range, because directional solidification is not possible, they are not needed for casting processes that utilized pressure to fill the mold cavity. A feeder operated by a treadle is called an underfeeder; the activity of planning of how a casting will be gated and risered is called foundry methoding or foundry engineering. Risers are only effective if three conditions are met: the riser cools after the casting, the riser has enough material to compensate for the casting shrinkage, the casting directionally solidifies towards the riser. For the riser to cool after the casting the riser must cool more than the casting.

Chvorinov's rule states that the slowest cooling time is achieved with the greatest volume and the least surface area. So, ideally, a riser should be a sphere, but this isn't a practical shape to insert into a mold, so a cylinder is used instead; the height to diameter ratio of the cylinder varies depending on the material, location of the riser, size of the flask, etc. The shrinkage must be calculated for the casting to confirm that there is enough material in the riser to compensate for the shrinkage. If it appears there is not enough material the size of the riser must be increased; this requirement is more important for plate-like shapes, while the first requirement is more important for chunky shapes. The casting must be designed to produce directional solidification, which sweeps from the extremities of the mold cavity toward the riser. In this way, the riser can feed molten metal continuously to part of the casting, solidifying. One part of achieving this end is by placing the riser near the thickest and largest part of the casting, as that part of the casting will cool and solidify last.

If this type of solidification is not possible, multiple risers that feed various sections of the casting or chills may be necessary. A riser is categorized based on three criteria: where it is located, whether it is open to the atmosphere, how it is filled. If the riser is located on the casting it is known as a top riser, but if it is located next to the casting it is known as a side riser. Top risers are advantageous because they take up less space in the flask than a side riser, plus they have a shorter feeding distance. If the riser is open to the atmosphere it is known as an open riser, but if the risers is contained in the mold it is known as a blind riser. An open riser is bigger than a blind because the open riser loses more heat to mold through the top of the riser. If the riser receives material from the gating system and fills before the mold cavity it is known as a live riser or hot riser. If the riser fills with material that has flowed through the mold cavity it is known as a dead riser or cold riser.

Live risers are smaller than dead risers. Top risers are always dead risers and risers in the gating system are always live risers; the connection of the riser to the molding cavity can be an issue for side risers. On one hand the connection should be as small as possible to make separation as easy as possible, but, on the other, the connection must be big enough for it to not solidify before the riser; the connection is made short to take advantage of the heat of both the riser and the molding cavity, which will keep it hot throughout the process. There are risering aids that can be implemented to decrease its size. One is using an insulating top around the riser. Another is placing a heater around only the riser. A hot top known as a feeder head, is a specialized riser, used to help counteract the formation of pipes when casting ingots, it is a live open riser, with a hot ceramic liner instead of just the mold materials. It is inserted into the top of the ingot mould near the end of the pour, the rest of the metal is poured.

Its purpose is to maintain a reservoir of molten metal, which drains down to fill the pipe as the casting cools. The hot top was invented by Robert Forester Mushet. With a hot top only 1 to 2% of the ingot is waste, prior to its use, up to 25% of the ingot was wasted; the efficiency, or yield, of a casting is defined as the weight of the casting divided by the weight of the total amount of metal poured. Risers can add a lot to the total weight being poured, so it is important to optimize their size and shape. Risers exist only to ensure the integrity of the casting, they are removed after the part has cooled, their metal is remelted to be used again. One way to calculate the minimum size of a riser is to use Chvorinov's rule by setting the solidification time for the riser to be longer than that of the casting. Any time can be chosen but 25% longer is a safe choice, written as follows: t riser = 1.25 t casting or riser n = 1.25 casting n {\displaystyle \left(\ri