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+Coordinates: 13°53′N 60°58′W / 13.883°N 60.967°W / 13.883; -60.967
+
+in the Caribbean (light yellow)
+
+Saint Lucia (UK: /sənt luˈsiːə, -ˈluː.ʃə/ (listen), US: /seɪnt ˈluːʃə/ (listen); French: Sainte-Lucie) is a sovereign island country in the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean.[7] The island was previously called Iyonola, the name given to the island by the native Amerindians and later, Hewanorra, the name given by the native Caribs. Part of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of 617 km2 (238 square miles) and reported a population of 165,595 in the 2010 census.[8] Its capital is Castries.
+
+The French were the first Europeans to settle on the island. They signed a treaty with the native Island Caribs in 1660. England took control of the island from 1663 to 1667. In ensuing years, it was at war with France fourteen times, and the rule of the island changed frequently (it was ruled seven times each by the French and British). In 1814, the British took definitive control of the island. Because it switched so often between British and French control, Saint Lucia was also known as the "Helen of the West Indies" after the Greek mythological character, Helen of Troy.
+
+Representative government came about in 1840 (universal suffrage was established in 1953). From 1958 to 1962, the island was a member of the West Indies Federation. On 22 February 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state and a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.[7] Saint Lucia is a mixed jurisdiction,[9] meaning that it has a legal system based in part on both the civil law and English common law. The Civil Code of St. Lucia of 1867 was based on the Quebec Civil Code of 1866, as supplemented by English common law-style legislation. It is also a member of Organisation internationale de la Francophonie.[10]
+
+One of the Windward Islands, Saint Lucia was named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse (AD 283 – 304).[11] It is one of two countries in the world named after a woman (Ireland is named after the Celtic goddess of fertility Eire)[12] and the only country named after a historical woman. St. Helena, another island, is also named for an historical woman—the mother of Emperor Constantine—but St. Helena is a Dependent Territory of the United Kingdom and is not a sovereign nation.  Legend states French sailors were shipwrecked at St. Lucia on 13 December, the feast day of St. Lucy, naming the island in honor of Sainte Lucie.[13]
+
+The first proven inhabitants were the Arawaks, though there may have been other native peoples prior to this. The Arawak are believed to have come from northern South America sometime around 200–400 AD, as there are numerous archaeological sites on the island where specimens of their well-developed pottery have been found. There is evidence to suggest that the Arawak called the island Iouanalao, meaning 'Land of the Iguanas', due to the island's high number of iguanas.[14]
+
+The more aggressive Caribs arrived around 800 AD, and seized control from the Arawaks by killing their men and assimilating the women into their own society.[14] They called the island Hewanarau, and later Hewanorra (Ioüanalao, or "there where iguanas are found").[15]
+
+Christopher Columbus may have sighted the island during his fourth voyage in 1502, since he made landfall on Martinique, yet he does not mention the island in his log. Juan de la Cosa noted the island on his map of 1500, calling it El Falcon, and another island to the south Las Agujas. A Spanish cédula from 1511 mentions the island within the Spanish domain, and a globe in the Vatican made in 1520, shows the island as Sancta Lucia.
+
+In the late 1550s, the French pirate François le Clerc (known as Jambe de Bois, due to his wooden leg) set up a camp on Pigeon Island, from where he attacked passing Spanish ships. In 1605, an English vessel called the Oliphe Blossome was blown off-course on its way to Guyana, and the 67 colonists started a settlement on Saint Lucia, after initially being welcomed by the Carib chief Anthonie. By 26 September 1605 only 19 survived following continued attacks by the Carib chief Augraumart, so the settlers fled the island.[16]
+
+In 1664, Thomas Warner (son of Sir Thomas Warner, the governor of St Kitts) claimed Saint Lucia for England. He brought 1,000 men to defend it from the French, but after two years, only 89 survived with the rest dying mostly due to disease. In 1666, the French West India Company resumed control of the island, which in 1674 was made an official French crown colony as a dependency of Martinique.[17]
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+Both the British and the French found the island attractive after the slave-based sugar industry developed, and during the 18th century the island changed ownership or was declared neutral territory a dozen times, although the French settlements remained and the island was a de facto French colony well into the eighteenth century.
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+In 1722, George I of Great Britain granted both Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent to The 2nd Duke of Montagu. He in turn appointed Nathaniel Uring, a merchant sea captain and adventurer, as deputy-governor. Uring went to the islands with a group of seven ships, and established settlement at Petit Carenage. Unable to get enough support from British warships, he and the new colonists were quickly run off by the French.[18]
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+During the Seven Years' War, Britain occupied Saint Lucia for a year. Britain handed the island back to the French at the Treaty of Paris in 1763. Like the English and Dutch on other islands, the French began to develop the land for the cultivation of sugar cane as a commodity crop on large plantations in 1765.
+
+In January 1791, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly sent four commissaires to St Lucia to spread their revolutionary philosophy. By August 1791, slaves began to abandon their estates and Governor de Gimat fled.  In December 1792, Lt. Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse arrived with revolutionary pamphlets, and the impoverished whites and free people of color began to arm themselves as patriots. On 1 February 1793, France declared war on England and Holland, and General Nicolas Xavier de Ricard took over as Governor.  The National Convention abolished enslavement on 4 February 1794, but St. Lucia fell to a British invasion led by Vice Admiral John Jervis on 1 April 1794. Morne Fortune became Fort Charlotte. Soon, a patriot army of resistance, L'Armee Française dans les Bois, began to fight back.  Thus started the First Brigand War.[19]
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+A short time later the British invaded the island as a part of the war with France that had recently broken out. On 21 February 1795 a group of locals under the nominal control of Victor Hugues defeated a battalion of British troops at Vieux Fort and Rabot. In 1796, Castries was burned as part of the conflict. General John Moore retook Fort Charlotte in 1796 with the 27th Inniskilling Fusiliers after two days of bitter fighting. As an honour, the Fusiliers' regimental colour was displayed on the flagstaff of the captured fortress at Morne Fortune for an hour before being replaced by the Union Jack.[20] Moore would then participate in British efforts to repress the slave rebels until falling ill of yellow fever, upon which he returned to Britain before 1798.
+
+In 1803, the British regained control of the island. Many of the rebels escaped into the thick rainforest where they evaded capture and established maroon communities.[21]
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+The slavery on the island was continued for a short time, but anti-slavery sentiment was rising in Britain. The British stopped the import of slaves by anyone, white or coloured, when they abolished the slave trade in 1807.
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+France and Great Britain continued to contest Saint Lucia until the British secured it in 1814, as part of the Treaty of Paris ending the Napoleonic Wars. Thereafter, Saint Lucia was considered part of the British Windward Islands colony.
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+The institution of slavery was abolished on the island in 1836, as it was throughout the British Empire. After abolition, all former slaves had to serve a four-year "apprenticeship," to accustom them to the idea of freedom. During this period, they worked for their former masters for at least three-quarters of the work week. Full freedom was duly granted by the British in 1838. By that time, people of African ethnicity greatly outnumbered those of ethnic European background. Some people of Carib descent also comprised a minority on the island.
+
+Castries' harbour was protected by a system of 60 surrounding forts. Along the top of Morne Fortune there are six military sites, building work by the French started in 1768, and the British completed the work by 1890. They include Fort Charlotte (Old Morne Fortress), the Apostle's Battery (1888–1890), The Powder Magazine built by the French in the 1750s, Provost's Redoubt (1792) built as a lookout point, and the Combermere barracks.[22]
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+The best preserved installation is a battery at La Toc Point, completed in 1888 it was not abandoned till 1905. This fort in particular was built by the British to repel any attack from the United States on the then valuable coaling harbour of Castries.[23]
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+The Second World War visited the island directly during the Battle of the Caribbean, when a German U-boat attacked and sank two British ships in Castries harbour on 9 March 1942.[24][25]
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+In the mid-twentieth century, Saint Lucia joined the West Indies Federation (1958–1962) when the colony was dissolved. In 1967, Saint Lucia became one of the six members of the West Indies Associated States, with internal self-government. In 1979, it gained full independence under Sir John Compton of the conservative United Workers party (UWP). The new country chose to remain within the British Commonwealth and to retain Queen Elizabeth as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.
+
+Compton's initial term as Prime Minister lasted only a few months, as he was defeated by the left-leaning Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) under Allan Louisy in the 1979 Saint Lucian general election.[26] The SLP sought to improve ties with socialist countries in the region such as Cuba, though the economy was severely affected by Hurricane Allen in 1980.[27] Louisy was replaced as Prime Minister by Winston Cenac in 1981. The SLP government faced a series of strikes and Cenac agreed to stand down, with Michael Pilgrim of the Progressive Labour Party briefly serving as Acting Prime Minister until the 1982 Saint Lucian general election.[28] This election was won by the UWP under John Compton, who proceeded to rule the country uninterrupted until 1996;[29][30] he was succeeded by Vaughan Lewis, who ruled for just over a year before losing the 1997 Saint Lucian general election to the SLP under Kenny Anthony. During this era the UWP adopted a generally pro-Western, pro-business outlook, seeking to diversify the economy away from over-reliance on bananas and boosting the tourism sector.[27] Compton was also a keen advocate of regional integration.[30]
+
+Kenny remained in power until 2006 when the UWP, again led by Compton, won control of parliament. Compton pledged to boost the economy and tackle the rising crime rate.[31] Police attempts to curb crime were criticised in 2015 when it emerged that several suspects had been unlawfully shot by police and the circumstances of their deaths covered up.[27] In May 2007, after Compton suffered a series of small strokes,[32][33] Finance and External Affairs Minister Stephenson King became acting prime minister and succeeded Compton as Prime Minister when the latter died in September 2007. In November 2011, Kenny Anthony was re-elected as prime minister for a third time.[34] In the June 2016 election the United Worker's Party (UWP) assumed power again, with Allen Chastanet becoming prime minister.[35]
+
+The volcanic island of Saint Lucia is more mountainous than most Caribbean islands, with the highest point being Mount Gimie, at 950 metres (3,120 feet) above sea level.[11][27] Two other mountains, the Pitons, form the island's most famous landmark.[11][27] They are located between Soufrière and Choiseul on the western side of the island. Saint Lucia is the only island in the world that contains a drive-in volcano.[dubious  – discuss] Forests cover about 77% of the land area.[11]
+
+There are a number of small islands off the coast, the largest of which are the Maria Islands in the south-east.
+
+The capital city of Saint Lucia is Castries (population 60,263) where 32.4% of the population lives. Other major towns include Gros Islet, Soufrière, and Vieux Fort. The population tends to be concentrated around the coast, with the interior more sparsely populated, due to the presence of dense forests.[11][27]
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+The local climate is tropical, specifically a tropical rainforest climate under the Köppen climate classification, moderated by northeast trade winds, with a dry season from 1 December to 31 May, and a wet season from 1 June to 30 November (referred to by locals as the hurricane season).
+
+Average daytime temperatures are around 30 °C (86.0 °F), and average nighttime temperatures are around 24 °C (75.2 °F). Since it is fairly close to the equator, the temperature does not fluctuate much between winter and summer. Average annual rainfall ranges from 1,300 mm (51.2 in) on the coast to 3,810 mm (150 in) in the mountain rainforests.
+
+The geology of St. Lucia can be described as composing three main areas.  The oldest, 16–18 Ma, volcanic rocks are exposed from Castries northward and consist of eroded basalt and andesite centres.  The middle, central highlands, portion of the island consists of dissected andesite centres, 10.4 to 1 Mya, while the lower southwest portion of the island contains recent activity from the Soufriere Volcanic Centre (SVC).  This SVC, centered about the Qualibou depression, contains pyroclastic flow deposits, lava flows, domes, block and ash flow deposits, and explosion craters.  This depression's perimeter includes the town of Soufriere, Mount Tabac, Mt. Gimie, Morne Bonin, and Gros Piton.  At 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) in diameter, though the western portion is open towards the Grenada basin, the depression formed as recently as 100 kya.  The depression is noted for its geothermal activity, especially at Sulphur Springs and Soufrière Estates, a phreatic eruption in 1776, and recent seismic activity (2000–2001).[37]
+
+Eroded andesitic stratovolcanoes to the north east of the depression include Mt. Gimie, Piton St Esprit, and Mt. Grand Magazin, all greater than 1 Ma in age.  Andesitic and dacite pyroclastic flows from these volcanoes are found at Morne Tabac dome (532 ka), Morne Bonin dome (273 kya), and Bellevue (264 kya). Avalanche deposits from the formation of the Qualibou depression are found offshore, and in the massive blocks of Rabot, Pleisance, and Coubaril.  The dacitic domes of Petit Piton (109 kya) and Gros Piton (71 kya) were then extruded onto the depression floor accompanied by the Anse John (104 kya) and La Pointe (59.8 kya) pyroclastic flows.  Later, pyroclastic flows include pumice-rich Belfond and Anse Noir (20 kya).  Finally, the dacitic domes of Terre Blanche (15.3 kya) and Belfond (13.6 kya) formed within the depression.[37]
+
+Saint Lucia is a Commonwealth realm. Elizabeth II is Queen of Saint Lucia, represented on the island by a governor-general. The prime minister[38] is normally the head of the party commanding the support of the majority of the members of the House of Assembly, which has 17 seats.[39] The other chamber of Parliament, the Senate, has eleven appointed members.
