Beautiful Art: architecture, paintings, sculptures, etc

"Like in a nebulous dream, the Church of Saint-Cirq and Saint-Juliet suddenly emerges from thick fog. The latter conceals the abyss by filling the dizzying void that, just behind the building, plunges towards the Lot river at about eighty meters below.
Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, October 22, 2022. Mavic pro drone, manual panorama."
(c) Pierre Peul Feyte

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The pyramids of Meroe, in Sudan. Most of the 41 tombs at the site house kings and queens of the powerful Kingdom of Kush (900 BC - 400 AD), who ruled over a vast territory in the central Nile Valley.

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The great ancient civilizations of Sudan relied on agriculture to prosper and to erect majestic tombs and temples in honor of their gods, kings, queens and nobility. From this building fever came some 255 pyramids, more than twice as many as those erected in neighboring Egypt.

Nubia once stretched from Aswan in Egypt to the present Sudanese city of Khartoum in the south. It was the cradle of one of Africa's earliest civilizations, the Kingdom of Kush, whose kings, known as the "Black Pharaohs," conquered Egypt in 747 B.C. and ruled this vast territory for nearly a century.

The banks of the world's longest river, the Nile, were the scene of these struggles for influence. Rising in Lake Victoria to the south and flowing into the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the famous river was considered the source of life itself because of its annual flooding, which fertilized the land for cultivation.

It is a nine-hour drive from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, to Soleb and its temple. This is the best preserved temple in the country and the southernmost building erected by Amenhotep III, the Egyptian pharaoh who also built the temples of Luxor. It was once guarded by the Lions of Prudhoe, delicately carved red granite felines, now on display at the British Museum in London, which bear inscriptions of Tutankhamen, made during a visit by the child-king.

A few kilometers south of Soleb, is Kerma. Founded about 5,500 years ago, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Kush developed around a huge adobe temple called the "Defuffa of the West". At its peak, the city had a population of 10,000. Today, only nesting swallows still live among its mud brick ruins. One of the oldest necropolises in Africa is just a short distance away.
 
The beautiful Leeds Castle in Kent, UK. It is built on islands in a lake formed by the River Len to the east of the village of Leeds. A castle has existed on the site since 857, but nothing remains of the original. 1119, Robert de Crevecoeur rebuilt it in stone as a Norman stronghold and Leeds Castle descended through the de Crevecoeur family until the 1260s. It has had various adventures since then including being owned by kings and queens over the centuries and nowadays used for film locations and tourism.

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Château de Versailles
Official Website in English:
The Hall of Mirrors, the most famous room in the Palace, was built to replace a large terrace designed by the architect Louis Le Vau, which opened onto the garden. The terrace originally stood between the King’s Apartments to the north and the Queen’s to the south, but was awkward and above all exposed to bad weather, and it was not long before the decision was made to demolish it. Le Vau’s successor, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, produced a more suitable design that replaced the terrace with a large gallery. Work started in 1678 and ended in 1684.

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Panoramic view of the ceiling:

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