Historical quarters of Paris are areas of Paris, France that have retained an older character, usually identifiable by commercial or cultural activity and often named for a neighborhood landmark. These sections often are not referenced on modern-day maps of Paris, crossing current arrondissements.

The central islands
The islands of Paris were once many but over the centuries they have been united or enjoined to the mainland. Today there are three  islands near the center of Paris, all in the Sienne river: the Île de la Cité, the Île Saint-Louis, and the artificial Île aux Cygnes.

Île de la Cité

The Île de la Cité is the central and historic district of Paris, with a secular and religious history that dates to the 10th century. Its western end has housed a palace since Roman times, and its eastern end has been primarily dedicated to various religious structures, including the famous Notre-Dame cathedral. Until the 1850s, the island was largely residential and commercial, but since has been filled by the city's Prefecture de Police, Palais de Justice, Hôtel-Dieu hospital and Tribunal de commerce de Paris. Only the western and northeastern areas of the island remain residential today, and the latter area preserves some vestiges of its 16th-century Anionic houses.

Île Saint-Louis

Purely residential, the island was initially used for the grazing of market cattle and the stocking of wood. One of France's earlier examples of urban planning, it was mapped and built from end to end during the 17th-century reigns of Henri IV and Louis XIII. This island has narrow one-way streets and no metro station.

Rive Droite
Rive Droite (English: "Right Bank"), formerly a marshland between two arms of the Seine, remained largely uninhabited until the early 11th century. The population has since grown and has remained Paris' densest area ever since.

Châtelet-Les-Halles / Hôtel de Ville
"Le Châtelet," a stronghold/gatehouse guarding the northern end of a bridge from the Île de la Cité, was the origin of early Rive Droite growth. The Les Halles quarter surrounds the former Les Halles marketplace, today a shopping mall centre for a commercial district whose boutiques are geared to tourism. Les Halles is a Metro and RER hub for transport, connecting all suburban regions around the capital.

One landmark in the region is the 1976-built Centre Georges Pompidou. Built in a highly colored modern style contrasting with its surrounding architecture, it houses a permanent modern art exposition and has rotating exhibits that keep to a theme of the post-pop art period. It also houses the BPI, one of the city's most significant libraries and places of study.

Just to the east of the Place du Châtelet lies Paris's Hôtel de Ville (City Hall). It stands on the location of a 12th-century "house of columns" belonging to the city's "Prévôt des Marchands" (a city governor of commerce), then a later version built in 1628 whose shell is the same today. Just across the street to the north of rue de Rivoli is the 1870s-built BHV (Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville) department store.

Le Louvre / Palais Royal

The Louvre, once Paris' second Royal Palace, is today a museum, garden (Tuileries), and, more recently, a shopping mall and fashion-show centre (Le Carrousel du Louvre). The Palais-Royal just to its north, originally a residence of the Cardinal Richelieu, is a walled garden behind its rue de Rivoli facade, with covered and columned arcades that house boutiques forming what could be considered Paris' first "shopping arcade". This quarter has 17th and 18th century buildings, as well as some of Paris' more grandiose constructions, namely along the avenue de l'Opéra, from the Haussmann era. The massive buildings on the northern side of the rue de Rivoli, with their covered and columned arcades, are a result of Paris' first attempt at reconstruction in a larger scale in the early 1840s, and today house the quarter's most tourist-oriented shops, boutiques and night-clubs.

Opéra

Centred on Paris' Opéra Garnier, completed in 1882, this quarter houses central Paris' largest shopping centres (the Galeries Lafayette and Printemps) and is a banking centre (Crédit Lyonnais, BNP and American Express, etc).

Saint-Honoré / Place Vendôme / Concorde

The rue Saint Honoré (and rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré) is known for its luxury boutiques selling fashion labels of international renown. Place Vendôme, home to the Hôtel Ritz, is the centre of the jewellery trade in Paris. There are also major banks and offices in this area. Place de la Concorde, to the western end of the Louvre's Jardin des Tuileries, are known for fountains, an Egyptian obelisk and a panoramic introduction to the Champs-Élysées that begins at its western extremity.

Les Champs-Élysées

Les Champs-Élysées features commerce along its entire length, from the rond-point des Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. The buildings above the street-side boutiques are for the most part Paris offices or residences for international businesses. The streets behind the Avenue and in the neighbourhood surrounding are filled with Haussmanian buildings that host some residences, but are largely dominated by offices.

Montmartre / Bas de Montmartre / Pigalle

Culminating at 130 metres, Montmartre is Paris's highest hill and second most-visited tourist area. It formerly was a town of wine growers and gypsum miners centred on a 15th-century monastery. Many of Montmartre's windmills and much of its "old village" charm had already been destroyed when Paris's tourist boom began in the early 20th century, but investors and speculators rebuilt it. Montmartre has some of the best views of the capital.

The boulevards below Montmartre, also called le bas de Montmartre ("lower Montmartre") or more informally Pigalle, were once popular with mid-19th-century Parisians for their cabarets, as at the time they were outside the city of Paris (up until the annexations of 1859) and thus exempt from the octroi (taxes levied on goods for consumption – including drinks – that were imported into the city). The Moulin Rouge is the most prominent remaining example of the once numerous saloons and dance halls that lined the north side of the boulevard. Today this establishment a gaudy mirror of what it once was. The surrounding boulevards, especially to the east of the Moulin Rouge towards Place Pigalle, are home to sex-oriented businesses (sex shops, peep shows, strip clubs). The south of the Pigalle district, in particular around Rue de Douai and Rue Victor Massé, is specialized in the retail of musical instruments and equipment, notably guitars and drums.

Gare de l'Est / Gare du Nord

This area contains clothing stores and hair salons whose owners are largely of African origin. These stations mark the northernmost limits of Paris' "Sentier" textile industry district.

Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, which runs along Gare du Nord, is the domain of Indian shops (clothes, Bollywood videos) and restaurants. A parade in honor of Ganesh is organized every year. These so-called "Indian" immigrants mostly come from Pakistan (in the lower part of the street) or Sri Lanka (in the upper part of the street).

Le Marais

To the west of the place de la Bastille extends the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, a street running through the centre of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, once a village of furniture-making artisans. To the north and north-west lies Le Marais with 17th century buildings. The rue du faubourg Saint-Antoine still has many furniture stores.

Today Le Marais is most known for its square and uniformly-built Place des Vosges. Inaugurated as the "Place Royale" in 1612, much of the land surrounding was built with vast and luxurious hotels by those seeking closer relations to royalty, and many remain today. This area fell out of royal favour when the King's court left for the Louvre then Versailles, and was in a state of almost abandon by the 19th century. It became a largely Jewish quarter around then, and has remained so. It is also the heart of gay Paris, with many gay cafés, bars, and clubs.

Rive Gauche
Paris' Rive Gauche was its centre from its first to 11th centuries, but little evidence remains of this today. Solidly built from Roman times, its crumbling constructions served as a quarry for Rive Droite constructions when its population moved to Paris' northern shores. Today, the rive Gauche is mostly residential.

Saint-Germain-des-Prés / Faubourg Saint-Germain

This central Rive-Gauche quarter is named for its 7th century abbey of which only a church is still standing. Its commercial growth began upon the 1886 completion of its Boulevard Saint-Germain and the opening of its cafés and bistros, namely its "Café de Flore" and "Deux Magots" terraces. Its fame came with the 1950s post-WW II student "culture emancipation" movement that had its source in the nearby University. Many jazz clubs appeared here during those times, and a few still remain today.

Located near the École des Beaux-Arts, this quarter is known for its artistry in general, and has many galleries along its rue Bonaparte and rue de Seine. In all, Saint-Germain-des-Prés is an upper-class residential district, with quality clothing and gastronomical street-side commerce.

Odéon / Saint-Michel

Odéon is named for the 18th-century theatre standing between the boulevard Saint-Germain and the Luxembourg gardens, but today it is best known for its cinemas and cafés.

The land to the south of the Seine river to the east of the Boulevard Saint-Michel, around its Sorbonne university, has been a centre of student activity since the early 12th century. The surrounding neighbourhood is filled with student-oriented commercial establishments such as bookstores, stationery stores and game shops.

The land to the north of the boulevard Saint-Germain, to the east of the Boulevard Saint-Michel, is one of the Rive Gauche's few tourist oases. Although its narrow streets are charming, as they have remained unchanged from medieval times, they are filled with souvenir shops and tourist restaurants.

Invalides / École Militaire / Eiffel Tower / Quai d'Orsay

Paris' 17th-century Hôtel des Invalides and 18th-century École Militaire were built where they were in an effort to force the Rive Gauche's growth westward, to match that to its opposing Rive Droite. Les Invalides, a former military hospital and today a retirement home for former soldiers, became a tourist attraction after Napoleon Bonaparte's ashes were interred there in 1840, and a military museum from 1872 (Artillery).

Just to the west from there lies the École Militaire, built from 1751. It is to the river end of its former parade ground that lies Paris' foremost tourist attraction. The Eiffel Tower, built by Gustave Alexandre Eiffel for the 1889 Universal Exposition, averages around 6 million visitors a year.

Further east along the bank of the Seine lies the former Paris-à-Orléans train station built for the 1900 Universal Exposition. Closed in 1939, it has been since renovated into a museum of 19th-century art, the Musée d'Orsay, open to the public since December 1986.

Montparnasse / Denfert-Rochereau

This quarter owes its artistic reputation to its Montparnasse cemetery. Open from 1824, it attracted the ateliers of sculptors and engravers to the still-inbuilt land nearby, and these in turn drew painters and other artists looking for calmer climes than the saturated and expensive Rive Droite. Many of these artists met in the boulevard Montparnasse's cafés and bistros, one of these being the Belle Époque "La Coupole". This aspect of Montparnasse's culture has faded since the second world war, but many of its artist atelier-residence "Cités" are there to see.

The Gare Montparnasse, since its beginning as a railway connection to Versailles in 1840, has since grown into the Rive Gauche's commuter hub connection to destinations in southern France. The neighbourhood around it is a business quarter that houses Paris' tallest building, the Tour Montparnasse.

To the south-east of the boulevard Montparnasse, to the bottom of the northward-running Avenue Denfert-Rochereau at the square of the same name, is one of Paris' few-remaining pre-1860s "prolype" gateways. The westernmost of these twin buildings holds the Catacombs of Paris. Formerly stone mines, abandoned when Paris annexed the land over them in 1860, the underground hallways became a new sepulture for the contents of Paris' overflowing and unhygienic parish cemeteries. At its origin a jumbled bone depository, it was renovated in the early 19th century into uniform rooms and hallways of neatly (and even artistically) arranged skulls and tibias, and opened to the public for paid visits from 1868.