+
+Saint Lucia is a two-party parliamentary democracy. Three political parties participated in the 6 June 2016 General Election. The United Workers Party, led by Allen Chastanet, won eleven of the seventeen seats.[40]
+
+Saint Lucia maintains friendly relations with the major powers active in the Caribbean, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France. Saint Lucia has no current international disputes.
+
+Saint Lucia is a full and participating member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), and La Francophonie. Saint Lucia is a Commonwealth Realm.
+
+Saint Lucia became the 152nd member of the United Nations on 9 December 1979.[41] As of January 2018, Cosmos Richardson, who presented his credentials on 22 February 2017, was Saint Lucia's representative to the United Nations.[42]
+
+The Charter of the OAS was signed in Bogota in 1948 and was amended by several protocols which were named after the city and the year in which the protocol was signed, such as Managua in 1993 forming part of the name of the protocol.[43]
+
+Saint Lucia entered the OAS system on 22 February 1979.[44]
+
+At a CARICOM Meeting, the representative of St. Lucia, John Compton signed The Double Taxation Relief (CARICOM) Treaty 1994 on 6 July 1994.[45]
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+The representatives of seven CARICOM countries signed similar agreements at Sherbourne Conference Centre, St. Michael, Barbados.[45] The countries whose representatives signed the treaties in Barbados were Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.[45]
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+This treaty covered taxes, residence, tax jurisdictions, capital gains, business profits, interest, dividends, royalties and other areas.
+
+On 30 June 2014, Saint Lucia signed a Model 1 agreement with the United States of America in relation to Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).[46] As of 1 September 2016, the status of the agreement is listed as "in force".
+
+Preceding the 2014 FATCA agreement is one which was entered into on 30 January 1987 between the United States of America and Saint Lucia according to Paragraph 2 of the Model 1 agreement, the purpose of which was to exchange tax Information.[47]
+
+Saint Lucia has no regular military force. A Special Service Unit and the Coast Guard are both under the command of the Royal Saint Lucia Police.[48][49]
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+In 2018, Saint Lucia signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[50]
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+The districts of the island, established by the French colonial government and continued by the British, are:
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+An additional area is the Forest Reserve Area Quarter (78.3 km²).
+
+The United Nations categorizes Saint Lucia as a Small Island Developing State, a designation similar to a developing country with a few substantial differences due to Saint Lucia's island nature.[51][52] The services sector accounted for 82.8% of GDP, followed by industry and agriculture at 14.2% and 2.9%, respectively.[2]
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+An educated workforce and improvements in roads, communications, water supply, sewerage, and port facilities have attracted foreign investment in tourism and in petroleum storage and transshipment. However, with the US, Canada, and Europe in recession, tourism declined by double digits in early 2009. The recent change in the European Union import preference regime and the increased competition from Latin American bananas have made economic diversification increasingly important in Saint Lucia.
+
+Saint Lucia has been able to attract foreign business and investment, especially in its offshore banking and tourism industries, which is Saint Lucia's main source of revenue.[53] The manufacturing sector is the most diverse in the Eastern Caribbean area, and the government is trying to revitalise the banana industry. Despite negative growth in 2011, economic fundamentals remain solid, and GDP growth should recover in the future.
+
+Inflation has been relatively low, averaging 5.5 percent between 2006 and 2008. Saint Lucia's currency is the East Caribbean Dollar (EC$), a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU). The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCL) issues the EC$, manages monetary policy, and regulates and supervises commercial banking activities in member countries. In 2003, the government began a comprehensive restructuring of the economy, including elimination of price controls and privatization of the state banana company.[54]
+
+Tourism is vital to Saint Lucia's economy. Its economic importance is expected to continue to increase as the market for bananas have become more competitive. Tourism tends to be more substantial during the dry season (January to April), often referred to as the tourist season. Saint Lucia tends to be popular due to its tropical weather and scenery and its numerous beaches and resorts.
+
+Other tourist attractions include a drive-in volcano, Sulphur Springs (in Soufrière), zip lining in beautiful Sault Falls, Dennery, the Botanical Gardens, the Majestic twin Peaks "The Pitons", a world heritage site, the rain forests, several options of boat trips, Frigate Island Nature Reserve (Operated by the St. Lucia National Trust), Dennery, and Pigeon Island National Park, which is home to Fort Rodney, an old British military base.
+
+The majority of tourists visit Saint Lucia as part of a cruise. Most of their time tends to be spent in Castries, although Soufriere, Marigot Bay, Rodney Bay and Gros Islet are popular locations to visit.
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+The current Minister of Tourism is Dominic Fedee, he has been in his role since 2016.
+
+Saint Lucia reported a population of 165,595 in the 2010 national census.[8] In 2018, the United Nations Population Division estimated Saint Lucia's population at 181,889.[3][4] The country's population is evenly divided between urban and rural areas, with more than a third living in the capital, Castries.
+
+Despite a high emigration rate, the population is growing rapidly at about 1.2% per year. Migration from Saint Lucia is primarily to Anglophone countries, with the United Kingdom having almost 10,000 Saint Lucian-born citizens, and over 30,000 of Saint Lucian heritage. The second most popular destination for Saint Lucian émigrés is the United States, where a combined (foreign and national-born Saint Lucians) almost 14,000 reside. Canada is home to a few thousand Saint Lucians.[56]
+
+Saint Lucia's population is predominantly of African and mixed African-European-Carib descent, with a small Indo-Caribbean minority (3%). Members of other or unspecified ethnic groups, account for about 2% of the population.
+
+The official language is English.[1][57] Saint Lucian French Creole (Kwéyòl), which is colloquially referred to as Patois ("Patwa"), is spoken by 95% of the population.[58] This Antillean Creole is used in literature and music, and is gaining official acknowledgement.[58] As it developed during the early period of French colonisation, the creole is derived chiefly from French and West African languages, with some vocabulary from the Island Carib language and other sources. Antillean Creole is also spoken in Dominica, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and (to a lesser extent) St. Vincent and Grenada; it also resembles the creoles spoken in French Guiana, Haiti, Mauritius and the Seychelles. Saint Lucia is a member of La Francophonie.[59]
+
+Religion in Saint Lucia (2015)[2]
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+About 61.5% of the population is Roman Catholic. Another 25.5% belong to Protestant denominations, (includes Seventh Day Adventist 10.4%, Pentecostal 8.9%, Baptist 2.2%, Anglican 1.6%, Church of God 1.5%, other Protestant 0.9%). Evangelicals comprise 2.3% of the population and 1.1% are Jehovah's Witnesses. In addition, about 1.9% of the population adheres to the Rastafari movement. Other religions include Islam, Bahá'í Faith, Judaism, and Buddhism.
+
+See Health in Saint Lucia
+
+In 2017, Saint Lucia recorded 60 homicides, the highest in the country's history.[60]
+
+The culture of Saint Lucia has been influenced by African, East Indian, French, and English heritage. One of the secondary languages is Saint Lucian French Creole or Kwéyòl, spoken by almost all of the population.[1][57]
+
+Saint Lucia boasts the second highest ratio of Nobel laureates produced with respect to the total population of any sovereign country in the world. Two winners have come from Saint Lucia: Sir Arthur Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and the poet Derek Walcott received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.
+
+Saint Lucian cultural festivals include La Rose and La Marguerite, the first representing a native Saint Lucian fraternal society known as the Order of the Rose that is fashioned in the mould of Rosicrucianism, and the second representing its traditional rival, the native Saint Lucian equivalent of Freemasonry known as the Order of the Marguerite.[61] References to their origins as versions of pre-existing external secret societies can be seen in a mural painted by Dunstan St Omer, depicting the holy trinity of Osiris, Horus, and Isis.
+
+The biggest festival of the year is the Saint Lucia Jazz Festival.  Held in early May at multiple venues throughout the island, it draws visitors and musicians from around the world. The grand finale or main stage is held at the Pigeon Island[62] which is located to the North of the Island.
+
+Traditionally in common with other Caribbean countries, Saint Lucia held a carnival before Lent. In 1999, the government moved Carnival to mid-July to avoid competing with the much larger Trinidad and Tobago carnival and so as to attract more overseas visitors.
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+In May 2009, Saint Lucians commemorated the 150th Anniversary of West Indian Heritage on the island.
+
+The Windward Islands cricket team includes players from Saint Lucia and plays in the West Indies regional tournament. Daren Sammy became the first Saint Lucian to represent the West Indies on his debut in 2007, and since 2010 has captained the side.[63] In an international career spanning 2003 to 2008, and including 41 ODIs and one Test, Nadine George MBE became the first woman to score a Test century for the team.[64] Sammy and George were recognised by the Saint Lucian government as Sportsman of the Year and Sportswoman of the Year respectively for 2004.[65]
+
+For sailing enthusiasts, the annual Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) race begins in the Canary Islands and ends in Saint Lucia. The year 2015 marked the ARC's 30th year of existence. Every November, the race attracts over 200 boats and 1,200 people to sail across the Atlantic to the Caribbean.
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+In 2019 a modern state of the art horse racing facility will open.  One of the main contributors will be The China Horse Club, operators of race tracks in Asia.
+
+Together with Caribbean music genres such as Calypso, Soca, Dancehall, Reggae, Compas, Zouk, and Salsa, Saint Lucia has a strong indigenous folk music tradition. Each May since 1991, Saint Lucia has hosted an internationally renowned Jazz Festival.  In 2013, the festival was re-branded The Saint Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival which encompassed culture, visual art, alternative music, education, fashion, and food.
+
+Dancing in Saint Lucia is inspired by Caribbean culture and enjoys an active following. A popular folk dance is the Kwadril.
+
+Caribbean Cinemas operates in Saint Lucia. The cinema is located at Choc Estate in Castries.There is also an ATM, Domino's Pizza outlet, &  a cafe near the Cinema.
+
+Much of the scenery for the film Dr. Dolittle was shot in Saint Lucia in 1967.[66] Water was shot on the island,[67] as were parts of Firepower.
+
+The Education Act provides for free and compulsory education in Saint Lucia from the ages of 5 to 15.[68][69] Public spending on education was at 5.8% among the 2002–2005 GDP.[68]
+
+Saint Lucia has a community college (Sir Arthur Lewis Community College[70]), one university campus operated by the University of the West Indies Open Campus,[71] and a few medical schools – American International Medical University, International American University − College of Medicine, Destiny University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and the oldest of which is Spartan Health Sciences University.
+
+Monroe College, a private for-profit college and graduate school based in New York City, established a campus in Saint Lucia in 2007. Formerly based at Barnard Hill in Castries, the campus is now located at Vide Bouteille, Castries. The college was founded in 1933 and also has campuses in the Bronx and New Rochelle, with an extension site in Manhattan. The college is named after James Monroe, the fifth President of the United States. Monroe College is regionally accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.[72]
+
+Saint Lucia's national dish is green figs and saltfish.
+
+The island's cuisine is a unique blend of West African[citation needed], European (mainly British and French) and Indian cuisine; this creates dynamic meal dishes such as macaroni pie, Stew chicken, rice and peas, fish broth or fish water, and soups packed full with fresh locally produced vegetables. Typical essential foodstuffs are potatoes, onions, celery, thyme, coconut milk, the very hot scotch bonnet peppers, flour, and cornmeal. All mainstream meat and poultry are eaten in St. Lucia; meat and seafood are normally stewed and browned to create a rich gravy sometimes served over ground provisions or rice. The island is also home to the famous fried dough, known by many as a bake or Johnny Cake. These bakes can be served with different sides, such as saltfish which is either sautéed or lightly fried along with red, green peppers, onions, and seasoned well. This is the most common way for bake to be prepared, though it can also be served with meats such as stewed chicken or beef.
+
+One popular Saint Lucian dessert is the pastry called a turnover. The pastry is made with sweetened coconut that is boiled with spices, some sugar, and whatever is satisfying. It is boiled until cooked to a light or dark brown colour; then the mixture is separated into various size portions placed on a rolled out piece of dough. The dough size may vary too depending on how much is desired, and lastly, it is baked in the oven until the colour of the turnover is nicely browned.
+
+Due to Saint Lucia's Indo-Caribbean population, curry is very popular; however due to the blend of cooking styles, curry dishes have a distinct Caribbean twist. Roti is typically served as a fast food meal: the bread itself is very flat (sometimes very thin) and is wrapped around curried vegetables such as chickpeas and potato, seafood such as shrimp and conch, or meats such as chicken, beef, goat, and liver.
+
+Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people living in Saint Lucia face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT members of the population.[73] Saint Lucia prohibits male-on-male sexual activity, punishing those found guilty with 10 years in jail. Saint Lucia was also the only UN member in the Americas to formally oppose the UN declaration on sexual orientation and gender identity.[74]
+
+A species of lizard, Anolis luciae, is named for and is endemic to Saint Lucia.[75][76]
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+Toraille Waterfall – July 2016
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+Gros Piton seen from the Ladera Hotel restaurant – September 2007
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+Petit Piton seen from the Ladera Hotel restaurant – December 2004
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+Soufrière Bay – February 2006
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+Aerial view of resort – June 2006
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+Typical sight in Canaries: houses on hills, June 2006
+
+St Lucia beach – February 2006
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+View from the Le Sport  resort – March 2006
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+A view of Soufrière
+
+Click on a coloured area to see an article about English in that country or region

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+Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. They are an informal grouping within the infraorder Cetacea, usually excluding dolphins and porpoises. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, which consists of even-toed ungulates. Their closest living relatives are the hippopotamuses, having diverged about 40 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have split apart around 34 million years ago.  Whales consist of eight extant families: Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), Balaenidae (right whales), Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale), Eschrichtiidae (the grey whale), Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals), Physeteridae (the sperm whale), Kogiidae (the dwarf and pygmy sperm whale), and Ziphiidae (the beaked whales).
