Pantheon, Rome
The Pantheon is a former Roman temple, now a church, in Rome, Italy, on the site of an earlier temple commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus. It was completed by the emperor Hadrian and dedicated about 126 AD, its date of construction is uncertain, because Hadrian chose not to inscribe the new temple but rather to retain the inscription of Agrippa's older temple, which had burned down. The building is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns under a pediment. A rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda, under a coffered concrete dome, with a central opening to the sky. Two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon's dome is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome; the height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are 43 metres. It is one of the best-preserved of all Ancient Roman buildings, in large part because it has been in continuous use throughout its history, since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a church dedicated to "St. Mary and the Martyrs" but informally known as "Santa Maria Rotonda".
The square in front of the Pantheon is called Piazza della Rotonda. The Pantheon is a state property, managed by Italy's Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism through the Polo Museale del Lazio; the Pantheon's large circular domed cella, with a conventional temple portico front, was unique in Roman architecture. It became a standard exemplar when classical styles were revived, has been copied many times by architects; the name "Pantheon" is from the Ancient Greek "Pantheion" meaning "of, relating to, or common to all the gods":. Cassius Dio, a Roman senator who wrote in Greek, speculated that the name comes either from the statues of many gods placed around this building, or from the resemblance of the dome to the heavens, his uncertainty suggests that "Pantheon" was a nickname, not the formal name of the building. In fact, the concept of a pantheon dedicated to all the gods is questionable; the only definite pantheon recorded earlier than Agrippa's was at Antioch in Syria, though it is only mentioned by a sixth-century source.
Ziegler tried to collect evidence of panthea, but his list consists of simple dedications "to all the gods" or "to the Twelve Gods," which are not true panthea in the sense of a temple housing a cult that worships all the gods. Godfrey and Hemsoll point out that ancient authors never refer to Hadrian's Pantheon with the word aedes, as they do with other temples, the Severan inscription carved on the architrave uses "Pantheum," not "Aedes Panthei", it seems significant that Dio does not quote the simplest explanation for the name—that the Pantheon was dedicated to all the gods. In fact, Livy wrote that it had been decreed that temple buildings should only be dedicated to single divinities, so that it would be clear who would be offended if, for example, the building were struck by lightning, because it was only appropriate to offer sacrifice to a specific deity. Godfrey and Hemsoll maintain that the word Pantheon "need not denote a particular group of gods, or, indeed all the gods, since it could well have had other meanings….
The word pantheus or pantheos, could be applicable to individual deities…. Bearing in mind that the Greek word θεῖος need not mean "of a god" but could mean "superhuman," or "excellent."Since the French Revolution, when the church of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris was deconsecrated and turned into the secular monument called the Panthéon of Paris, the generic term pantheon has sometimes been applied to other buildings in which illustrious dead are honoured or buried. In the aftermath of the Battle of Actium, Marcus Agrippa started an impressive building program: the Pantheon was a part of the complex created by him on his own property in the Campus Martius in 29–19 BC, which included three buildings aligned from south to north: the Baths of Agrippa, the Basilica of Neptune, the Pantheon, it seems that the Pantheon and the Basilica of Neptune were Agrippa's sacra privata, not aedes publicae. This less solemn designation would help explain how the building could have so lost its original name and purpose in such a short period of time.
It had long been thought that the current building was built by Agrippa, with alterations undertaken, this was in part because of the Latin inscription on the front of the temple which reads: M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECITor in full, "M Agrippa L f cos tertium fecit," meaning "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made when consul for the third time." However, archaeological excavations have shown that the Pantheon of Agrippa had been destroyed except for the façade. Lise Hetland argues that the present construction began in 114, under Trajan, four years after it was destroyed by fire for the second time, she reexamined Herbert Bloch's 1959 paper, responsible for the maintained Hadrianic date, maintains that he should not have excluded all of the Trajanic-era bricks from his brick-stamp study. Her argument is interesting in light of Heilmeyer's argument that, based on stylistic evidence, Apollodoru
Giosuè Carducci
Giosuè Alessandro Giuseppe Carducci was an Italian poet, literary critic and teacher. He was influential and was regarded as the official national poet of modern Italy. In 1906 he became the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature "not only in consideration of his deep learning and critical research, but above all as a tribute to the creative energy, freshness of style, lyrical force which characterize his poetic masterpieces", he was born in Valdicastello, a small town in the Province of Lucca in the northwest corner of the region of Tuscany. His father, a doctor, was an advocate of the unification of Italy and was involved with the Carbonari; because of his politics, the family was forced to move several times during Carducci's childhood settling for a few years in Florence. From the time he was in college, he was fascinated with the restrained style of Greek and Roman Antiquity, his mature work reflects a restrained classical style using the classical meters of such Latin poets as Horace and Virgil.
