Category: Place

The Breakers, Newport, Vermont, United States

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The Breakers is the grandest of Newport’s summer cottages and a symbol of the Vanderbilt family’s social and financial preeminence. Cornelius Vanderbilt II bought a wooden house called The Breakers in Newport in 1885, some years later he asked architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a villa and replace the framed house which had been destoyed by fire a year before. He built a 70 room house, in Renaissance Italian style inspired in 16th century palaces of Genoa and Turin. He had important collaborators from different countries. Gladys, the youngest daughter of the family inherited the house. She opened the house to the public in 1948 to raise funds for The Preservation Society of Newport County, in 1972 the association bought the house and designed it as a National Historic Landmark. We also found a stable and carriage house about half a mile from the house.
Tips
You can buy the tickets on line before your visit; you’ll find different combinations to save many if you take more than a visit for different houses.
You can have an audio guided visit too.
There’s also a shop to buy souvenirs.

Park Güell, Barcelona, Spain

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Park Güell is one of the achievements of the catalan architect Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona which is on the UNESCO World Heritage list. It was built between 1900 and 1914. Originally, it was to be a garden city that Eusebi Güell asked him to build on a hill in the South of the city (El Carmel). This should contain a chapel and 60 houses. But the cost of construction increased in big proportions that only were completed three houses and Güell Park. In 1923, the Park became property of the city of Barcelona. With his imagination, Gaudí made an original work with curves that fit with the nature like the columns in the aisles, for example, simulating tree trunks and the two houses at the entrance, in the form of fungus. There are 3 remarkable fountains and the best-known has a salamander. There are large stairs that lead to the Hypostyle Hall to the hundred Doric columns where there are actually just 84. The room had to serve as a market. The columns have 6 m high and 1.20 m diameter and the vault is built so that rain water is recovered in tanks located under the market to allow watering free and ecological gardens, as well as the power of fountains. The vault is decorated with four ceramic suns of 3 m in diameter. The central square, with the longest corrugated bench of the world (110 m); measures 86 m long by 43 m wide. The trencadís, a mosaic technique using broken and mismatched pieces of earthenware or colored glass, is used extensively on buildings, fountains, the main bench and other buildings in the park. The House-Museum of Gaudí in the Güell Park was built by one of his collaborators, Francesc Berenguer. This museum includes an important collection of works by Gaudí and of some of its employees. The Museum is spread over three floors including two dedicated to Gaudí. On the ground floor there’s an exhibition of furniture designed by Gaudí for Batlló and Calvet houses and on the first floor, the office and the house of the artist where he lived his last years.

Tips

The best way to get there is with the bus as the nearest metro station is a bit far from there and you need to walk 10-15 minutes and you’ll have an escalator on the highest part of the climb.
The park is open every day but the access to the area from the main entrance to the esplanade (part of monuments by Gaudí) isn’t free since October 2013. It is nevertheless possible to see the monuments from the tops of the park and the main entrance. You can buy the ticket at the entrancet or by Internet.
If you want to have beautiful panoramic photos of Barcelona, the park will give you this possibility.

Cathedral of St. James of Compostela, Spain

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The cathedral of St. James of Compostela, dedicated to the Apostle James of Zebedee (saint patron and protector of Spain) is a cathedral located in the historical center of the city of St. James of Compostela, purpose of one of the great pilgrimages of medieval Europe; initiatory way in which people followed the wake of the Milky Way. At the beginning of the ninth century, Alfonso II had built the first church; in 899, Alfonso III replaced it for a greater pre-Romanesque church. The present cathedral is a Romanesque building built in granite, which work began in 1075 and was finished in 1211. It is dedicated to the relics and pilgrimages. The two towers of the western façade (Baroque churrigueresque) are from the Middle Ages and its monumental staircase of 1606. Its chapels form a museum of paintings, sculptures, reliquaries and altar pieces accumulated over the centuries. The cathedral has a plan of three naves, a large transept with aisles and stands and a sanctuary with ambulatory surrounded by a ring of chapels. The original plan had additions of the Renaissance and Baroque. A sumptuous statue of St. James is in the main altar; the crypt is below with the remains of St. James and his disciples, St. Theodore and St. Athanasius. The ambulatory, the beautiful gates, the vault of the Chapel of Mondragón, the Renaissance door of the sacristy and the cloister are the most outstanding items. Above the transept of the cathedral stands a lantern tower from whose summit is hung by steel cables a brass censer of 54 kilos which is used in special ceremonies as in Compostelan years. The treasure is housed in a Gothic chapel in the south transept of the cathedral; it has a tympanum representing the equestrian figure of the Apostle (XIII century). The King of France, Charles V had made a very important gift for it to be celebrated daily a mass for the prosperity of France, so the San Salvador chapel is also known as the Chapel of the King of France; this is where the pilgrims after confessed, received the Compostela; certificate of pilgrimage.

 
Tips

Pilgrims can go to kiss the holy mantle by a staircase behind the altar.
You can also visit the library which displays the censers and tapestries (it’s part of the cathedral museum), even as the pieces found in the excavations .
The archives of the cathedral has a copy of the Codex Calixtinus (set of texts dated around 1140); in the texts you can find practical advice for pilgrims.