1.
Heraklion
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Heraklion is the largest city and the administrative capital of the island of Crete. It is the fourth largest city in Greece.3 km2, Heraklion is the capital of Heraklion regional unit. The Bronze Age palace of Knossos, also known as the Palace of Minos, is located nearby. The Arab raiders from Andalusia who founded the Emirate of Crete moved the capital from Gortyna to a new castle they called ربض الخندق rabḍ al-ḫandaq Castle of the Moat in the 820s. After the Byzantine reconquest, the city was known as Megalo Kastro or Castro. The ancient name Ηράκλειον was revived in the 19th century and comes from the nearby Roman port of Heracleum, english usage formerly preferred the classicizing transliterations Heraklion or Heraclion, but the form Iraklion is becoming more common. Heraklion is close to the ruins of the palace of Knossos, though there is no archaeological evidence of it, Knossos might well have had a port at the site of Heraklion as early as 2000 BC. They built a moat around the city for protection, and named the city ربض الخندق and it became the capital of the Emirate of Crete. The Saracens allowed the port to be used as a haven for pirates who operated against Imperial shipping. In 961, Byzantine forces under the command of Nikephoros Phokas, later to become Emperor, landed in Crete, after a prolonged siege, the city fell. The Saracen inhabitants were slaughtered, the city looted and burned to the ground, soon rebuilt, the town was renamed Χάνδαξ, Chandax, and remained under Greek control for the next 243 years. Chandax was renamed Candia and became the seat of the Duke of Candia, the city retained the name of Candia for centuries and the same name was often used to refer to the whole island of Crete as well. To secure their rule, Venetians began in 1212 to settle families from Venice on Crete, after the Venetians came the Ottoman Empire. During the Cretan War, the Ottomans besieged the city for 21 years, from 1648 to 1669, in its final phase, which lasted for 22 months,70,000 Turks,38,000 Cretans and slaves and 29,088 of the citys Christian defenders perished. The Ottoman army under an Albanian grand vizier, Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha conquered the city in 1669, under the Ottomans, the city was known officially as Kandiye but informally in Greek as Megalo Castro. During the Ottoman period, the harbour silted up, so most shipping shifted to Chania in the west of the island, in 1898, the autonomous Cretan State was created, under Ottoman suzerainty, with Prince George of Greece as its High Commissioner and under international supervision. During the period of occupation of the island by the Great Powers. At this time, the city was renamed Heraklion, after the Roman port of Heracleum, in 1913, with the rest of Crete, Heraklion was incorporated into the Kingdom of Greece
2.
Piraeus
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Piraeus is a port city in the region of Attica, Greece. Piraeus is located within the Athens urban area,12 kilometres southwest from its city center, the municipality of Piraeus and several other suburban municipalities within the regional unit of Piraeus form the greater Piraeus area, with a total population of 448,997. Piraeus has a recorded history, dating to ancient Greece. During the Golden Age of Athens the Long Walls were constructed to connect Athens with Piraeus, the port of Piraeus is the chief port in Greece, the largest passenger port in Europe and the second largest in the world, servicing about 20 million passengers annually. With a throughput of 1.4 million TEUs, Piraeus is placed among the top ten ports in container traffic in Europe, the city hosted events in both the 1896 and 2004 Summer Olympics held in Athens. The University of Piraeus is one of the largest universities in Greece, Piraeus, which roughly means the place over the passage, has been inhabited since the 26th century BC. Consequently, it was called the Halipedon, meaning the salt field, through the centuries, the area was increasingly silted and flooding ceased, and thus by early classical times the land passage was made safe. In the late 6th century BC, the area caught attention due to its advantages, in 511 BC, the hill of Munichia was fortified by Hippias and four years later Piraeus became a deme of Attica by Cleisthenes. The Athenian fleet played a role in the battle of Salamis against the Persians in 480 BC. From then on Piraeus was permanently used as the navy base, the citys fortification was farther reinforced later by the construction of the Long Walls under Cimon and Pericles, with which Piraeus was connected to Athens. Meanwhile, Piraeus was rebuilt to the grid plan of architect Hippodamus of Miletus, known as the Hippodamian plan. As a result, Piraeus flourished and became a port of high security and great commercial activity, during the Peloponnesian War, Piraeus suffered its first setback. In the second year of the war, the first cases of the Athens plague were recorded in Piraeus, in 404 BC, the Spartan fleet under Lysander blockaded Piraeus and subsequently Athens surrendered to the Spartans, putting an end to the Delian League and the war itself. As a result, the tattered and unfortified port city was not able to compete with prosperous Rhodes, the destruction was completed in 395 AD by the Goths under Alaric I. Piraeus was led to a period of decline which lasted for fifteen centuries. During the Byzantine period the harbour of Piraeus was occasionally used for the Byzantine fleet and it was also called Porto Drako by Greeks, drako meaning not just dragon, but any monster. When Piraeus was taken by the Ottoman Empire in 1456, it known as Aslan Liman. The Piraeus Lion itself was looted in 1687 by Francesco Morosini during his expedition against Athens and was carried to the Venetian Arsenal, a copy of the lion statue is on display at the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus
3.