Front de Seine / Beaugrenelle
The Front de Seine district located along the river Seine in the 15th arrondissement right at the South of the Eiffel Tower is the result of an urban planning project from the 1970s. It includes about 20 towers reaching nearly 100 m of height built around an elevated esplanade. That esplanade is paved with frescos. It is host to The Hôtel Novotel Paris-Tour Eiffel (formerly known as Hôtel Nikkō), with its red-encircled windows, the Tour Totem consisting of a stack of several glassed-blocks and a newly redesigned shopping mall, the Centre commercial Beaugrenelle.

Place d'Italie / Olympiades / Chinatown
During the 1960s, public authorities designed an urban renewal plan inspired from Le Corbusier's theories that tended to erase many peripheral quarters of Paris and build pedestrian quarters with high rise buildings, connected by urban highways. The plan was partially completed in the Beaugrenelle quarter (15th district) and, through the Italie 13 project, in the 13th district. More than twenty-five 100-meter-high residential buildings were built south of Place d'Italie, notably Les Olympiades. The completion of these towers in the mid-1970s coincided with the arrival of many refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam, so that the triangle between the Avenue d'Ivry, the Avenue de Choisy and the boulevard Masséna quickly became a vibrant and colorful 'Chinatown' with dozens of Asian restaurants, shops, hairdressers, supermarkets, and a New Year parade. Other, less well-known Asian quarters exist for example in the 3rd district (rue au Maire) and Belleville.

Key suburbs

La Défense business district
As one of the largest business districts in the world, Paris La Défense is a major destination for business travel in Europe.

Characteristics:
3,000,000 m² (32.3 million sq. ft) of offices
Europe's largest shopping centre with nearly 3,000 hotel rooms, 600 shops and services, and over 100 restaurants
daily influx of 160,000 office staff with 2 million tourist visits annually
CNIT congress centre, the largest self-supporting vault in the world, 43,000 m² (463,000 sq ft), including 29,000 m² (312,000 sq ft) of modular spaces, 36 meetings rooms and 4 halls
La Défense stands on Paris's historic East-West axis (L'Axe historique).

In December 2005 the new plan for the district of La Défense was presented. The project is articulated around a tall skyscraper (more than 400 m/1,300 ft high), a new symbol for Paris which would be the tallest skyscraper in Europe if it is built.

The project to build the Grande Arche was initiated by the French president François Mitterrand, who wanted a 20th-century version of the Arc de Triomphe. The design of the Danish architect Otto van Spreckelsen looks more like a cube-shaped building than a triumphal arch. It is a 110-meter-tall white building with the middle part left open. The sides of the cube contain offices. A lift to the top of the Grande Arche provides views of Paris.

See also
Landmarks in Paris
List of tourist attractions in Paris
Arrondissements of Paris

References

Tourist attractions in Paris

Historical quarters of Paris


Renewable heat is an application of renewable energy referring to the generation of heat from renewable sources; for example, feeding radiators with water warmed by focused solar radiation rather than by a fossil fuel boiler. Renewable heat technologies include renewable biofuels, solar heating, geothermal heating, heat pumps and heat exchangers. Insulation is almost always an important factor in how renewable heating is implemented.

Many colder countries consume more energy for heating than for supplying electricity. For example, in 2005 the United Kingdom consumed 354 TWh of electric power, but had a heat requirement of 907 TWh, the majority of which (81%) was met using gas. The residential sector alone consumed 550 TWh of energy for heating, mainly derived from methane. Almost half of the final energy consumed in the UK (49%) was in the form of heat, of which 70% was used by households and in commercial and public buildings. Households used heat mainly for space heating (69%).

The relative competitiveness of renewable electricity and renewable heat depends on a nation's approach to energy and environment policy. In some countries renewable heat is hindered by subsidies for fossil fuelled heat. In those countries, such as Sweden, Denmark and Finland, where government intervention has been closest to a technology-neutral form of carbon valuation (i.e. carbon and energy taxes), renewable heat has played the leading role in a very substantial renewable contribution to final energy consumption. In those countries, such as Germany, Spain, the US, and the UK, where government intervention has been set at different levels for different technologies, uses and scales, the contributions of renewable heat and renewable electricity technologies have depended on the relative levels of support, and have resulted generally in a lower renewable contribution to final energy consumption.

Leading renewable heat technologies

Solar heating
Solar heating is a style of building construction which uses the energy of summer or winter sunshine to provide an economic supply of primary or supplementary heat to a structure. The heat can be used for both space heating (see solar air heat) and water heating (see solar hot water). Solar heating design is divided into two groups:
 Passive solar heating relies on the design and structure of the house to collect heat. Passive solar building design must also consider the storage and distribution of heat, which may be accomplished passively, or use air ducting to draw heat actively to the foundation of the building for storage. One such design was measured lifting the temperature of a house to  on a partially sunny winter day (-7 °C or 19 °F), and it is claimed that the system provides passively for the bulk of the building's heating.  The  home cost $125 per square foot (or 370 m2 at $1,351/m2), similar to the cost of a traditional new home.
 Active solar heating uses pumps to move air or a liquid from the solar collector into the building or storage area. Applications such as solar air heating and solar water heating typically capture solar heat in panels which can then be used for applications such as space heating and supplementation of residential water heaters. In contrast to photovoltaic panels, which are used to generate electricity, solar heating panels are less expensive and capture a much higher proportion of the sun's energy.
Solar heating systems usually require a small supplementary backup heating system, either conventional or renewable.

Geothermal heating

Geothermal energy is accessed by drilling water or steam wells in a process similar to drilling for oil. Geothermal energy is an enormous, underused heat and power resource that is clean (emits little or no greenhouse gases), reliable (average system availability of 95%), and homegrown (making populations less dependent on oil).

The earth absorbs the sun's energy and stores it as heat in the oceans and underground. The ground temperature remains constant at a point of  all year round depending on where you live on earth. A geothermal heating system takes advantage of the consistent temperature found below the Earth's surface and uses it to heat and cool buildings. The system is made up of a series of pipes installed underground, connected to pipes in a building. A pump circulates liquid through the circuit. In the winter the fluid in the pipe absorbs the heat of the earth and uses it to heat the building. In the summer the fluid absorbs heat from the building and disposes of it in the earth.

Heat pumps
Heat pumps use work to move heat from one place to another, and can be used for both heating and air conditioning. Though capital intensive, heat pumps are economical to run and can be powered by renewable electricity. Two common types of heat pump are air source heat pumps (ASHP) and ground-source heat pumps (GSHP), depending on whether heat is transferred from the air or from the ground.  Air source heat pumps are not effective when the outside air temperature is lower than about -15 °C, while ground-source heat pumps are not affected. The efficiency of a heat pump is measured by the coefficient of performance (CoP): For every unit of electricity used to pump the heat, an air source heat pump generates 2.5 to 3 units of heat (i.e. it has a CoP of 2.5 to 3), whereas a GSHP generates 3 to 3.5 units of heat. Based on current fuel prices for the United Kingdom, assuming a CoP of 3–4, a GSHP is sometimes a cheaper form of space heating than electric, oil, and solid fuel heating. Heat pumps can be linked to an interseasonal thermal energy storage (hot or cold), doubling the CoP from 4 to 8 by extracting heat from warmer ground.

Interseasonal heat transfer

A heat pump with Interseasonal Heat Transfer combines active solar collection to store surplus summer heat in thermal banks with ground-source heat pumps to extract it for space heating in winter. This reduces the "Lift" needed and doubles the CoP of the heat pump because the pump starts with warmth from the thermal bank in place of cold from the ground.

CoP and lift
A heat pump CoP increases as the temperature difference, or "Lift", decreases between heat source and destination. The CoP can be maximized at design time by choosing a heating system requiring only a low final water temperature (e.g., underfloor heating), and by choosing a heat source with a high average temperature (e.g., the ground). Domestic hot water (DHW) and conventional radiators require high water temperatures, affecting the choice of heat pump technology. Low temperature radiators provide an alternative to conventional radiators.

Resistive electrical heating
Renewable electricity can be generated by hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal and by burning biomass. In a few countries where renewable electricity is inexpensive, resistance heating is common. In countries like Denmark where electricity is expensive, it is not permitted to install electric heating as the main heat source. Wind turbines have more output at night when there is a small demand for electricity, storage heaters consume this lower cost electricity at night and give off heat during the day.

Wood-pellet heating

Wood-pellet heating and other types of wood heating systems have achieved their greatest success in heating premises that are off the gas grid, typically being previously heated using heating oil or coal. Solid wood fuel requires a large amount of dedicated storage space, and the specialized heating systems can be expensive (though grant schemes are available in many European countries to offset this capital cost.) Low fuel costs mean that wood fuelled heating in Europe is frequently able to achieve a payback period of less than 3 to 5 years.  Because of the large fuel storage requirement wood fuel can be less attractive in urban residential scenarios, or for premises connected to the gas grid (though rising gas prices and uncertainty of supply mean that wood fuel is becoming more competitive.) There is also growing concern over the air pollution from wood heating versus oil or gas heat, especially the fine particulates.

Wood-stove heating
Burning wood fuel in an open fire is both extremely inefficient (0-20%) and polluting due to low temperature partial combustion. In the same way that a drafty building loses heat through loss of warm air through poor sealing, an open fire is responsible for large heat losses by drawing very large volumes of warm air out of the building.

Modern wood stove designs allow for more efficient combustion and then heat extraction. In the United States, new wood stoves are certified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and burn cleaner and more efficiently (the overall efficiency is 60-80%) and draw smaller volumes of warm air from the building.

"Cleaner" should not, however, be confused with clean. An Australian study of real-life emissions from woodheaters satisfying the current Australian standard, found that particle emissions averaged 9.4 g/kg wood burned (range 2.6 to 21.7).  A heater with average wood consumption of 4 tonnes per year therefore emits 37.6 kg of PM2.5, i.e. particles less than 2.5 micrometers. This can be compared with a passenger car satisfying the current Euro 5 standards (introduced September 2009) of 0.005 g/km. So one new wood heater emits as much PM2.5 per year as 367 passenger cars each driving 20,000 km a year. A recent European study identified PM2.5 as the most health-hazardous air pollutant, causing an estimated 492,000 premature deaths.  The next worst pollutant, ozone, is responsible for 21,000 premature deaths.

