The Lovely Hilltop Town of Civita di Bagnoregio

The lovely Civita di Bagnoregio is a small Italian hill town in the province of Viterbo, in central Italy. The town is located atop a highpoint rising high above a vast canyon that is unceasingly being eroded by two streams flowing in the valleys below and by the action of rain and wind. This beautiful 2,500-years-old town is under constant threat of devastation as its edges are falling off, leaving the buildings built on the plateau to crumble.

Civita di Bagnoregio is actually two towns. Civita is on a hill reachable only by a long stone walkway that begins at the end of the road from neighboring town Bagnoregio. Once, Civita was the larger community and Bagnoregio the satellite town. Nowadays, Civita has only around 6 year-round residents determined to keep this little fragment of rock alive.

Civita di Bagnoregio was bringing into being by the Etruscans about 2,500 years ago. At that time, it was a vital city for its position along an ancient road interlinked to a dense network of trade routes. Civita’s decay started in the 16th century triggered by a dreadful earthquake which, affecting serious damages to the roads and buildings compelled plentiful inhabitants to leave the city. The constant seismic activities that followed in the course of the centuries brought a continue series of landslides. By the end of the 17th century, the bishop and the municipal government were enforced to move to Bagnoregio, and by the 19th century, Civita was turning into a lovely an island. Bagnoregio continues as a small but flourishing town, while Civita became recognized in Italian as il paese che muore ("the town that is dying"). It’s only recently that Civita began experiencing a tourist revival.

Civita is an attractive medieval town with architecture spanning several hundred years. The town’s isolation has allowed it to withstand most disturbances of modernity as well as the destruction brought by two world wars. Notwithstanding its nickname, during the tourist season, Civita bustles with day trippers.

Giant Horse Head Sculptures in Scotland

The giant sculpture is towering 30 meters (approximately 100 feet) above the ground, The Kelpies consists of a pair of mammoth horse head sculptures installed by artist Andy Scott in Falkirk, Scotland. The Scottish artist almost spent a total of 9 years designing and then assembling the sculptures on-site, crafting steel parts into intricate busts that allude to the legendary Scottish water spirit that takes the form of a horse.

The Kelpies project was undergoing construction from long time in The Helix Park, but as these spectacular images taken by photographer dswain display us, the canal site has been transformed entirely to complement the dynamic grace of the sculptures since the installation was opened to the public in April 2014. Moreover; the colorful lights around and inside the steel works illuminate their superlative shapes in the darkness, additionally increasing the beauty of the Scottish landscape.

For artists, the project's location finally decided to in his father's hometown of Falkirk, the cultural tale of kelpies, and Scotland's industrial past compelled him to take on the project as a source of national pride. The Scott determined to build around a contemporary sculptural monument. Water-borne, towering gateways into The Helix, the Forth & Clyde canal and Scotland, translating the legacy of the area into honored equine guardians he say; I see The Kelpies as a personification of local and national equine history, of the lost industries of Scotland. I also visualize them as a symbol of modern Scotland full of pride and royal, of the people and the land. They’re the culmination of cutting edge technology and hand crafted artisanship, formed by our country's leading authorities through international partnerships."

Lava Lake on Top of Mount Nyiragongo, Congo

You would be thinking that the last place on earth where people would want to inhabit to the bottom of a steep volcano hosting the world's largest fluid lava lake. Mount Nyiragongo Virunga National Park Democratic Republic of the Congo is an active volcano and very famous for housing the biggest lava lake in the world. The volcano’s slopes are steep and lava is very fluid, thus enabling it to flow in high velocity when it erupts.

In spite of the continuous threat of catastrophic fiery death, the area at the foot of Mount Nyiragongo is dotted with greatly populated bustling villages. Well, the one such disaster happened in 1977, when the walls of the crater burst open and the lake of molten rock drained in less than an hour, pouring itself down into the villages at a frightening speed of up to 60 mph. Different your average lava flow, the exclusive presence of an alkali-rich volcanic rock, melilite nephelinite, creates a extremely fluid consistency, allowing it to move at speeds that can with no trouble overcome anything in its path. The official death toll was 70, but numerous report states much higher numbers, some guessing the losses at several thousand.

The dreadful eruption of 1977 took place when the lake was at its maximum depth ever recorded, 10,700 ft., but the extent of its volume varies depending on activity. Because no one exactly knows how long the volcano has been active, but history tells us since 1882 it's been very busy, erupting more than 34 times, sporadically bubbling and spewing fire for years before settling down. It is located inside Virunga National Park about 20 km. North of Goma, Mount Nyiragongo is now still active, its last deadly eruption taking 147 lives in 2002. Its activity is, for now, being confined to the crater, where the lake of lava is slowly rising once more.

 Source: Charismatic Planet

Ksar Ouled Soltane is a Multi-Story Vaulted Granary Built by Berbers in the 15 Century

Ksar Ouled Soltane is located approximately 20 kilometers south of the city of Tataouine, in southern Tunisia. This is an attractive and perfectly preserved fortified granary well built by the Berbers in the 15th Century. This is built with adobe; the ksar is spread out over two courtyards, each of which has a perimeter of multi-story vaulted granary cellars called ghorfas. In those unruly Middle Ages, granaries were frequently fortified to stop raids on a village's food supply. Such as other granaries created by North African Berber communities, Ksar Ouled Soltane is located on a hilltop, to help protect it from raiding parties.

Ksar Ouled Soltane was originally built in the 15th century and had myriads of ghorfas for storage of grains. Therefore later in the 19th century, the ksar was stretched into a second courtyard, and the quantity of ghorfas increased to around 400. The two courtyards are interlinked by a passage made of palm wood. The ghorfas are four stories high and reachable by steep external stairs that reach up one by one to the single doors. Each ghorfas was assigned to and used by a single family. So more than five hundred years, the nomadic tribes used them to store grain and olives. However on Friday afternoons the courtyard functioned as meeting places for the community, the majority of whom spent most of their year in the pastures with their goats, sheep and camels. Ksar Ouled Soltane appeared in the Star Wars movies as slave quarters where Anakin and his mother lived in the Phantom Menace. With the passage of ups and downs, The Ksar was needed to repair in 1997 and restored to its original state, though with cement rather than the original materials of mud and brick. It is now a popular tourist destination in Tunisia with visitors coming to see its well-preserved granary vaults.