2221, 3388, 3411, 3428, 3443 FRANCE (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) - Chartreuse Mountains

2221 Chartreuse Mountains (1)

Located in southeastern France, the Chartreuse Mountains rises between Grenoble (south), Chambéry (north), Voiron and Saint-Laurent-du-Pont (west) and Grésivaudan Valley. It is the southernmost range in the Jura Mountains and belongs to the French Prealps. The monastic Carthusian Order takes its name from these mountains, where its first hermitage, Grande Chartreuse, was founded in 1084.

3428 The desert road in Chartreuse

Also derived from the mountain range's name is that of the alcoholic cordial Chartreuse produced by the monks since the 1740s, and of the chartreuse colour, named after the drink. The east flank falls abruptly almost 2,000m to the Isère valley, while to the west, the high ground falls away towards the Rhône valley. It is separated from the Vercors upland area to the south also by the Isère river, which swings round to the west at Grenoble on its way towards the Rhône.

3388 Chartreuse Mountains (2)

Above the meadows in the valleys, wooded ridges rise up steeply towards steep limestone cliffs. Above these, may be found a hidden world of high altitude plateaus and valleys, vegetated with grassland and dwarf forest. The highest summit in the Chartreuse Mountains is Chamechaude (2,082 m), the third most prominent mountain (1,769m) in metropolitan France. Other important summits include Dent de Crolles (2,062m), Grand Som (2026m) and Mont Granier (1,933m).

3443 Chartreuse Mountains (4)

These are limestone mountains with rather large precipices. Mont Granier is known because in the year 1248, a mass of limestone resting on marls slid into the valley, causing a massive landslide that destroyed many villages and caused over a thousand casualties. This event created the sheer 700 m north face of the mountain.

3411 Chartreuse Mountains (3)

3333, 3339, 3372, 3398 JAPAN (Kansai) - Eikan-dō Zenrin-ji in Kyoto

3333

Founded in Kyoto by the monk Shinshō (797-873), a pupil of Kūkai, as part part of the Shingon sect, Eikan-dō (View of Eternity Hall) is the head temple for the Seizan branch of Japan's Jōdo-shū Buddhist sect. Formally known as Zenrin-ji (Temple in a Calm Grove), it is famous for its fall foliage and for its prominence in the past as a center of learning. Its buildings, most of them connected by covered walkways and staircases, are scattered among a range of heights. It also has two other names: Shōju-raigō-san (Mountain where the saints welcome you), while Muryōsu-in (Temple of Immeasurable Fortune).

3339

In the 11th century, it had a popular head priest named Eikan, who is credited with acquiring the temple's main object of worship, an unusual statue of the Amida Buddha with his head turned sidewards. According to legend, Eikan was walking through the temple one day, when the statue, which was originally facing forward, turned its head towards the priest and talked to him. In the 13th century, a later head priest converted the temple to the Jodo sect.

3372

Eikando's main buildings are built alongside the base of the hillside and are connected by wooden corridors. The first building that visitors enter is the Shakado (Hall of the historical Buddha) with a small rock garden and beautifully painted sliding doors (fusuma). Walking through the corridors, visitors also pass by the Miedo which enshrines the Jodo sect's founder Honen and the Amidado (Amida Hall) which houses the Amida statue.

3398

The temple most recognizable building is its Tahōtō Pagoda, which is nestled in the trees on the hillside above the temple's other buildings. Its style pagoda are two story structures, whose first stories are square and second stories are round. Visitors can walk up to the pagoda, from where the rest of the temple grounds and the city of Kyoto can be seen. The view from the pagoda is particularly attractive in autumn, when the maple trees of the temple grounds are changing colors.

3384 CANADA (British Columbia) - Mount Seymour

Located in Mount Seymour Provincial Park, Mount Seymour is a part of the North Shore Mountains, rising to the north from the shores of Burrard Inlet and Indian Arm to a summit of 1,449 m above the Indian River and Deep Cove neighbourhoods. It is most commonly identified for its ski area of the same name, and as a popular hiking area. It is named in honour of Frederick Seymour, second governor of the Colony of British Columbia. The name is used to refer to the ridge although the main summit is one of several, and is also known as Third Peak.

2278, 3320 ROMANIA (Prahova) - Caraiman Monastery in Buşteni

3320 Caraiman Monastery (2)

Posted on 08.02.2016, 01.01.2020

Situated in town Buşteni, at the foot of the massif Caraiman, in a glade which has in its center a fir tree with a unique shape, the Caraiman Monastery is an orthodox monastery, founded in 1998 at the initiative of Father Gherontie Puiu. The Heroes' Cross erected on Caraiman Peak seems to guard the path which leads the steps of the pilgrims towards the monastery. In 2010 the monastic settlement was raised from the rank of skete, to the rank of the monastery.