Because of the problems with pollution, the Australian Lung Foundation recommends using alternative means for climate control.  The American Lung Association "strongly recommends using cleaner, less toxic sources of heat. Converting a wood-burning fireplace or stove to use either natural gas or propane will eliminate exposure to the dangerous toxins wood burning generates including dioxin, arsenic and formaldehyde.

"Renewable" should not be confused with "greenhouse neutral".  A recent peer-reviewed paper found that, even if burning firewood from a sustainable supply, methane emissions from a typical Australian wood heater satisfying the current standard cause more global warming than heating the same house with gas.  However, because a large proportion of firewood sold in Australia is not from sustainable supplies, Australian households that use wood heating often cause more global warming than heating three similar homes with gas.

High efficiency stoves should meet the following design criteria:
 Well sealed and precisely calibrated to draw a low yet sufficient volume of air. Air-flow restriction is critical; a lower inflow of cold air cools the furnace less (a higher temperature is thus achieved). It also allows greater time for extraction of heat from the exhaust gas, and draws less heat from the building.
 The furnace must be well insulated to increase combustion temperature, and thus completeness.
 A well insulated furnace radiates little heat. Thus heat must be extracted instead from the exhaust gas duct. Heat absorption efficiencies are higher when the heat-exchange duct is longer, and when the flow of exhaust gas is slower.
 In many designs, the heat-exchange duct is built of a very large mass of heat-absorbing brick or stone. This design causes the absorbed heat to be emitted over a longer period - typically a day.

Renewable natural gas
Renewable natural gas is defined as gas obtained from biomass which is upgraded to a quality similar to natural gas. By upgrading the quality to that of natural gas, it becomes possible to distribute the gas to customers via the existing gas grid. According to the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands, renewable natural gas is 'cheaper than alternatives where biomass is used in a combined heat and power plant or local combustion plant'. Energy unit costs are lowered through 'favourable scale and operating hours', and end-user capital costs eliminated through distribution via the existing gas grid.

Energy efficiency
Renewable heat goes hand in hand with energy efficiency. Indeed, renewable heating projects depend heavily for their success on energy efficiency; in the case of solar heating to cut reliance on the requirement supplementary heating, in the case of wood fuel heating to cut the cost of wood purchased and volume stored, and in the case of heat pumps to reduce the size and investment in heat pump, heat sink and electricity costs.

Two main types of improvement can be made to a building's energy efficiency:

Insulation
Improvements to insulation can cut energy consumption greatly, making a space cheaper to heat and to cool. However existing housing can often be difficult or expensive to improve. Newer buildings can benefit from many of the techniques of superinsulation. Older buildings can benefit from several kinds of improvement:

 Solid wall insulation: A building with solid walls can benefit from internal or external insulation. External wall insulation involves adding decorative weather-proof insulating panels or other treatment to the outside of the wall. Alternatively, internal wall insulation can be applied using ready-made insulation/plaster board laminates, or other methods. Thicknesses of internal or external insulation typically range between 50 and 100 mm.
 Cavity wall insulation: A building with cavity walls can benefit from insulation pumped into the cavity. This form of insulation is very cost effective.
 Programmable thermostats allow heating and cooling of a room to be switched off depending the time, day of the week, and temperature. A bedroom, for example, does not need to be heated during the day, but a living room does not need to be heated during the night.
 Roof insulation
 Insulated windows and doors
 Draught proofing

Underfloor heating
Underfloor heating may sometimes be more energy efficient than traditional methods of heating:

 Water circulates within the system at low temperatures (35 °C - 50 °C) making gas boilers, wood fired boilers, and heat pumps significantly more efficient.
 Rooms with underfloor heating are cooler near the ceiling, where heat is not required, but warmer underfoot, where comfort is most required.
 Traditional radiators are frequently positioned underneath poorly insulated windows, heating them unnecessarily.

Waste-water heat recovery

It is possible to recover significant amounts of heat from waste hot water via hot water heat recycling. Major consumption of hot water is sinks, showers, baths, dishwashers, and clothes washers. On average 30% of a property's domestic hot water is used for showering. Incoming fresh water is typically of a far lower temperature than the waste water from a shower. An inexpensive heat exchanger recovers up on average 40% of the heat that would normally be wasted, by warming incoming cold fresh water with heat from outgoing waste water.

Heat recovery ventilation
Heat recovery ventilation (HRV) is an energy recovery ventilation system which works between two air sources at different temperatures. By recovering the residual heat in the exhaust gas, the fresh air introduced into the air conditioning system is preheated.

See also

 s

References

External links
 Heat pumps based on R744 (CO2) FAQ
 Heat pumps  Long Awaited Way out of the Global Warming - Information from Heat Pump & Thermal Storage Technology Center of Japan
 Department of Trade and Industry, 2005 study on Renewable Heat
 Renewable Heat combining asphalt solar collectors, thermal banks and ground source heat pumps.
 Energy Saving Trust information on Home Insulation
 The Gill report on biomass in the UK  - download
 Solid wall insulation
 Cavity wall insulation

Energy economics
Energy conservation
Heating
Low-energy building
Residential heating
Renewable energy technology
Sustainable technologies
Sustainable building
Sustainable architecture
Sustainable energy

Renewable heat


Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio (Latin name: Iohannes Mercurius de Corigio; 1451 - ?) was an Italian itinerant preacher, Hermeticist, and alchemist. Due to his bizarre appearance in Rome on Palm Sunday 1484 he has been believed by some scholars to have not actually existed, but this has been contested with other reports that corroborate his eccentricities. His most notable follower was Lodovico Lazzarelli, an Italian humanist poet and alchemist, who writes his accounts of da Correggio in his Epistola Enoch.

Biography

Early life

Giovanni da Correggio was born sometime around 1451 to a noble family in Bologna, and was likely the illegitimate son of a certain Antonio da Correggio (not the artist), who died in 1474. Da Correggio is also likely from the same feudal family that produced Niccolò da Correggio. He does not appear to have had any formal education in academics, oration, grammar, or rhetoric, but nevertheless went on to become a very eloquent wandering preacher.

The first account of da Correggio was on 12 November 1481 in Rome, where Lodovico Lazzarelli encountered him as an apocalyptic preacher trying to gain the attention of the pope (Sixtus IV) and the College of Cardinals. Lazzarelli was so taken in by da Correggio that he decided to become his pupil.  This meeting is reported by Lazzarelli to have been a turning point in his life and studies. It is possible that Lazzarelli may have introduced da Correggio to Hermetic philosophy and writings.

Palm Sunday 1484

On Palm Sunday, 11 April 1484 da Correggio is reported by Lazzarelli to have been in Rome dressed in rich garments and gold with four servants. Lazzarelli reports that da Correggio then exits the city of Rome, and returns riding on a white donkey in imitation of Jesus. He is wearing blood-stained linen garments, a crown of thorns, on top of which is a silver crescent moon shaped disk. He then travels up to Saint Peter's Basilica and walks right up to the altar. Da Correggio places upon the altar his mystical apparel and a paper entitled The Eternal Gospel, knelt to pray, and then left. He proclaimed that he was "Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio" (or the Latin equivalent: "Iohannes Mercurius de Corigio"), "the angel of wisdom," "Poimandres" (or Pimander, a Hermetic manifestation of the mind of God), and "the most perfect manifestation of Jesus Christ." He distributed scrolls that read: "Ego Joannes Mercurius de Corigio, sapientiae angelus Pimanderque in summo ac maximo spiritus Jesu Chrisi excessu, hanc aquam regni pro paucis, sic super omnes magna voce evangelizo."

According to Lazzarelli da Correggio did all this completely unaccosted.

The only other account of da Correggio's Palm Sunday appearance in Rome was written by Abraham Farissol, an Italian Jewish scholar and scribe, in his Magen Avraham, who was in Rome at the time. According to Farissol da Correggio never even made it to the altar, but was arrested for heresy. According to Farissol da Correggio also calls himself "Son of God," "Hermes Trismegistus," "Enoch," and "Methuselah." Later da Correggio escapes from prison, possibly with the assistance of some friends.

According to both Lazzarelli and Farissol, after leaving Rome, da Correggio returns to Bologna to his wife, Elana Marie, and five children. Upon arriving in Bologna da Correggio is arrested again with new charges of heresy, but either escapes from prison in Bologna or is released.

Later life

After 1484, Giovanni da Correggio begins to wander from city to city preaching. Accounts of his appearances throughout Italy are scarce and scattered.

The first appearance of da Correggio since Palm Sunday is on 4 July 1486 in Florence while on his way to Naples. Lazzarelli was in the court of Ferdinand I of Naples at the time, and Ferdinand I requested to meet with da Correggio. While in Florence da Correggio is ordered to be arrested by Lorenzo de' Medici and accosted by a Franciscan inquisitor. It is unclear if da Correggio ever made it to Naples.

He is reported to have been in Cesena in 1484, but it is unclear if this was prior to or after his appearance in Rome on Palm Sunday. It could easily be both, as he would have had to travel through Cesena to get from Rome to Bologna if he did not travel through Florence. Additionally he is reported to have been in Rome again 1492 in hopes of meeting with Pope Alexander VI. In Rome he begins to proclaim himself to be the "Younger Hermes" (implying that he is either the son of Hermes Trismegistus or Hermes Trismegistus reincarnated, hence the adoption of "Mercuio" to his name). In 1494 he is reported to be in Lucca vainly trying to get to Florence. He apparently gets to visit Florence again in 1496. He is reported in Venice in 1497. In 1499 he is reported in Rome again seeking a meeting with the pope, as well as in Cesena on his way to Milan. While in Cesena he is seen wearing sackcloth and accompanied by his wife and five children.