He translated Book 9 of Homer's Iliad into Italian. He began teaching school; the following year, he published his first collection of Rime. These were difficult years for Carducci: his father died, his brother committed suicide. In 1859, he married Elvira Menicucci, they had four children, he taught Greek at a high school in Pistoia, was appointed Italian professor at the university in Bologna. Here, one of his students was Giovanni Pascoli, who became a poet himself and succeeded him at the university. Carducci was a fierce critic of literature and society, he was an atheist, whose political views were vehemently hostile to Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular. I know peace with the Vatican or any priests, they are the unaltering enemies of Italy. He said in his years; this anti-clerical revolutionary vehemence is prominently showcased in one famous poem, the deliberately blasphemous and provocative "Inno a Satana" The poem was composed in 1863 as a dinner party toast, published in 1865 republished in 1869 by Bologna's radical newspaper, Il Popolo, as a provocation timed to coincide with the First Vatican Council, a time when revolutionary fervor directed against the papacy was running high as republicans pressed both politically and militarily for an end of the Vatican's domination over the papal states.
In 1890 he met poet Annie Vivanti, with whom he started a love affair. Carlo Emilio Gadda reported that Carducci used to travel with a suitcase in which he kept a huge pair of Annie Vivanti's panties... every once in a while, he opened the suitcase, took out the panties, sniffed them and got intoxicated from them. In 2004, the uncensored letters between her and Carducci were published. While "Inno a Satana" had quite a revolutionary impact, Carducci's finest poetry came in years, his collections Rime Nuove and Odi Barbare contain his greatest works. He was the first Italian to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1906, he was elected a Senator of Italy. In politics he remained a strong Liberal throughout his life, although he vacillated between a preference for republicanism and constitutional monarchy. Although his reputation rests on his poetry, he produced a large body of prose works. Indeed, his prose writings, including literary criticism, biographies and essays, fill some 20 volumes.
Carducci was an excellent translator and translated some of Goethe and Heine into Italian. The Museum of the Risorgimento, Bologna is housed in the Casa Carducci, the house where he died at the age of 71, contains an exhibits on the author, it is not always easy to follow the development of Carducci's poetry through the collections he edited. The poet in fact organized his compositions several times and in different ways and gave a definitive arrangement only in the edition of his Opere published for Zanichelli between 1889 and 1909; the following is a list of poetic works published in one volume rearranged into the 20 volumes of his Opere. Rime, San Miniato, 1857. Levia Gravia, 1868. Poesie, Barbera, 1871. Primavere elleniche, 1872. Nuove poesie, 1873. Odi barbare, 1877. Juvenilia, 1880. Levia Gravia, 1881. Giambi ed Epodi, 1882. Nuove odi barbare, 1882. Rime nuove, 1887. Terze odi barbare, 1889. Delle Odi barbare. Libri II ordinati e corretti, 1893. Rime e ritmi, 1899. Poesie. MDCCCL-MCM, 1901. Below are the poetic volumes in the Opere.
The volumes, however, do not correspond to the chronological order with which the poet had published his first collections, but refer more than anything else to the distinctions of genres and therefore we find poems of the same period in different collections. The collections follow this order: Juvenilia, in six books, 1850-1860 Levia Gravia, in two books, 1861-1871 Inno a Satana, 1863 Giambi ed Epodi, in two books, 1867-1879 Intermezzo, 1874-1887 Rime Nuove, in nine books, 1861-1887 Odi barbare, in two books, 1873-1889 Rime e Ritmi, 1889-1898 Della Canzone di Legnano, Part I, 1879 The first collection of lyrical poems, which Carducci collected and divided in six books under the title Juvenilia, is undoubtedly inspired by the classical tradition of the Amici pedanti group, constituted at that time for the purpose of fighting the romanticism of the Florentines. In the verses of the collection we can see his imitation of the ancient classics, of the stilnovo style, of Dante and Petrarch and, among the moderns, Vi
Naples
Naples is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest municipality in Italy after Rome and Milan. In 2017, around 967,069 people lived within the city's administrative limits while its province-level municipality has a population of 3,115,320 residents, its continuously built-up metropolitan area is the second or third largest metropolitan area in Italy and one of the most densely populated cities in Europe. First settled by Greeks in the second millennium BC, Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban areas in the world. In the ninth century BC, a colony known as Parthenope or Παρθενόπη was established on the Island of Megaride refounded as Neápolis in the sixth century BC; the city was an important part of Magna Graecia, played a major role in the merging of Greek and Roman society and a significant cultural centre under the Romans. It served as the capital of the Duchy of Naples of the Kingdom of Naples and of the Two Sicilies until the unification of Italy in 1861.