+
+Whales are creatures of the open ocean; they feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. So extreme is their adaptation to life underwater that they are unable to survive on land. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) and 135 kilograms (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres (98 ft) and 190 metric tons (210 short tons) blue whale, which is the largest known creature that has ever lived. The sperm whale is the largest toothed predator on earth. Several species exhibit sexual dimorphism, in that the females are larger than males. Baleen whales have no teeth; instead they have plates of baleen, a fringe-like structure used to expel water while retaining the krill and plankton which they feed on. They use their throat pleats to expand the mouth to take in huge gulps of water. Balaenids have heads that can make up 40% of their body mass to take in water. Toothed whales, on the other hand, have conical teeth adapted to catching fish or squid. Baleen whales have a well developed sense of "smell", whereas toothed whales have well-developed hearing − their hearing, that is adapted for both air and water, is so well developed that some can survive even if they are blind. Some species, such as sperm whales, are well adapted for diving to great depths to catch squid and other favoured prey.
+
+Whales have evolved from land-living mammals. As such, whales must breathe air regularly, although they can remain submerged under water for long periods of time. Some species such as the sperm whale are able to stay submerged for as much as 90 minutes.[1] They have blowholes (modified nostrils) located on top of their heads, through which air is taken in and expelled. They are warm-blooded, and have a layer of fat, or blubber, under the skin. With streamlined fusiform bodies and two limbs that are modified into flippers, whales can travel at up to 20 knots, though they are not as flexible or agile as seals. Whales produce a great variety of vocalizations, notably the extended songs of the humpback whale. Although whales are widespread, most species prefer the colder waters of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and migrate to the equator to give birth. Species such as humpbacks and blue whales are capable of travelling thousands of miles without feeding. Males typically mate with multiple females every year, but females only mate every two to three years. Calves are typically born in the spring and summer months and females bear all the responsibility for raising them. Mothers of some species fast and nurse their young for one to two years.
+
+Once relentlessly hunted for their products, whales are now protected by international law. The North Atlantic right whales nearly became extinct in the twentieth century, with a population low of 450, and the North Pacific grey whale population is ranked Critically Endangered by the IUCN. Besides whaling, they also face threats from bycatch and marine pollution. The meat, blubber and baleen of whales have traditionally been used by indigenous peoples of the Arctic. Whales have been depicted in various cultures worldwide, notably by the Inuit and the coastal peoples of Vietnam and Ghana, who sometimes hold whale funerals. Whales occasionally feature in literature and film, as in the great white whale of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Small whales, such as belugas, are sometimes kept in captivity and trained to perform tricks, but breeding success has been poor and the animals often die within a few months of capture. Whale watching has become a form of tourism around the world.
+
+The word "whale" comes from the Old English hwæl, from Proto-Germanic *hwalaz, from Proto Indo European *(s)kwal-o-, meaning "large sea fish".[2][3] The Proto-Germanic *hwalaz is also the source of Old Saxon hwal, Old Norse hvalr, hvalfiskr, Swedish val, Middle Dutch wal, walvisc, Dutch walvis, Old High German wal, and German Wal.[2] The obsolete "whalefish" has a similar derivation, indicating a time when whales were thought to be fish.[citation needed] Other archaic English forms include wal, wale, whal, whalle, whaille, wheal, etc.[4]
+
+The term "whale" is sometimes used interchangeably with dolphins and porpoises, acting as a synonym for Cetacea. Six species of dolphins have the word "whale" in their name, collectively known as blackfish: the killer whale, the melon-headed whale, the pygmy killer whale, the false killer whale, and the two species of pilot whales, all of which are classified under the family Delphinidae (oceanic dolphins).[5] Each species has a different reason for it, for example, the killer whale was named "Ballena asesina" 'killer whale' by Spanish sailors.[6]
+
+The term "Great Whales" covers those currently regulated by the International Whaling Commission:[7]
+the Odontoceti family Physeteridae (sperm whales); and the Mysticeti families Balaenidae (right and bowhead whales), Eschrichtiidae (grey whales), and some of the Balaenopteridae (Minke, Bryde's, Sei, Blue and Fin; not Eden's and Omura's whales).[8]
+
+The whales are part of the largely terrestrial mammalian clade Laurasiatheria. Whales do not form a clade or order; the infraorder Cetacea includes dolphins and porpoises, which are not considered whales.[citation needed] The phylogenetic tree shows the relationships of whales and other mammals, with whale groups[citation needed]  marked in green.
+
+(carnivorans and allies)
+
+(horses, rhinos, tapirs)
+
+(camelids)
+
+Pigs
+
+Ruminants (cattle, sheep, antelopes)
+
+Hippopotamuses
+
+Archaeocetes (Ambulocetus, Protocetus, Basilosaurus)
+
+(right, grey, rorquals)
+
+Delphinoidea (dolphins, porpoises, beluga whales, narwhals)
+
+Lipotoidea (river dolphins)
+
+Physeteroidea (sperm whales)
+
+Ziphoidea (beaked whales)
+
+Cetaceans are divided into two parvorders: the largest parvorder, Mysticeti (baleen whales), is characterized by the presence of baleen, a sieve-like structure in the upper jaw made of keratin, which it uses to filter plankton, among others, from the water; Odontocetes (toothed whales) are characterized by bearing sharp teeth for hunting, as opposed to their counterparts' baleen.[9]
+
+Cetaceans and artiodactyls now are classified under the order Cetartiodactyla, often still referred to as Artiodactyla, which includes both whales and hippopotamuses. The hippopotamus and pygmy hippopotamus are the whale's closest terrestrial living relatives.[10]
+
+Mysticetes are also known as baleen whales. They have a pair of blowholes side-by-side and lack teeth; instead they have baleen plates which form a sieve-like structure in the upper jaw made of keratin, which they use to filter plankton from the water. Some whales, such as the humpback, reside in the polar regions where they feed on a reliable source of schooling fish and krill.[11] These animals rely on their well-developed flippers and tail fin to propel themselves through the water; they swim by moving their fore-flippers and tail fin up and down. Whale ribs loosely articulate with their thoracic vertebrae at the proximal end, but do not form a rigid rib cage. This adaptation allows the chest to compress during deep dives as the pressure increases.[12]  Mysticetes consist of four families: rorquals (balaenopterids), cetotheriids, right whales (balaenids), and grey whales (eschrichtiids).
+
+The main difference between each family of mysticete is in their feeding adaptations and subsequent behaviour.
+Balaenopterids are the rorquals. These animals, along with the cetotheriids, rely on their throat pleats to gulp large amounts of water while feeding. The throat pleats extend from the mouth to the navel and allow the mouth to expand to a large volume for more efficient capture of the small animals they feed on. Balaenopterids consist of two genera and eight species.[13]
+Balaenids are the right whales. These animals have very large heads, which can make up as much as 40% of their body mass, and much of the head is the mouth. This allows them to take in large amounts of water into their mouths, letting them feed more effectively.[14]
+Eschrichtiids have one living member: the grey whale. They are bottom feeders, mainly eating crustaceans and benthic invertebrates. They feed by turning on their sides and taking in water mixed with sediment, which is then expelled through the baleen, leaving their prey trapped inside. This is an efficient method of hunting, in which the whale has no major competitors.[15]
+
+Odontocetes are known as toothed whales; they have teeth and only one blowhole. They rely on their well-developed sonar to find their way in the water. Toothed whales send out ultrasonic clicks using the melon. Sound waves travel through the water. Upon striking an object in the water, the sound waves bounce back at the whale. These vibrations are received through fatty tissues in the jaw, which is then rerouted into the ear-bone and into the brain where the vibrations are interpreted.[16] All toothed whales are opportunistic, meaning they will eat anything they can fit in their throat because they are unable to chew. These animals rely on their well-developed flippers and tail fin to propel themselves through the water; they swim by moving their fore-flippers and tail fin up and down. Whale ribs loosely articulate with their thoracic vertebrae at the proximal end, but they do not form a rigid rib cage. This adaptation allows the chest to compress during deep dives as opposed to resisting the force of water pressure.[12] Excluding dolphins and porpoises, odontocetes consist of four families: belugas and narwhals (monodontids), sperm whales (physeterids), dwarf and pygmy sperm whales (kogiids), and beaked whales (ziphiids). There are six species, sometimes referred to as "blackfish", that are dolphins commonly misconceived as whales: the killer whale, the melon-headed whale, the pygmy killer whale, the false killer whale, and the two species of pilot whales, all of which are classified under the family Delphinidae (oceanic dolphins).[5]
+
+The differences between families of odontocetes include size, feeding adaptations and distribution.
+Monodontids consist of two species: the beluga and the narwhal. They both reside in the frigid arctic and both have large amounts of blubber. Belugas, being white, hunt in large pods near the surface and around pack ice, their coloration acting as camouflage. Narwhals, being black, hunt in large pods in the aphotic zone, but their underbelly still remains white to remain camouflaged when something is looking directly up or down at them. They have no dorsal fin to prevent collision with pack ice.[17]
+Physeterids and Kogiids consist of sperm whales. Sperm whales consist the largest and smallest odontocetes, and spend a large portion of their life hunting squid. P. macrocephalus spends most of its life in search of squid in the depths; these animals do not require any degree of light at all, in fact, blind sperm whales have been caught in perfect health. The behaviour of Kogiids remains largely unknown, but, due to their small lungs, they are thought to hunt in the photic zone.[18]
+Ziphiids consist of 22 species of beaked whale. These vary from size, to coloration, to distribution, but they all share a similar hunting style. They use a suction technique, aided by a pair of grooves on the underside of their head, not unlike the throat pleats on the rorquals, to feed.[19]
+
+Whales are descendants of land-dwelling mammals of the artiodactyl order (even-toed ungulates). They are related to the Indohyus, an extinct chevrotain-like ungulate, from which they split approximately 48 million years ago.[20][21] Primitive cetaceans, or archaeocetes, first took to the sea approximately 49 million years ago and became fully aquatic 5–10 million years later. What defines an archaeocete is the presence of anatomical features exclusive to cetaceans, alongside other primitive features not found in modern cetaceans, such as visible legs or asymmetrical teeth.[22][23][24][10] Their features became adapted for living in the marine environment. Major anatomical changes included their hearing set-up that channeled vibrations from the jaw to the earbone (Ambulocetus 49 mya), a streamlined body and the growth of flukes on the tail (Protocetus 43 mya), the migration of the nostrils toward the top of the cranium (blowholes), and the modification of the forelimbs into flippers (Basilosaurus 35 mya), and the shrinking and eventual disappearance of the hind limbs (the first odontocetes and mysticetes 34 mya).[25][26][27]
+
+Whale morphology shows a number of examples of convergent evolution, the most obvious being the streamlined fish-like body shape.[28] Other examples include the use of echolocation for hunting in low light conditions — which is the same hearing adaptation used by bats — and, in the rorqual whales, jaw adaptations, similar to those found in pelicans, that enable engulfment feeding.[29]
+
+Today, the closest living relatives of cetaceans are the hippopotamuses; these share a semi-aquatic ancestor that branched off from other artiodactyls some 60 mya.[10] Around 40 mya, a common ancestor between the two branched off into cetacea and anthracotheres; nearly all anthracotheres became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene 2.5 mya, eventually leaving only one surviving lineage – the hippopotamus.[30]
+
+Whales split into two separate parvorders around 34 mya – the baleen whales (Mysticetes) and the toothed whales (Odontocetes).[31][32][33]
+
+Whales have torpedo shaped bodies with non-flexible necks, limbs modified into flippers, non-existent external ear flaps, a large tail fin, and flat heads (with the exception of monodontids and ziphiids). Whale skulls have small eye orbits, long snouts (with the exception of monodontids and ziphiids) and eyes placed on the sides of its head. Whales range in size from the 2.6-metre (8.5 ft) and 135-kilogram (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 34-metre (112 ft) and 190-metric-ton (210-short-ton) blue whale. Overall, they tend to dwarf other cetartiodactyls; the blue whale is the largest creature on earth. Several species have female-biased sexual dimorphism, with the females being larger than the males. One exception is with the sperm whale, which has males larger than the females.[34][35]
+
+Odontocetes, such as the sperm whale, possess teeth with cementum cells overlying dentine cells. Unlike human teeth, which are composed mostly of enamel on the portion of the tooth outside of the gum, whale teeth have cementum outside the gum. Only in larger whales, where the cementum is worn away on the tip of the tooth, does enamel show. Mysticetes have large whalebone, as opposed to teeth, made of keratin. Mysticetes have two blowholes, whereas Odontocetes contain only one.[36]
+
+Breathing involves expelling stale air from the blowhole, forming an upward, steamy spout, followed by inhaling fresh air into the lungs; a humpback whale's lungs can hold about 5,000 litres of air. Spout shapes differ among species, which facilitates identification.[37][38]
+
+All whales have a thick layer of blubber. In species that live near the poles, the blubber can be as thick as 11 inches. This blubber can help with buoyancy (which is helpful for a 100-ton whale), protection to some extent as predators would have a hard time getting through a thick layer of fat, and energy for fasting when migrating to the equator; the primary usage for blubber is insulation from the harsh climate. It can constitute as much as 50% of a whale's body weight. Calves are born with only a thin layer of blubber, but some species compensate for this with thick lanugos.[39][40]
+
+Whales have a two- to three-chambered stomach that is similar in structure to terrestrial carnivores. Mysticetes contain a proventriculus as an extension of the oesophagus; this contains stones that grind up food. They also have fundic and pyloric chambers.[41]
