1963, 1975 MALTA - St. Paul's Cathedral in Mdina

1963 Malta - St. Paul's Cathedral in Mdina

Posted on 16.10.2015, 20.10.2015
Built between 1697 and 1702 in Baroque style on the site where governor Publius was reported to have met Saint Paul following his shipwreck off the Maltese coast, St. Paul's Cathedral dominates with its prominent facade the landscape of Mdina’s narrow streets, which served as the capital of the island since antiquity until the arrival of the Knights Hospitaller, in 1530. It was designed by the architect Lorenzo Gafa to replace the Norman cathedral, destroyed by the 1693 earthquake.

1975 Malta - St. Paul's Cathedral in Mdina: 1. A view of the baroque
architecture over the high altar; 2. The Carrara marble statue of
St. Luke, by Giuseppe Valenti, on the presbitery;
3. St. Paul's Cathedral exterior/

From the old cathedral survived several artifacts and edifices, including paintings and frescoes. The near-square facade is cleanly divided in three bays by the Corinthian order of pilasters. There are two bell towers at the both corners. The plan is a Latin cross with a vaulted nave, two aisles and two small side chapels. The Cathedral has a light octagonal dome, with eight stone scrolls above a high drum leading up to a neat lantern.

1974 TAJIKISTAN - The map of the country

Tajikistan is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia, bordered by Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and China. Pakistan lies to the south separated by the narrow Wakhan Corridor. Its territory was previously home to several ancient cultures, including the city of Sarazm of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, and was later home to kingdoms ruled by people of different faiths and cultures, including the Oxus civilization, Andronovo culture, Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Manichaeism.

1973 ITALY (Sicily) - La Vucciria

One of the legacies of Palermo’s past as a commercial center and port that continues to manifest itself in the present day is the Palermo market culture. In particular, Palermo’s muslim history has made an imprint on the bazaars and markets of the town. Bustling, crowded, and full of all kinds of treasures, a day at the markets is a unique way to connect with the real lifestyle of the Palermo locals. And the most famous Palermo market is the Vucciria market.

1972 CHINA - Imperial Concubine Consort Hua in "Empresses in the Palace"

Empresses in the Palace, also known as The Legend of Zhen Huan, is a Chinese television series based on the Internet novel of the same name, first aired in China on 17 November 2011. The drama has been praised for being one of the best historical dramas broadcast in Chinese mainland in recent years, and achieved very high ratings not only in China, but also in Taiwan and Japan. In the postcard is the Imperial Concubine Consort Hua, played by the actress Jiang Xin.

1971 ROMANIA (Constanţa) - Esmehan Sultan Mosque in Mangalia

For almost 500 years, from early 15th century to 1878, Mangalia belonged to the Ottoman Empire, together with all of Dobruja. During this period, the area, and implicit the town, were colonized by Muslim Turks and Tatars, who in time became a majority. Although Dobruja has been extensively colonized with Romanian after 1878, when it became part of Romania, so that in 2011 more than 82% of the population of Mangalia was Romanian, the town maintained a significant minority (7.52%) of Turks and Tartars Muslims.

1970 FRANCE (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur) - Lake Serre-Ponçon

Lake Serre-Ponçon is second largest artificial lake in Europe. It gathers the waters of the Durance and the Ubaye rivers, flowing down through the Hautes-Alpes and the Alpes du Sud to the Rhône River. The waters are dammed by the Barrage de Serre-Ponçon, a 123m high earth core dam, the biggest in Europe, erected between 1955 and 1961. It was created to control water flow after disastrous floods caused severe damage and loss of life in 1843 and 1856.

1969 MONACO - Monaco Grand Prix

The Monaco Grand Prix is a Formula One motor race held each year. Run since 1929, it is widely considered to be one of the most important and prestigious automobile races in the world and, alongside  the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, it forms the Triple Crown of Motorsport. The race is held on a narrow course laid out in the streets of  Monaco, with many elevation changes and tight corners as well as a tunnel, which makes it one of the most demanding tracks in Formula One.

1968 UNITED STATES (Alaska) - Ketchikan

 

Located on Revillagigedo Island, so named in 1793 by Captain George Vancouver, Ketchikan is the southeasternmost city in Alaska, and, even if has only 8,050 inhabitants, is the sixth-most populous city in the state. Ketchikan's economy is based upon government services, tourism and commercial fishing. Civic boosters have dubbed the community the "Salmon Capital of the World." It has the world's largest collection of standing totem poles, found throughout the city and at four major locations.