Rethymno
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Rethymno is a city of approximately 40,000 people in Greece, the capital of Rethymno regional unit on the island of Crete, a former Latin Catholic bishopric as Retimo and former Latin titular see. It was originally built during the Minoan civilization, but was never a competitive Minoan centre and it was, however, strong enough to mint its own coins and maintain urban growth. One of these coins is depicted as the crest of the town. This region as a whole is rich with ancient history, most notably through the Minoan civilisation centred at Kydonia east of Rethymno, todays old town is almost entirely built by the Republic of Venice. It is one of the old towns in Crete. The Venetian Loggia houses the office of the Ministry of Culture. A Wine Festival is held annually at the beginning of July. Another festival, in memory of the destruction of the Arkadi Monastery, is held on 7–8 November, the citys Venetian-era citadel, the Fortezza of Rethymno, is one of the best-preserved castles in Crete. Other monuments include the Neratze mosque, the Great Gate, the Piazza Rimondi, the town was captured by the Ottoman Empire in 1646 during the Cretan War and they ruled it for almost three centuries. The town, called Resmo in Turkish, was the centre of a sanjak during Ottoman rule, during the Battle of Crete, the Battle of Rethymno was fought between German paratroopers and the Second Australian Imperial Force and Hellenic Army. Agriculture is also notable, especially for oil and other Mediterranean products. Rethymno hosted the international athletics meeting known as Vardinogianneia, the athletics meeting stopped in 2012 due to Greek financial crisis. Rethymno has many clubs with presence in Panhellenic championships of various sports. Below is shown the list of sport clubs of Rethymno. More, there are about 8.000 students per annum studying at Galos where the Campus rests, also in Rethymnon is located the Department of Music Technology and Acoustics Engineering of the School for Applied Sciences of the Technological Institute of Crete with ~500 Students
4.