+
+Whales have two flippers on the front, and a tail fin. These flippers contain four digits. Although whales do not possess fully developed hind limbs, some, such as the sperm whale and bowhead whale, possess discrete rudimentary appendages, which may contain feet and digits. Whales are fast swimmers in comparison to seals, which typically cruise at 5–15 kn, or 9–28 kilometres per hour (5.6–17.4 mph); the fin whale, in comparison, can travel at speeds up to 47 kilometres per hour (29 mph) and the sperm whale can reach speeds of 35 kilometres per hour (22 mph). The fusing of the neck vertebrae, while increasing stability when swimming at high speeds, decreases flexibility; whales are unable to turn their heads. When swimming, whales rely on their tail fin propel them through the water. Flipper movement is continuous. Whales swim by moving their tail fin and lower body up and down, propelling themselves through vertical movement, while their flippers are mainly used for steering. Some species log out of the water, which may allow them to travel faster. Their skeletal anatomy allows them to be fast swimmers. Most species have a dorsal fin.[42][43]
+
+Whales are adapted for diving to great depths. In addition to their streamlined bodies, they can slow their heart rate to conserve oxygen; blood is rerouted from tissue tolerant of water pressure to the heart and brain among other organs; haemoglobin and myoglobin store oxygen in body tissue; and they have twice the concentration of myoglobin than haemoglobin. Before going on long dives, many whales exhibit a behaviour known as sounding; they  stay close to the surface for a series of short, shallow dives while building their oxygen reserves, and then make a sounding dive.[12][44]
+
+The whale ear has specific adaptations to the marine environment. In humans, the middle ear works as an impedance equalizer between the outside air's low impedance and the cochlear fluid's high impedance. In whales, and other marine mammals, there is no great difference between the outer and inner environments. Instead of sound passing through the outer ear to the middle ear, whales receive sound through the throat, from which it passes through a low-impedance fat-filled cavity to the inner ear.[45] The whale ear is acoustically isolated from the skull by air-filled sinus pockets, which allow for greater directional hearing underwater.[46] Odontocetes send out high frequency clicks from an organ known as a melon. This melon consists of fat, and the skull of any such creature containing a melon will have a large depression. The melon size varies between species, the bigger the more dependent they are of it. A beaked whale for example has a small bulge sitting on top of its skull, whereas a sperm whale's head is filled up mainly with the melon.[47][48][49][50]
+
+The whale eye is relatively small for its size, yet they do retain a good degree of eyesight. As well as this, the eyes of a whale are placed on the sides of its head, so their vision consists of two fields, rather than a binocular view like humans have. When belugas surface, their lens and cornea correct the nearsightedness that results from the refraction of light; they contain both rod and cone cells, meaning they can see in both dim and bright light, but they have far more rod cells than they do cone cells. Whales do, however, lack short wavelength sensitive visual pigments in their cone cells indicating a more limited capacity for colour vision than most mammals.[51] Most whales have slightly flattened eyeballs, enlarged pupils (which shrink as they surface to prevent damage), slightly flattened corneas and a  tapetum lucidum; these adaptations allow for large amounts of light to pass through the eye and, therefore, a very clear image of the surrounding area. They also have glands on the eyelids and outer corneal layer that act as protection for the cornea.[52][53]
+
+The olfactory lobes are absent in toothed whales, suggesting that they have no sense of smell. Some whales, such as the bowhead whale, possess a vomeronasal organ, which does mean that they can "sniff out" krill.[54]
+
+Whales are not thought to have a good sense of taste, as their taste buds are atrophied or missing altogether.  However, some toothed whales have preferences between different kinds of fish, indicating some sort of attachment to taste. The presence of the Jacobson's organ indicates that whales can smell food once inside their mouth, which might be similar to the sensation of taste.[55]
+
+Whale vocalization is likely to serve several purposes. Some species, such as the humpback whale, communicate using melodic sounds, known as whale song. These sounds may be extremely loud, depending on the species. Humpback whales only have been heard making clicks, while toothed whales use sonar that may generate up to 20,000 watts of sound (+73 dBm or +43 dBw)[56] and be heard for many miles.
+
+Captive whales have occasionally been known to mimic human speech. Scientists have suggested this indicates a strong desire on behalf of the whales to communicate with humans, as whales have a very different vocal mechanism, so imitating human speech likely takes considerable effort.[57]
+
+Whales emit two distinct kinds of acoustic signals, which are called whistles and clicks:[58]
+Clicks are quick broadband burst pulses, used for sonar, although some lower-frequency broadband vocalizations may serve a non-echolocative purpose such as communication; for example, the pulsed calls of belugas. Pulses in a click train are emitted at intervals of ≈35–50 milliseconds, and in general these inter-click intervals are slightly greater than the round-trip time of sound to the target.
+Whistles are narrow-band frequency modulated (FM) signals, used for communicative purposes, such as contact calls.
+
+Whales are known to teach, learn, cooperate, scheme, and grieve.[59] The neocortex of many species of whale is home to elongated spindle neurons that, prior to 2007, were known only in hominids.[60] In humans, these cells are involved in social conduct, emotions,  judgement, and theory of mind. Whale spindle neurons are found in areas of the brain that are homologous to where they are found in humans, suggesting that they perform a similar function.[61]
+
+Brain size was previously considered a major indicator of the intelligence of an animal. Since most of the brain is used for maintaining bodily functions, greater ratios of brain to body mass may increase the amount of brain mass available for more complex cognitive tasks. Allometric analysis indicates that mammalian brain size scales at approximately the ⅔ or ¾ exponent of the body mass. Comparison of a particular animal's brain size with the expected brain size based on such allometric analysis provides an encephalisation quotient that can be used as another indication of animal intelligence. Sperm whales have the largest brain mass of any animal on earth, averaging 8,000 cubic centimetres (490 in3) and 7.8 kilograms (17 lb) in mature males, in comparison to the average human brain which averages 1,450 cubic centimetres (88 in3) in mature males.[62] The brain to body mass ratio in some odontocetes, such as belugas and narwhals, is second only to humans.[63]
+
+Small whales are known to engage in complex play behaviour, which includes such things as producing stable underwater toroidal air-core vortex rings or "bubble rings". There are two main methods of bubble ring production: rapid puffing of a burst of air into the water and allowing it to rise to the surface, forming a ring, or swimming repeatedly in a circle and then stopping to inject air into the helical vortex currents thus formed. They also appear to enjoy biting the vortex-rings, so that they burst into many separate bubbles and then rise quickly to the surface.[64] Some believe this is a means of communication.[65] Whales are also known to produce bubble-nets for the purpose of foraging.[66]
+
+Larger whales are also thought, to some degree, to engage in play. The southern right whale, for example, elevates their tail fluke above the water, remaining in the same position for a considerable amount of time. This is known as "sailing". It appears to be a form of play and is most commonly seen off the coast of Argentina and South Africa. Humpback whales, among others, are also known to display this behaviour.[67]
+
+Whales are fully aquatic creatures, which means that birth and courtship behaviours are very different from terrestrial and semi-aquatic creatures. Since they are unable to go onto land to calve, they deliver the baby with the  fetus positioned for tail-first delivery. This prevents the baby from drowning either upon or during delivery. To feed the new-born, whales, being aquatic, must squirt the milk into the mouth of the calf. Being mammals, they have mammary glands used for nursing calves; they are weaned off at about 11 months of age. This milk contains high amounts of fat which is meant to hasten the development of blubber; it contains so much fat that it has the consistency of toothpaste.[68] Females deliver a single calf with gestation lasting about a year, dependency until one to two years, and maturity around seven to ten years, all varying between the species.[69] This mode of reproduction produces few offspring, but increases the survival probability of each one. Females, referred to as "cows", carry the responsibility of childcare as males, referred to as "bulls", play no part in raising calves.
+
+Most mysticetes reside at the poles. So, to prevent the unborn calf from dying of frostbite, they migrate to calving/mating grounds. They will then stay there for a matter of months until the calf has developed enough blubber to survive the bitter temperatures of the poles. Until then, the calves will feed on the mother's fatty milk.[70] With the exception of the humpback whale, it is largely unknown when whales migrate. Most will travel from the Arctic or Antarctic into the tropics to mate, calve, and raise during the winter and spring; they will migrate back to the poles in the warmer summer months so the calf can continue growing while the mother can continue eating, as they fast in the breeding grounds. One exception to this is the southern right whale, which migrates to Patagonia and western New Zealand to calve; both are well out of the tropic zone.[71]
+
+Unlike most animals, whales are conscious breathers. All mammals sleep, but whales cannot afford to become unconscious for long because they may drown. While knowledge of sleep in wild cetaceans is limited, toothed cetaceans in captivity have been recorded to sleep with one side of their brain at a time, so that they may swim, breathe consciously, and avoid both predators and social contact during their period of rest.[72]
+
+A 2008 study found that sperm whales sleep in vertical postures just under the surface in passive shallow 'drift-dives', generally during the day, during which whales do not respond to passing vessels unless they are in contact, leading to the suggestion that whales possibly sleep during such dives.[72]
+
+All whales are carnivorous and predatory. Odontocetes, as a whole, mostly feed on fish and cephalopods, and then followed by crustaceans and bivalves. All species are generalist and opportunistic feeders. Mysticetes, as a whole, mostly feed on krill and plankton, followed by crustaceans and other invertebrates. A few are specialists. Examples include the blue whale, which eats almost exclusively krill, the minke whale, which eats mainly schooling fish, the sperm whale, which specialize on squid, and the grey whale which feed on bottom-dwelling invertebrates.[13][73][74] The elaborate baleen "teeth" of filter-feeding species, mysticetes, allow them to remove water before they swallow their planktonic food by using the teeth as a sieve.[68] Usually whales hunt solitarily, but they do sometimes hunt cooperatively in small groups. The former behaviour is typical when hunting non-schooling fish, slow-moving or immobile invertebrates or endothermic prey. When large amounts of prey are available, whales such as certain mysticetes hunt cooperatively in small groups.[75] Some cetaceans may forage with other kinds of animals, such as other species of whales or certain species of pinnipeds.[76][77]
+
+Large whales, such as mysticetes, are not usually subject to predation, but smaller whales, such as monodontids or ziphiids, are. These species are preyed on by the killer whale or orca. To subdue and kill whales, orcas continuously ram them with their heads; this can sometimes kill bowhead whales, or severely injure them. Other times they corral the narwhals or belugas before striking. They are typically hunted by groups of 10 or fewer orcas, but they are seldom attacked by an individual. Calves are more commonly taken by orcas, but adults can be targeted as well.[78]
+
+These small whales are also targeted by terrestrial and pagophilic predators. The polar bear is well adapted for hunting Arctic whales and calves. Bears are known to use sit-and-wait tactics as well as active stalking and pursuit of prey on ice or water. Whales lessen the chance of predation by gathering in groups. This however means less room around the breathing hole as the ice slowly closes the gap. When out at sea, whales dive out of the reach of surface-hunting orcas. Polar bear attacks on belugas and narwhals are usually successful in winter, but rarely inflict any damage in summer.[79]
+
+A 2010 study considered whales to be a positive influence to the productivity of ocean fisheries, in what has been termed a "whale pump." Whales carry nutrients such as nitrogen from the depths back to the surface. This functions as an upward biological pump, reversing an earlier presumption that whales accelerate the loss of nutrients to the bottom. This nitrogen input in the Gulf of Maine is "more than the input of all rivers combined" emptying into the gulf, some 23,000 metric tons (25,000 short tons) each year.[81][82]
+Whales defecate at the ocean's surface; their excrement is important for fisheries because it is rich in iron and nitrogen. The whale faeces are liquid and instead of sinking, they stay at the surface where phytoplankton feed off it.[82][83][84]
+
+Upon death, whale carcasses fall to the deep ocean and provide a substantial habitat for marine life. Evidence of whale falls in present-day and fossil records shows that deep sea whale falls support a rich assemblage of creatures, with a global diversity of 407 species, comparable to other neritic biodiversity hotspots, such as cold seeps and hydrothermal vents.[85]
+
+Deterioration of whale carcasses happens though a series of three stages. Initially, moving organisms such as sharks and hagfish, scavenge the soft tissues at a rapid rate over a period of months, and as long as two years. This is followed by the colonization of bones and surrounding sediments (which contain organic matter) by enrichment opportunists, such as crustaceans and polychaetes, throughout a period of years. Finally, sulfophilic bacteria reduce the bones releasing hydrogen sulfide enabling the growth of chemoautotrophic organisms, which in turn, support other organisms such as mussels, clams, limpets, and sea snails. This stage may last for decades and supports a rich assemblage of species, averaging 185 species per site.[85][86]
+