2278 Caraiman Monastery (1)

The monastery has two church: a wooden one, inspired by the architecture of the churches of Maramureş, built between 1998 and 2001, and dedicated to the Assumption, and a larger one, from brick, with three steeples, built between 2002 to 2007 and dedicated to the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The last has a porch with columns, from where can be seen in the opposite side of the court the bell tower, bordered by cells.

3289 NORWAY (Oslo) - Holmenkollen

Holmenkollen is a neighborhood in the Vestre Aker borough of Oslo, the capital city of Norway. In addition to being a residential area, the area has been a ski recreation area since the late 19th century, with its famous ski jumping hill, the Holmenkollbakken, hosting  Holmenkollen Ski Festival since 1892. The hill has been rebuilt 19 times; important upgrades include a stone take-off in 1910, an in-run superstructure in 1914, and a new superstructure in 1928. Between 2008 and 2010, the entire structure was demolished and rebuilt.

3197 RUSSIA (Arkhangelsk Oblast) - Hooker Island (Franz Josef Land)

Located within the Arctic Ocean, 360km north of Novaya Zemlya and 260km east of the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land constitutes the northernmost part of Russia's  Arkhangelsk Oblast. These 191 islands are 900km from the North Pole and 750km from the Yamal Peninsula, the closest point of the Eurasian mainland. At 81° north the archipelago experiences 141 annual days of midnight sun, from 12 April to 30 August.

0861, 1184, 1775, 1947, 2923, 2934 CANADA (Alberta / British Columbia) - Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks (UNESCO WHS)

0861 Banff National Park - Peyto Lake

Posted on 14.11.2013, 16.08.2014, 25.07.2015, 10.10.2015, 01.01.2017, 24.01.2017
Renowned for their scenic splendor, the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks are comprised of Banff, and Jasper parks in Alberta, and Kootenay, Yoho, Mount Robson, Mount Assiniboine and Hamber parks in British Columbia. Together, they exemplify the outstanding physical features of the Rocky Mountain Biogeographical Province. Classic illustrations of glacial geological processes - including icefields, remnant valley glaciers, canyons and exceptional examples of erosion and deposition - are found throughout the area. The Burgess Shale Cambrian and nearby Precambrian sites contain important information about the earth's evolution.

1947 Banff National Park - Lake Louise

Located at 110-180km west of Calgary, Banff National Park is Canada's oldest national park, established in 1885. Named for an early trail guide and trapper, Peyto Lake is a glacier-fed lake formed in a valley of the Waputik Range, between Caldron Peak, Peyto Peak and Mount Jimmy Simpson, at an elevation of 1,860m. During the summer, significant amounts of glacial rock flour flow into the lake, and these suspended rock particles give the lake a bright, turquoise colour. The lake is fed by the Peyto Creek, which drains water from the Caldron Lake and Peyto Glacier, and flows into the Mistaya River. Lake Louise, named Lake of the Little Fishes by the Stoney Nakota First Nations people, is also a glacial lake within the same park, drained through the 3 km long Louise Creek into the Bow River, and having characteristics similar to Peyto Lake.

1184 Jasper National Park - Athabasca Glacier

 

One of the icefield of Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks is Columbia Icefield, which lies partly in the northwestern tip of Banff National Park and the southern end of Jasper National Park. It is about 325 km² in area, 100 to 365m in depth and receives up to 7m of snowfall per year. The icefield feeds eight major glaciers, including Athabasca Glacier. It currently recedes at a rate of about 5m per year and has receded more than 1.5km in the past 125 years and lost over half of its volume. The glacier moves down from the icefield at a rate of several centimetres per day. Due to its close proximity to the Icefields Parkway, between the Alberta towns of Banff and Jasper, and rather easy accessibility, it is the most visited glacier in North America.

1775 Jasper National Park - Maligne Lake

 

Jasper National Park is the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies, and includes the glaciers of the Columbia Icefield, hot springs, lakes, waterfalls and mountains. Located 44km south of Jasper town, Maligne Lake (from the French word for malignant or wicked) is famed for the colour of its water, the surrounding peaks, the three glaciers visible from the lake and Spirit Island. It is fed and drained by the Maligne River, which enters the lake on its south side, near Mount Unwin and drains the lake to the north. Spirit Island is a tiny tied island, frequently photographed, a view which many people associate with the Canadian Rockies.

2923 Yoho National Park - Emerald Lake

Located in southeastern British Columbia, Yoho National Park was named after a Cree expression of awe and wonder. Emerald Lake is the largest of Yoho's 61 lakes and ponds, as well as one of the park's premier tourist attractions. It is enclosed by mountains of the President Range, as well as Mount Burgess and Wapta Mountain. This basin traps storms, causing frequent rain in summer and heavy snowfalls in winter. This influx of moisture works with the lake's low elevation to produce a unique selection of flora. Due to its high altitude, the lake is frozen from November until June. The vivid turquoise color of the water, caused by powdered limestone, is most spectacular in July as the snow melts from the surrounding mountains.

