1.
Agde
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Agde is a commune in the Hérault department in southern France. It is the Mediterranean port of the Canal du Midi, Agde is located on the River Hérault,4 kilometres from the Mediterranean Sea, and 750 kilometres from Paris. The Canal du Midi connects to the Hérault at the Agde Round Lock just above Agde, Agde is one of the oldest towns in France, right behind Béziers and Marseilles. Greek colony settled by Phocaeans from Massilia, in the history of Roman Catholicism in France, the Council of Agde was held 10 September 506 at Agde, under the presidency of Caesarius of Arles. It was attended by bishops, and its forty-seven genuine canons dealt with ecclesiastical discipline. One of its canons, forbidding ecclesiastics to sell or alienate the property of the church from which derived their living. Bishop Guillaume fortified the cathedrals precincts and provided it with a 35-metre donjon, the Romanesque cloister of the cathedral was demolished in 1857. It is assumed that a Jewish community was established in the town around the sixth century AD, during the council of Agde, assembled by the Catholic church in 506 AD, Christian laymen and ecclesiastics were prohibited from eating with Jews or hosting them. This prohibition suggests that the town Jews held good relations with their town neighbours and it is also assumed that the Jewish community was never large, since it did not own a cemetery and buried their dead in Béziers, three miles away. The Jewish name of the city was Agdi, or Akdi, during World War II, about two thousand Jews from Germany and Austria were sent to a labour camp near the town, most were deported on 24 August 1942. Agde has a football club RCO Agde who play at the Stade Louis Sanguin and they currently play in the Championnat de France amateur 2. Agde also has a club, Rugby Olympique Agathois, who play in the French Federale 1 competition. Princeton Encyclopædia of Classical Sites,1976, Agatha Hérault, France Recent undersea find of bronzes
2.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
3.
Ideal city
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An ideal city is the concept of a plan for a city that has been conceived in accordance with the dictates of some rational or moral objective. The ground plans of cities are often based on grids or other geometrical patterns. Several attempts to develop ideal city plans are known from the Renaissance, the concept dates at least from the period of Plato, whose Republic is a philosophical exploration of the notion of the ideal city. Examples of the cities include Filaretes Sforzinda, a description of which was included in his Trattato di Architettura. The city of Sforzinda was laid out within an eight-pointed star inscribed within a circular moat, further examples may have been intended to have been read into the so-called Urbino and Baltimore panels, which show Classically influenced architecture disposed in logically planned piazzas. The physical design component of the famous Oglethorpe Plan remains preserved in the Savannah Historic District, late nineteenth-century examples of the ideal city include the Garden city movement of Sir Ebenezer Howard, realised at Letchworth Garden City and Welwyn Garden City in England. Poundbury, Prince Charles architectural vision established in Dorset, is among the most recent examples of ideal city planning, Ideal town Oglethorpe Plan Media related to Ideal city at Wikimedia Commons
4.
Robert de Cotte
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Robert de Cotte was a French architect-administrator, under whose design control of the royal buildings of France from 1699, the earliest notes presaging the Rococo style were introduced. First a pupil of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, he became his brother-in-law. After Hardouin-Mansarts death, de Cotte completed his projects, notably the royal chapel at Versailles. Fiske Kimball, the chronicler of the Rococo, notes that there are no surviving drawings by de Cotte from this period, from 1708, Robert de Cotte was Premier architecte du Roi and director of the Académie royale darchitecture. De Cotte, with ever-widening responsibilities at Court, was occupied with projects in Paris. His name is inscribed on the first draft for the project for Place Vendôme. Mariette attributed its design to François-Antoine Vassé, and Fiske Kimball, on the basis of surviving preparatory drawings, no new architects were added to the rolls of the Bâtiments du Roi. Balthasar Neumann, in Paris to consult him over the operations at Würzburg, found him. At this period, de Cotte was responsible for the Hôtel de Conti, rue de Bourbon, outside France, de Cottes team was commissioned for projects to be completed on site by local craftsmen. In Bonn, his team was employed by the Elector of Cologne, for the design of his rural Poppelsdorf Palace. The decoration of the Cabinet des Glâces in the palace followed designs by Oppenord that featured reverse curves and garlands applied to mirror surfaces. A new wing called the Buen Retiro was commissioned in the autumn of 1717, from newly-Bourbon Spain, the princesse des Ursins required his advice on the queens apartments of the royal palace in Madrid. An octagonal room was fabricated in Paris under de Cottes eye, 1713–1715, at La Granja, an assistant from de Cottes office, René Carlier, was employed in the designs for the parterres. For the cardinal de Rohan, de Cotte provided decors for the Château de Saverne in Alsace, Robert Neuman, Robert de Cotte and the Perfection of Architecture in Eighteenth-Century France, University of Chicago Press,1994. ISBN 0-226-57437-7 Robert de Cotte at the archINFORM database
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Seine
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The Seine is a 777-kilometre-long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France. It rises at Source-Seine,30 kilometres northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and it is navigable by ocean-going vessels as far as Rouen,120 kilometres from the sea. There are 37 bridges within Paris and dozens more spanning the river outside the city, examples in Paris include the Pont Alexandre III and Pont Neuf, the latter of which dates back to 1607. Outside the city, examples include the Pont de Normandie, one of the longest cable-stayed bridges in the world, the Seine rises in the commune of Source-Seine, about 30 kilometres northwest of Dijon. The source has been owned by the city of Paris since 1864, a number of closely associated small ditches or depressions provide the source waters, with an artificial grotto laid out to highlight and contain a deemed main source. The grotto includes a statue of a nymph, on the same site are the buried remains of a Gallo-Roman temple. Small statues of the dea Sequana Seine goddess and other ex voti found at the place are now exhibited in the Dijon archeological museum. The Seine is dredged and oceangoing vessels can dock at Rouen,120 kilometres from the sea, commercial riverboats can use the river from Bar-sur-Seine,560 kilometres to its mouth. At Paris, there are 37 bridges, the river is only 24 metres above sea level 446 kilometres from its mouth, making it slow flowing and thus easily navigable. The Seine Maritime,105.7 kilometres from the English Channel at Le Havre to Rouen, is the portion of the Seine used by ocean-going craft. The tidal section of the Seine Maritime is followed by a section with four large multiple locks until the mouth of the Oise at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine. Multiple locks at Bougival / Chatou and at Suresnes lift the vessels to the level of the river in Paris, upstream from Paris seven locks ensure navigation to Saint Mammès, where the Loing mouth is situated. Through an eighth lock the river Yonne is reached at Montereau-Fault-Yonne, from the mouth of the Yonne, larger ships can continue upstream to Nogent-sur-Seine. From there on, the river is only by small craft. All navigation ends abruptly at Marcilly-sur-Seine, where the ancient Canal de la Haute-Seine used to allow vessels to continue all the way to Troyes and this canal has been abandoned for many years. The average depth of the Seine today at Paris is about 9.5 metres. Until locks were installed to raise the level in the 1800s, the river was much shallower within the city most of the time, today the depth is tightly controlled and the entire width of the river between the built-up banks on either side is normally filled with water. The average flow of the river is low, only a few cubic metres per second
Media related to Pierre-Alexis Delamair at Wikimedia Commons