+Whaling by humans has existed since the Stone Age. Ancient whalers used harpoons to spear the  bigger animals from boats out at sea.[87] People from Norway and Japan started hunting whales around 2000 B.C.[88] Whales are typically hunted for their meat and blubber by aboriginal groups; they used baleen for baskets or roofing, and made tools and masks out of bones.[88] The Inuit hunted whales in the Arctic Ocean.[88] The Basques started whaling as early as the 11th century, sailing as far as Newfoundland in the 16th century in search of right whales.[89][90] 18th- and 19th-century whalers hunted whales mainly for their oil, which was used as lamp fuel and a lubricant, baleen or whalebone, which was used for items such as corsets and skirt hoops,[88] and ambergris, which was used as a fixative for perfumes. The most successful whaling nations at this time were the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States.[91]
+
+Commercial whaling was historically important as an industry well throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Whaling was at that time a sizeable European industry with ships from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany, sometimes collaborating to hunt whales in the Arctic, sometimes in competition leading even to war.[92] By the early 1790s, whalers, namely the Americans and Australians, focused efforts in the South Pacific where they mainly hunted sperm whales and right whales, with catches of up to 39,000 right whales by Americans alone.[89][93] By 1853, US profits reached US$11,000,000 (UK£6.5m), equivalent to US$348,000,000 (UK£230m) today, the most profitable year for the American whaling industry.[94] Commonly exploited species included North Atlantic right whales, sperm whales, which were mainly hunted by Americans, bowhead whales, which were mainly hunted by the Dutch, common minke whales, blue whales, and grey whales. The scale of whale harvesting decreased substantially after 1982 when the International Whaling Commission (IWC) placed a moratorium which set a catch limit for each country, excluding aboriginal groups until 2004.[95]
+
+Current whaling nations are Norway, Iceland, and Japan, despite their joining to the IWC, as well as the aboriginal communities of Siberia, Alaska, and northern Canada.[96] Subsistence hunters typically use whale products for themselves and depend on them for survival. National and international authorities have given special treatment to aboriginal hunters since their methods of hunting are seen as less destructive and wasteful. This distinction is being questioned as these aboriginal groups are using more modern weaponry and mechanized transport to hunt with, and are selling whale products in the marketplace. Some anthropologists argue that the term "subsistence" should also apply to these cash-based exchanges as long as they take place within local production and consumption.[97][98][99] In 1946, the IWC placed a moratorium, limiting the annual whale catch. Since then, yearly profits for these "subsistence" hunters have been close to US$31 million (UK£20m) per year.[95]
+
+Whales can also be threatened by humans more indirectly. They are unintentionally caught in fishing nets by commercial fisheries as bycatch and accidentally swallow fishing hooks. Gillnetting and Seine netting is a significant cause of mortality in whales and other marine mammals.[100] Species commonly entangled include beaked whales. Whales are also affected by marine pollution. High levels of organic chemicals accumulate in these animals since they are high in the food chain. They have large reserves of blubber, more so for toothed whales as they are higher up the food chain than baleen whales. Lactating mothers can pass the toxins on to their young. These pollutants can cause gastrointestinal cancers and greater vulnerability to infectious diseases.[101] They can also be poisoned by swallowing litter, such as plastic bags.[102] Advanced military sonar harms whales. Sonar interferes with the basic biological functions of whales—such as feeding and mating—by impacting their ability to echolocate. Whales swim in response to sonar and sometimes experience decompression sickness due to rapid changes in depth. Mass strandings have been triggered by sonar activity, resulting in injury or death.[103][104][105][106]
+
+Whaling decreased substantially after 1946 when, in response to the steep decline in whale populations, the International Whaling Commission placed a moratorium which set a catch limit for each country; this excluded aboriginal groups up until 2004.[91][98][107][108] As of 2015, aboriginal communities are allowed to take 280 bowhead whales off Alaska and two from the western coast of Greenland, 620 grey whales off Washington state, three common minke whales off the eastern coast of Greenland and 178 on their western coast, 10 fin whales from the west coast of Greenland, nine humpback whales from the west coast of Greenland and 20 off St. Vincent and the Grenadines each year.[108] Several species that were commercially exploited have rebounded in numbers; for example, grey whales may be as numerous as they were prior to harvesting, but the North Atlantic population is functionally extinct. Conversely, the North Atlantic right whale was extirpated from much of its former range, which stretched across the North Atlantic, and only remains in small fragments along the coast of Canada, Greenland, and is considered functionally extinct along the European coastline.[109]
+
+The IWC has designated two whale sanctuaries: the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, and the Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuary. The Southern Ocean whale sanctuary spans 30,560,860 square kilometres (11,799,610 sq mi) and envelopes Antarctica.[110] The Indian Ocean whale sanctuary takes up all of the Indian Ocean south of 55°S.[111] The IWC is a voluntary organization, with no treaty. Any nation may leave as they wish; the IWC cannot enforce any law it makes.
+
+As of 2013, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recognized 86 cetacean species, 40 of which are considered whales. As of 2018, six are considered at risk, as they are ranked  "Endangered" (blue whale,  North Atlantic right whale,[112] North Pacific right whale, and sei whale), and "Vulnerable" (fin whale[113] and sperm whale). Twenty-one species have a "Data Deficient" ranking.[114] Species that live in polar habitats are vulnerable to the effects of recent and ongoing climate change, particularly the time when pack ice forms and melts.[115]
+
+An estimated 13 million people went whale watching globally in 2008, in all oceans except the Arctic.[116] Rules and codes of conduct have been created to minimize harassment of the whales.[117] Iceland, Japan and Norway have both whaling and whale watching industries. Whale watching lobbyists are concerned that the most inquisitive whales, which approach boats closely and provide much of the entertainment on whale-watching trips, will be the first to be taken if whaling is resumed in the same areas.[118] Whale watching generated US$2.1 billion (UK£1.4 billion) per annum in tourism revenue worldwide, employing around 13,000 workers.[119] In contrast, the whaling industry, with the moratorium in place, generates US$31 million (UK£20 million) per year.[95] The size and rapid growth of the industry has led to complex and continuing debates with the whaling industry about the best use of whales as a natural resource.
+
+As marine creatures that reside in either the depths or the poles, humans knew very little about whales over the course of history; many feared or revered them. The Vikings and various arctic tribes revered the whale as they were important pieces of their lives. In Inuit creation myths, when 'Big Raven', a deity in human form, found a stranded whale, he was told by the Great Spirit where to find special mushrooms that would give him the strength to drag the whale back to the sea and thus, return order to the world. In an Icelandic legend, a man threw a stone at a fin whale and hit the blowhole, causing the whale to burst. The man was told not to go to sea for twenty years, but during the nineteenth year he went fishing and a whale came and killed him.
+
+Whales played a major part in shaping the art forms of many coastal civilizations, such as the Norse, with some dating to the Stone Age. Petroglyphs off a cliff face in Bangudae, South Korea show 300 depictions of various animals, a third of which are whales. Some show particular detail in which there are throat pleats, typical of rorquals. These petroglyphs show these people, of around 7,000 to 3,500 B.C.E. in South Korea, had a very high dependency on whales.[120]
+
+The Pacific Islanders and Australian Aborigines viewed whales as bringers of good and joy. One exception is French Polynesia, where, in many parts, cetaceans are met with great brutality.[121]
+
+In Vietnam and Ghana, among other places, whales hold a sense of divinity. They are so respected in their cultures that they occasionally hold funerals for beached whales, a throwback to Vietnam's ancient sea-based Austro-Asiatic culture.[122][123][124][125] The god of the seas, according to Chinese folklore, was a large whale with human limbs.
+
+Whales have also played a role in sacred texts such as the Bible. It mentions whales in Genesis 1:21, Job 7:12, and Ezekiel 32:2. The "leviathan" described at length in Job 41:1-34 is generally understood to refer to a whale. The "sea monsters" in Lamentations 4:3 have been taken by some to refer to marine mammals, in particular whales, although most modern versions use the word "jackals" instead.[126] The story of Jonah being swallowed by a great fish is told both in the Qur'an and in the Bible. A medieval column capital sculpture depicting this was made in the 12th century in the abbey church in Mozac, France.[127] The Old Testament contains the Book of Jonah and in the New Testament, Jesus mentions this story in Matthew 12:40.[128]
+
+In 1585, Alessandro Farnese, 1585, and Francois, Duke of Anjou, 1582, were greeted on his ceremonial entry into the port city of Antwerp by floats including "Neptune and the Whale", indicating at least the city's dependence on the sea for its wealth.[129]
+
+In 1896, an article in The Pall Mall Gazette popularised a practice of alternative medicine that probably began in the whaling town of Eden, Australia two or three years earlier.[130] It was believed that climbing inside a whale carcass and remaining there for a few hours would relief symptoms of rheumatism.[131]
+
+Whales continue to be prevalent in modern literature. For example, Herman Melville's Moby Dick features a "great white whale" as the main antagonist for Ahab, who eventually is killed by it. The whale is an albino sperm whale, considered by Melville to be the largest type of whale, and is partly based on the historically attested bull whale Mocha Dick. Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories includes the story of "How the Whale got in his Throat". Niki Caro's film the Whale Rider has a Māori girl ride a whale in her journey to be a suitable heir to the chieftain-ship.[132] Walt Disney's film Pinocchio features a showdown with a giant whale named Monstro at the end of the film. Alan Hovhaness' orchestra And God Created Great Whales included the recorded sounds of humpback and bowhead whales.[133] Léo Ferré's song "Il n'y a plus rien" is an example of biomusic that begins and ends with recorded whale songs mixed with a symphonic orchestra and his voice.
+
+Belugas were the first whales to be kept in captivity. Other species were too rare, too shy, or too big. The first beluga was shown at Barnum's Museum in New York City in 1861.[134] For most of the 20th century, Canada was the predominant source of wild belugas.[135] They were taken from the St. Lawrence River estuary until the late 1960s, after which they were predominantly taken from the Churchill River estuary until capture was banned in 1992.[135] Russia has become the largest provider since it had been banned in Canada.[135] Belugas are caught in the Amur River delta and their eastern coast, and then are either transported domestically to aquariums or dolphinariums in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Sochi, or exported to other countries, such as Canada.[135] Most captive belugas are caught in the wild, since captive-breeding programs are not very successful.[136]
+
+As of 2006, 30 belugas were in Canada and 28 in the United States, and 42 deaths in captivity had been reported up to that time.[135] A single specimen can reportedly fetch up to US$100,000 (UK£64,160) on the market. The beluga's popularity is due to its unique colour and its facial expressions. The latter is possible because while most cetacean "smiles" are fixed, the extra movement afforded by the beluga's unfused cervical vertebrae allows a greater range of apparent expression.[137]
+
+Between 1960 and 1992, the Navy carried out a program that included the study of marine mammals' abilities with sonar, with the objective of improving the detection of underwater objects. A large number of belugas were used from 1975 on, the first being dolphins.[137][138] The program also included training them to carry equipment and material to divers working underwater by holding cameras in their mouths to locate lost objects, survey ships and submarines, and underwater monitoring.[138] A similar program was used by the Russian Navy during the Cold War, in which belugas were also trained for antimining operations in the Arctic.[139]
+
+Aquariums have tried housing other species of whales in captivity. The success of belugas turned attention to maintaining their relative, the narwhal, in captivity. However, in repeated attempts in the 1960s and 1970s, all narwhals kept in captivity died within months. A pair of pygmy right whales were retained in an enclosed area (with nets); they were eventually released in South Africa. There was one attempt to keep a stranded Sowerby's beaked whale calf in captivity; the calf rammed into the tank wall, breaking its rostrum, which resulted in death. It was thought that Sowerby's beaked whale evolved to swim fast in a straight line, and a 30-metre (98 ft) tank was not big enough.[140] There have been attempts to keep baleen whales in captivity. There were three attempts to keep grey whales in captivity. Gigi was a grey whale calf that died in transport. Gigi II was another grey whale calf that was captured in the Ojo de Liebre Lagoon, and was transported to SeaWorld.[141] The 680-kilogram (1,500 lb) calf was a popular attraction, and behaved normally, despite being separated from his mother. A year later, the 8,000-kilogram (18,000 lb) whale grew too big to keep in captivity and was released; it was the first of two grey whales, the other being another grey whale calf named JJ, to successfully be kept in captivity.[141] There were three attempts to keep minke whales in captivity in Japan. They were kept in a tidal pool with a sea-gate at the Izu Mito Sea Paradise. Another, unsuccessful, attempt was made by the U.S. [142] One stranded humpback whale calf was kept in captivity for rehabilitation, but died days later.[143]

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+www.fatih.gov.tr/dunya-mimarlik-tarihinin-onemli-anitlarindan-ayasofya
+
+Hagia Sophia (/ˈhɑːɡiə soʊˈfiːə/; from Koinē Greek: Ἁγία Σοφία, romanized: Hagía Sophía; Latin: Sancta Sophia, lit. 'Holy Wisdom'), officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque (Turkish: Ayasofya-i Kebir Camii Şerifi)[2] and formerly the Church of Hagia Sophia,[3] is a Late Antique place of worship in Istanbul. Built in 537 as the patriarchal cathedral of the imperial capital of Constantinople, it was the largest Christian church of the eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire), except during the Latin Empire from 1204 to 1261, when it became the Roman Catholic cathedral. In 1453, after the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire, it was converted into a Muslim mosque. In 1935 the secular Turkish Republic established it as a museum. In 2020, it was re-opened as a mosque.
