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Giorgio Grognet De Vassé
Giorgio Grognet de Vassé (1774–1862) was a Maltese architect and antiquarian, who is mostly known for designing the Mosta Basilica, popularly known as the Rotunda of Mosta. In the late 18th century, he studied at Frascati in the Papal States to become a priest. However, he developed a strong support for the Jacobins, and he joined the French expeditionary force as an officer during the Egyptian campaign. He eventually returned to Malta in the 19th century, some years after the uprising against French rule had ended. By the 1830s, the parish church of Mosta, which had been built in the 17th century by the architect Tommaso Dingli, had become too small to cater for the town's population. Grognet proposed rebuilding the church on a neoclassical design based on the Pantheon in Rome. Despite opposition from Bishop Francesco Saverio Caruana, the design was approved and construction of the church began on 30 May 1833. Grognet had never received any formal architectural training, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hospitaller Malta
Hospitaller Malta, known in Maltese history as the Knights' Period (, ), was a '' de facto'' state which existed between 1530 and 1798 when the Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were ruled by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. It was formally a vassal state of the Kingdom of Sicily, and it came into being when Emperor Charles V granted the islands as well as the city of Tripoli in modern Libya to the Order, following the latter's loss of Rhodes in 1522. Hospitaller Tripoli was lost to the Ottoman Empire in 1551, but an Ottoman attempt to take Malta in 1565 failed. Following the 1565 siege, the Order decided to settle permanently in Malta and began to construct a new capital city, Valletta. For the next two centuries, Malta went through a Golden Age, characterized by a flourishing of the arts, architecture, and an overall improvement in Maltese society. In the mid-17th century, the Order was the ''de jure'' proprietor over some islands in the Caribbean, making it th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francesco Saverio Caruana
Francesco Saverio Caruana (7 July 1759 – 17 November 1847) was a Maltese prelate who was Bishop of Malta from 1831 to his death in 1847. He was also a rebel leader during the Maltese uprising of 1798–1800. Caruana was born in Żebbuġ on 7 July 1759. At the age of 24, he was ordained priest by Archbishop Vincenzo Labini, and in 1796 he became canon of the Mdina Cathedral chapter. During the French occupation of Malta Canon Caruana was made a member of the '' Commission de gouvernement'' (Government commission) but resigned some time later when he saw that he could not prevent the French from establishing unjust laws and when they started stealing precious artifices from the Maltese churches. Canon Caruana played a prominent role in the Maltese uprising against the French and in bringing the British to Malta. During the revolt, he was the commander of the battalions of Żebbuġ and Siġġiewi. Tas-Samra camp and battery fell under his overall command. In 1822 Caruana was no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1774 Births
Events January–March * January 21 – Mustafa III, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, dies and is succeeded by his brother Abdul Hamid I. * January 27 ** An angry crowd in Boston, Massachusetts seizes, tars, and feathers British customs collector and Loyalist John Malcolm, for striking a boy and a shoemaker, George Hewes, with his cane. ** British industrialist John Wilkinson patents a method for boring cannon from the solid, subsequently utilised for accurate boring of steam engine cylinders. * February 3 – The Privy Council of Great Britain, as advisors to King George III, votes for the King's abolition of free land grants of North American lands. Henceforward, land is to be sold at auction to the highest bidder. * February 6 – The Parlement of Paris votes a sentence of civil degradation, depriving Pierre Beaumarchais of all rights and duties of citizenship. * February 7 – The volunteer fire company of Trenton, New Jersey, predecessor to the paid Trenton Fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Le Marchant (British Army Officer, Born 1803)
Lieutenant General (United Kingdom), Lieutenant General Sir John Gaspard Le Marchant (1803–1874) was a British Army officer and governor of Colony of Newfoundland, Newfoundland from 1847 to 1852. He later became the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia (1852–1858) and Governor of Malta (1858–1864). Biography Le Marchant was the son of Major-General John Le Marchant (British Army cavalry officer), John Le Marchant and the younger brother of Sir Denis Le Marchant, 1st Baronet, and was educated at Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, High Wycombe Royal Grammar School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. In 1820, at the age of seventeen, he was commissioned into the 10th Foot as an Ensign (rank), ensign. In 1821 he transferred to the 57th Foot as a lieutenant and later transferred to the 98th Foot, in which he was promoted major. In 1835 he became adjutant-general of the British Auxiliary Legion in Spain with the rank of brigadier-general. He transferred to the 20th Fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Times Of Malta
The ''Times of Malta'' is an English-language daily newspaper in Malta. Founded in 1935, by Lord and Lady Strickland and Lord Strickland's daughter Mabel, it is the oldest daily newspaper still in circulation in Malta. It has the widest circulation of any Maltese newspaper. The newspaper is published by Allied Newspapers Limited, which is owned by the Strickland Foundation, a charitable trust established by Mabel Strickland in 1979 to control the majority of the company. History The history of ''The Times'' of Malta is linked with that of its publishing house, Allied Newspapers Limited. This institution has a history going back to the 1920s, when it pioneered journalism and the printing industry in Malta. It all started with the publication, by Gerald Strickland, of Malta's first evening newspaper in Maltese, ''Il-Progress''. This was a four-page daily with its own printing offices in what was then 10A, Strada Reale, Valletta. The name "Progress" is retained to this day by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Villa Grognet
