Historical Thursday: "Fontana Di Trevi"

Helloooo!

No clue how you all are feeling but I'm so weighed down by all the tragedy in the US these past couple of days. So glad I don't have any friends by where the explosion happened!

I thought we could take a trip away from here and visit a lovely site in Rome, Italy. The Fontana Di Trevi ( The Trevi Fountain). This is one of my favorite places in Rome.

Isn't this so gorgeous? Couldn't you sit here for hours and enjoy the water sound and the people watching? If you answered yes to both, you're my kind of a person! 

The fountain was first commissioned to be built in the 1600s but never went beyond the sketch phase. It was picked up a Century later and finally finished in 1762.

The fountain is the largest Baroque fountain in the city and one of the most recognized in the world!

The man standing in the middle of the fountain is Neptune, god of the sea. He is riding a chariot, in the shape of a shell, pulled by two horses. The horses are both being led by a Triton. The horses symbolize two aspects of the sea, one is really calm, right side, and the other is very aggressive, left side. 
The statues on either side of Neptune stand for abundance, left, and health, right side. 

These pictures do not do the fountain any justice..it's so darn beautiful! It was actually restored in 1998 that's why it's so bright and shiny. Along with a cleaning all the cracks were also fixed.

Here's me being my smiley self right after I threw my coin into the fountain. Legend has it that you will come to the Rome again if you throw a coin over your back into the fountain. I will throw another 20 coins if it'll get me back to that beautiful country! 

I looked it up and an estimated 3,000 Euros, $3,900, are thrown in to the fountain everyday.. that's just insane. I hope they put that money to good use.

Today's post was short and sweet but I hope informative!

With All My LOVE,

Pati

Historical Thursday: the Great Sphinx of Giza

Happy Thursday ladies!

Today I thought I would bring you a site that my family and I were lucky enough to travel to last summer. Egypt! I have loads of pictures from various places around Cairo and I've actually shared some of the Muhammad Ali Mosque a couple of weeks ago. Today I thought I would bring you one of the most well known in Egypt, the Great Sphinx of Giza. 

To be near it was completely surreal. Not to mention the pyramids but that's for another post :) Although I will mention that the pyramid you can see here is called the Pyramid of Khafre and it is the only one that still retains any of the shiny, white limestone at the top. So on to the Sphinx, I thought it would be a whole heck of a lot larger than it actually was. I mean of course it's this giant stone statue but I thought it would be way taller than what it actually was!

This is unfortunately as close as you can get to the face of the sphinx. You can no longer walk up to the paws like you were able to before. They are doing restoration work on and off and don't want anymore destruction to be done to the body. I was honestly astounded by how much damage some of the blocks of stones on the pyramids had. People had scratched their initials and names into the stones. Seriously, WTF?! It hurts my heart that anybody would think that's ok?!

Via

The picture above gives you an aerial view of what I'm standing in front of. I was in front of that stone in the upper left hand corner. I cannot remember what temple this was that we passed through before getting to the sphinx. Sorry! 

It's head is so tiny compared to the rest of its body. Totally not at all proportional. There is so much dissent between Egyptologists and archaeologists alike as to who built this great statue. Most think that it was Khafre, who I told you was also the builder of the pyramid behind it, but a lot of historians are now starting to believe that it was built before his time. Some are now saying that Khufu, Khafre's father and predecessor, built the statue. There's even a third theory saying that Djedefre, a little know Pharaoh, son to Khufu, and half brother to Khafre built it for Khufu in the likeness of the sun god Ra to restore respect to the dynasty. 

WOOOOO... that was a mouthful! So conclusion no one know for sure who built it! There's no inscriptions on it anywhere either which is not helpful at all.

The stone that the body is made out of is really low quality limestone bedrock and thus is eroding at a rapid pace. The heat, wind, and smog in Egypt do not help the preservation of this beautiful creature at all! As there is dissenting opinions as to who built it there are also dissenting opinions as to what should be done to maintain it. I don't know what the right way of fixing it is but someone needs to figure it out quickly because the integrity of the body is deteriorating rapidly.