While da Correggio was originally from a noble family, and he seems to have been wealthy given the lavish and rich garments he wore in Rome in 1484 before he paraded around in imitation of Jesus, he appears to be truly destitute beginning in 1499. From this point forward he is always seen traveling with his entire household, begging on the streets, and dressed in sackcloth. It is possible he could have wasted his fortunes in alchemical pursuits, which was not uncommon in the 15th century. Hanegraaff puts forth the conjecture that Lazzarelli not only introduced da Correggio to Hermeticism, but may have also introduced him to alchemy sometime after 1495. In 1495 Lazzarelli met Johannes Rigaud de Branchiis, an alchemist, and decided to be de Branchiis' pupil as well. (Lazzarelli dedicated his transcription of Petrus Bonus' Pretiosa Margarita Novella to his "teacher Joannes," though it is unclear if this dedication was directed toward de Branchiis or da Correggio; but it is certain that the Epistola Enoch, credited to Lazzarelli, is dedicated to da Correggio). Despite being destitute or impending destitution that same year, 1499, da Correggio published his Against the Barbarians, the Turks, and the Scyths (it is unclear if he published this before or after becoming a beggar), which he presented in Lyons to King Louis XII in 1501. Sometime after visiting France he published a plague tract.

It is unclear when da Correggio traveled to Ferrara, but Farissol reports to have seen him in Ferrara. This is appropriate as Carlo Sosenna, a humanist scholar, poet, and magician at the University of Ferrara, writes a commentary on a sonnet attributed to da Correggio. It is known that Sosenna was friendly with the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole I d'Este, as both held an interest in astrology and divination. Ruderman speculates that da Correggio may have met the duke through Sosenna.

Lazzarelli, Farissol, and Sosenna are the only three persons to have written about anything concerning Giovanni da Correggio who also were contemporary with him. There is another notable contemporary to have written about da Correggio, but it is unlikely he ever encountered the man in person. Johannes Trithemius writes about da Correggio boasting of himself as knowing all the learnings of the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Latins. It is unlikely Trithemius ever met da Correggio, or even traveled to Italy. It is more probable that he learned of da Correggio's existence through the writings of Lazzarelli, which were circulated among scholars and alchemists in Germany at that time. It is known that Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, a notorious German alchemist, had access to Lazzarelli's Hermetic writings, as he quotes a portion of Lazzarelli's Crater Hermetiis in his The Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

The last that is ever heard of da Correggio is in 1506 while he was meeting with Pope Julius II in Rome. Da Correggio had just published his De Quercu Iulii Pontificis, Sive De Lapide Philosophico (On the Oak of Pope Julius, or On the Philosopher's Stone), and presented it to the pope. Given da Correggio's state of poverty, Hanegraaff conjectures that De Quercu was a desperate last attempt by da Correggio to secure a source of funding to provide for himself and his family. He appeals to Julius II by mentioning that they had met before face-to-face in Savona (possibly before Julius II was pope), as if attempting to imply a stronger connection between the two men. Mostly da Correggio appeals to Julius II by regularly using the oak tree as an emblem of majesty, protection, power, and beauty (Julius II was formerly Giuliano della Rovere; Rovere meaning oak), describing the pope's oak as a sort of world tree. He makes use a popular alchemical symbol, the phoenix (often associated with the philosopher's stone), which he says perches on the upper branches of the papal tree. Da Correggio then goes on to discuss the philosopher's stone and quintessence, and all the virtues therein. He implies that he possesses these secrets, if only the pope would give him and his family protection. Da Correggio writes De Quercu as if he is the conduit of a divine entity, imploring the pope's help in the third person: "Give our Giovanni Mercurio your help and I will help you." It is uncertain if Julius II ever secured any help for da Correggio, but given that there are no other documentations concerning Giovanni da Correggio after this meeting with the pope, then it can be surmised that Julius did not assist da Correggio and he and his family perished in poverty sometime thereafter.

Controversy of Existence
The first modern authority to describe Giovanni da Correggio was Kurt Ohly while he was researching Lazzarelli's Epistola Enoch in 1938. Ohly found the man to be so strange that he concluded that da Correggio was a fictitious invention of Lazzarelli. Ohly came to this conclusion because of the scarcity of other accounts concerning da Correggio.

Paul Oskar Kristeller was the next authority to write about da Correggio while researching Hermetic documents and manuscripts in the Viterbo Municipal Library. Kristeller found other accounts of da Correggio in other cities in the latter half of the 15th century, citing namely a letter from the Medici Archives reporting da Correggio was in Lucca in 1494. Other sources found by Kristeller include the Harley Manuscript 4081 in the British Museum, better known as De Quercu, as well as da Correggio's sonnet with Sosenna's commentary. Kristeller dissented against Ohly's conclusion, now concluding that Giovanni da Correggio had in fact existed.

Since Kristeller other scholars have brought to the forefront other accounts of da Correggio. Among them are David Ruderman in Abraham Farissol's Magen Avraham.

It is generally agreed upon that Giovanni da Correggio did in fact exist.

See also

 Contemporary Italian Renaissance philosophers: Marsilio Ficino, Lodovico Lazzarelli, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
 Hermetica (philosophical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus)
 Hermeticism
 Renaissance humanism
 Renaissance philosophy
 Renaissance magic

References

 Churton, Tobias. "The Golden Builders". Boston, MA: Weiser Books. 2002. pp. 44–48. .
 Kristeller, Paul Oskar. "Lodovico Lazzarelli e Giovanni da Correggio, due ermetici del quattrocento, e il manoscritto II. D. I. 4 della biblioteca comunale degli argenti di Viterbo", Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, Volume III. Roma, Italia: Edizione di Storia e Letteratura. 1993. pg. 207–225.
 Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. "Of man, how he was created after the image of God", The Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book III, Chapter XXXVI. Trans. James Freake. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications. 2010. pp. 579–582.

 Hanegraaff, Wouter J. "Pseudo-Lullian Alchemy and the Mercurial Phoenix: Giovanni da Correggio's De Quercu Iulii pontificis sive De lapide philosophico ", Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry. Ed. Lawrence M. Principe. Watson Publishing International LLC: Sagamore Beach. 2007. pp. 101–112. (https://www.academia.edu/1170579/Pseudo-Lullian_Alchemy_and_the_Mercurial_Phoenix_Giovanni_da_Correggios_De_Quercu_Iulii_pontificis_sive_De_lapide_philosophico_2007_)

External links
 http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-da-correggio_(Dizionario-Biografico)/
 http://www.aelialaeliacrispis.com/mercurio.html

1451 births
15th-century alchemists
Year of death missing
Italian alchemists

Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio


The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London is part of University College London Museums & Collections. With over 80,000 objects, it is one of the world's best collections of objects from Egypt and the Sudan.

History
The museum started in 1892 to help with the teaching of Egyptian Archaeology and Philology. The collection began with objects given to the museum by the writer Amelia Edwards. William Flinders Petrie led many important archaeological digs. In 1913 he sold his collection to University College. He had found objects at major sites, such as the Roman Period cemeteries at Hawara. These were famous for the beautiful mummy portraits in classical Roman style. He found objects at Amarna, the city of king Akhenaten, the first king to believe in one God. At Meydum, the site of the first true pyramid Petrie found some of the earliest examples of mummification.

The collection and library were in rooms at the university. A book about the collection was printed in 1915. At first the museum was only for people studying and not open to the public. After Petrie retired in 1933, other archaeologists added objects to the collection. These had been found in other parts of Egypt and the Sudan. During the Second World War (1939–1945) the collection was packed up and moved out of London for to keep it safe. In the early 1950s it was moved into an old stable, beside the science library.

Collections
The museum has one of the oldest pieces of linen from Egypt, made about 5000 BC. There are two lions from the temple of Min at Koptos. These were part of the first group of monumental sculpture from about 3000 BC. There is a small piece from the first king list or calendar written about 2900 BC. The museum has some iron beads, the earliest example of metal from Egypt. There is the earliest example of glazing. The collection includes the earliest 'cylinder seal' in Egypt made about 3500 BC. It also has a collection of writings on papyrus, which are the oldest wills, the oldest medical writing, the only veterinary writing from ancient Egypt; and the largest architectural drawing, showing a shrine (about 1300 BC).

The collection also includes a number of costumes. It has the 'oldest dress', there is a beadnet dress of a dancer from the Pyramid Age (about 2400 BC) and two long sleeved robes of the same date. There is a suit of armour from the palace of Memphis, as well as socks and sandals from the Roman period. The collection contains works of art from Akhenaten's city at Amarna. There are: colourful tiles, carvings and frescoes, from Egyptian and Nubian settlements and burial sites. The museum has the world's largest collection of Roman period mummy portraits. These were made in the first to second centuries AD. The collection also includes objects from the Coptic and Islamic periods.

The museum
The museum has three rooms. The main room has many of the museum's small objects, as well as tablets of writing, mummy portraits and cases. The first room has mainly pottery. Some parts of the collection are not lit to protect the objects from light and visitors use torches to see inside the cases.

The collection has been digitised and the catalogue can be viewed online.

References

Other websites

Official website
UCL Museum & Collections blog
Friends of the Petrie Museum
Information from Culture24
Digital Egypt

Colleges and universities in London
Ancient Egypt
Museums in London

Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology


Research associates are researchers (scholars and professionals) that usually have an advanced degree beyond a Master's degree.

In some universities/research institutes, such as Harvard/Harvard Medical School/Harvard School of Public Health, the candidate holds the degree of Ph.D. or possess training equivalent to that required for the Ph.D. In addition, the candidate must have demonstrated exceptional fitness in independent research. This position allows the candidate to enlarge professional network, get more experience, get publications, fellowships, grants to establish independence as a Principal Investigator (PI) or start looking for a more secure permanent job. It can advance to senior research associate (higher pay with more responsibilities equivalent to a PI), research scientist, senior research scientist, principal research scientist, and later head of research or equivalent.

In contrast to a research assistant, a research associate often has a graduate degree, such as a master's (e.g. Master of Science) or in some cases Master of Engineering or a doctoral degree (e.g. Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Medicine or Doctor of Pharmacy). In some cases it can be synonymous with postdoctoral research.

Research associate roles

In academic and research institutions, as well as in some industries, a research associate is a common professional position. Typically, research associates work with other researchers, scientists, and faculty members on a variety of research projects. The duties of research associates can change depending on the organization and the particular field, but the following are some typical duties:

 Working closely with principal investigators (PIs), research scientists, or professors, research associates plan, carry out, and manage research projects. They provide their knowledge when designing, carrying out, and analyzing experiments or studies.
 Literature Review: To comprehend the state of the art and the context of the research field, they conduct in-depth literature reviews, which guide the formulation of research hypotheses and methodologies.
 Laboratory and Fieldwork: Research associates may carry out laboratory experiments, fieldwork, or clinical trials, depending on the field. They make certain that procedures are accurately and securely followed.
 Technical Competencies: Research associates frequently need specialized technical competencies related to their research area, such as competence in the use of laboratory instruments, software tools, data analysis software, programming languages, etc.
 They record the procedures, approaches, findings, and outcomes of the research. For the purpose of keeping track of the study's progress and disseminating its findings to the scientific community, this documentation is essential.
 Data collection and analysis: Research associates gather data using various techniques such as surveys, observations, experiments, and more. They are frequently in charge of organizing and processing data using statistical and analytical methods in order to reach meaningful conclusions.

