I bet you didn't know that this thread would have a part 2
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Moderators, Arts Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 76,463 Mod ✭✭✭✭
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,092 Mod ✭✭✭✭
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They're not quite the oldest Roman doors. The doors from the Curia Julia are slightly older, though were moved from their original position into a church in the 17th century.
The Pantheon doors weigh 22 tonnes a piece, an incredible feat to cast. In the 18th century there was an attempt to replace the pins in them, but one fell and killed a worker. They were rehung, but arseways, so up until the 1990's one was jammed shut, the other permanently ajar.
The scale of the Pantheon is hard to discern in pics. Even in person it feels quite human sized. Big but not huge.
Until you get some humans into the mix for scale. Check out the squares making up the dome at the top...
The Pantheon was also built with an astronomical alignment like our own far older Newgrange. Once a year on the day that was celebrated as the date of Rome's foundation, Rome's birthday as it were, the hole(oculus) in the roof directs a beam of light towards the entrance.
Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,092 Mod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 59021
Well the non ancient romans tried to feck the Pantheon up not so long after Rome fell. Lucky for it(and a few other Roman buildings in the empire) it got converted into a church so that really helped preserve it. Even so bits and bobs were robbed from it. The original bronze lettering dedicating the building for one, then bits of the portico roof, then a later pope tried to nick more from it, but was thwarted. It's amazing the doors escaped the pillage. That much high quality bronze awaiting the smelter for cannon and the like. It had been thought this was what had happened and the doors were renaissance copies(though almost no Renaissance foundry would have been up to the task), but metallurgy and the like proved they were the originals. Their very size likely helped them. They were so bloody heavy and ackward they weren't easy to move.
Unlike classical bronze statues for example. Pretty much every single example of one of them was found at the bottom of the sea dug outa shipwrecks, because the rest were melted down. The stone ones, many of the copies of bronzea surviving for the most part because stone like that wasn't valuable. Cut cubed stone on the other hand... Much of that was stripped by later builders from Rome, and Greece too. Hell the fine outer casing of the Great Pyramic was stripped to build medieval Cairo and because of the strong iconoclasm in Islam many of the representations of pharoahs and the like were chipped out of the walls.
The Parthenon in Athens an even older building very nearly made it to the present time intact. Like the Pantheon it too had been turned into a Christian church, first Catholic, then Greek Orthodox, then when Greece was invaded by the Ottomans a Mosque. Roll on the 18th century when the Ottomans were fighting the Italians(the insaniac poet Byron was involved in that). The Ottomans put their gunpowder supplies inside thinking that the Italians wouldn't fire on it. They were wrong. And the whole thing went up in a huge cataclysm killing hundreds when it did.
Personally I'd completely rebuild the bugger. The cost would be insane mind you. Only saints and madmen would attempt it, or be successful at such an attempt.
Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,092 Mod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 59021
And it got its name from before sugar was granulated there was the practice of casting solid lumps of sugar in pots which resulted in a conical shape and you'd scrape bits off for your coffee or whatever. There are a load of mountains named in this way. Though the Sugarloaf mountain in Rio is far more like the original "sugar loaf" in shape.
I've no idea why the one in Wicklow got the name? It's just your basic hill shape.
Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Not all Holly leaves are prickly, in fact the same tree can produce smooth and pricly ones and several types in between. This is now believed to be a response for the tree when it feels it's under threat from and animal (such as deer nibbling at them).
We were always told this as kids by our granduncle and grandaunts, but now it's in the National Geographic. So it must be true. No wonder the Brehon's had it down as a noble tree.
As an example, these 5 leaves all came from the same tree.
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