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Malaspina Castle
The Malaspina Castle is located in Massa, Italy. It crowns the top of a rocky hill and dominates the wide underlying plain and part of the Tyrrhenian coast. From the 17th century the main purpose of the castle was military and it served as a prison until 1946. The castle was subsequently restored and reopened to the public. History The first record of a castle here dates back to 1164. In 1269 because of political discords with local inhabitants it was leveled to the ground by the army of the nearby city of Lucca. The castle became the seat of the marquises of Massa. It was visited by Dante Alighieri, who supposedly envisioned the descending circles of Hell, that inspired the corresponding part of his ''Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature a ...''.Lucio G ...
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Massa, Tuscany
Massa (; ) is a town and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, the administrative centre of the province of Massa and Carrara. It is located in the Frigido River Valley, near the Alpi Apuane, from the Tyrrhenian Sea. History Massa is mentioned for the first time in the Tabula Peutingeriana, a 2nd-4th century AD itinerary, with the name ''ad Tabernas frigidas'', referring perhaps to a stage on the Via Aemilia Scauri consular road from Pisa to Luni. From the 15th to the 19th century, Massa was the capital of the independent Principate (later Duchy) of Massa and Carrara, ruled by the Malaspina and Cybo-Malaspina families. Massa is the first recorded town in Europe in which the magnetic needle compass was used in mines to map them and determine the extent of various mine owners' properties. In 1829 the states were inherited by Francis IV, Duke of Modena. In 1859, during the unification of Italy process, it joined the Kingdom of Sardinia. Geography Located in south of the p ...
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Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical region. Italy is also considered part of Western Europe, and shares land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and the enclaved microstates of Vatican City and San Marino. It has a territorial exclave in Switzerland, Campione. Italy covers an area of , with a population of over 60 million. It is the third-most populous member state of the European Union, the sixth-most populous country in Europe, and the tenth-largest country in the continent by land area. Italy's capital and largest city is Rome. Italy was the native place of many civilizations such as the Italic peoples and the Etruscans, while due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, the country has also historicall ...
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Tyrrhenian Sea
The Tyrrhenian Sea (; it, Mar Tirreno , french: Mer Tyrrhénienne , sc, Mare Tirrenu, co, Mari Tirrenu, scn, Mari Tirrenu, nap, Mare Tirreno) is part of the Mediterranean Sea off the western coast of Italy. It is named for the Tyrrhenian people identified with the Etruscans of Italy. Geography The sea is bounded by the islands of Corsica and Sardinia (to the west), the Italian Peninsula (regions of Tuscany, Lazio, Campania, Basilicata, and Calabria) to the north and east, and the island of Sicily (to the south). The Tyrrhenian Sea also includes a number of smaller islands like Capri, Elba, Ischia, and Ustica. The maximum depth of the sea is . The Tyrrhenian Sea is situated near where the African and Eurasian Plates meet; therefore mountain chains and active volcanoes such as Mount Marsili are found in its depths. The eight Aeolian Islands and Ustica are located in the southern part of the sea, north of Sicily. Extent The International Hydrographic Organization defin ...
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Stemma Dei Malaspina Dallo Spino Secco, Rocca Malaspina, Massa
Stemma (plural stemmata) may refer to: * In stemmatics, an approach to textual criticism, a stemma or stemma codicum is a diagram showing the relationships of the various versions of a text to earlier versions or manuscripts * Tree-like diagrams representing sentence structure and syntax created by Lucien Tesnière * Coat of arms or arms in the Italian language *A family tree or recorded genealogy * Stemmata A simple eye (sometimes called a pigment pit) refers to a form of eye or an optical arrangement composed of a single lens and without an elaborate retina such as occurs in most vertebrates. In this sense "simple eye" is distinct from a multi-l ...
refers to a class of simple eyes in arthropods * Kind of empire crown in the late Roman, the Byzantine and the Bulgarian empires {{Disambiguation ...
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Lucca
Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957. Lucca is known as one of the Italian's "Città d'arte" (Arts town), thanks to its intact Renaissance-era city walls and its very well preserved historic center, where, among other buildings and monuments, are located the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, which has its origins in the second half of the 1st century A.D. and the Guinigi Tower, a tower that dates from the 1300s. The city is also the birthplace of numerous world-class composers, including Giacomo Puccini, Alfredo Catalani, and Luigi Boccherini. Toponymy By the Romans, Lucca was known as ''Luca''. From more recent and concrete toponymic studies, the name Lucca has references that lead to "sacred wood" (Latin: ''lucus''), "to cut" (Latin: ''lucare'') and "luminous space" (''leuk'', a term used by the f ...
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Marquises
The Marquesas Islands (; french: Îles Marquises or ' or '; Marquesan: ' ( North Marquesan) and ' ( South Marquesan), both meaning "the land of men") are a group of volcanic islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southern Pacific Ocean. Their highest point is the peak of Mount Oave (french: Mont Oave, links=no) on Ua Pou island, at 1,230 m (4,035 ft) above sea level. Archaeological research suggests the islands were colonized in the 10th century AD by voyagers from West Polynesia. Over the centuries that followed, the islands have maintained a "remarkably uniform culture, biology and language". The Marquesas were named after the 16th century Spanish Viceroy of Peru, the Marquis of Cañete ( es, Marqués de Cañete, italic=unset) by navigator , who visited them in 1595. The Marquesas Islands constitute one of the five administrative divisions (') of French Polynesia. The capital of the Marquesas Islands' administrative subdivision is ...
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Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: ''Commedia'') and later christened by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language. Dante is known for establishing the use of the vernacular in literature at a time when most poetry was written in Latin, which was accessible only to the most educated readers. His ''De vulgari eloquentia'' (''On Eloquence in the Vernacular'') was one of the first scholarly defenses of the vernacular. His use of the Florentine dialect for works such as '' The New Life'' (1295) and ''Divine Comedy'' helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language. His work set a precedent that important Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would late ...
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Divine Comedy
The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval worldview as it existed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: ''Inferno'', ''Purgatorio'', and '' Paradiso''. The narrative takes as its literal subject the state of the soul after death and presents an image of divine justice meted out as due punishment or reward, and describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Allegorically, the poem represents the soul's journey towards God, beginning with the recognition and rejection of sin (''Inferno''), foll ...
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Castles In Tuscany
A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble. This is distinct from a palace, which is not fortified; from a fortress, which was not always a residence for royalty or nobility; from a ''pleasance'' which was a walled-in residence for nobility, but not adequately fortified; and from a fortified settlement, which was a public defence – though there are many similarities among these types of construction. Use of the term has varied over time and has also been applied to structures such as hill forts and 19th-20th century homes built to resemble castles. Over the approximately 900 years when genuine castles were built, they took on a great many forms with many different features, although some, such as curtain walls, arrowslits, and portcullises, wer ...
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