See also
Research fellow

References

Physiology & Biophysics - Postdoctoral Personnel

Academic administration
Associate

Research associate


Count Antoine Seilern (17 September 1901 – 6 July 1978) was an Anglo-Austrian art collector and art historian. He was considered, along with Sir Denis Mahon, to be one of a handful of important collectors who was also a respected scholar.  The bulk of his collection was bequeathed anonymously to the Courtauld Institute of Art. Known as the "Princes Gate bequest", most of it is on display at the Courtauld Gallery in London.

Early life

Count Antoine Edward Seilern und Aspang was born on 17 September 1901 at Frensham Place, Farnham, in Surrey, England. He was the youngest of the three sons of Count Carl Seilern und Aspang (1866–1940) and the American heiress Antoinette "Nettie" née Woerishoffer (1875–1901). He therefore enjoyed citizenship of both Austria and the United Kingdom. His ancestors had been ennobled after successful involvement with the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713. His father's sister Ida was married to Phillip Hennessy, whose sister Nora was the wife of the Royal Academician Lord Methuen.

He had two older brothers, Count Charles Hugo ("Chappie"), born 1899, and Count Oswald Seilern, born 1900. His mother died five days after he was born. Thereafter the three Seilern boys divided their time between their grandmother, Anna Woerishoffer, in New York City, and their father in London and Vienna, in the company of nannies and governesses (and frequently chaperoned by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury), though until America entered the First World War Mrs Woerishoffer spent 1912 to 1916 with her grandsons in Vienna. Anna Woerishoffer's wealth derived mainly from the German-language New York newspaper, the Neue-Yorker Staats-Zeitung, and her late husband's success on Wall Street. Seilern, like his older brothers, grew up with a passion for horse-racing and shooting.

Further education and business career

After the First World War Seilern relinquished his Austrian citizenship. However, despite this, he graduated in 1920 from the Realgymnasium in Vienna before attending the Wiener Handelsakademie (1920–1921) and then, at the start of 1922, he enrolled at the Technische Hochschule in order to study for an engineering certificate until 1924. He then worked briefly for a Yugoslavian lumber company, and in Vienna in finance.

Early collecting and the study of art history

A friend in Vienna, the old Count Karol Lanckoroński (Karl Lanckoronski) a large man of huge charm, who had a fine collection of art at his palace in Vienna, persuaded Seilern he should collect also, and in 1931, after the death of his grandmother, when he received his share of an enormous inheritance, he was able to devote himself to the study of art history and to serious collecting. During the years 1930 to 1933 he travelled widely, particularly in Africa, in search of big-game (as the trophies that could be seen at his house at Princes Gate after the war testified) though his bags were reputedly always packed with art books. He even acquired a pilot's license in Berlin.

However, in 1933, Count Karl Wilczek, another family friend who was also an art historian, recommended Seilern take private lessons with the great Hungarian art historian Johannes Wilde, very soon a mentor who was to become a lifelong friend. Seilern shortly afterwards enrolled at Vienna University to study the history of art with Karl Maria Swoboda, Julius Schlosser and Hans Sedlmayr. Unusually, perhaps, his subsidiary subject at university was Kinderpsychologie (Child Psychology), taught by a lady who was a pupil of Sigmund Freud and who was vouched for by his friend Jan van Gelder. Seilern wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Venetian influences on the ceiling paintings of Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Die venezianischen Voraussetzungen der Deckenmalerei des Peter Paul Rubens) which he completed in 1939. Rubens remained a lifelong passion and he later remarked, "Everything connected with Rubens interests me."

Meanwhile, Seilern had started to collect seriously, and was being advised by Wilde, and Ludwig Burchard, the great Rubens scholar. His collection of Rubens' paintings would soon include Landscape by Moonlight (which was once the possession of Sir Joshua Reynolds), and large numbers of paintings, drawings, copies and modelli also by Rubens, as well as oil sketches by Tiepolo and other masters. Between the wars and whilst studying in Vienna he had kept his art collection in an apartment at Brahmsplatz 1.

The Second World War

At the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, and because of his British citizenship (he had apparently hung the Union Jack from his house in Vienna), Seilern decided in 1939 to return to England, bringing with him his already large art collection and his library. Based in England now he was able to provide finance to support to another art historian fleeing from Nazi-occupied Austria, Ludwig Münz, as well as helping Johannes Wilde and his Jewish wife to leave Vienna. The Director of the National Gallery, Sir Kenneth Clark, sponsored Wilde who was reunited with Seilern at Aberystwyth in Wales where his collection was important enough to be hidden with works of art from the National Gallery and Royal Collection. Seilern then enlisted in the ranks of the British Army (though aged thirty-eight), serving in the Royal Artillery, and in 1940 immediately volunteered for the disastrous Russo-Finnish campaign, only escaping from occupied Norway. It was at the end of the Second World War, whilst acting as a German interpreter in the Intelligence Corps, that he appeared at the door of Professor Jan van Gelder in Amsterdam to pick up three oil sketches by Rubens he had bought for Seilern from the Koenig collection in 1940 and had deposited as 'Swedish property' at an Amsterdam bank.

It was when the war was at its height that Seilern purchased The Entombment with Donor and the Resurrection (now called the Seilern Triptych) by the "Master of Flémalle", now usually identified as Robert Campin, one of his finest purchases, which he bought at Christie's as a work attributed to Adriaen Isenbrandt in 1942.

Collecting and cataloguing art 1945–1978

Seilern returned to London at the end of the war to live in a great gloomy house he had acquired at 56 Princes Gate, South Kensington, where he rarely opened the blinds and electric light was largely eschewed as he said it distorted colours in pictures. At Princes Gate the ground floor was devoted to his enormous art library, and therefore pictures were hung mainly on the first floor, well-spaced, as in a museum. Other rooms in the house, of course, also held pictures: for example, on the second floor there was a charmingly decorated room called the card-room, which was apparently rarely shown to visitors but in which, eventually, he hung his Tiepolos, and behind this was a private study, hung with a group of Impressionist pictures including a fine late Cézanne.

The war over, he resumed collecting works of art, buying them privately for the most part rather than at auctions, never from a photograph, and never when pressed by a dealer, pictures left 'on approval' frequently being returned. He devoted time to studying them in depth and cataloguing them accurately, though he was also a generous anonymous benefactor of public collections; for example, he lent to exhibitions held at the British Museum (he lent his Michelangelo drawings to the 1975 exhibition there – which he would otherwise not have done except that it was being held in honour of his friend Johannes Wilde), and in 1945 he gave the National Gallery anonymously a very fine full-length portrait of William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh by Sir Anthony van Dyck [NG5633] as well presenting anonymously to the British Museum in 1946 the majority of the important collection of Old Master drawings (some 1250 in number) belonging to Mr. Thomas FitzRoy Fenwick, which had been assembled by Sir Thomas Phillipps, 1st Baronet in the library at Thirlestaine House, Cheltenham, and which had been catalogued by Arthur E. Popham of the museum in 1935 and bought by Seilern en bloc (Seilern retained about two dozen drawings). The proceeds of the sale of the catalogue of his own collection, when it appeared, would be given to the National Art-Collections Fund (now The Art Fund) and the National Trust.

Eventually his collection would come to include masterpieces not just by Rubens (32 paintings – oil sketches and modelli mainly, but also some of the artist's copies of Old Masters like Raphael's portrait of Baldassare Castiglione – and 20 drawings); 14 small copies by David Teniers the Younger after pictures in the collection of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria during his Governorship of the Spanish Netherlands in 1647–56, commissioned to make a series of prints for the book known as the Theatrum Pictorium first published in 1660; and 12 by Tiepolo (including six oil sketches for paintings for the Monastery Church of Aranjuez, south of Madrid), and pictures by Claude Lorrain, Degas, Van Dyck, Quentin Massys, Lorenzo Lotto, Magnasco, Manet, Francesco de Mura, Palma Vecchio, Parmigianino, Pittoni, Sebastiano Ricci, and Tintoretto. There were also drawings by Giovanni Bellini, Pieter Bruegel (one of the most important collections of his landscape drawings in existence), Hugo van der Goes, Fra Bartolommeo landscape drawings, Michelangelo, Parmigianino, Stefano della Bella, 30 drawings by or attributed to Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Watteau, Degas, Cézanne and Picasso, and drawings and engravings by Albrecht Dürer. Surprisingly perhaps, he commissioned a ceiling painting in triptych form of The Myth of Prometheus for the entrance hall of his home in Princes Gate by his friend Oskar Kokoschka. He also possessed fine Chinese bronzes, Greek vases, Limbourg brothers manuscripts, Holbein manuscripts, and German and Austrian paintings. He is recorded as owning a three-quarter length pastel of his mother by  (1894) as well as a signed and dated bust-length portrait of himself as a boy by Muller-Ury, which was unframed and stored in a cupboard. Starting in 1955 Seilern began the publication of a catalogue in seven volumes assisted by Fritz Grossmann of the most important parts of the collection, though he waited in vain for Wilde to produce catalogue entries on his important Michelangelo drawings.

Provenance issues
Of the artworks donated by Seilern, more than one hundred have been listed in the Spoliation Reports for UK Museums because of gaps in the provenance in the years 1933–1945.

Death
Seilern died in hospital in London in the early hours of 6 July 1978; he was 76. He was buried on 13 July in the churchyard in Frensham, Surrey. His family later had the body exhumed and had it re-interred in the family vault at Schloss Schönbühel, approximately 80 km west of Vienna.

