Monday, April 25, 2011

Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome, Italy

I always feel happy everytime I remember my past travels. Thanks to the creation of digital cameras where we can always turn back time by viewing over and over again our travel images.

I have here an image of the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome, Italy. It is called in Italian as The Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II (National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II) or Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland).

This was taken during my Europe tour with a friend last August 2010.

It is a monument to honour Victor Emmanuel, the first king of a unified Italy, located in Rome, Italy. It occupies a site between the Piazza Venezia and the Capitoline Hill. The monument was designed by Giuseppe Sacconi in 1885; sculpture for it was parceled out to established sculptors all over Italy, such as Angelo Zanelli. It was inaugurated in 1911 and completed in 1935.

The monument, "chopped with terrible brutality into the immensely complicated fabric of the hill", is built of pure white marble from Botticino, Brescia, and features majestic stairways, tall Corinthian columns, fountains, a huge equestrian sculpture of Victor Emmanuel and two statues of the goddess Victoria riding on quadrigas. The structure is 135 m (443 ft) wide and 70 m (230 ft) high. If the quadrigae and winged victories are included, the height is to 81 m (266 ft). credit

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