Between 1925 and 1936, Naples was expanded and upgraded by Benito Mussolini's government but subsequently sustained severe damage from Allied bombing during World War II, which led to extensive post-1945 reconstruction work. Naples has experienced significant economic growth in recent decades, helped by the construction of the Centro Direzionale business district and an advanced transportation network, which includes the Alta Velocità high-speed rail link to Rome and Salerno and an expanded subway network. Naples is the third-largest urban economy in Italy, after Rome; the Port of Naples is one of the most important in Europe and home of the Allied Joint Force Command Naples, the NATO body that oversees North Africa, the Sahel and Middle East. Naples' historic city centre is the largest in Europe and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with a wide range of culturally and significant sites nearby, including the Palace of Caserta and the Roman ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Naples is known for its natural beauties such as Posillipo, Phlegraean Fields and Vesuvius.
Neapolitan cuisine is synonymous with pizza – which originated in the city – but it includes many lesser-known dishes. The best-known sports team in Naples is the Serie A club S. S. C. Napoli, two-time Italian champions who play at the San Paolo Stadium in the southwest of the city, in the Fuorigrotta quarter. Naples has been inhabited since the Neolithic period; the earliest Greek settlements were established in the Naples area in the second millennium BC. Sailors from the Greek island of Rhodes established a small commercial port called Parthenope on the island of Megaride in the ninth century BC. By the eighth century BC, the settlement had expanded to include Monte Echia. In the sixth century BC the new urban zone of Neápolis was founded on the plain becoming one of the foremost cities of Magna Graecia; the city grew due to the influence of the powerful Greek city-state of Syracuse, became an ally of the Roman Republic against Carthage. During the Samnite Wars, the city, now a bustling centre of trade, was captured by the Samnites.
During the Punic Wars, the strong walls surrounding Neápolis repelled the invading forces of the Carthaginian general Hannibal. Naples was respected by the Romans as a paragon of Hellenistic culture. During the Roman era, the people of Naples maintained their Greek language and customs, while the city was expanded with elegant Roman villas and public baths. Landmarks such as the Temple of Dioscures were built, many emperors chose to holiday in the city, including Claudius and Tiberius. Virgil, the author of Rome's national epic, the Aeneid, received part of his education in the city, resided in its environs, it was during this period. Januarius, who would become Naples' patron saint, was martyred there in the fourth century AD; the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustulus, was exiled to Naples by the Germanic king Odoacer in the fifth century AD. Following the decline of the Western Roman Empire, Naples was captured by the Ostrogoths, a Germanic people, incorporated into the Ostrogothic Kingdom.
However, Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire recaptured Naples in 536, after entering the city via an aqueduct. In 543, during the Gothic Wars, Totila took the city for the Ostrogoths, but the Byzantines seized control of the area following the Battle of Mons Lactarius on the slopes of Vesuvius. Naples was expected to keep in contact with the Exarchate of Ravenna, the centre of Byzantine power on the Italian Peninsula. After the exarchate fell, a Duchy of Naples was created. Although Naples' Greco-Roman culture endured, it switched allegiance from Constantinople to Rome under Duke Stephen II, putting it under papal suzerainty by 763; the years between 818 and 832 were tumultuous in regard to Naples' relations with the Byzantine Emperor, with numerous local pretenders feuding for possession of the ducal throne. Theoctistus was appointed without imperial approval. However, the disgruntled general populace chased him from the city, instead elected Stephen III, a man who minted coins with his own initials, r
Gaetano Bresci
Gaetano Bresci was an Italian anarchist who assassinated King Umberto I of Italy on 29 July 1900. Bresci was the first European regicide offender not to be executed, as capital punishment in Italy had been abolished in 1889. Bresci was born at Coiano, in Prato and emigrated from Italy to the United States in his late twenties, making his living as a weaver in Paterson, New Jersey, which had a large Italian-American community, he became involved with and was a leading member of an Italian political group called "Gruppo diritti all' esistenza". He was one of the founders of La Questione Sociale, the Italian language anarchist paper published in Paterson. Bresci had thought of killing Italian King Umberto I. After emigrating to the United States, he was introduced to anarchist and propaganda of the deed advocate Giuseppe Ciancabilla via the anarchist organizer Errico Malatesta. While Bresci was influenced by Ciancabilla and the continued suppression of popular revolt in Italy, he was affected by the 1898 Bava-Beccaris massacre, in which dozens of people were murdered during the Milanese bread riots over the rising price of bread, for which the king awarded a medal to General Fiorenzo Bava-Beccaris.