A villa is a type of house that was originally an Ancient Rome, ancient Roman upper class country house that provided an escape from urban life. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became small farming compounds, which were increasingly fortified in Late Antiquity, sometimes transferred to the Church for reuse as a monastery. They gradually re-evolved through the Middle Ages into elegant upper-class country homes. In the early modern period, any comfortable detached house with a garden near a city or town was likely to be described as a villa; most surviving villas have now been engulfed by suburbia. In modern parlance, "villa" can refer to various types and sizes of residences, ranging from the suburban semi-detached double villa to, in some countries, especially around the Mediterranean, residences of above average size in the countryside. Roman Roman villas include ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valletta
Valletta ( ; , ) is the capital city of Malta and one of its 68 Local councils of Malta, council areas. Located between the Grand Harbour to the east and Marsamxett Harbour to the west, its population as of 2021 was 5,157. As Malta’s capital city, it is a commercial centre for shopping, bars, dining, and café life. It is also the southernmost capital of Europe, and at just , it is the European Union's smallest capital city. Valletta's 16th-century buildings were constructed by the Hospitaller Malta, Knights Hospitaller. The city was named after the Frenchman Jean Parisot de Valette, who succeeded in defending the island against an Ottoman invasion during the Great Siege of Malta. The city is Baroque architecture, Baroque in character, with elements of Mannerist architecture#Mannerist architecture, Mannerist, Neoclassical architecture, Neo-Classical and Modern architecture, though the Second World War left major scars on the city, particularly the destruction of the Royal Oper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantis
Atlantis () is a fictional island mentioned in Plato's works '' Timaeus'' and ''Critias'' as part of an allegory on the hubris of nations. In the story, Atlantis is described as a naval empire that ruled all Western parts of the known world, making it the literary counter-image of the Achaemenid Empire. After an ill-fated attempt to conquer "Ancient Athens," Atlantis falls out of favor with the deities and submerges into the Atlantic Ocean. Since Plato describes Athens as resembling his ideal state in the ''Republic'', the Atlantis story is meant to bear witness to the superiority of his concept of a state. Despite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon's ''New Atlantis'' and Thomas More's ''Utopia''. On the other hand, nineteenth-century amateur scholars misinterpreted Plato's narrative as histo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ħaġar Qim
ĦaÄ¡ar Qim (; "Standing/Worshipping Stones") is a megalithic temple complex found on the Mediterranean island of Malta, dating from the Ä gantija phase (3600–3200 BC). The Megalithic Temples of Malta are among the most ancient religious sites on Earth, described by the World Heritage Sites committee as "unique architectural masterpieces." In 1992 UNESCO recognized ĦaÄ¡ar Qim and four other Maltese megalithic structures as World Heritage Sites. V. Gordon Childe, Professor of Prehistoric European Archeology and director of the Institute of Archaeology in the University of London from 1946-1957 visited ĦaÄ¡ar Qim. He wrote, "I have been visiting the prehistoric ruins all round the Mediterranean, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, Greece and Switzerland, but I have nowhere seen a place as old as this one." ĦaÄ¡ar Qim's builders used globigerina limestone in the temple's construction. As a result of this, the temple has suffered from severe weathering and surface flaking o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ä gantija
Ä gantija (; "place of giants") is a megalithic temple complex from the Neolithic era (–2500 BC), on the List of islands in the Mediterranean, Mediterranean island of Gozo in Malta. The Ä gantija temples are the earliest of the Megalithic Temples of Malta and are older than the Egyptian Pyramids, pyramids of Egypt. Their makers erected the two Ä gantija temples during the Neolithic, which makes these temples more than 5,500 years old and the world's second-oldest existing manmade religion, religious structures after Göbekli Tepe in present-day Turkey. Together with other similar structures, these have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Megalithic Temples of Malta. The temples are elements of a ceremonial site used in a fertility rite. Researchers have found that the numerous figurines and statues found on the site are associated with that cult. According to local Gozitan folklore, a giantess named Sansuna who ate nothing but fava beans and honey bore a child fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classics
Classics, also classical studies or Ancient Greek and Roman studies, is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, ''classics'' traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek literature, Ancient Greek and Roman literature and their original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics may also include as secondary subjects Greco-Roman Ancient philosophy, philosophy, Ancient history, history, archaeology, anthropology, classical architecture, architecture, Ancient art, art, Classical mythology, mythology, and society. In Western culture, Western civilization, the study of the Ancient Greek and Roman classics was considered the foundation of the humanities, and they traditionally have been the cornerstone of an elite higher education. Etymology The word ''classics'' is derived from the Latin adjective ''wikt:classicus, classicus'', meaning "belonging to the highest class of Citizenship, citizens." The word was originally used to describe the members of the Patri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary () is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artefacts, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts. The essence of antiquarianism is a focus on the empirical evidence of the past, and is perhaps best encapsulated in the motto adopted by the 18th-century antiquary Sir Richard Colt Hoare, "We speak from facts, not theory." The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' first cites "archaeologist" from 1824; this soon took over as the usual term for one major branch of antiquarian activity. "Archaeology", from 1607 onwards, initially meant what is now seen as "ancient history" generally, with the narrower modern sense first seen in 1837. Today the term "antiquarian" is often used in a pejorative sense, to refer to an excessively narrow focus on factual historical trivia, to the exclusion of a sense of histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