2934 Yoho National Park -
A fossil of Bathyuriscus rotundatus

 

The Burgess Shale, located in Yoho National Park, has among the world's richest deposits of rare fossils. Bathyuriscus is an extinct genus of Cambrian trilobite. It was a nektobenthic predatory carnivore. The genus Bathyuriscus is endemic to the shallow seas that surrounded Laurentia. Its major characteristics are a large forward-reaching glabella, pointed pleurae or pleurae with very short spines, and a medium pygidium with well-impressed furrows.In Greek, bathys means deep, and oura - tail, so Bathyuriscus means a trilobite with a deep tail. On the other hand, rotundatus comes from the Latin rotundus - round, presumably alluding to the rounded outline of the dorsal shield.

2915 ROMANIA (Mehedinţi) - Saint Ana Monastery

Located on the Danube Defile, in Orşova, on the crest of Moşului Hill, a place that offers an unique landscape, Saint Ana Monastery was founded by Pamfil Şeicaru, the greatest Romanian journalist between the two world wars, who fought here as a lieutenant in the WWI. He wanted to express his gratitude to God, because he survived after it had been buried here by a bomb explosion. For the facts of his courage, Pamfil Şeicaru was granted the title Knight of the Order of  Mihai Viteazul.

0093, 0223, 0774, 1330, 2892 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Stonehenge - part of Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites (UNESCO WHS)

2892 Stonehenge during a storm

Posted on 08.01.2012, 26.05.2012, 30.07.2013, 09.11.2014, 05.12.2016
I don't know if Stonehenge is the most important megalithic construction which survived the history, but certainly is the best known and most intensively researched. Located in the county of Wiltshire, at about 13km north of Salisbury, in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds, Stonehenge assembly consists of four concentric circles made of standing stones set within earthworks.

2892 Stonehenge during a storm (left)

 

The outer circle (Sarsen Circle), about 33m in diameter, was originally comprised of 30 neatly trimmed upright sandstone blocks (of which only 17 are now standing), above which were placed as lintels some other blocks, circular arc-shaped. Inside is another circle of eggplant stone blocks. They surround a horseshoe-shaped arrangement, built also of eggplant stone, within which is a sandstone slab mecacee called the Altar Stone.

2892 Stonehenge during a storm (center)

The whole construction is surrounded by a circular ditch measuring 104m in diameter. Inside stands a sandbank which contains 56 tombs, known as the Aubrey holes (named after the discoverer). The embankment and the ditch are intersected by a processional path 23m wide and almost 3km long, Stonehenge Avenue, which connects Stonehenge with the River Avon, and the small henge on its bank, discovered in 2008, at West Amesbury. 

2892 Stonehenge during a storm (right)

Near the entrance to the Avenue is Slaughter Stone (a fallen sarsen that once stood upright with one or two other stones across the entrance causeway), and on the other side is the Heelstone, a single huge unshaped sarsen boulder. The main axis of the stones is aligned upon the solstitial axis. At midsummer, the sun rises over the horizon to the north-east, close to the Heel Stone. At midwinter, the sun sets in the south-west, in the gap between the two tallest trilithons, one of which has now fallen.

0223 Stonehenge at sunset

With regard to construction's purpose, opinions are divided, the most important theories circulated claiming that Stonehenge have served as a burial ground, as a place of healing, as part of a ritual landscape or have a celestial observatory function. Even I'm not historian, may have my own opinion, isn't it? Personally I believe that the people who have built it (between 3100 and 1600 BC) just don't thinking like us, ie they not separate the sides of existence as we do, but they viewed things globally.

0774 Stonehenge in summertime

Surrounding universe didn't have for them a sacred dimension and a profran one, but life, death, nature, cosmos, divinity was closely entwined, forming a inseparable whole. As a result I don't think there was a space where they worshiped gods, another in which they buried the dead, another in which they made astronomical observations and so on, but there was only one site (like Stonehenge) which served all these types of activities. Anyway, many aspects of Stonehenge remain subject to debate.

1330 Stonehenge in springtime

 

Throughout the 20th century, Stonehenge began to be revived as a place of religious significance, this time by adherents of Neopagan and New Age beliefs, particularly the Neo-druids. The historian Ronald Hutton would later remark that "it was a great, and potentially uncomfortable, irony that modern Druids had arrived at Stonehenge just as archaeologists were evicting the ancient Druids from it." The first such Neo-druidic group to make use of the megalithic monument was the Ancient Order of Druids, who performed a mass initiation ceremony there in August 1905.

0093 Stonehenge in wintertime

Between 1972 and 1984, Stonehenge was the site of the Stonehenge Free Festival, culminating with the summer solstice on or near June 21. It emerged as the major free festival in the calendar after the violent suppression of the Windsor Free Festival in August 1974. After the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985, this use of the site was stopped for several years and ritual use of Stonehenge is now heavily restricted. Some Druids have arranged an assembling of monuments styled on Stonehenge in other parts of the world as a form of Druidist worship.