+
+Built by the eastern Roman emperor Justinian I as the Christian cathedral of Constantinople for the state church of the Roman Empire between 532 and 537, the church was then the world's largest interior space and among the first to employ a fully pendentive dome. It is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture[4] and is said to have "changed the history of architecture".[5] The building was designed by the Greek geometers Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles.[6] The present Justinianic building was the third church of the same name to occupy the site, the prior one having been destroyed in the Nika riots. Being the episcopal see of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, it remained the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520. Beginning with subsequent Byzantine architecture, Hagia Sophia became the paradigmatic Orthodox church form and its architectural style was emulated by Ottoman mosques a thousand years later.[7] It has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world",[7] and architectural and cultural icon of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox civilization.[8][9][10][7]
+
+The church was dedicated to the Holy Wisdom, the Logos, the second person of the Trinity.[11] Its patronal feast falls on 25 December (Christmas), the commemoration of the incarnation of the Logos in Christ.[11] Sophia is the Latin transliteration of the Greek word for wisdom and, although sometimes referred to as Sancta Sophia, 'Saint Sophia', it is not connected with Sophia the Martyr.[12][13] The centre of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly one thousand years, the building witnessed the excommunication of Patriarch Michael I Cerularius officially delivered by Humbert of Silva Candida, the papal envoy of Pope Leo IX in 1054, an act that is commonly considered the start of the East–West Schism. In 1204, it was converted by the Fourth Crusaders to a Roman Catholic cathedral under the Latin Empire, before being restored to the Eastern Orthodox Church upon the return of the Byzantine Empire in 1261. The doge of Venice who led the Fourth Crusade and the 1204 Sack of Constantinople, Enrico Dandolo, was buried in the church.
+
+After the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453,[14] it was converted to a mosque by Mehmed the Conqueror. The patriarchate moved to the Church of the Holy Apostles, which became the city's cathedral. Although some parts of the city had fallen into disrepair, the cathedral had been maintained with funds set aside for this purpose, and the Christian cathedral made a strong impression on the new Ottoman rulers who conceived its conversion.[15][16] The bells, altar, iconostasis, ambo and baptistery were removed and relics destroyed. The mosaics depicting Jesus, his mother Mary, Christian saints, and angels were eventually destroyed or plastered over.[17] Islamic architectural features were added, such as a minbar (pulpit), four minarets, and a mihrab – a niche indicating the direction of prayer (qibla). From its initial conversion until the construction in 1616 of the nearby Sultan Ahmed Mosque, aka the Blue Mosque, it was the principal mosque of Istanbul. The Byzantine architecture of the Hagia Sophia served as inspiration for many other religious buildings from the Hagia Sophia, Thessaloniki and Panagia Ekatontapiliani to the Blue Mosque, the Şehzade Mosque, the Süleymaniye Mosque, the Rüstem Pasha Mosque and the Kılıç Ali Pasha Complex.
+
+The complex remained a mosque until 1931, when it was closed to the public for four years. It was re-opened in 1935 as a museum by the secular Republic of Turkey.[18] According to data released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Hagia Sophia was Turkey's most visited tourist attraction in 2015[19] and 2019.[20][21]
+
+In early July 2020, the Council of State annulled the Cabinet's 1934 decision to establish the museum, revoking the monument's status, and a subsequent decree by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered the reclassification of Hagia Sophia as a mosque.[22][23][24] The 1934 decree was ruled to be unlawful under both Ottoman and Turkish law as Hagia Sophia's waqf, endowed by Sultan Mehmed, had designated the site a mosque; proponents of the decision argued the Hagia Sophia was the personal property of the sultan.[25][26][27] This redesignation is controversial, invoking condemnation from the Turkish opposition, UNESCO, the World Council of Churches, the International Association of Byzantine Studies, and many international leaders.[28][29][30][31][32]
+
+The first church on the site was known as the Magna Ecclesia (Μεγάλη Ἐκκλησία, Megálē Ekklēsíā, 'Great Church'),[33][34] because of its larger dimensions in comparison to the contemporary churches in the city.[11] According to the Chronicon Paschale, the church was consecrated on 15 February 360, during the reign of the emperor Constantius II (r. 337–361), by the Arian bishop Eudoxius of Antioch,[35][36] it was built next to the area where the Great Palace was being developed. According to the 5th-century ecclesiastical historian Socrates of Constantinople, the emperor Constantius had around 346 "constructed the Great Church alongside that called Irene which because it was too small, the emperor's father [Constantine] had enlarged and beautified".[37][35] A tradition which is not older than the 7th or 8th century, reports that the edifice was built by Constantius' father, Constantine the Great (r. 306–337).[35] The 12th century chronicler Joannes Zonaras reconciles the two opinions, writing that Constantius had repaired the edifice consecrated by Eusebius of Nicomedia, after it had collapsed.[35] Since Eusebius was bishop of Constantinople 339 to 341, and Constantine died in 337, it seems that the first church was erected by Constantius.[35]
+
+The nearby Hagia Irene ("Holy Peace") church was completed earlier and served as cathedral until the Great Church was completed. Besides Hagia Irene, there is no record of any major churches in the city-centre before the late 4th century.[36] Rowland Mainstone argued the 4th-century church was not yet known as Hagia Sophia.[38] Though its name as the 'Great Church' implies it was larger than other Constantinopolitan churches, the only other major churches of the 4th century were the Church of St Mocius, which lay outside the Constantinian walls and was perhaps attached to a cemetery, and the Church of the Holy Apostles.[36]
+
+The church itself is known to have had a timber roof, curtains, columns, and an entrance that faced west.[36] It probably had a narthex, and is described as being shaped like a Roman circus.[39] This may mean that it had a U-shaped plan like the basilicas of San Marcellino e Pietro and Sant'Agnese fuori le mura in Rome.[36] However, it may also have been a more conventional three-, four-, or five-aisled basilica, perhaps resembling the original Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem or the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.[36] The building was likely preceded by an atrium, as in the later churches on the site.
+
+According to Ken Dark and Jan Kostenec, a further remnant of the 4th century basilica may exist in a wall of alternating brick and stone banded masonry immediately to the west of the Justinianic church.[40] The top part of the wall is constructed with bricks stamped with brick-stamps dating from the 5th century, but the lower part is of constructed of bricks typical of the 4th century.[40] This wall was probably part of the propylaeum at the west front of both the Constantinian and Theodosian Great Church.[40]
+
+The building was accompanied by a baptistery and a skeuophylakion.[36] A hypogeum, perhaps with an martyrium above it, was discovered before 1946 and the surviving parts of a brick wall with traces of marble revetment were identified in 2004.[40] The hypogeum was a tomb which may have been part of the 4th-century church or may have dated from the pre-Constantinian city of Byzantium.[40] The skeuophylakion is said by Palladius to have circular plan, and because some U-shaped basilicas in Rome were funerary churches with attached circular mausolea (the Mausoleum of Constantina and the Mausoleum of Helena) it is possible it originally had a funerary function, though by 405 its use had changed.[40] One much later account credited a woman called Anna with donating the land on which the church was built in return for the right to be buried there.[40]
+
+Excavations on the western side of the site of the first church under the propylaeum wall reveal that the first church was built atop a road some 8 metres (26 ft) broad.[40] According to early accounts, the first Hagia Sophia was built on the site of an ancient pagan temple,[41][42][43] although there are no artefacts to confirm this.[44]
+
+The Patriarch of Constantinople John Chrysostom came into a conflict with Empress Aelia Eudoxia, wife of the emperor Arcadius (r. 395–408), and was sent into exile on 20 June 404. During the subsequent riots, this first church was largely burnt down.[35] Palladius noted that the 4th-century skeuophylakion survived the fire.[45] According to Dark and Kostenec, the fire may only have affected the main basilica, leaving the surrounding ancillary buildings intact.[45]
+
+A second church on the site was ordered by Theodosius II (r. 401–450), who inaugurated it on 10 October 415.[citation needed] The Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae describes the Hagia Sophia as the Magna Ecclesia, 'Great Church', while the former cathedral Hagia Irene is named the Ecclesia Antiqua, 'Old Church'. At the time of Socrates of Constantinople around 440, "both churches are enclosed by a single wall and served by the same clergy".[37] The complex would thus have encompassed a large area including the site of the later Hospital of Samson.[45] If the fire of 404 destroyed only the 4th-century main basilica church, then the 5th century Theodosian basilica could have been built surrounded by a mainly 4th-century complex.[45]
+
+The area of the western entrance to the Justinianic Hagia Sophia revealed the western remains of its Theodosian predecessor, as well as some fragments of the Constantinian church.[45] German archaeologist Alfons Maria Schneider began conducting archaeological excavations during the mid-1930s, publishing his final report in 1941.[45] Excavations in the area that had once been the 6th-century atrium of the Justinianic church revealed the monumental western entrance and atrium, along with columns and sculptural fragments from both 4th- and 5th-century churches.[45] Further digging was abandoned for fear of impinging on the integrity of the Justinianic building, but parts of the excavation trenches remain uncovered, laying bare the foundations of the Theodosian building.
+
+The basilica was built by architect Rufinus.[citation needed] The church's main entrance faced west, perhaps with gilded doors, and with an additional entrance to the east.[46] There was a central pulpit, and probably there was an upper gallery, possibly employed as a matroneum (women's section).[46] The exterior was decorated with elaborate carvings with rich Theodosian-era designs, of which fragments survive, while the floor just inside the portico was embellished with polychrome mosaics.[45] The surviving carved gable end from the centre of the western facade is decorated with a cross-roundel.[45] Fragments of a frieze of reliefs with 12 lambs representing the 12 apostles also remain; unlike Justinian's 6th-century church the Theodosian Hagia Sophia had both colourful floor mosaics and external decorative sculpture.[45]
+
+At the western end, surviving stone fragments of the show there was vaulting, at least at the western end.[45] The Theodosian building had a monumental propylaeum hall with a portico, which may account for this vaulting, which was thought by the original excavators in the 1930s to be part of the western entrance of the church itself.[45] The propylaeum opened onto an atrium which lay in front of the basilica church itself. Preceding the propylaeum was a steep monumental staircase following the contours of the ground as it sloped away westwards in the direction of the Strategion, the Basilica, and the harbours of the Golden Horn.[45] This arrangement would have recalled the steps outside the atrium of the Constantinian Old St Peter's Basilica in Rome.[45] Nearby was a cistern, perhaps to supply a fountain in the atrium or for worshippers to wash with before entering.[45]
+
+The 4th-century skeuophylakion was replaced in the 5th century by the present-day structure, a rotunda constructed of banded masonry in the lower two levels and of plain brick masonry in the third.[45] Originally this rotunda, probably employed as a treasury for liturgical objects, had an second-storey internal gallery accessed by an external spiral staircase and two levels of niches for storage.[45] A further row, of windows with marble window frames on the third level remain bricked up.[45] The gallery was supported on monumental consoles with carved acanthus designs, similar to those used on the late 5th-century Column of Leo.[45] A large lintel of the skeuophylakion's western entrance – bricked up in the Ottoman era – was discovered inside the rotunda when it was archaeologically cleared to its foundations in 1979, during which time the brickwork was also repointed.[45] The skeuophylakion was again restored in 2014 by the Vakıflar.[45]
+
+A fire started during the tumult of the Nika Revolt, which had begun nearby in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, and the second Hagia Sophia was burnt to the ground on 13–14 January 532. The court historian Procopius wrote:[47]
+
+And by way of shewing that it was not against the Emperor alone that they [the rioters] had taken up arms, but no less against God himself, unholy wretches that they were, they had the hardihood to fire the Church of the Christians, which the people of Byzantium call "Sophia", an epithet which they have most appropriately invented for God, by which they call His temple; and God permitted them to accomplish this impiety, foreseeing into what an object of beauty this shrine was destined to be transformed. So the whole church at that time lay a charred mass of ruins.
+
+Column and capital with a Greek cross
+
+Porphyry column; column capital; impost block
+
+Soffits and cornice
+
+Columns and other fragments
+
+Frieze with lambs
+
+Frieze with lambs
+
+Theodosian capital for a pilaster
+
+Theodosian capital
+
+Theodosian capital for a column
+
+Soffits
+
+On 23 February 532, only a few weeks after the destruction of the second basilica, Emperor Justinian I decided to build a third and entirely different basilica, larger and more majestic than its predecessors. It was designed by Anthemius of Tralles, and Isidore of Miletus.
