The Rotunda

of Alabama." On April 18, inaugural ceremonies held and the University opened. By May 28, 52 students had enrolled. The campus consisted of seven buildings: two faculty houses, two dormitories, the laboratory, the hotel (now Gorgas House), and the Rotunda. The first president for the University of Alabama was Robert Witt, but the President’s Mansion wasn’t finished until 1841, and its first occupant was Basil Manly. The University of Alabama was the first in the state to offer engineering…

I arrived at the museum around noon and decided to first use this time as a museum visitor, assuming the average visitor would first eat lunch. During this time I viewed several of the major exhibits such as the China Gallery in the massive rotunda, Iraq’s Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur’s Royal Cemetery, and two of their special exhibitions, Beneath the Surface: Life, Death and Gold in Ancient Panama and Native American Voices: The People – Here and Now. These exhibitions feature several…

country shaken. I encourage you to read the description of public mourning in Robert Caro’s book The Passage of Power. I was struck by the nature of the national mourning, especially the hundreds of thousands who came to view the body in the Capitol Rotunda, and the poignant quality of that line of people wanting to pay their respects, never going down, but only growing until, finally, they had to send people…

The Parthenon of Athens is over five hundred years older than the Pantheon of Rome. The Romans admired the ancient Greeks, who were as far removed from them across time as we are from Renaissance Italy. Although Greece and Rome were, and are different cultures, our concept of ‘progress’ is also relevant. The Romans were more modern, more globalized and more technologically advanced. This shows in their art, but not as much as in the architectural techniques and materials available to them.…

The grandiose course of human history has bared witness to many great wonders of the world. Whether it be the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, or the ancient pyramids of Egypt and Mesoamerica, human ingenuity has truly shown its ability to stand the test of time through its many architectural accomplishments. This essay will discuss the architectural accomplishments of two particular monuments of human history – the Greek Parthenon, and the Roman Pantheon. The Parthenon and the Pantheon equally…

Not only for that reason, but she later on mentioned a leaf falling from the sky, which also hints at it being fall outside. It seems as though the metaphors in this story that could be found, were about the sky or about the scenery. “Behind the rotunda the slender trees with yellow leaves down drooping and through them just a line of sea, and beyond the blue sky the gold-veined clouds” (197). This metaphor is to perhaps compare the nature around her including the sky to that of a…

Rome stood as a true empire in the early centuries of the Common Era. Its wealth and power went unmatched in the West for years. Engineering was an area Rome specialized in. With the invention of concrete, Rome could build structures unmatched in the ancient world. Though Rome herself fell, these buildings have stood the test of time. Everyone knows the Colosseum, which is also, though less popularly, known as the Flavian Amphitheater. While the Colosseum is spectacular in its own right,…

Twenty years and 58,286 deaths later, the Vietnam War went down as one of the most significant in United States history. (Source A) The war is more historically remembered as the Indochina War to Americans due to its location and its unforeseeable loss to North Vietnam. Although the United States was just an ally of South Vietnam with hopes to stop the spread of communism, they ended up being the largest foreign military presence which lead to Vietnam schooling labeling it as the American War.…

When people hear the word penitentiary they automatically think prison, but there is a difference in the two institutions. Penitentiary was a deep and place criminal went as a form of punishment for a crime someone committed. A penitentiary was considered secular and spiritual. It was a place of human punishment instead of physical punishments that was used in other societies. A penitentiary was an idea, or set of principles, opposed to an actual physical institution with shape and form. The…

of marble columns. The semi-circular ones are made with Phrygian purple, and the rectangular ones with Numidian yellow. Each alcove has three decorative recess sets for statues, along with a small window. There are seven windows placed around the rotunda walls. The floor of this building is checked with the colors grey granite, red porphyry, Numidian yellow and Phrygian purple marble (Cartwright, "Pantheon”). Another important element within this structure, that was briefly mentioned earlier,…