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Catania - Fontana Dell'Elefante 03
Catania (, , , Sicilian and ) is the second-largest municipality on Sicily, after Palermo, both by area and by population. Despite being the second city of the island, Catania is the center of the most densely populated Sicilian conurbation, which is among the largest in Italy. It has important road and rail transport infrastructures, and hosts Catania Airport, the main airport of Sicily (fifth-largest in Italy). The city is located on Sicily's east coast, facing the Ionian Sea at the base of the active volcano Mount Etna. It is the capital of the 58-municipality province known as the Metropolitan City of Catania, which is the seventh-largest metropolitan area in Italy. The population of the city proper is 297,517, while the population of the metropolitan city is 1,068,563. Catania was founded in the 8th century BC by Chalcidian Greeks in Magna Graecia. The city has weathered multiple geologic catastrophes: it was almost completely destroyed by a catastrophic earthquake in 1169 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Etna
Mount Etna, or simply Etna ( or ; , or ; ; or ), is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy, in the Metropolitan City of Catania, between the cities of Messina, Italy, Messina and Catania. It is located above the Convergent boundary, convergent plate margin between the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate. It is one of the tallest active volcanoes in Europe, and the tallest peak in Italy south of the Alps with a current height (September 2024) of , though this varies with summit eruptions. For instance, in 2021 the southeastern crater reached a height of , but was then surpassed by the Voragine crater after the summer 2024 eruptions. Etna covers an area of with a basal circumference of . This makes it by far the largest of the three volcanism in Italy, active volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. Only Teide, Mount Teide on Tenerife in the Canary Islands surpasses it in the whole of the Euro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collins English Dictionary
The ''Collins English Dictionary'' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. It was first published in 1979. Corpus The dictionary uses language research based on the Collins Corpus, which is continually updated and has over 20 billion words. Editions * The current edition is the 14th; it was published on 31 August 2023, with more than 732,000 words, meanings, and phrases (not 730,000 headwords) and 9,500 place names and 7,300 biographies. A newer edition of the 14th edition was published 7 May 2024. * The previous edition was the 13th edition, which was published in November 2018. * A special "30th Anniversary" 10th edition was published in 2010. * Earlier editions were published once every 3 or 4 years. History The 1979 edition of the dictionary, with Patrick Hanks as editor and Laurence Urdang as editorial director, was the first British English dictionary to be typeset from the output from a computer database in a specif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Verga
Giovanni Carmelo Verga di Fontanabianca (; 2 September 1840 – 27 January 1922) was an Italian Literary realism, realist (''Verismo (literature), verista'') writer. His novels ''I Malavoglia'' (1881) and ''Mastro-don Gesualdo'' (1889) are widely recognized as masterpieces. Verga has been called the greatest Italian novelist after Alessandro Manzoni, Manzoni. D. H. Lawrence translated several of his works into English language, English. Life and career Early life and works The first son of Giovanni Battista Catalano Verga and Caterina Di Mauro, Verga was born into a prosperous family of Catania in Sicily. He began writing in his teens, producing the historical novel ''Amore e Patria'' (''Love and Homeland'') when he was only 16 years old. Although nominally studying law at the University of Catania, he used money his father had given him to publish his ''I carbonari della montagna'' (''The Carbonari of the Mountain'') in 1861 and 1862. This was followed by ''Sulle lagune'' (' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Pacini
Giovanni Pacini (11 February 17966 December 1867) was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. Pacini was born in Catania, Sicily, the son of the buffo Luigi Pacini, who was to appear in the premieres of many of Giovanni's operas. The family was of Tuscany, Tuscan origin, living in Catania when the composer was born. He served as the Florence Conservatory's first director from 1849 through 1862. His first 25 or so operas were written when Gioachino Rossini dominated the Italian operatic stage. But Pacini's operas were "rather superficial", a fact which, later, he candidly admitted in his ''Memoirs''.Rose 2001, in Holden, p. 650 For some years he held the post of "director of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples." Later, retiring to Viareggio to found a school of music, Pacini took time to assess the state of opera in Italy and, during a five-year period during which he stopped composing, laid out his ideas in his Memoirs. Like Saverio Mercadante, who also reassessed the strengt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (; ; 3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was an Italian opera composer famed for his long, graceful melodies and evocative musical settings. A central figure of the era, he was admired not only by the public, but also by many composers who were influenced by his work. His songs balanced florid Ornament (music), embellishment with a deceptively simple approach to lyric setting. Born to a musical family in Sicily, he distinguished himself early and earned a scholarship to study under several noted musicians at Music conservatories of Naples#Conservatorio di San Sebastiano, Naples' Real Collegio di Musica. There he absorbed elements of the Neapolitan School's style and was inspired by performances of Donizetti's and Rossini's operas, among others, in more modern idioms. He wrote his first opera, ''Adelson e Salvini'' (1825), for the conservatory, and his next, ''Bianca e Fernando'' (1826), on a Teatro di San Carlo-affiliated commiss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Catania
