Tag: rome
All the articles with the tag "rome".
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Pompeii: The City That Vesuvius Buried, and Then Preserved
Published:• 9 min readPompeii was buried alive in a single afternoon in 79 AD. The ash that killed the city is also what saved it. A walk through what the volcano left behind.
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The Pantheon Dome: How Rome Cast a Concrete Sky That Has Not Fallen in 1,900 Years
Published:• 12 min readThe Pantheon dome is still, after nineteen hundred years, the largest unreinforced concrete dome on earth. How the Romans cast it -- and why it has not fallen.
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Who Built the Pantheon: The Three Names Behind a Two-Thousand-Year-Old Roof
Published:• 10 min readWho built the Pantheon? Agrippa's name is on it, Hadrian actually built it, and Apollodorus of Damascus probably designed the dome. Here is how all three fit.
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Raphael's Famous Work and the Tomb in the Pantheon: Why a Painter Got Buried with Gods
Published:• 11 min readRaphael's most famous work earned him a burial slot in the Pantheon in 1520 -- a reading of the paintings that made him, and the epitaph that closes them.
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Pantheon History: How a Pagan Temple Became the Oldest Continuously Used Building in Rome
Published:• 11 min readThe full pantheon history -- Agrippa's lost temple, the fire, Hadrian's rebuild, the conversion to Santa Maria ad Martyres, and the pope who stripped the bronze.
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Where to See Caravaggio in Rome: A Walking Guide to Every Painting
Published:• 20 min readA walking guide to every surviving Caravaggio painting in the city of Rome -- seven churches and museums, and the fastest route between them.
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Why Michelangelo Signed the Pietà and Never Signed Again
Published:• 12 min readWhy Michelangelo signed the Pietà: he overheard pilgrims crediting a rival for his masterpiece, and never signed another work for life.
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Raphael Self Portrait School of Athens: The Painter Who Hid in the Corner
Published:• 13 min readThe Raphael self portrait School of Athens tucks the painter beside Ptolemy at age twenty seven, staring straight out and claiming a seat among the ancients.
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School of Athens Figures Identified: Who's Who in Raphael's Fresco
Published:• 15 min readSchool of Athens figures identified one by one: Leonardo as Plato, Michelangelo as Heraclitus, Euclid as Bramante, and the painter hiding in the corner.
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The Sistine Chapel Restoration Controversy: Did the Vatican Ruin Michelangelo?
Published:• 16 min readThe Sistine Chapel restoration controversy of 1980 to 1994 turned the ceiling from brown to neon, and one professor spent his life calling it a crime.