Syros
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Syros, or Siros or Syra is a Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea. It is located 78 nautical miles south-east of Athens, the area of the island is 83.6 km2 and it has 21,507 inhabitants. The largest towns are Ermoupoli, Ano Syros, and Vari, Ermoupoli is the capital of the island and of the Cyclades. It has always been a significant port town, and during the 19th century it was more significant than Piraeus. Other villages are Galissas, Foinikas, Pagos, Manna, Kini, Syros also refers to USS LST-325, which is an American made World War II-era tank landing ship that was sent to Greece on 1 September 1964, as part of the grant-in-aid program. She served in the Hellenic Navy as RHS Syros from 1964 to 1999 and it is now decommissioned and docked in Evansville, Indiana. Ermoupoli stands on a naturally amphitheatrical site, with buildings, old mansions. The City Hall, where Miaoulis Square lies ringed with cafes, the City of Hermes has numerous churches, including Metamorphosis, Koimisis, St. Demetrius, Three Hierarchs, Anastasis, Evangelistria and St. Nicolas. The Archaeological Museum has many finds and the Municipal Library contains numerous editions, the quarter of the town known as Vaporia is where the sea captains lived. Along its narrow streets, stand numerous neo-classical mansions, Ano Syros is the second town of Syros and was built by the Venetians at the beginning of the 13th century on the hill of San Giorgio, north-west of Hermoupolis. Ano Syros maintains a medieval atmosphere, innumerable steps between narrow streets and houses with coloured doors lead to the top of the town. The medieval settlement of Ano Syros is accessible by car, the town is served mostly by marble steps, the distance from the harbour up to the main entry point of the town is approximately 1000 metres. The Catholic cathedral of Saint George dominates Ano Syros, the cathedral church was constructed during the 13th century. From the cathedral visitors have a view of the neighbouring islands of Tinos, Delos, Mykonos, Paros, Andros and Naxos. The history of settlement on Syros goes back at least 5,000 years and this is when the hill-top settlement of Kastri began. Archaeologists describe Early Cycladic III culture as Kastri culture, Kastri, dated by archaeologists to 2800-2300 BC, was one of the earliest settlements in Greece that were protected by stone walls with rounded bastions. Also the cemetery of Chalandriani is associated with Kastri, inside the fortification, the houses shared party walls and were packed close together. It is estimated that the town was home to up to 300 people
5.
Trieste
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Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a strip of Italian territory lying between the Adriatic Sea and Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city. It is also located near Croatia some further 30 kilometres south, Trieste is located at the head of the Gulf of Trieste and throughout history it has been influenced by its location at the crossroads of Latin, Slavic, and Germanic cultures. In 2009, it had a population of about 205,000 and it is the capital of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Trieste was one of the oldest parts of the Habsburg Monarchy. In the 19th century, it was the most important port of one of the Great Powers of Europe, as a prosperous seaport in the Mediterranean region, Trieste became the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the fin de siècle period at the end of the 19th century it emerged as an important hub for literature, Trieste underwent an economic revival during the 1930s, and Trieste was an important spot in the struggle between the Eastern and Western blocs after the Second World War. Today, the city is in one of the richest regions of Italy, Roman authors also transliterated the name as Tergestum. Modern names of the city include, Italian, Trieste, Slovene, Trst, German, Triest, Hungarian, Trieszt, Croatian, Trst, Serbian, Трст/Trst, Trieste lies in the northernmost part of the high Adriatic in northeastern Italy, near the border with Slovenia. The city lies on the Gulf of Trieste, built mostly on a hillside that becomes a mountain, Triestes urban territory lies at the foot of an imposing escarpment that comes down abruptly from the Karst Plateau towards the sea. The karst landforms close to the city reach an elevation of 458 metres above sea level and it lies on the borders of the Italian geographical region, the Balkan Peninsula, and the Mitteleuropa. The territory of Trieste is composed of different climate zones depending on the distance from the sea. The average temperatures are 5.4 °C in January and 23.3 °C in July, the climatic setting of the city is humid subtropical climate. On average, humidity levels are low, while only two months receive slightly less than 60 mm of precipitation. Trieste along with the Istrian peninsula has evenly distributed rainfall above 1,000 mm in total, snow occurs on average 0 –2 days per year. Temperatures are very mild - lows below zero are somewhat rare, winter maxima are lower than in typical Mediterranean zone with quite high minima. Summer is very warm with maxima about 28 °C and lows above 20 °C, the absolute maximum of the last fifty years is 37.2 °C in 2003, whereas the absolute minimum is −14.6 °C in 1956. Since the second millennium BC, the location was an inhabited site, originally an Illyrian settlement, the Veneti entered the region in the 10th-9th c. BC and seem to have given the town its name, Tergeste, still later, the town was later captured by the Carni, a tribe of the Eastern Alps, before becoming part of the Roman republic in 177 BC during the Istrian War
6.
