The Hôtel des Invalides, commonly called Les Invalides, is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and an Old Soldiers' retirement home, the building's original purpose. The buildings house the Musée de l'Armée, the museum of the Army of France, the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, and the Musée d'Histoire Contemporaine. The complex also includes the Cathedral of Saint-Louis-des-Invalides, the national cathedral of the French military. It is adjacent to the Royal Chapel known as the Dôme des Invalides, the tallest church building in Paris at a height of 107 meters. The latter has been converted into a shrine to some of France's leading military figures, most notably the tomb of Napoleon.
The Papal Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls is one of Rome's four major papal basilicas, along with the basilicas of Saint John in the Lateran, Saint Peter's, and Saint Mary Major, as well as one of the city’s Seven Pilgrim Churches. The basilica is the conventual church of the adjacent Benedictine abbey. It lies within Italian territory, but the Holy See owns the basilica and it is part of the Vatican's extraterritoriality.
Porphyry is any of various granites or igneous rocks with coarse-grained crystals such as feldspar or quartz dispersed in a fine-grained silicate-rich, generally aphanitic matrix or groundmass. In its non-geologic, traditional use, the term porphyry usually refers to the purple-red form of this stone, valued for its appearance, but other colours of decorative porphyry are also used such as "green", "black" and "grey".
The Pantheon is a former Roman temple and, since AD 609, a Catholic church in Rome, Italy. It was built on the site of an earlier temple commissioned by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa during the reign of Augustus ; then, after the original burnt down, the present building was ordered by the emperor Hadrian and probably dedicated c. AD 126. Its date of construction is uncertain, because Hadrian chose not to inscribe the new temple but rather to retain the inscription of Agrippa's older temple.
Carrara marble, or Luna marble to the Romans, is a type of white or blue-grey marble popular for use in sculpture and building decor. It has been quarried since Roman times in the mountains just outside the city of Carrara in the province of Massa and Carrara in the Lunigiana, the northernmost tip of modern-day Tuscany, Italy.
The Basilica of Saint Mary Major, or church of Santa Maria Maggiore, is one of the four major papal basilicas as well as one of the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome and the largest Marian church in Rome, Italy. Santa Maria Maggiore is the first Marian sanctuary in the Western world and the mother of all sanctuaries.
Sant'Andrea della Valle is a titular church and minor basilica in the rione of Sant'Eustachio of the city of Rome, Italy. The basilica is the seat of the general curia of the Theatines and is located on the Piazza Vidoni, at the intersection of Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Corso Rinascimento. It is one of the great 17th century preaching churches built by Counter-Reformation orders in the Centro Storico.
Carlo Maderno or Maderna was an Italian architect, born in today's Ticino, Switzerland, who is remembered as one of the fathers of Baroque architecture. His façades of Santa Susanna, St. Peter's Basilica, and Sant'Andrea della Valle were of key importance in the evolution of the Italian Baroque. He often is referred to as the brother of sculptor Stefano Maderno, but this is not universally agreed upon.
The Cosmati were a Roman family, seven members of which, for four generations, were skilful architects, sculptors and workers in decorative geometric mosaic, mostly for church floors. Their name is commemorated in the genre of Cosmatesque work, often just called "Cosmati", a technique of opus sectile formed of elaborate inlays of small triangles and rectangles of colored stones and glass mosaics set into stone matrices or encrusted upon stone surfaces. Bands, panels and shaped reserves of intricate mosaic alternate with contrasting bands, guilloches and simple geometric shapes of plain white marble. Pavements and revetments were executed in Cosmatesque technique, columns were inlaid with fillets and bands, and immovable church furnishings like cathedras and ambones were similarly treated. Initial inspiration for the technique was Byzantine, transmitted through Ravenna and Sicily, while some of the minutely-figured tiling patterns are Islamic in origin, transmitted through Sicily.
San Gregorio Magno al Celio, also known as San Gregorio al Celio or simply San Gregorio, is a church in Rome, Italy, which is part of a monastery of monks of the Camaldolese branch of the Benedictine Order. On 10 March 2012, the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of the Camaldolese in 1012 was celebrated here at a Vespers service attended by Anglican and Catholic prelates and jointly led by Pope Benedict XVI and Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Old St. Peter's Basilica was the church buildings that stood, from the 4th to 16th centuries, where St. Peter's Basilica stands today in Vatican City. Construction of the basilica, built over the historical site of the Circus of Nero, began during the reign of Roman Emperor Constantine I. The name "old St. Peter's Basilica" has been used since the construction of the current basilica to distinguish the two buildings.
The Basilica di Sant'Apollinare alle Terme Neroniane-Alessandrine is a titular church in Rome, Italy, dedicated to St Apollinare, the first bishop of Ravenna.
Pierre-Étienne Monnot was a French sculptor from the Franche-Comté who settled in Rome in 1687 for the rest of his life. He was a distinguished artist working in a late-Baroque idiom for international clients. In Italian sources he is often referred to as Pietro Stefano Monnot, an italianised version of his name.
St. Peter's Baldachin is a large Baroque sculpted bronze canopy, technically called a ciborium or baldachin, over the high altar of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, the city-state and papal enclave surrounded by Rome, Italy. The baldachin is at the center of the crossing, and directly under the dome of the basilica. Designed by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, it was intended to mark, in a monumental way, the place of Saint Peter's tomb underneath. Under its canopy is the high altar of the basilica. Commissioned by Pope Urban VIII, the work began in 1623 and ended in 1634. The baldachin acts as a visual focus within the basilica; it is itself a very large structure and forms a visual mediation between the enormous scale of the building and the human scale of the people officiating at the religious ceremonies at the papal altar beneath its canopy.
The Basilica of St. John was a basilica in Ephesus. It was constructed by Justinian I in the 6th century at a site where John the Apostle was said to have been buried. It was modeled after the now-demolished Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople.
Verd antique, also called verde antique, marmor thessalicum, or Ophite, is a serpentinite breccia popular since ancient times as a decorative facing stone. It is a dark, dull green, white-mottled serpentine, mixed with calcite, dolomite, or magnesite, which takes a high polish. The term verd antique has been documented in English texts as early as 1745.
Pavonazzo marble, also known as Pavonazzetto, Docimaean marble or Synnadic marble, is a whitish marble originally from Docimium, or modern İscehisar, Turkey.
The Abbey of Santa Giustina is a 10th-century Benedictine abbey complex located in front of the Prato della Valle in central Padua, region of Veneto, Italy. Adjacent to the former monastery is the basilica church of Santa Giustina, initially built in the 6th century, but whose present form derives from a 17th-century reconstruction.
Napoleon's tomb is the monument erected at Les Invalides in Paris to keep the remains of Napoleon following their repatriation to France from Saint Helena in 1840, or retour des cendres, at the initiative of King Louis Philippe I and his minister Adolphe Thiers. While the tomb's planning started in 1840, it was only completed two decades later and inaugurated by Emperor Napoleon III on 2 April 1861, after its promoter Louis Philippe I, architect Louis Visconti, and main sculptors James Pradier and Pierre-Charles Simart had all died in the meantime.
Giallo antico is a precious yellow marble used first by the ancient Africans and later by the ancient Romans (which they called marmor numidicum It was one of the marbles most favoured by the Romans because of its beautiful yellow colour.
Altar of the Madonna Nicopeia
Tomb of Joseph Napoleon
Roosevelt Hotel in New York City