Don't know how many of you know this but the sphinx used to have a beard. It has since fallen off and part of it and the headdress are scattered between the Cairo museum and the British museum. The beard though is thought to have been a later addition since its falling did not damage the chin. This picture also depicts a missing nose, duh right? Well when was it destroyed? Have you heard the story that Napoleon's canon fire destroyed it? I have and it's completely false. There is photographic evidence that the nose was already detached before Napoleon's time. It is actually believed to have been destroyed by a Sufi Muslim, Muhammad Sa’im al-Dahr, in rage because the peasants were making ceremonial offerings to control the flooding of the Nile. Even though this story is not 100% verified it is what most believe happened to it.

I hope I didn't completely bore you with all this huge amount of information. I hope you actually learned a little bit! The picture above is me, obviously, and my dad... just thought I would include it because he loves to dress like an extreme tourist everywhere we go. So embarrassing really. 

Y'all have an amazing Easter weekend! I know I will be partaking in some of the Easter fun.

With all my LOVE,

Pati

Historical Thursday: Venice, Italy

Hello Ladies!

Hope your Thursday is going splendidly I know mine will be awesome because that's the outlook I'm taking on it!

Anyway.. today I wanted to do another historical Thursday, I know I haven't done these in a while but maybe I'll do one every week again if you all dig it. Today's historical site is Venice, Italy. Seriously to die for. It has to be one of my favorite places on Earth hands down. I would love to live there. It's just so marvelously beautiful. We went on a family trip to Italy and then a cruise two summer ago and I cannot complain about that.

You will notice that I am a little chunkier in these pictures and it is why I don't have a lot of me photographed. :| Enjoy the sights anyway.

Here goes!

 Venice, "the floating city", is comprised of several small islands that are joined by bridges and separated by canals. You can walk pretty much anywhere around Venice but sometimes it is much easier to take a gondola and get to point B from A. There is no record of when the city was ACTUALLY founded but historians think it was somewhere around the 400s. It was founded by refugees from Roman cities nearby. It was always a place for art and trade around the Mediterranean after its population started to grow after the 800s. 

I love a city with good history and man does Venice have a long history. 

 So the city itself is built on top of Alder tree piles on which the foundation for the buildings were put.

Via

Something like these pictures above. I seriously tried my hardest to find some type of illustration to show you guys so you could visualize. I hope these two sort of helped. Basically, they lined up the wood and staked it into where the ground was a harder clay. From there they built the foundations on top of these stakes. You would think these wooden stakes would rot but no, since they are not exposed to oxygen they are protected. Another level of protection was made by making all the foundation of the houses marble, which is unaffected by the tides. They only have to worry when the tides go above a certain point and start to slosh against the weak brick. 

EVERYTHING in this city is marvelous. I have to go back sometime in my lifetime. Look at the architecture above! Tons of houses had little pots or window planters full of flowers. The walkways as you can see above weren't very wide at all but somehow everyone managed. Those are all my siblings by the way!

The only thing that I find quite sad is that the lagoon that the whole city sits on top of is polluted. The citizens did not treat the sewage before it was dumped in there, resulting in the condition it is in today. They have started to take measures and clean up their mess but it will take a good while until the water is at a normal level.

It was really neat being in a gondola and our gondolier sang! Not all of them sing like in the movies. I loved it. They also yell as you start to turn into the countless blind corners, so there are no accidents.

Hope you enjoyed the little stroll through Venice :)

With all my LOVE,

Pati

Historical Thursday: Muhammad Ali Mosque (Cairo)

Hello Gals!

So I've been featuring some local favorites of mine for Historical Thursday and today I wanted to show you guys an amazing place my family and I went to this summer.

These pictures aren't amazing because unfortunately I didn't yet have the lovely camera I have now.

Either way I hope you enjoy them.

               

It was a Mosque!!! I'm really crazy about Mosques, especially really old ones like this one that we visited in Cairo. It's called the Muhammad Ali Mosque and it is inside of the Cairo Citadel.

The Citadel is a medieval Cairo fortification on a hill near the center of Cairo. 

The whole fortification was built around the 1100s and the mosque was built between 1830 and 1848.

The Mosque itself is made out of limestone but it also contains an alabaster courtyard and the inside courtyard is filled with alabaster columns.

It's so breathtaking I could've spent all day walking around and it wouldn't have been enough time. 

The Mosque has many of these painted motifs inside of the mosque and also alongside the courtyard.