Karl von Piloty
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Karl Theodor von Piloty was a German painter. Von Piloty was born in Munich and his father, Ferdinand Piloty, enjoyed a great reputation as a lithographer. In 1840, Karl was admitted as a student of the Munich Academy, under the artists Karl Schorn, a year later the acclaimed history paintings, i. e. But he soon forsook this branch of painting in favour of historical subjects and it was succeeded by Seni at the Dead Body of Wallenstein, which gained for the young painter the membership of the Munich Academy, where he succeeded Schorn as professor in 1856. He also executed a number of paintings for the royal palace in Munich. For Baron von Schach, he painted the famous Discovery of America, in 1874, he was appointed keeper of the Munich Academy, being afterwards ennobled by the king of Bavaria. Piloty was the foremost representative of the school in Germany. He was a teacher, and among his more famous pupils were Hans Makart, Franz von Lenbach, Franz Defregger, Gabriel von Max, Georgios Jakobides. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Piloty. Media related to Karl von Piloty at Wikimedia Commons
7.
Nikolaos Gyzis
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Nikolaos Gyzis was considered one of Greeces most important 19th-century painters. He was most famous for his work Eros and the Painter and it was auctioned in May 2006 at Bonhams in London, being last exhibited in Greece in 1928. He was the representative of the so-called Munich School, the major 19th-century Greek art movement. Gyzis was born in the village of Sklavochori, on the island of Tinos which has a long artistic history, as his family settled in Athens in 1850, he soon embarked on a study at the Athens School of Fine Arts. His studies there, formed the foundation of his artistic education, in 1865, having won a scholarship, he went to continue his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, where he settled for the rest of his life. He was very soon incorporated into the German pictorial climate, and this is expressed in the painting News of Victory of 1871, which deals with the Franco-Prussian War, and the painting Apotheosis i Thriamvos tis Vavarias. From 1886 onward he was professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich and his students included Ernst Oppler, Fritz Osswald, Anna May-Rychter and Stefan Popescu. Towards the end of his life, in the 1890s, he took a turn toward more religious themes and his works are today exhibited at museums and private collections in Greece, Germany and elsewhere. Gysis painting The Secret School was depicted on the reverse of the Greek 200 drachmas banknote of 1996-2001
8.
Georgios Jakobides
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Georgios Jakobides was a painter and one of the main representatives of the Greek artistic movement of the Munich School. He founded and was the first curator of the National Gallery of Greece in Athens and he was born in Lesbos, Ottoman Empire. His first education was in Smyrna, in Munich, he lived for 17 years where he worked in his studio, painting mythological scenes, genre pictures, and portraits. His work is influenced by German academic Realism, hs most famous paintings were of children. In the capital of Bavaria he was regarded as a successful German artist selling many of his works at high prices, at this time, additional to his themes he produced formal portraits of eminent Greeks. He opposed all new artistic tendencies, including Impressionism and Expressionism and he was given awards at five international exhibits, among those in Berlin 1891 and in Paris 1900. His works are found in the National Gallery of Athens, private collections and in museums and art galleries around the world including art galleries in Germany and he died in Athens in 1932. Munich School Art in modern Greece Jakobides Digital Museum National Gallery of Athens Official website Andreas S. Ioannou, 19th Century Greek Art
9.
