Paris skyline
Looking southwest across Paris towards the Eiffel Tower from the dome of the Basilica du Sacré-Cœur. Paris, France.
Looking southwest across Paris towards the Eiffel Tower from the dome of the Basilica du Sacré-Cœur. Paris, France.
October 17, 2009
The pock-marked facade of the Pantheon. Its dome was the world’s largest for close to two thousand years.
October 17, 2009
Surrounded by such beautiful scenes, it isn’t too hard to imagine where the great Italian artists of the Renaissance may have gotten some of their inspiration from. The picturesque Tuscan town of San Gimignano is famous for its towers.
October 17, 2009
The baldacchino and immense dome of the largest church in the world. St Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican Palace remain the ultimate symbols of the incredible heights of opulence, wealth and waste that the Roman Catholic Church reached during the 16th century.
October 17, 2009
An Evzone soldier stands guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Athens, Greece. The Scots did not have a monopoly on going to war in skirts. The ceremonial uniform of the Evzones is derived from that of the Greek bandits and guerillas that resisted Ottoman Turkish occupation prior to independence in the early… [Read more…]
October 17, 2009
One of the last masterpieces of classical Ottoman architecture, it is popularly known as the Blue Mosque, for the blue tiles on its inside walls.
October 17, 2009
Off the coast of Normandy in northern France. Surrounded by some of the fastest tides in Europe, the thousand year old abbey and fortified island is famous for holding out against the English during the Hundred Years’War.
October 17, 2009
Credit to I. M. Pei for his daring design and credit to the French for accepting it. Completed in 1989.
October 17, 2009
The Pont du Gard, ancient Roman aqueduct: The picturesque village of Gordes: Oppède Le Vieux: The imposing Palais des Papes in Avignon:
October 17, 2009
Formally known as the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court. Designed by Foster & Partners and opened in 2001.
October 17, 2009
Built between five hundred to a thousand years ago, the monks and hermits of the Greek Orthodox Church sought ever more remote and difficult-to-reach places from where to pray and contemplate. Hence their position amongst these spectacular sandstone rock formations in central Greece. Nowadays a sealed road links all the monasteries and they are as… [Read more…]
October 17, 2009
The view southwest across the Golden Horn, towards the magnificent Suleymaniye Mosque.
October 17, 2009
The iconostasis of the Church of St George, within the grounds of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in Istanbul. The Greek presence in Turkey is now small, but the Ecumenicl Patriarchate still serves at the spiritual home of the Greek Orthodox Church for believers in Greece and scattered all over the world. It claims its… [Read more…]
October 17, 2009
The Sufi dervishes of the Mevlevi order in Turkey are famous for their Sema, a ceremony in which they spin themselves into a trance-like state as a way of becoming closer to God.
October 17, 2009
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