Bresci requested the return of a loan with the money he went to Italy. In Monza, where the king was visiting on July 29, 1900, he shot him four times with a five-shot.32 revolver. A monument, the Cappella Espiatoria, has been erected on the spot. Bresci was captured and put on trial, where he was defended by the anarchist lawyer Francesco Saverio Merlino. There being no capital punishment in Italy at the time, he was sentenced in Milan on August 29, 1900, to penal servitude for life on Santo Stefano Island near Ventotene, where numerous other anarchists had been sent over the years. Less than a year on May 22, 1901, he was found dead in prison at the age of 31. Biographer Arrigo Petacco described the circumstances of Bresci's death as mysterious. While Bresci was reported to have hanged himself, many believed. Anarchists regarded Bresci as a martyr and raised money to support his widow and two daughters. Bresci's regicide inspired anarchist Leon Czolgosz to kill United States President William McKinley in 1901.
New York City anarchists congregated as the Bresci Circle in his honor. The group, which reached 600 participants in 1914, plotted against the Catholic Church. In the 1970s through the 1980s, Tuscany anarchists commissioned a monument to Bresci for his hometown but were blocked by the government, it was erected overnight in Carrara's Turigliano cemetery in 1990
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is an international humanitarian movement with 17 million volunteers and staff worldwide, founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, to prevent and alleviate human suffering. The movement consists of several distinct organizations that are independent from each other, but are united within the movement through common basic principles, symbols and governing organisations; the movement's parts are: The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution founded in 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland, in particular by Henry Dunant and Gustave Moynier. Its 25-member committee has a unique authority under international humanitarian law to protect the life and dignity of the victims of international and internal armed conflicts; the ICRC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on three occasions. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies was founded in 1919 and today it coordinates activities between the 190 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies within the Movement.
On an international level, the Federation leads and organizes, in close cooperation with the National Societies, relief assistance missions responding to large-scale emergencies. The International Federation Secretariat is based in Switzerland. In 1963, the Federation was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the ICRC. National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies exist in nearly every country in the world. 190 National Societies are recognized by the ICRC and admitted as full members of the Federation. Each entity works in its home country according to the principles of international humanitarian law and the statutes of the international Movement. Depending on their specific circumstances and capacities, National Societies can take on additional humanitarian tasks that are not directly defined by international humanitarian law or the mandates of the international Movement. In many countries, they are linked to the respective national health care system by providing emergency medical services.
Until the middle of the 19th century, there were no organized and/or well-established army nursing systems for casualties and no safe and protected institutions to accommodate and treat those who were wounded on the battlefield. A devout Reformed Christian, the Swiss businessman Jean-Henri Dunant, in June 1859, traveled to Italy to meet French emperor Napoléon III with the intention of discussing difficulties in conducting business in Algeria, at that time occupied by France, he arrived in the small town of Solferino on the evening of 24 June after the Battle of Solferino, an engagement in the Austro-Sardinian War. In a single day, about 40,000 soldiers on both sides were left wounded on the field. Jean-Henri Dunant was shocked by the terrible aftermath of the battle, the suffering of the wounded soldiers, the near-total lack of medical attendance and basic care, he abandoned the original intent of his trip and for several days he devoted himself to helping with the treatment and care for the wounded.
He took point in organizing an overwhelming level of relief assistance with the local villagers to aid without discrimination. Back in his home in Geneva, he decided to write a book entitled A Memory of Solferino which he published using his own money in 1862, he sent copies of the book to leading political and military figures throughout Europe, people he thought could help him make a change. In addition to penning a vivid description of his experiences in Solferino in 1859, he explicitly advocated the formation of national voluntary relief organizations to help nurse wounded soldiers in the case of war, an idea, inspired by Christian teaching regarding social responsibility, as well as his experience after the battlefield of Solferino. In addition, he called for the development of an international treaty to guarantee the protection of medics and field hospitals for soldiers wounded on the battlefield. In 1863, Gustave Moynier, a Geneva lawyer and president of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare, received a copy of Dunant's book and introduced it for discussion at a meeting of that society.