The University of Catania () is a university located in Catania, Sicily. Founded in 1434, it is the oldest university in Sicily, the 13th oldest in Italy, and the 29th oldest in the world. With over 38,000 enrolled students, it is the largest university in Sicily. History The university was founded by King Alfonso I of Sicily on 19 October 1434. A charter was granted after two royal councillors ( Adamo Asmundo and Battista Platamone) convinced the king to accept the founding of a '' Studium Generale'' in Catania, with the papal recognition arriving ten years later from Pope Eugene IV (18 April 1444). Alfonso V with this gesture wanted to compensate the city (in which there had been recently established the royal court) for moving the Sicilian capital from Catania to Palermo. The activity of the Atheneum actually started a year later, in 1445, with six professors and ten students. The first four faculties were Medicine, Philosophy, Canon and Civil Law and Theology. Lessons were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity. Associated with great social change in most fields and disciplines, including Renaissance art, art, Renaissance architecture, architecture, politics, Renaissance literature, literature, Renaissance exploration, exploration and Science in the Renaissance, science, the Renaissance was first centered in the Republic of Florence, then spread to the Italian Renaissance, rest of Italy and later throughout Europe. The term ''rinascita'' ("rebirth") first appeared in ''Lives of the Artists'' () by Giorgio Vasari, while the corresponding French word was adopted into English as the term for this period during the 1830s. The Renaissance's intellectual basis was founded in its version of Renaiss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1693 Sicily Earthquake
The 1693 Sicily earthquake was a natural disaster that struck parts of southern Italy near Sicily, then a territory part of the Crown of Aragon by the Kings of Spain Calabria and Malta, on 11 January at around 21:00 local time. This earthquake was preceded by a damaging foreshock on 9 January. The main quake had an estimated magnitude of 7.4 on the moment magnitude scale, the most powerful in recorded Italian history, and a maximum intensity of XI (''Extreme'') on the Mercalli intensity scale, destroying at least 70 towns and cities, seriously affecting an area of and causing the death of about 60,000 people. The earthquake was followed by a number of tsunamis that devastated the coastal villages on the Ionian Sea and in the Straits of Messina. Almost two-thirds of the entire population of Catania were killed. The Epicenter, epicentre of the disaster was probably close to the coast, possibly offshore, although the exact position remains unknown. The extent and level of destruction ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1669 Eruption Of Mount Etna
The 1669 eruption of Mount Etna is the largest-recorded historical eruption of the volcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy. After several weeks of increasing seismic activity that damaged the town of Nicolosi and other settlements, an eruption fissure opened on the southeastern flank of Etna during the night of 10–11 March. Several more fissures became active during 11 March, erupting pyroclastics and tephra that fell over Sicily and accumulated to form the Monti Rossi scoria cone. Lava disgorged from the eruption fissures flowed southwards away from the vent, burying a number of towns and farmland during March and April, eventually covering . The inhabitants of the towns fled to the city of Catania and sought refuge there; religious ceremonies were held in the city to implore the end of the eruption. In early April a branch of the lava flow advanced towards the city and on the 1 or 16 April it reached its city walls, provoking a crisis and the flight of many of its i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1169 Sicily Earthquake
The 1169 Sicily earthquake occurred on 4 February 1169 at 08:00 local time on the eve of the feast of St. Agatha of Sicily (in southern Italy). It had an estimated magnitude of between 6.4 and 7.3 and an estimated maximum perceived intensity of X (''Extreme'') on the Mercalli intensity scale. The cities of Catania, Lentini and Modica were severely damaged, and the earthquake also triggered a paleotsunami. Overall, the earthquake is estimated to have caused the deaths of at least 15,000 people. Tectonic setting Sicily lies on part of the complex convergent boundary where the African plate is subducting beneath the Eurasian plate. This subduction zone is responsible for the formation of the stratovolcano Mount Etna. Most of the damaging earthquakes occur on the Siculo-Calabrian rift zone, a zone of extensional faulting which runs for about , forming three main segments through Calabria, along the east coast of Sicily and immediately offshore, and finally forming the southeast ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia refers to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy, encompassing the modern Regions of Italy, Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were Greek colonisation, extensively settled by Greeks beginning in the 8th century BC. Initially founded by their ''metropoleis'' (mother cities), the settlements evolved into independent and powerful Greek city-states (''poleis''). The settlers brought with them Ancient Greece, Hellenic civilization, which over time developed distinct local forms due to both their distance from Greece and the influence of the indigenous peoples of southern Italy. This interaction left a lasting imprint on Italy, including on Ancient Rome, Roman culture. The Greek settlers also influenced native groups such as the Sicels and the Oenotrians, many of whom adopted Greek culture and became Hellenization, Hellenized. In areas like architecture and urban planning, the colonies sometimes surpassed the achievem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ionian Sea
The Ionian Sea (, ; or , ; , ) is an elongated bay of the Mediterranean Sea. It is connected to the Adriatic Sea to the north, and is bounded by Southern Italy, including Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily, and the Salento peninsula to the west, southern Albania (and western Apulia, Italy) to the north, and the west coast of Greece, including the Peloponnese. All major islands in the sea, which are located in the east of the sea, belong to Greece. They are collectively named the Ionian Islands, the main ones being Corfu, Kefalonia, Zakynthos, Lefkada, and Ithaca. There are ferry routes between Patras and Igoumenitsa, Greece, and Brindisi and Ancona, Italy, that cross the east and north of the Ionian Sea, and from Piraeus westward. Calypso Deep, the deepest point in the Mediterranean at , is in the Ionian Sea, at . The sea is one of the most seismically active areas in the world. Etymology The name ''Ionian'' comes from the Greek word . Its etymology is unknown. Ancient G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