Nikiforos Lytras
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Nikiforos Lytras was a nineteenth-century Greek painter. He was born in Tinos, and trained in Athens at the School of Arts, in 1860 he won a scholarship to Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Munich. After completing these studies, he became a professor at the School of Arts in 1866 and he remained faithful to the precepts and principles of the Munich School, while paying greatest attention both to ethographic themes and portraiture. His most famous portrait was of the couple, Otto and Amalia. Nikiforos Lytras was a child of a marble sculptor. In 1850 to the age of eighteen years he went to Athens to study in the School of Arts and he studied painting with Ludwig Thiersch and Raffaelo Ceccoli. With his graduation in 1856 he started teaching there the course of elementary writing, in 1836 with a Greek government’s scholarship he went to Munich to study in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. His teacher there was Karl von Piloty, in 1862 after King Otto was exiled the scholarship was no longer available to Lytra so the expenses undertook the ambassador of Greece in Vienna Simon Sinas. In the summer of 1865 before his return to Greece he meets Nikolaos Gyzis in Munich, there they visited and studied a lot of art masterpieces. With his return in Athens Lytras became professor in the Athens School of Fine Arts in the department of Painting, Spyridon Vikatos was one of his pupils. In 1873 and for four years he travelled to Smyrna and Asia Minor, Munich, in 1879 he married Irene Kyriakidi daughter of a tradesman from Smyrna and they had six children. His son Nikolaos Lytras followed in his footsteps by studying at the Munich academy of Fine Arts. The nineteenth-century painters Ioannis Altamouras and Periklis Pantazis may be regarded as forerunners of this group, nikiforos Lytras died at the age of 72 in 1904, after a short illness that is believed to have been caused by his colours’ chemicals substances. After his death Georgios Jakobides took his place in Athens School of Fine Arts, during the period that Lytras was Piloty’s student he focused in history painting. His subjects were inspired from Greek Mythology and Greek history, after his return to Greece he started to paint portraits and every day life scenes. Lytra’s paintings about everyday life correspond in the ideology of the class of the times. His trips in Minor Asia and Egypt enriched his paintings with dark skinned children, the last period of his life he painted many scenes about aging, loneliness and the fear of death. Lytras was one of the most famous painters in Athens and he participated and honored in many exhibitions, at the Zappeion exhibitions, as well as in exhibitions in Paris and in Vienna
10.
Battle of Lissa (1866)
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It was the first major sea battle between ironclads and one of the last to involve deliberate ramming. The Italian navy fired roughly 1450 shots during the engagement, the battle occurred as part of the Third Italian Independence War, in which Italy allied with Prussia in the course of the conflict against Austria. The major Italian objective was to capture Venice and at least part of the former Venetian territory from Austria, the fleets were composed of a mix of unarmoured sailing ships with steam engines, and armoured ironclads also combining sails and steam engines. The Italian fleet of 12 ironclads and 17 unarmoured ships outnumbered the Austrian fleet of 7 and 11 respectively, the Austrians were also severely outmatched in rifled guns and total weight of metal. A single turret ship took part in the action — the Italian Affondatore, piedmontese Count Carlo di Persano commanded the Italian fleet, while the Austrian fleet was commanded by Konteradmiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff. The Fort of Lissa was put under the authority of the Oberst David Urs de Margina, the attacking Austrian fleet was also split into 3 divisions. The 1st Division consisted of the ships, while the 2nd consisted of the powerful. The 3rd Division consisted of the smaller gunboats and armed merchantmen. The armed merchant cruiser Stadion was ahead of the acting as a scout. The Italians, despite their superiority, were not prepared for battle. They were busy preparing for landings on the island of Vis when the news that the Austrian fleet was at sea, in total, the Italians had 11 ironclads in the battle line. The other ships were dispersed into the battleline, the exception was Affondatore, which was on the far side of the 2nd squadron and out of the battleline. Persano may have intended this to be an uncommitted reserve, before the battle Persano caused more confusion by deciding to transfer his flag to the Affondatore and the 2nd and 3rd Divisions slowed to allow Re dItalia to lower her boats. However the signal to slow down never reached the 1st Division and they continued to steam on, and it is curious that the Albini ships with their 398 guns, though ordered by Persano to do so, did not fire a single shot all through the battle. Having ignored warnings from his pickets of suspicious ships in sight, Tegetthoff, seeing a gap opening between the 1st and 2nd Divisions, forced his fleet into it and concentrated on raking the Italians and ramming. This meant that he allowed his T to be crossed, while the Austrians were approaching, Vaccas 1st Italian Division threw a heavy weight of fire at them. The Austrians could only reply with their chase guns, because Persano was in the process of transferring his flag, no general order was given. The 2nd and 3rd Divisions did not join in and the Austrians crossed the area, suffering some serious damage