As a result of this initial discussion the society established an investigatory commission to examine the feasibility of Dunant's suggestions and to organize an international conference about their possible implementation. The members of this committee, which has subsequently been referred to as the "Committee of the Five," aside from Dunant and Moynier were physician Louis Appia, who had significant experience working as a field surgeon. Eight days the five men decided to rename the committee to the "International Committee for Relief to the Wounded". In October 1863, the international conference organized by the committee was held in Geneva to develop possible measures to improve medical services on the battlefield; the conference was attended by 36 individuals: eighteen official delegates from national governments, six delegates from other non-governmental organizations, seven non-official foreign delegates, the five members of the International Committee. The states and kingdoms represented by official delegates were: Austrian Empire, Grand Duchy of Baden, Kingdom of Bavaria, Second French Empire, Kingdom of Hanover, Grand Duchy of Hesse, Kingdom of Italy, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kingdom of Prussia, Russian Empire, Kingdom of Saxony, Spanish Empire, United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, United Kingdom
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician and journalist, the leader of the National Fascist Party. He ruled Italy as Prime Minister from 1922 to 1943. Known as Il Duce, Mussolini was the founder of Italian Fascism. In 1912, Mussolini had been a leading member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party, but was expelled from the PSI for advocating military intervention in World War I, in opposition to the party's stance on neutrality. Mussolini served in the Royal Italian Army during the war until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. Mussolini denounced the PSI, his views now centering on nationalism instead of socialism and founded the fascist movement which came to oppose egalitarianism and class conflict, instead advocating "revolutionary nationalism" transcending class lines. Following the March on Rome in October 1922, Mussolini became the youngest Prime Minister in Italian history until the appointment of Matteo Renzi in February 2014. After removing all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labor strikes and his followers consolidated their power through a series of laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship.
Within five years, Mussolini had established dictatorial authority by both legal and extraordinary means and aspired to create a totalitarian state. In 1929, Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty with the Vatican, ending decades of struggle between the Italian state and the Papacy, recognized the independence of Vatican City. After the Abyssinia Crisis of 1935–1936, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in the Second Italo–Ethiopian War; the invasion was condemned by the Western powers and was answered with economic sanctions against Italy. Relations between Germany and Italy improved due to Hitler's support of the invasion. In 1936, Mussolini surrendered Austria to the German sphere of influence, signed the treaty of cooperation with Germany and proclaimed the creation of a Rome–Berlin Axis. From 1936 through 1939, Mussolini provided huge amounts of military support to Franco's forces in the Spanish Civil War; this active intervention further distanced Italy from Britain. Mussolini had sought to delay a major war in Europe, but Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, resulting in declarations of war by France and the UK and the start of World War II.
On 10 June 1940—with the Fall of France imminent—Italy entered the war on the side of Germany, though Mussolini was aware that Italy did not have the military capacity and resources to carry out a long war with the British Empire. He believed that after the imminent French armistice, Italy could gain territorial concessions from France, he could concentrate his forces on a major offensive in North Africa, where British and Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces. However, the British government refused to accept proposals for a peace that would involve accepting Axis victories in Eastern and Western Europe. In October 1940, Mussolini sent Italian forces into Greece; the invasion failed and the following Greek counter-offensive pushed the Italians back to occupied Albania. The Greek debacle and simultaneous defeats against the British in North Africa reduced Italy to dependence on Germany. Beginning in June 1941, Mussolini sent Italian forces to participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union, Italy declared war on the United States in December.
In 1943, Italy suffered one disaster after another: by February the Red Army had destroyed the Italian Army in Russia. As a consequence, early on 25 July, the Grand Council of Fascism passed a motion of no confidence for Mussolini. After the king agreed the armistice with the allies, on 12 September 1943 Mussolini was rescued from captivity in the Gran Sasso raid by German paratroopers and Waffen-SS commandos led by Major Otto-Harald Mors. Adolf Hitler, after meeting with the rescued former dictator put Mussolini in charge of a puppet regime in northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic, informally known as the Salò Republic. In late April 1945, in the wake of near total defeat and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee to Switzerland, but both were captured by Italian communist partisans and summarily executed by firing squad on 28 April 1945 near Lake Como, his body was taken to Milan, where it was hung upside down at a service station to publicly confirm his demise. Mussolini was born on 29 July 1883 in Dovia di Predappio, a small town in the province of Forlì in Romagna.
During the Fascist era, Predappio was dubbed "Duce's town" and Forlì was called "Duce's city", with pilgrims going to Predappio and Forlì to see the birthplace of Mussolini. Benito Mussolini's father, Alessandro Mussolini, was a blacksmith and a socialist, while his mother, was a devout Catholic schoolteacher. Owing to his father's political leanings, Mussolini was named Benito after liberal Mexican president Benito Juárez, while his middle names Andrea and Amilcare were from Italian socialists Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani. Benito was the eldest of his parents' three children, his siblings Arnaldo and Edvige fol
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