Bequest to the Courtauld Gallery
Whilst he lived he was persuaded by Johannes Wilde, who had quickly been appointed by Anthony Blunt deputy director of The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, to leave the majority of the paintings and drawings in his collections to the Courtauld Institute Galleries, which already had bequests given by Samuel Courtauld, Viscount Lee of Fareham, Roger Fry, Mark Gambier-Parry and other benefactors. This bequest was made after his death with the condition that it be made anonymously, and be called The Princes Gate Collection.  His friend Michael Kitson, another art historian, was given the responsibility under his will of ensuring that the collection was moved to the Courtauld and appropriately displayed. This included his Michelangelo drawings, his Rubens collection, his Tiepolos, Parmigianino's Virgin and Child and Rest on the Flight into Egypt, the Kokoschka ceiling and Bernardo Daddi's masterpiece Virgin and Child with Saints from 1338, which Seilern had purchased in 1956, as well as modern works by Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and others, and two pictures by Daubigny and Narcisse Virgilio Díaz he had retained from his grandmother's collection in New York. The Courtauld also received his papers relating to the collection.

Not everything at Princes Gate was bequeathed to the Courtauld as the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna was bequeathed two paintings: a copy by Van Dyck of a Titian called 'Madonna and Child with St Dorothy' and a painting by Domenico Fetti called 'The Return of the Prodigal Son' and Seilern's nephews and nieces received substantial bequests of groups of art works in the collection, like the Dürer engravings, Greek vases, German and Austrian paintings not in the published catalogue (that hung principally on the bedroom floor at Princes Gate), and the pictures at the farm in Buckinghamshire.

Personal life and character
Seilern never married, was extremely reserved, and his private life is undocumented although he had many women friends, and was evidently fond of his brother Charles's four children, his cousin Paul Methuen (whose pictures he bought occasionally, apparently never keeping them but giving them away as presents), and enjoyed long friendships with scholars like Wilde, Ludwig Burchard, Anthony Blunt, Michael Kitson, and unusually, as he was perforce also a dealer, James Byam Shaw.

After the war he also acquired Hog Lane Farm close to Chesham, Buckinghamshire, where he bred pigs (Courtauld Institute students of the 1950s sometimes alleged to have seen him outside 20 Portman Square in a sports car with a pet pig beside him) and grew orchids and fruit which he enjoyed giving to his friends. For convenience he often rode a moped when in London.

He was a large man with quite a booming voice, and according to James Byam Shaw possessed something of a dual character, being business-like and intellectual with his male friends, but with women of all ages had all the charm and manners of an aristocrat from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Portraits
He was painted at least twice as a boy by Adolfo Müller-Ury, who was a close friend of his mother and father and who had acted as an usher at their wedding in New York in February 1898, and who, along with the other ushers, had been given a gold cigarette box by 'Carlo' Seilern by way of thanks. The first portrait was in a group portrait with his two brothers which was certainly painted in London in the summer of 1906 and was exhibited at Knoedler in New York in December that year. The New York Herald, 5 December 1906, called the group 'graceful' and on 8 December 1906 commented that '...The boys are about 4, 6, and 7 years in age, and they have been painted out of doors.'  The second was in late 1906, a full-length dressed in ermine with a rabbit on a string (first exhibited in January 1907 at Knoedler and in February 1908 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC). Both are unlocated. A head and shoulders of Antoine peeping out from behind a red curtain and dated 1909 was in his possession at Princes Gate at his death in 1978 and is now in a private collection in Austria; what appears to be a reduced version of the full-length portrait survives in a private collection in Lucerne, Switzerland; the group portrait is only known through photographs.

Muller-Ury also painted portraits [all lost] of his mother in 1898, two of his aunt Carola Woerishoffer aged 13 in 1898 and posthumously as an adult (like her sister she died young, but in a car crash), and his much beloved grandmother, Mrs Charles Woerishoffer, seated in a lakeland, around 1912.

Publications
Between 1955 and 1971 Antoine Seilern published an illustrated catalogue of his collection in seven parts; he was assisted by Fritz Grossmann. He dedicated the catalogue to his grandmother, Mrs Charles Woerishoffer. The catalogue consists of:

 Flemish Paintings & Drawings at 56 Princes Gate, London SW7, 2 volumes. London: Shenval Press, 1955
 Italian Paintings & Drawings at 56 Princes Gate, London SW7, 2 volumes. London: Shenval Press, 1959
 Paintings and Drawings of Continental Schools Other than Flemish and Italian at 56 Princes Gate, London SW7, 2 volumes. London: Shenval Press, 1961
 Flemish Paintings & Drawings at 56 Princes Gate, London SW7: Addenda. London: Shenval Press, 1969
 Italian Paintings & Drawings at 56 Princes Gate, London SW7: Addenda, 2 volumes. London: Shenval Press, 1969
 Recent Acquisitions at 56 Princes Gate, London SW7, 2 volumes. London: Shenval Press, 1971
 Corrigenda & addenda to the catalogue of Paintings & Drawings at 56 Princes Gate, London SW7. London: Shenval Press, 1971

References

Bibliography
 'Count Seilern's Flemish Paintings and Drawings' in The Burlington Magazine (December 1955), pp. 396–398
 Michael Levey, 'Count Seilern's Italian Pictures and Drawings' in The Burlington Magazine (March 1960) pp. 122–3
 Helen Braham, 'Introduction' to The Princes Gate Collection, Courtauld Institute Galleries, London, 1981, pp. vii-xv
 Dennis Farr, 'Seilern und Aspang, Count Antoine Edward (1901–1978)' in The Oxford Dictionary of American Biography
 James Byam Shaw, 'Count Antoine Seilern (1901–78)' (obituary) in The Burlington Magazine (November 1978), pp. 760–2
 Anthony Blunt, 'Antoine Seilern: Connoisseur in the Grand Tradition' in Apollo (January 1979), pp. 10–23.
 Helen Braham,'My Little Collection' in The Antique Collector (January 1991), pp. 35–41
 Stephen Conrad, 'Re-introducing Adolfo Müller-Ury 1862–1947: The artist, two dealers, four counts and the Kaiser: A hitherto unknown episode in international art history' in The British Art Journal, Volume 4, No. 2, Summer 2003, pp. 57–65.
 Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen, 'Everything connected with Rubens interests me': collecting Rubens' oil sketches: the case of Count Antoine Seilern' in Natalya Gritsay, Alexey Larionov, Stephanie-Suzanne Durante and Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen, Rubens: A Touch of Brilliance (London, 2003)
 Brian Sewell, Outsider II – Always Almost: Never Quite, An Autobiography (London, 2012), pp. 128–133

Auction catalogues:
 'Early Chinese Ceramics, Archaic Bronzes, Paintings and Works of Art: the Property of the Estate of the Late Count Antoine Seilern, sold by Order of Beneficiaries.'  Christie's, London, 1982
 'Albrecht Dürer: Prints from the Collection of the late Count Antoine Seilern.' Christie's, London, 1998
 'The Count Oswald Seilern Collection: from the library of the late Count Oswald Seilern; with two additions from the collection of the late Count Antoine Seilern.' Christie's, London, 2003

External links
 Uni Wien | Anton Seilern
 Familie Seilern | Antoine Seilern

1901 births
1978 deaths
English art collectors
Counts of Austria
English art historians
People from Farnham
20th-century English historians
20th-century art collectors
British Army personnel of World War II
Royal Artillery soldiers
Intelligence Corps soldiers

Antoine Seilern


David G. Watts is a Welsh games designer and publisher.  Originally a school geography teacher at Milford Haven Grammar School, he designed Railway Rivals, his most popular game, to teach the geography of Wales and upon retirement published it under the imprint Rostherne Games.  His games have been published worldwide with his greatest successes in Germany. Most use transportation as a theme but he has also designed abstract games, chess variants and a variety of race games.

Published games
Railway Rivals (Rostherne Games, Games Workshop, Schmidt Spiele, Laurin, and Queen Spiele
Pirate Island (Rostherne Games, and Schmidt Spiele)
Bus Boss
Send
Winchester
Scramble for Africa

External links

Living people
Board game designers
Year of birth missing (living people)

David G. Watts


Mystechs (sometimes referred to as The Mystechs) is an electronic/punk music group formed in 1998 in Chicago, Illinois.  The band's lineup consists of keyboardist/songwriter Emil Hyde joined by a host of other musicians and collaborators. Their music covers a wide range of genres from indie rock to new wave, hip hop and heavy metal. The Mystechs began as an electronica group, gradually incorporating other genres to their sound. Hyde says of the band, "Mystechs began as a nice, normal, female-fronted trip-hop group like Portishead or Esthero".

Formed in 1999, the Mystechs have issued CDs and DVDs on the independent Omega Point label. The CDs are 1999's Fantaseed, 2000's Dark Age Disco, 2001's Unholy Land, 2002's Showtime at the Apocalypse, 2003's City Folk, 2004's Jook Een Dah, 2005's Warriors & Warlocks, 2006's Escape From Planet Love, and 2007's Hot Tub o' Blood.

The DVDs are Legend of the Buick Brothers, Warriors & Warlocks: The Movie, and 2007's Escape From Planet Love: The Motion Picture.

The Mystechs have toured with Aviador Dro and Rick Johnson Rock N' Roll Machine, among other groups.

References

Official Mystechs website

Electronic music groups from Illinois

Mystechs


The Picentes or Piceni or Picentini were an ancient Italic people who lived from the 9th to the 3rd century BC in the area between the Foglia and Aterno rivers, bordered to the west by the Apennines and to the east by the Adriatic coast. Their territory, known as Picenum, therefore included all of today's Marche and the northern part of Abruzzo.

The limits of Picenum depend on the era; during the early historic period the region between the Apennines and the Adriatic Sea south of Ancona was Picenum (South Picenians), while between Ancona and Rimini to the north the population was multi-ethnic (North Picenians) because after 390 BC the Senoni Gauls had combined with or supplanted earlier populations. In the Roman Republic the coastal part of northern Picenum was called the ager Gallicus.

History

The origins of the Picentini date from the 9th c. BC as shown by archaeology. They may have been Sabine colonists, although this is doubted by more recent scholars, who see the South Picenes at least as more closely related to the Sabellians.

The Piceni did not have a state-type organisation, had no predominant inhabited centre and therefore had no need for a capital. In 390 BC the Senoni Gauls invaded Italy from the north and occupied Picenum north of the Esino river and the centuries-old balance in Picenum underwent drastic changes. The archaeological evidence shows groups of Senones settled much further south of this river, in the Macerata area and even in the Ascoli area, in sites such as Filottrano, San Genesio, Matelica, Offida.

Roman Era

When in 299 BC the Romans captured Nequinum, they also concluded a treaty with the Picentes. In 297 BC the Picentes warned the Roman Senate that they had been approached by the Samnites asking for alliance in renewed hostilities with Rome for which the Senate thanked them.