+
+Construction of the church began in 532 during the short term of Phocas as praetorian prefect.[48] Phocas replaced John the Cappadocian after the Nika Riots saw the destruction of the Theodosian church, although he had previously been arrrested in 529 on suspicion of paganism.[48] According to John the Lydian, Phocas was responsible for funding the initial construction of the building with 4,000 Roman pounds of gold, although he was dismissed from office in October 532.[49][48] John the Lydian, writing in the 550s, was careful to say Phocas had acquired the funds by moral means; Evagrius Scholasticus later wrote that he had obtained the money unjustly.[50][48]
+
+According to Aristotle Kaldellis, both of Hagia Sophia's architects named by Procopius  were associated with to the school of the pagan philosopher Ammonius of Alexandria.[48] It is possible that both they and John the Lydian envisaged Hagia Sophia as a great temple of the supreme Neoplantonist deity whose visible manifestation was light and the sun. John the Lydian describes the church as the "temenos of the Great God" (Greek: τὸ τοῦ μεγάλου θεοῦ Τέμενος, romanized: tò toû meglou theoû Témenos).[49][48]
+
+Originally the exterior was covered with marble veneer, as indicated by remaining pieces of marble and surviving attachments for lost panels on the building's western face.[51] The white marble cladding of much of the church, together with gilding of some parts, would have given Hagia Sophia a shimmering appearance quite different to the brick- and plaster-work of the modern period, and would greatly have increased its visibility from the sea.[51] The cathedral's interior surfaces were sheathed with polychrome marbles, green and white with purple porphyry, and gold mosaics. The exterior was clad in stucco tinted yellow and red during restorations in the 19th century at the direction of the Fossati architects.[citation needed]
+
+Justinian chose geometer and engineer Isidore of Miletus and mathematician Anthemius of Tralles as architects. The construction is described by Procopius's On Buildings (Greek: Περὶ κτισμάτων, romanized: Peri ktismatōn, Latin: De aedificiis).[47] Columns and other marbles were brought from all over the empire, throughout the Mediterranean. The idea of these columns being spoils from cities such as Rome and Ephesus is a later invention.[52] Even though they were made specifically for Hagia Sophia, the columns show variations in size.[53] More than ten thousand people were employed. This new church was contemporaneously recognized as a major work of architecture. Outside the church was an elaborate array of monuments around the bronze-plated Column of Justinian, topped by an equestrian statue of the emperor which dominated the Augustaeum, the open square outside the church which connected it with the Great Palace complex through the Chalke Gate. At the edge of the Augustaeum was the Milion and the Regia, the first stretch of Constantinople's main thoroughfare, the Mese. Also facing the Augustaeum were the enormous Constantinian thermae, the Baths of Zeuxippus, and the Justinianic civic basilica under which was the vast cistern known as the Basilica Cistern. On the opposite side of Hagia Sophia was the former cathedral, Hagia Irene.
+
+Referring to the destruction of the Theodosian Hagia Sophia and comparing the new church with the old, Procopius lauded the Justinianic building, writing in De aedificiis:[47]
+
+... the Emperor Justinian built not long afterwards a church so finely shaped, that if anyone had enquired of the Christians before the burning if it would be their wish that the church should be destroyed and one like this should take its place, shewing them some sort of model of the building we now see, it seems to me that they would have prayed that they might see their church destroyed forthwith, in order that the building might be converted into its present form.
+
+The Justinian and Patriarch Menas, inaugurated the new basilica on 27 December 537 – 5 years and 10 months after construction started – with much pomp.[54][55][56] Hagia Sophia was the seat of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and a principal setting for Byzantine imperial ceremonies, such as coronations. Like other churches throughout Christendom, the basilica offered sanctuary from persecution to outlaws.[citation needed]
+
+Earthquakes in August 553 and on 14 December 557 caused cracks in the main dome and eastern semi-dome. According to the Chronicle of John Malalas, during a subsequent earthquake on 7 May 558,[57] the eastern semi-dome fell down, destroying the ambon, altar, and ciborium. The collapse was due mainly to the unfeasibly high bearing load and to the enormous shear load of the dome, which was too flat.[54] These caused the deformation of the piers which sustained the dome.[54] Justinian ordered an immediate restoration. He entrusted it to Isidorus the Younger, nephew of Isidore of Miletus, who used lighter materials. The entire vault had to be taken down and rebuilt 20 Byzantine feet (6.25 meters or 20.5 feet) higher than before, giving the building its current interior height of 55.6 meters (182 ft).[58] Moreover, Isidorus changed the dome type, erecting a ribbed dome with pendentives whose diameter was between 32.7 and 33.5 m.[54] Under Justinian's orders, eight Corinthian columns were disassembled from Baalbek, Lebanon, and shipped to Constantinople around 560.[59] This reconstruction, giving the church its present 6th-century form, was completed in 562. The poet Paul the Silentiary composed a long Greek poem, an ekphrasis, for the re-dedication of the basilica presided over by Patriarch Eutychius on 23 December 562. Paul the Silentiary's poem is conventionally known under the Latin title Descriptio Sanctae Sophiae, and he was also author of another ekphrasis on the ambon of the church, the Descripto Ambonis.[60][61] The mosaics were completed in the reign of Emperor Justin II (r. 565–578), Justinian I's successor.[citation needed]
+
+In 726, the emperor Leo the Isaurian issued a series of edicts against the veneration of images, ordering the army to destroy all icons – ushering in the period of Byzantine iconoclasm. At that time, all religious pictures and statues were removed from the Hagia Sophia. After a brief reprieve under Empress Irene (797–802), the iconoclasts made a comeback. The Emperor Theophilus (r. 829–842) had two-winged bronze doors with his monograms installed at the southern entrance of the church.[citation needed]
+
+The basilica suffered damage, first in a great fire in 859, and again in an earthquake on 8 January 869, that made one of the half-domes collapse. Emperor Basil I ordered the church repaired.[citation needed]
+
+In his book De caerimoniis aulae Byzantinae ("Book of Ceremonies"), Emperor Constantine VII (r. 913–959) wrote a detailed account of the ceremonies held in the Hagia Sophia by the emperor and the patriarch.
+
+After the great earthquake of 25 October 989, which collapsed the western dome arch, Emperor Basil II asked for the Armenian architect Trdat, creator of the Cathedral of Ani, to direct the repairs.[62] He erected again and reinforced the fallen dome arch, and rebuilt the west side of the dome with 15 dome ribs.[63] The extent of the damage required six years of repair and reconstruction; the church was re-opened on 13 May 994. At the end of the reconstruction, the church's decorations were renovated, including the addition of four immense paintings of cherubs; a new depiction of Christ on the dome; a burial cloth of Christ shown on Fridays, and on the apse a new depiction of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus, between the apostles Peter and Paul.[64] On the great side arches were painted the prophets and the teachers of the church.[64]
+
+According to the Greek historian Niketas Choniates, in 1203 during the Fourth Crusade, the emperors Isaac II Angelos and Alexios IV Angelos stripped Hagia Sophia of all the gold ornaments and all the silver oil-lamps in order to pay off the Crusaders who had ousted Alexios III Angelos and helped Isaac return to the throne.[65] Upon the subsequent Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the church was further ransacked and desecrated by the Crusaders, as described by Niketas, though he did not witness the events in person. According to his account, composed at the court of the rump Empire of Nicaea, Hagia Sophia was stripped of its remaining metal ornaments, its altar was smashed into pieces, and a "woman laden with sins" sang and danced on the synthronon.[66][67][68] He adds that mules and donkeys were brought into the cathedral's sanctuary to carry away the gilded silver plating of the bema, the ambo, and the doors and other furnishings, and that one of these slipped on the marble floor and was accidentally disembowelled, further contaminating the place.[66] According to Ali ibn al-Athir, whose treatment of the Sack of Constantinople was probably dependent on a Christian source, the Crusaders massacred some clerics who had surrendered to them.[69] Much of the interior was damaged and would not be repaired until its return to Orthodox control in 1261.[44] The sack of Hagia Sophia, and Constantinople in general, remained a sore point in Catholic–Eastern Orthodox relations.[70]
+
+During the Latin occupation of Constantinople (1204–1261) the church became a Roman Catholic cathedral. Baldwin I of Constantinople (r. 1204–1205) was crowned emperor on 16 May 1204 in Hagia Sophia, at a ceremony which closely followed Byzantine practices. Enrico Dandolo, the Doge of Venice who commanded the sack and invasion of the city by the Latin Crusaders in 1204, is buried inside the church, probably in the upper eastern gallery. In the 19th century, an Italian restoration team placed a cenotaph marker, frequently mistaken as being a medieval, near the probable location and still visible today. The original tomb was destroyed by the Ottomans during the conversion of the church into a mosque.[71]
+
+At the capture of Constantinople in 1261 by the Empire of Nicaea and the emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus, (r. 1261–1282) the church was in a dilapidated state. In 1317, emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus (r. 1282–1328) ordered four new buttresses (Byzantine Greek: Πυραμίδας, romanized: Pyramídas) to be built in the eastern and northern parts of the church, financing them with the inheritance of his late wife, Irene of Montferrat (d.1314).[17] New cracks developed in the dome after the earthquake of October 1344, and several parts of the building collapsed on 19 May 1346; consequently, the church was closed until 1354, when repairs were undertaken by architects Astras and Peralta.[citation needed]
+
+On 12 December 1452, Isidore of Kiev proclaimed in Hagia Sophia the long-anticipated and short-lived ecclesiastical union between the western Catholic and eastern Orthodox Churches as decided at the Council of Florence and the papal bull Laetentur Caeli. The union was unpopular among the Byzantines, who had already expelled the Partiarch of Constantinople, Gregory III, for his pro-union stance. A new patriarch was not installed until after the Ottoman conquest. According to the Greek historian Doukas, the Hagia Sophia was tainted by these Catholic associations, and the anti-union Orthodox faithful avoided the cathedral, considering it to be a haunt of demons and a "Hellenic" temple of Roman paganism.[72]
+
+According to Nestor Iskander's Tale on the Taking of Tsargrad, the Hagia Sophia was the focus of an alarming omen interpreted as the Holy Spirit abandoning Constantinople on 21 May 1453, in the final days of the Siege of Constantinople.[73] The sky lit up, illuminating the city, and "many people gathered and saw on the Church of the Wisdom, at the top of the window, a large flame of fire issuing forth. It encircled the entire neck of the church for a long time. The flame gathered into one; its flame altered, and there was an indescribable light. At once it took to the sky. ... The light itself has gone up to heaven; the gates of heaven were opened; the light was received; and again they were closed."[73] This phenomenon was perhaps St Elmo's fire induced by gunpowder smoke and unusual weather.[73] In Niccolò Barbaro's account, the statue on the Column of Justinian in the Augustaion beside Hagia Sophia, which gestured towards Asia, was interpreted in the last days of the siege as indicating "this is the way my conqueror will come".[73]
+
+Constantinople fell to the attacking Ottoman forces on 29 May 1453. Sultan Mehmed entered the city and performed the Friday prayer and kutbah (sermon) in Hagia Sophia, this action marked the official conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque.[74]
+
+In accordance with the traditional custom at the time, Sultan Mehmed II allowed his troops and his entourage three full days of unbridled pillage and looting in the city shortly after it was captured. Once the three days passed, he would then claim its remaining contents for himself.[75][76] However, by the end of the first day, he proclaimed that the looting should cease as he felt profound sadness when he toured the looted and enslaved city.[77][75]
+
+Hagia Sophia was not exempted from the pillage and looting and specifically became its focal point as the invaders believed it to contain the greatest treasures and valuables of the city.[78] Shortly after the defence of the Walls of Constantinople collapsed and the Ottoman troops entered the city victoriously, the pillagers and looters made their way to the Hagia Sophia and battered down its doors before storming in.[79]
+
+Throughout the period of the siege of Constantinople, the trapped worshippers of the city participated in the Divine Liturgy and the Prayer of the Hours at the Hagia Sophia and the church formed a safe-haven and a refuge for many of those who were unable to contribute to the city's defence, which comprised women, children, elderly, the sick and the wounded.[80][81] Being trapped in the church, the many congregants and yet more refugees inside became spoils-of-war to be divided amongst the triumphant invaders. The building was desecrated and looted, with the helpless occupants who sought shelter within the church being enslaved.[78] While most of the elderly and the infirm/wounded and sick were killed, and the remainder (mainly teenage males and young boys) were chained up and sold into slavery.[82]
+
+In an apocryphal story described by Matthias Döring, Leonardo Benvoglienti, Filippo da Rimini, and Mathieu d'Escouchy, Mehmed perpetrated the rape of a girl inside the church.[83] Two Greek refugees, Thomas Eparkhos and Joseph Diplovatazes, appear to be the source of the narrative; their accounts were translated into German and Italian.[83] According to Filippo da Rimini, who compared the girl's fate to that of Cassandra at the Fall of Troy, Mehmed claimed it was his revenge for Cassandra's rape by Ajax the Lesser in Troy's Temple of Athena.[83] In the account to Mathieu d'Escouchy, the victim was a daughter of Constantine XI whom Mehmed had tried to convert to Islam, decapitating her and sending her head to her uncle when she refused.[83] As told by Matthias Döring, Mehmed raped the girl on the church's altar, while her father and brother were made to watch, and then dismembered them all the following day.[83] Leonardo Benvoglienti added that her brother was raped as well, before father, daughter and son were all killed on the altar itself.[83] The claim of the girl being the emperor's daughter is fictitious; Constantine XI did not have a daughter, and this detail was apparently invented to closer match the tragic fate of the Trojan king Priam and his daughter Cassandra.[83]
+
+The church's priests and religious personnel continued to perform Christian rites, prayers and ceremonies until finally being forced to stop by the invaders.[82] When Sultan Mehmed and his entourage entered the church, he ordered that it be converted into a mosque at once. One of the ʿulamāʾ (Islamic scholars) present climbed onto the church's ambo and recited the shahada ("There is no god but God, and Muhammed is his messenger"), thus marking the beginning of the conversion of the church into a mosque.[17][84] Mehmed is reported to have taken a sword to a soldier who tried to prise up one of the paving slabs of the Proconnesian marble floor.[85]
+
+As described by Western visitors before 1453, such as the Córdoban nobleman Pero Tafur[86] and the Florentine geographer Cristoforo Buondelmonti,[87] the church was in a dilapidated state, with several of its doors fallen from their hinges; Mehmed II ordered a renovation of the building. Mehmed attended the first Friday prayer in the mosque on 1 June 1453.[88] Aya Sofya became the first imperial mosque of Istanbul.[89] To the corresponding waqf were endowed most of the existing houses in the city and the area of the future Topkapı Palace.[17] From 1478, 2,360 shops, 1,300 houses, 4 caravanserais, 30 boza shops, and 23 shops of sheep heads and trotters gave their income to the foundation.[90] Through the imperial charters of 1520 (AH 926) and 1547 (AH 954) shops and parts of the Grand Bazaar and other markets were added to the foundation.[17]
+
+Before 1481, a small minaret was erected on the southwest corner of the building, above the stair tower.[17] Later, Mehmed's successor Bayezid II (r. 1481–1512) built another minaret at the northeast corner.[17] One of these collapsed after the earthquake of 1509,[17] and around the middle of the 16th century they were both replaced by two diagonally opposite minarets built at the east and west corners of the edifice.[17] In 1498, Bernardo Bonsignori was the last Western visitor to Hagia Sophia to report seeing the ancient Justinianic floor; shortly afterwards the floor was covered over with carpet and not seen again until the 19th-century.[85]
+
+In the 16th century, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566) brought two colossal candlesticks from his conquest of the Kingdom of Hungary and placed them on either side of the mihrab. During Suleiman's reign, the mosaics above the narthex and imperial gates depicting Jesus, Mary and various Byzantine emperors were covered by whitewash and plaster, which was removed in 1930 under the Turkish Republic.[91]
+
+During the reign of Selim II (r. 1566–1574), the building started showing signs of fatigue and was extensively strengthened with the addition of structural supports to its exterior by Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan, who was also an earthquake engineer.[92] In addition to strengthening the historic Byzantine structure, Sinan built the two additional large minarets at the western end of the building, the original sultan's lodge and the türbe (mausoleum) of Selim II to the southeast of the building in 1576–1577 / AH 984. In order to do that, parts of the Patriarchate at the south corner of the building were pulled down the previous year.[17] Moreover, the golden crescent was mounted on the top of the dome,[17] while a respect zone 35 arşin (about 24 m) wide was imposed around the building, pulling down all the houses which in the meantime had nested around it.[17] Later his türbe hosted also 43 tombs of Ottoman princes.[17] Murad III (r. 1574–1595) had two large alabaster Hellenistic urns transported from Pergamon (Bergama) and placed on two sides of the nave.[17]
+
+In 1594 / AH 1004 Mimar (court architect) Davud Ağa built the türbe of Murad III, where the Sultan and his valide, Safiye Sultan were later buried.[17] The octagonal mausoleum of their son Mehmed III (r. 1595–1603) and his valide was built next to it in 1608 (AH 1017) by royal architect Dalgiç Mehmet Aĝa.[93] His son Mustafa I (r. 1617–1618, 1622–1623) converted the baptistery into his türbe.[93]
+
+In 1717, under Sultan Ahmed III (r. 1703–1730), the crumbling plaster of the interior was renovated, contributing indirectly to the preservation of many mosaics, which otherwise would have been destroyed by mosque workers.[93] In fact, it was usual for them to sell the mosaic's tesserae—believed to be talismans—to the visitors.[93] Sultan Mahmud I ordered the restoration of the building in 1739 and added a medrese (a Koranic school, subsequently the library of the museum), an imaret (soup kitchen for distribution to the poor) and a library, and in 1740 a Şadirvan (fountain for ritual ablutions), thus transforming it into a külliye, i.e. a social complex. At the same time, a new sultan's lodge and a new mihrab were built inside.