1967 THAILAND (Bangkok) - Museum Siam in Bangkok

Located at Sanamchai road in Bangkok, the Museum Siam uses interactive storytelling with seven characters as intermediates. It focuses on the national identity of the people in Thailand which lets visitors learn about history of people in Thailand with a focus on people in Bangkok. The building itself, built in neoclassical style, is a piece of Thailand's history. A huge bronze ‘ribbon’ coiling and looping in the front garden is the first clue of things to come inside.

1966 UNITED STATES (Louisiana) - Second line jazz band in New Orleans

Some say that Jazz was born in 1895, when Buddy Bolden started his first band. Others say 1917, when Nick LaRocca and his Original Dixieland Jass Band recorded the first Jazz record, Livery Stable Blues. Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton said, "It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the cradle of Jazz, and I myself happen to be the inventor in the year 1902." The truth is that Jazz wasn't born on a particular day, it was created over a period of time. It wasn't just one person or one race that was responsible for creating it. It was a meeting, and mixing, of the essences and emotions of many people, of many cultures. Jazz is alive. It grows, it dies, it changes, it stays the same.

1883-1887, 1965 NETHERLANDS (Sint Maarten) - Philipsburg

1883 Sint Maarten - Philipsburg - The peninsula that separates
the Little Bay and Great Bay

Posted on 10.09.2015, and 17.10.2015
Philipsburg is the main town and capital of Sint Maarten (a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which encompasses the southern 40% of the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, while the northern 60% of the island constitutes the French overseas collectivity of Saint-Martin). The town has about 1,400 inhabitants, and consists of four parallel streets situated on a narrow stretch of land between Great Bay (where the cruise ships dock), and the Great Salt Pond (where salt was made many years ago).

1884 Sint Maarten - Philipsburg - Cruise ships docked

The island was first sighted by Christopher Columbus on 11 November (St. Martin's Day) 1493, but there was already an Arawak settlement there before his "discovery". Philipsburg was founded in 1763 by John Philips, a Scottish captain in the Dutch navy, the settlement soon becoming a bustling centre of international trade, and since 1768 the Dutch capital. Two historic forts bear witness to Philipsburg's strategic importance: Fort Amsterdam (the first Dutch military outpost in the Caribbean) and Fort Willem (built in 1801 by the British).

1885 Sint Maarten - Philipsburg - On the beach

 

Although most of the vessels that arrive in the harbor today are cruise ships (like Celebrity Solstice, Crown Princess, Disney Magic, and since 2010, Oasis of the Seas) international trade still thrives in St. Maarten thanks to its status as a leading duty-free port. In the 1950s, a prominent politician of the Democratic Party, Dr. A.C. Wathey considered that tourism could be one of Sint Maarten's economic pillars he was right. If in 1964 the cruise tourism took off, in 1980 105,000 cruise passengers visited the island, and in 2012 their number reached 1.7 million.

1886 Sint Maarten - Philipsburg - The cruise ship Crown Princess docked

The main shopping district, Front Street, is in the heart of the city, and is lined with duty-free shops offering everything from Italian leather goods and Japanese cameras to native crafts. Over the last few years it was beautified with paving stones, benches, new sidewalks, palm trees, and cast iron streetlights. Actually, the entire area has been improved greatly over the last few years. The harbor was dredged so that cruise ships could tie up at a new terminal. The sand from the dredging was used to replenish Great Bay beach and a boardwalk was built running the length of the beach.

1887 Sint Maarten - Philipsburg

Actually, Front Street has reinvented itself. Now it's mall-like, with a redbrick walk and streets, palm trees lining the sleek boutiques, jewelry stores, souvenir shops, outdoor restaurants, and the old reliables, like McDonald's and Burger King. Here and there a school or a church appears to remind visitors there's more to the island than shopping. Back Street is where you'll find the Philipsburg Market Place. Old Street, near the end of Front Street, has stores, boutiques, and open-air cafés offering French crepes, rich chocolates, and island mementos.

1965 Sint Maarten - Old Street

 

The narrow alleyways (steegjes) which connects the four main streets have Dutch names recalling the street signs in Amsterdam, and lead in either direction to arcades and courtyards filled with flowers. Visitors will also find examples of traditional West Indian architecture, including characteristic pastel-colored houses with second-story verandas looking out over the street. The lacy carvings of the fanciful gingerbread houses often form patterns that could remind the fairy-tale children of the witch's house built of bread and decorated with cakes.

1964 UNITED KINGDOM (England) - Cambridge

Cambridge: 1. Queens' Mathematical Bridge; 2. King's College Chapel;
3. St. John's College; 4. The ubiquitous bicycle.