Picentine war

The Romans in about 290 BC had absorbed the territory of the Pretuzi, south of Picenum and after a series of victories with the help of the Piceni themselves, the Senones were expelled from the coastal region in 283 BC and the Romans annexed it down to Ancona when it became part of the Ager publicus (Roman state land). The Romans had made Senigallia a colony and were planning another colony a little further north. Following this progressive and unstoppable expansion of Rome around their territory the Piceni realised that they had supported a great power by which they were surrounded, and hence they broke the alliance and in 269 BC revolted and started the "Picentine war".

The consuls Appius Claudius Russus and Titus Sempronius Sophus were sent by the Roman Senate to Picenum. Sempronius arrived through the Tronto valley, while Appius passed through Umbria, descended into the Potenza valley through the Pioraco straits and took the fortified city of Camerino. To reunite the armies, the consuls conducted the military campaign by first invading the territories of the Agro Palmense (Fermo), so as to wedge themselves between the northern and southern Piceno territories. Sempronius led his troops into the Aso valley, avoiding a frontal attack on the city of Ascoli Piceno, which would have greatly delayed the campaign. After defeating the Picene troops at Interamnia, he arrived in what is now Ortezzano; following a new clash with the Picene resistance, the same city was devastated. Meanwhile, the Piceni forces had gathered at Truento, with a strong army; thus, Sempronius had to go back, in the valley of the Tronto, slowing down the advance. Before the battle started, a massive earthquake shook the earth, throwing men on both sides into panic; the first to awake from fear were the Romans, since the consul stated that the seismic event was a favourable omen for Rome and that, after the battle, he would erected a temple in Tellure. Once the initial fear was overcome, calm returned even among the ranks of the Piceni. The ensuing clash was so violent that few survived the battle, on either side. The negative outcome of the battle reduced the Piceni to sue for peace. For Rome, the victory against the Piceni was so important that, in addition to being given a triumph to the consuls, the Senate decided to mint memorial silver coins for the first time.

Ancona retained the statute of civitas foederata or ally of Rome and Asculum received the same status but the rest of Picenum was annexed and partially Romanised, their cities being made first civitas sine suffragio (268 BC) and then civitas optimo iure (241 BC). The Romans made two more colonies to hold it: Ariminum in 268 and Firmum in 264. Between these years part of the Piceno population was deported: the inhabitants of Ortona to Lake Fucino, some colonies founded in Marsica, Campania, giving them land at Paestum and on the river Silarus and assisted them to build a city, Picentia. They also placed a garrison at Salernum to monitor them. Strabo reports that in his time (64 BC – c. 24 AD) they had depopulated the city in favour of villages scattered about the Salerno region. In Ptolemy's time (2nd century AD) a population named by him the Picentini were still at Salernum and Surentum.

Social War

Following the expansion of the Roman Republic in the 2nd century BC to which the Italians had contributed, they asked that Roman citizenship be extended to them but continued to be legally discriminated against. It came to a head when the Social War (91–87 BC) broke out following an insurrection in the city of Asculum: after having killed the Roman proconsul Quintus Servilius and the legate Fonteius, the people of Asculum massacred the entire Roman population of the city. Subsequently, the Piceni and the other Italic peoples (except the Etruscans and the Umbrians) joined together and made their own capital, Corfinium. The Piceni were therefore the main inspirers, with Peligni and Marsi, of the whole coalition; the Italian army, divided into two branches, one Sabellic led by Quintus Poppaedius Silo, the other Samnite led by Gaius Papius Mutilus, had contingents of numerous peoples while the Piceni were led by Gaius Vidacilius and Publius Ventidius Bassus.

The initial phases of the conflict took place in Picenum, between Asculum and Firmum; the Picene commanders defeated Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo near Falerone (90 BC), forcing him to retreat and find refuge in Firmum, which was besieged. Meanwhile in the summer of the same year the commander Vidacilius rushed to support the Peligni in battle and Ventidius Bassus was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Etruscans and Umbrians to induce them to support the Italian cause; parallel to this, Pompeius Strabo received the support of a Roman contingent, sent to break the siege of the Piceni. The latter thus found themselves having to contend with the Romans on two fronts: the threat was in fact brought both by the besieged inside the city, who could make sorties, and by the troops that had just arrived in Fermo; they were thus defeated, also suffering the loss of the general left to lead the siege, the Marsian Titus Lafrenius.

Picentes were however divided during the War, with some fighting against Rome for the Roman citizenship and others remaining loyal.

With the troops left after the battle of Firmum, Pompeius Strabo moved towards Asculum, besieging it. Shortly after, the commander Vidacilius went north with the intention of freeing the besieged; however, while managing to break through the enemy lines and enter the city, upon his arrival he did not find his fellow citizens willing to oppose the siege as he had requested; disappointed and indignant by this attitude, Vidacilius took his own life.

In 89 BC an army of Marsi tried to undermine the Roman encirclement of the Piceni capital, but failed; the city finally fell on that year, was razed to the ground and its citizens deprived of all property. The fall of Asculum marked the definitive defeat of the Italians. At the end of the conflict, the Piceni were ascribed to the Fabia tribe, obtaining Roman citizenship and completing the Romanisation process of the Piceno population, which began in the 3rd century BC.

Empire

In 27 BC Augustus established a colony at Asculum. The territory inhabited by the Piceni during the Augustan age was divided between Regio V (Picenum) and Regio VI (Umbria et ager gallicus picenus). It was reunified during the empire of Diocletian in the Flaminia et Picenum region.

Periods

The long period of development of the Picenum civilisation has led to several periods (Picenum I to VI) being used to subdivide the period from the 9th to the 3rd c. BC.

The objects left by the Piceni are rich and strongly characteristic: in sculpture, in figurative art (which shows a remarkable imagination in figures and a tendency towards abstractionism), in the originality of the forms of ceramics, in the abundant use of amber, in the great variety of weapons and in eye-catching female adornments.

Phase "Picenum I" (9th century BC)

The birth and spread of the Picene civilisation mark the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in the Marche region. In the first phase, the Piceni necropolises and settlements show a gradual passage between these two ages, given the close archaeological links with the previous Bronze Age civilisations widespread in the Marche: the Apennine culture and the Proto-Villanovan culture. From the point of view of funeral customs, the Picenes are distinguished from previous civilisations by the use of the burial ritual (curled up and on a bed of gravel), but among the elements of continuity with the cultures of the Bronze Age there is the permanence, strongly minority, of incineration tombs.

The archaeological evidence of this first phase shows a concentration of the population in the coastal area and in particular in the area of the Conero promontory (Ancona, Numana, Camerano, Osimo) and the short stretch of high coast of Porto Sant'Elpidio; inside, the settlements of Monte Roberto and Moie di Pollenza are known. The guiding exhibit is the kothon, a small typically Picene terracotta vase, with a flattened globular shape, with a narrow mouth and a single handle.

Phase "Picenum II" (8th century BC)

The archaeological evidence bears witness to a diffusion of the Picene civilisation towards the north, up to the northern part of the Marche, where the very rich necropolis of Novilara was found, up to now the only one fully excavated and which has been able to enjoy a complete publication of the results of the excavation . The phase is characterised by a great development of metallurgy, also testified by typical Picene objects, such as the spiral armlets in laminate and the solar boat pectorals with wild duck protomes on the bow and stern, rich in symbolic meanings. In this phase, among other things, the first iron objects appear: short swords and cutlass. Despite this, bronze swords of the "antenna" type are still produced and used. Some metal objects bear witness to relations with the opposite Adriatic shore; among these the fibulae with spectacles, subsequently accompanied by a vast range of typologies of fibulae of all sizes, which appear as a characterising element of Picene female ornaments.

Phase "Picenum III" (7th century BC and part of the 6th, up to 580 BC)

The diffusion area of the phase coincides with that of the previous phase: all the Marche; however, a concentration of testimonies can be observed in the area close to the Apennines, characterised by an orientalising culture, that is influenced by the Mediterranean East: Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor. In fact, objects from these countries were imported into Picenum through the Greek emporiums of Ankón (Ancona) and Numana. Also characteristic of this phase are the imports of Etruscan objects made in a style similar to the oriental one. Even the Etruscan civilisation, in fact, goes through a similar phase, also called "orientalising". Tumulus tombs and circle burials are typical of this phase, typologies that are influenced by oriental customs; in these tombs the buried are often accompanied by their war chariot. The best known centres of the orientalising Picenum area are located near the Apennine passes and are therefore linked to trade with the Etruscans: Fabriano, Pitino di San Severino, Taverne di Serravalle. The best known finds are the oinochoe made using an ostrich egg, the lid with the dance around the totem, the war chariots. In the Picenum the orientalising period begins around the middle of the 7th century.

Despite the external influences, local art is still flourishing and is characterised by the tendency to synthesise human and animal figures to the point of making them almost abstract; typical examples are the armour-discs decorated with human figures juxtaposed with fantastic animals. Furthermore, in this phase the production of extraordinary ceramics for variety and formal imagination begins. Metallurgy also produces objects of great originality, such as breastplates decorated with human figures linked together by rings or by holding hands; the best known example is the one from Numana. The fibulae are also produced in the most varied typologies, such as those with a winding bow, a dragon with antennas, a ship; another very typical item of women's clothing is the "disc-stole", made with solar symbols.

The Novilara inscriptions and the absorption of the Villanovan culture of Fermo within the Picene culture date back to this period.

Phase "Picenum IV" (from 580 to 470 BC)

The phase is divided by archaeologists into "Picenum IV A" and "Picenum IV B", which are considered here together.

The territory saw a rarefaction of the testimonies to the north of the Esino and a flowering of testimonies in the south of the Marche and in the north of Abruzzo.

Some of the most typical and well-known elements of the Picene civilisation date to this period. In particular they are: the South Picene inscriptions, the monumental statuary of Numana and Capestrano, the extraordinary richness and variety of the female ornamentation of the fibulae, even more than in the previous phase and the enigmatic six-knot rings, which appeared in the early twentieth century as a symbol of the entire Picene civilisation.

The typical material of this period can be considered amber, already attested previously, but with which the best-known objects, coming from Belmonte Picenum, were made in this phase. An amber route has been identified which from the Baltic reached the coasts of Picenum, where the fossil resin was much appreciated, also due to the characteristics that put it in relation with the solar symbology. In the last century, the Piceni were also called "people of amber" because of their love for this material, and their very name was related to the Latin term pix, picis, i.e. amber.