It was built with one large dome surrounded by four small and four semi-circular dome. The architecture of the overall Mosque also included two minarets, which is a tall spire that tapers off into a cylinder or cone shape. Basically a ornate type of tower structure. They use it for call to prayer.

 Outside wall ornate metal decorations.

Not too sure what this was but Arabic is such a beautifully written language.

Tomb of Muhammad Ali Pasha who had this built in memory of his son. It is made out of Carrara marble and it is centrally located in the courtyard. The carvings on these were breathtaking!

My sister and I standing next to the tomb. We had to wear those robes because we were wearing clothing that didn't cover our knees and upper arms. When we walked into the Mosque itself we had to take our shoes off as well.

Covered hallways contained these intricate motifs that were painted and decorated.

Those last three pictures were from the actual inside of the Mosque. They all have those lamps in the middle of the praying are which I find to be mesmerizing. 

Not too sure why I didn't take pictures of the ceilings inside, might have had to do with no flash, either way they were so ornate and beautiful.

Via

I don't like to use images that aren't mine really but I had to find this one for you guys. It was stunning to say the least. I also completely forgot to mention that it is still indeed a working Mosque and people come to prayer here.

Bonus picture of us overlooking Cairo. All the stuff that looks like fog is actually smog. This was a particularly bad day and we couldn't really see too much of the city. Bummer.

This is one of many locations that I hope to lead you guys through. Hope you enjoyed it!

With all my love,

Pati

Historical Thursday: Stillman House

Hello on another beautiful Thursday!

Today I wanted to introduce you guys to a lovely house museum.
It's called the "Stillman House", mostly because the founder of Brownsville,Texas first resided in this here house.
The house was built in 1850 by a man named Henry Miller, he was a business man who also owned a well respected hotel in the downtown part of the city.
Mr. Miller rented out the house to the Stillmans for a couple of years(1851-1853).
Charles Stillman was a true businessman! He laid claim to several properties, river steamboats, he was involved in cotton brokerage, mercantile operations, and ranching.  His steamboat business is what actually brought him down to the area from Connecticut, where he was born.

Wow, right? That's a pretty insane amount of things to take control over. As if that wasn't enough he also got the title to a tract of land north of Matamoros, Mexico, which is now Brownsville, Texas. I know, you have probably never heard of these places. I promise you they're on the map! At the very tip of Texas. Go and take a look!

Charles would go on and lay out the city, and actually start it up into the bustling commercial and cultural center that it was in the mid 19th Century.

Even though you might not have heard about Charles Stillman he had a lot of power and money during these times. 

His son, James, would go on to be president of the First National City Bank and his daughters, Elsie and Isabel, married two of William Rockefeller's sons.

It might surprise you to learn that the Rockefeller's were actually marrying into money in the above marriages. The Stillmans were that wealthy!

I hope I haven't thoroughly bored you with that little history lesson. I'll give you a look into some of the inside of the house in the next couple of pictures.  This door above  is still the original door from the 1850s. So awesome.

These two pictures show the bedroom of the house, which is immediately to the right as you walk in. 

I would seriously love a bed like this. Wouldn't you?

This room is just in front of the bedroom and was considered the parlor in those days. This is where the Stillmans would entertain their guests. The mannequin above is supposed to be Elizabeth Stillman, wife to Charles, in her actual Wedding dress. Beautiful. I love sleeves on wedding dresses and oh, the lace!

The hallway showing where the bedroom, on the left in this picture, and the parlor were.

Hallway again but this time standing at the front door. I need to get a fancy candelabra so that Bob, the kids, and I can have a fancy dinner EVERY night.

This is where the exhibition space of the house began. It was put into the later additions to the original 1850 house. 

Pictures of the kitchen. I've always wanted to have one of those irons just to see what it would've been like.

I might just go buy one and try it out. I know. I'm so weird. 

These last three pictures are looking into the carriage house, which was not connected to but was part of the original house, an authentic carriage, and a picture of some of the shutters from the outside.

There's tons more that I could have said about this house. Believe me, there was. It's just so beautiful. I also completely forgot to take a picture of the inside courtyard that the house has. Oops! I was just too excited I guess. 

Hope you enjoyed this mini tour.

With all my love,

Pati