Located in East Anglia, on the River Cam, at about 80km north of London, Cambridge is a university city, widely known as the home of the University of Cambridge, founded in 1209 and consistently ranked one of the top five universities in the world. The area was inhabited since the Bronze Age and then in Roman times, but only under Viking rule it became an important trading centre. The first town charters were granted in the 12th century, but city status wasn't conferred until 1951.

1962 UNITED STATES (California) - University of California, Santa Barbara

1962 University of California, Santa Barbara - Stork Tower

 

The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is a public research university and one of the 10 campuses of the University of California system, located near Goleta, California, 13km from Santa Barbara. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an independent teachers' college, UCSB joined the University of California system in 1944 and is the third-oldest general-education campus in the system. The university is a comprehensive doctoral university and is organized into five colleges and schools offering 87 undergraduate degrees and 55 graduate degrees. Current UCSB faculty includes six Nobel Prize laureates, and 31 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

1908, 1961 MEXICO (Oaxaca) - At the market in Oaxaca

1908 At the market in Oaxaca - Baskets seller eating watermelon

Posted on 20.09.2015, 15.10.2015
Located on the foothills of the Sierra Madre, Oaxaca relies heavily on tourism, not least for the native Zapotec and Mixtec cultures. The city is home to several large markets, the oldest being the Mercado (Market) Benito Juárez, built in 1893 and named after a former president. The Mercado 20 de Noviembre, known as the Mercado de la Comida (food), is recommended for regional dishes such as moles, tasajo, tlayudas, pan de yema, chapulines, quesillo, queso fresco, as well as very large cups of hot chocolate, often spiced with cinnamon and almonds.

1961 At the market in Oaxaca - Grilled meat corridor

Also called the handicrafts market, the Mercado de Artesañas it’s open daily and offers lots of household items, leather goods, native textiles, handicrafts, and ceramics. La Merced Market is also open daily and is a good place to find cheap mescal and tequila, as well as many other food items. On Saturday’s, Oaxaca City market, also known as Abastos Market becomes alive with crafts from the early morning to afternoon. The market is open everyday of the week, but the craft section is only around on Saturdays.

0282, 1960 UZBEKISTAN (Xorazm) - Itchan Kala (UNESCO WHS)

0282 Itchan Kala (1)

Posted on 19.07.2012, 15.09.2015
"It was now near midnight, and the silent, sleeping city lay bathed in a flood of glorious moonlight. The place was transformed. The flat mud roofs had turned to marble; the tall, slender minarets rose dim and indistinct, like spectre sentinels watching over the city. Here and there little courts and gardens lay buried in deepest shadow, from which arose the dark masses of the mighty elms and the still and ghostly forms of the slender poplars. Far away, the exterior walls of the city, with battlements and towers, which in the misty moonlight looked as high as the sky and as distant as the horizon. It was no longer a real city, but a leaf torn from the enchanted pages of the Arabian nights."

1960 Itchan Kala (2)

Thus described in 1873 the American journalist Januarius MacGahan the city of Khiva, then the capital of the khanate with the same name, which the Russians had just occupied it. Of course, the 13,000 soldiers of General Von Kaufman (the first Governor-General of Russian Turkestan) didn't entered in the fairytale city on flying carpets, but have opened the way with their German-manufactured cannons. Khiva remained a Russian protectorate until the October Revolution.

1959 RUSSIA (Krasnodar Krai) - Sochi

Located on the Black Sea coast, near the Caucasus Mountains, not far from the border with Georgia / Abkhazia, Greater Sochi area sprawls for 145 kilometers and is Federation's largest resort city, and also one of the very few places in Russia with a subtropical climate. Anyway, Russia conquered this coastline only in 1829, and since 1866, after the Circassian Genocide, the area was actively colonized by Russians, Armenians, Ukrainians, and other people from inner Russia. Sochi was established as a fashionable resort area under Stalin, and following the loss of the popular resorts of the Crimean peninsula in favor of Ukraine, it emerged as the unofficial summer capital of the country.

1958 FRANCE (Grand Est) - Munster cheese at the window of a farm in Vosges

Located in eastern France, near its border with Germany, Vosges are a range of low mountains which forms the western boundary of the Upper Rhine Plain. As in most mountain regions, the animal breeding, is a basic occupation in Vosges. There is even a breed of cattle native of this mountains, exceptionally healthy, fertile and long-lived. Originally a working breed, was transformed into a dairy type. The origin of the breed traces back to the 17th century, when Swedish soldiers brought Scandinavian cattle into the region after the Thirty Years War.