Weapons are now all made of iron, and present a great variety and continuous updating, a rare thing in Italic peoples of the same period; among the offensive weapons of the period we remember the scimitar broadsword of the machaira type and, among those of defense, the typical helmets with reliefs in the shape of animal horns, which however coexist with other helmets of the Greek-Corinthian type. The production of armor-discs continues, but they too are strongly influenced by Greek art in their ornamentation. The inhumation is now fully extended.

Phase "Picenum V" (from 470 BC until the beginning of the 4th century)

From a territorial point of view we note a revitalisation of the Picenum centres north of the Esino; south of this river all the centres already vital in the previous phase continue their activities.

The dominant archaeological feature of this phase is the massive importation of Greek red-figure pottery, which then spread throughout the Picenum territory through the ports of Numana and Ancona. In particular, the complex of vases from Numana is exceptionally rich, with specimens also monumental and with rich mythological representations.

This abundance can be explained by thinking of the fact that, after the naval battle of Alalia (540 BC), the Etruscans and the Carthaginians managed to prevent the Greeks from trading freely in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Thus the Adriatic cities of Numana, Spina and Adria flourished , which in any case allowed a commercial outlet for the rich Greek vase production. Interestingly, a form of Attic pottery was produced by the Greeks specifically for the Piceni; it is the "plate with a high foot", which some archaeologists think was used to serve a typical Picenum product during banquets: olives.

Phase "Picenum VI" (4th and a small part of the 3rd century BC, up to the Battle of Sentinum)

The Battle of Sentinum conventionally marks, according to archaeology, the dissolution of the Picene culture, which from then was gradually absorbed within the Roman one. Naturally, even after this date, the history of the Piceni continues, even if its vitality is no longer expressed so much on a cultural (and therefore archaeological) level, as in the important role they played during the Romanisation of the Adriatic coast. This explains the fact that, despite the Picenum phase VI is the last described by the archaeologists, the history of the Picenes continues even after this phase, and is the subject of the following paragraphs.

A fundamental event of the period is the arrival of the Senoni Gauls, who occupied the northern part of the Picenum territory, reaching as far as the Esino river, with temporary or limited expansions even further south. The Senones partially merged with the Piceni of the occupied areas, but profoundly influencing their culture. After the Gallic invasion, the control by the Piceni of the Adriatic coastal area is approximately included between the Castellano torrent, Numana and the Conero. The Picenum territory occupied by the Gauls was later called by the Romans Ager Gallicus or specifically the Ager Gallicus Picenus.

Another event that contributed to modifying the ethnic balance of the Picenum territory was the arrival of Greeks, coming from Syracuse, who founded the colony of Ankón (Ancona) which absorbed the previous Picenum village.

Despite these factors, the Picene culture precisely in this period produced a highly original type of vase, defined by archaeologists as "upper Adriatic ceramics", characterised by female figures seen in profile, so stylised as to recall some forms of modern art.

Myth

There is a legend that a woodpecker () led the way to Picenum for the people who became the Picentini and a folk etymology of their ethnonym was "those of the woodpecker." For this reason the green woodpecker is the modern emblem of the Marche region.

Culture

Excavations in Picenum have given much insight into the region during the Iron Age. Excavated tombs in Novilara of the Molaroni and Servici cemeteries show that the Piceni laid bodies in the ground wrapped in garments they had worn in life.

Warriors were buried with a helmet, weapons and vessels for food and drinks. Buried beads, bone, fibulae and amber seem to demonstrate that there was an active trade in the ninth and perhaps tenth centuries on the Adriatic coast, especially in the fields of amber and beads of glass paste. In women's graves there is a large abundance of ornaments made of bronze and iron.

Origins of these items may also show that the Piceni may have looked to the south and east for development.

The warrior tombs seem to show that the Piceni were a war-like people. Every man's grave contained more or less a complete outfit of a warrior, with the most frequent weapon being a spear. Piceni swords appear to be imported from the Balkans.

Genetics
A 2017 analysis of maternal haplogroups from ancient and modern samples indicated a substantial genetic similarity among the modern inhabitants of Central Italy and the area's ancient pre-Roman inhabitants of settlement of Novilara in the province of Pesaro, and evidence of substantial genetic continuity in the region from pre-Roman times to the present with regard to mitochondrial DNA.

Language

From Ancona southward a language of the Umbrian group was originally spoken, today called South Picene, attested mainly in inscriptions. North of Ancona around Pesaro a non-Italic language termed North Picene, written in a version of the Old Italic script, is attested by four inscriptions (three of which are very brief). Both the meaning of the inscriptions and the relationship of North Picene to other languages remain unknown. There is phonological evidence that it was linked more closely to the Indo-European language family (than to, for example, Etruscan).

Ethnonym

One endonym of the Picentes, or at least the South Picenes, may be Pupeneis or, according to Edward Togo Salmon "something similar", as this apparently ethnic name is used in four South Picenian language inscriptions found near Ascoli Piceno. Later refinements of the argument connected it to the Latin name Poponius, as in inscription TE 1 found near Teramo:
apaes ...púpúnis nir
"Appaes ... a Poponian man"
The connection between Poponian and Picentes, if any, remains obscure.

There is no mention in ancient sources of the endonym used by the North Picenes.

The first document to mention the Latin exonym Picentes is the Fasti triumphales, which record for 268/267 BC a triumph given to Publius Sempronius Sophus for a victory de Peicentibus, "over the Picentes," where the -ei- is an Old Latin form. The entire group of Latin Picene words delivered subsequently appear to follow the standard rules for Latin word formation. The root is Pīc-, provenience and meaning yet unknown. The extended Pīc-ēn- is used to form a second-declension adjective, appearing in such phrases as Pīcēnus ager, "Picene country," Pīcēnae olivae, "Picene olives", and the neuter used as a noun, Pīcēnum. These are not references to any people, *Pīcēni, but to the country. Pīcēnus used alone implies Pīcēnus ager, the "Picene (country)" and does not mean one resident of Picenum. This adjective is never used of the people.

For the people, a third-declension adjective stem is formed: Pīc-ent-, used in Pīcens and Pīcentes, "a Picentine" and "the Picentines," which are nouns formed from the adjective. This adjective can be used of people or of other words, as well as in a second formation of the name of the country, Pīcentum. From it comes a final name of the people, Pīcentini. The historical order in which these words appeared or whether they came from each other remains unknown.

Prominent Picentes

Gentes of Picentine origin
 Afrania gens
 Annia gens
 Nasidiena (gens)
 Pasidiena gens
 Pilia (gens)
 Saturia gens

See also
Picenum
North Picene language
South Picene language
Ancient peoples of Italy

Notes

Italic peoples
Socii
Ancient Abruzzo
History of le Marche

Picentes


In fisheries and conservation biology, the catch per unit effort (CPUE) is an indirect measure of the abundance of a target species. Changes in the catch per unit effort are inferred to signify changes to the target species' true abundance. A decreasing CPUE indicates overexploitation, while an unchanging CPUE indicates sustainable harvesting.

CPUE has a number of advantages over other methods of measuring abundance. It does not interfere with routine harvesting operations, and data are easily collected. The data are also easy to analyse, even for non-specialists, in contrast to methods based on transects. This means that decisions about stock management can also be made by the people doing the harvesting. The best practice is to standardise the effort employed (e.g. number of traps or duration of searching), which controls for the reduction in catch size that often results from subsequent efforts.

Although CPUE is a relative measure of abundance, it can be used to estimate absolute abundances. The main difficulty when using measures of CPUE is to define the unit of effort. CPUE is also often nonlinearly related to abundance, making interpretation more difficult.

See also
List of commercially important fish species
Sustainable fishery

References

Conservation biology
Fisheries science

Catch per unit effort


Focal dermal hypoplasia is a form of ectodermal dysplasia. It is a multisystem disorder characterized primarily by skin manifestations to the atrophic and hypoplastic areas of skin which are present at birth. These defects manifest as yellow-pink bumps on the skin and pigmentation changes. The disorder is also associated with shortness of stature and some evidence suggests that it can cause epilepsy.

Signs and symptoms

Genetics

Focal dermal hypoplasia has been associated with PORCN gene mutations on the X chromosome. 90% of the individuals who are affected with the syndrome are female: the commonly accepted, though unconfirmed, explanation for this is that the non-mosaic hemizygous males are not viable.

The differential diagnosis of focal dermal hypoplasia (Goltz) syndrome includes autosomal recessive Setleis syndrome due to TWIST2 gene mutations. It associated with morning glory anomaly, polymicrogyria, incontinentia pigmenti, oculocerebrocutaneous syndrome, Rothmund-Thomson syndrome and microphthalmia with linear skin defects (also known as MLS) syndrome because they are all caused by deletions or point mutations in the HCCS gene.

Diagnosis
Goltz syndrome is a very rare diagnosis.  To date, there are fewer than 25 cases of Goltz syndrome in the United States.

Treatment
Management is targeted toward the various soft tissue and skeletal anomalies, with the goal of achieving optimal functional and cosmetic results.

Eponyms

Jessner–Cole syndrome
The disorder was first formally recognized by dermatologists Max Jessner and Harold Newton Cole in the early 20th century. Jessner and Cole's papers were referenced more than any others in the first half of the 20th century.

Goltz–Gorlin
Besides its formal name, it is most commonly referred to as Goltz–Gorlin syndrome, after Robert Goltz and Robert Gorlin. Goltz and Gorlin worked together at the University of Minnesota  and are credited for describing the symptoms of the disorder in more detail than ever before and tracking its genetic trends. The name became popular during the second half of the 20th century.

See also
 List of cutaneous conditions
 List of radiographic findings associated with cutaneous conditions

References

External links
 http://www.orpha.net/consor/www/cgi-bin/OC_Exp.php?lng=EN&Expert=2092
  GeneReview/NIH/UW entry on Focal dermal hypoplasia

Genodermatoses
X-linked dominant disorders
Rare diseases

Focal dermal hypoplasia


Carl Zeiss (11 September 1816 – 3 December 1888) was a German scientific instrument maker, optician and businessman. In 1846 he founded his workshop, which is still in business as Carl Zeiss AG. Zeiss gathered a group of gifted practical and theoretical opticians and glass makers to reshape most aspects of optical instrument production. His collaboration with Ernst Abbe revolutionized optical theory and practical design of microscopes.

References

1816 births
1888 deaths

Carl Zeiss