+
+Restoration of the Hagia Sophia was ordered by Sultan Abdulmejid I (r. 1823–1861) and completed by eight hundred workers between 1847 and 1849, under the supervision of the Swiss-Italian architect brothers Gaspare and Giuseppe Fossati. The brothers consolidated the dome with a restraining iron chain and strengthened the vaults, straightened the columns, and revised the decoration of the exterior and the interior of the building.[94] The mosaics in the upper gallery were exposed and cleaned, although many were recovered "for protection against further damage".[citation needed]
+
+Eight new gigantic circular-framed discs or medallions were hung from the cornice, on each of the four piers and at either side of the apse and the west doors. These were painted, to designs by the calligrapher Kazasker Mustafa Izzet Efendi (1801–1877), with the names of Allah, Muhammad, the Rashidun (the first four caliphs: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali), and the two grandsons of Muhammad: Hasan and Husayn, the sons of Ali. The old chandeliers were replaced by new pendant ones.[citation needed]
+
+In 1850 the architects Fossati built a new maqsura or caliphal loge in Neo-Byzantine columns and an Ottoman–Rococo style marble grille, connecting to the royal pavilion behind the mosque.[94] The new maqsura was built at the extreme east end of the northern aisle, next to the north-eastern pier. The existing maqsura in the apse, near the mihrab, was demolished.[94] A new entrance was constructed for the sultan: the Hünkar Mahfili.[94] The Fossati brothers also renovated the minbar and mihrab.
+
+Outside the main building, the minarets were repaired and altered so that they were of equal height.[95] A clock building, the Muvakkithanesi was built by the Fossatis for the use of the muwaqqit (the mosque timekeeper), and a new madrasa (Islamic school) was constructed. The Kasr-ı Hümayun was also built under their direction When the restoration was finished, the mosque was re-opened with ceremonial pomp on 13 July 1849.[citation needed] An edition of lithographs from drawings made during the Fossatis' work on Hagia Sophia was published in London in 1852, entitled: Aya Sophia of Constantinople as Recently Restored by Order of H.M. The Sultan Abdulmedjid.[94]
+
+Nave before restoration, looking east.
+
+Nave and apse after restoration, looking east.
+
+Nave and entrance after restoration, looking west.
+
+Narthex, looking north.
+
+Exonarthex, looking north
+
+North aisle from the entrance looking east
+
+North aisle, looking west.
+
+Nave and south aisle from the north aisle.
+
+Northern gallery and entrance to the matroneum from the north-west.
+
+Southern gallery from the south-west
+
+Southern gallery from the Marble Door looking west.
+
+Southern gallery from the Marble Door looking east.
+
+In 1935, the first Turkish President and founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, transformed the building into a museum. The carpet and the layer of mortar underneath them were removed and marble floor decorations such as the omphalion appeared for the first time since the Fossatis' restoration,[96] while the white plaster covering many of the mosaics was removed. Nevertheless, the condition of the structure deteriorated, and the World Monuments Fund (WMF) placed Hagia Sophia on 1996 World Monuments Watch, and again in 1998. The building's copper roof had cracked, causing water to leak down over the fragile frescoes and mosaics. Moisture entered from below as well. Rising ground water had raised the level of humidity within the monument, creating an unstable environment for stone and paint. The WMF secured a series of grants from 1997 to 2002 for the restoration of the dome. The first stage of work involved the structural stabilization and repair of the cracked roof, which was undertaken with the participation of the Turkish Ministry of Culture. The second phase, the preservation of the dome's interior, afforded the opportunity to employ and train young Turkish conservators in the care of mosaics. By 2006, the WMF project was complete, though many other areas of Hagia Sophia continue to require significant stability improvement, restoration and conservation.[97] Hagia Sophia is currently (2014) the second most visited museum in Turkey, attracting almost 3.3 million visitors annually.[98]
+
+While use of the complex as a place of worship (mosque or church) was strictly prohibited,[99] in 1991 the Turkish government allowed the allocation of a pavilion in the museum complex (Ayasofya Müzesi Hünkar Kasrı'nda) to be used as a prayer room, and since 2013, two of the museum′s minarets had been used for voicing the call to prayer (the ezan) regularly.[100][101]
+
+In 2007, Greek American politician Chris Spirou launched an international organization "Free Agia Sophia Council" championing the cause of restoring the building to its original function as a Christian church.[102][103][104] Since the early 2010s, several campaigns and government high officials, notably Turkey's deputy prime minister Bülent Arınç in November 2013, have been demanding that Hagia Sophia be converted into a mosque again.[105][106][107] In 2015, in response to the acknowledgement by Pope Francis of the Armenian Genocide, which is officially denied in Turkey, the mufti of Ankara, Mefail Hızlı, said that he believed that the Pope′s remarks would accelerate the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque.[108]
+
+On 1 July 2016, Muslim prayers were held again in the Hagia Sophia for the first time in 85 years.[109] On November, the Turkish non-governmental organization, the Association for the Protection of Historic Monuments and the Environment filed a lawsuit for converting the museum into a mosque.[110] The court decided it should stay as a 'monument museum'.[111] In October 2016, Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) appointed, for the first time in 81 years, a designated imam, Önder Soy, to the Hagia Sofia mosque (Ayasofya Camii Hünkar Kasrı'nda), located at the Hünkâr Kasrı, a pavilion for the sultans' private ablutions. Since then, the adhan has been regularly called out from the Hagia Sophia′s all four minarets five times a day.[100][101][112]
+
+On 13 May 2017 a large group of people, organized by the Anatolia Youth Association (AGD), gathered in front of Hagia Sophia and prayed the morning prayer with a call for the re-conversion of the museum into a mosque.[113] On 21 June 2017 the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) organized a special programme, broadcast live by state-run television TRT, which included the recitation of the Quran and prayers in Hagia Sofia, to mark the Laylat al-Qadr.[114]
+
+Since 2018, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has spoken of reverting the status of the Hagia Sophia back to a mosque, a move seen to be very popularly accepted by the religious populace whom Erdoğan is attempting to persuade.[115] On 31 March 2018 Erdoğan recited the first verse of the Quran in the Hagia Sophia, dedicating the prayer to the "souls of all who left us this work as inheritance, especially Istanbul's conqueror," strengthening the political movement to make the Hagia Sophia a mosque once again, which would reverse Atatürk's measure of turning the Hagia Sophia into a secular museum.[116] In March 2019 Erdoğan said that he would change the status of Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque,[117] adding that it had been a "very big mistake" to turn it into a museum.[118] As a UNESCO World Heritage site, this change would require approval from UNESCO's World Heritage Committee.[119]
+
+In 2020, Turkey's government is set to celebrate the 567th anniversary of the Fall of Constantinople with an Islamic prayer in Hagia Sophia. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said during a televised broadcast "Al-Fath surah will be recited and prayers will be done at Hagia Sophia as part of conquest festival".[120] In May, during the anniversary events, passages from the Quran was read in the Hagia Sophia. Greece condemned this action, while Turkey in response accused Greece of making “futile and ineffective statements”.[121]
+In June, the head of the Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) said that "we would be very happy to open Hagia Sophia for worship" and if this happens "we will provide our religious services as we do in all our mosques”.[110] On 25 June, John Haldon, president of the International Association of Byzantine Studies, wrote an open letter to Erdoğan asking that he "consider the value of keeping the Aya Sofya as a museum".[32]
+
+On 10 July 2020, the decision of the Council of Ministers to transform the Hagia Sophia into a museum was cancelled by the Council of State, decreeing that Hagia Sophia can be used only as a mosque and not “for any other purpose”.[122] Despite secular and global criticism, Erdoğan signed a decree annulling the Hagia Sophia's museum status, reverting it to a mosque.[123][124] The call to prayer was broadcast from the minarets shortly after the announcement of the change and rebroadcast by major Turkish news networks.[124] The Hagia Sophia Museum's social media channels were taken down the same day, with Erdoğan announcing at a press conference that prayers themselves would be held there from 24 July.[124] A presidential spokesperson said it would become a working mosque, open to anyone similar to the Parisian churches Sacré-Cœur and Notre-Dame. The spokesperson also said that the change would not affect the status of the Hagia Sophia as a UNESCO World Heritage site, and that "Christian icons" within it would continue to be protected.[115] Earlier the same day, before the final decision, the Turkish Finance and Treasury Minister Berat Albayrak and the Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gül expressed their expectations of opening the Hagia Sophia to worship for Muslims.[125][126] Mustafa Şentop, Speaker of Turkey's Grand National Assembly, said "a longing in the heart of our nation has ended".[125] A presidential spokesperson claimed that all political parties in Turkey supported Erdoğan's decision;[127] however, the Peoples' Democratic Party had previously released a statement denouncing the decision, saying "decisions on human heritage cannot be made on the basis of political games played by the government".[128] The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, said that he supports the conversion "as long as it benefits Turkey", adding that he always said that Hagia Sophia is a mosque and for him it has remained a mosque since 1453.[129] Ali Babacan attacked the policy of his former ally Erdoğan, saying the Hagia Sophia issue "has come to the agenda now only to cover up other problems".[130] Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate, publicly denounced the move, saying "Kemal Atatürk changed ... Hagia Sophia from a mosque to a museum, honouring all previous Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic history, making it as a sign of Turkish modern secularism".[124][131]
+
+On 17 July, Erdoğan announced that the first prayers in the Hagia Sophia would be open to between 1,000 and 1,500 worshippers, and reiterated that the issue was a matter of Turkey's sovereignty and international reaction would not deter him.[132] Turkey invited foreign leaders and officials, including Pope Francis,[133] for the first prayers which was held on Friday on July 24 2020, in the Hagia Sophia.[134]
+
+On 22 July, a turquoise-coloured carpet was laid to prepare the mosque for worshippers; Ali Erbaş, head of the Diyanet, attended its laying.[130] The omphalion was left exposed. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey, Erbaş said Hagia Sophia would accommodate up to 1,000 worshippers at a time and asked that they bring "masks, a prayer rug, patience and understanding".[130] The mosque opened for Friday prayers on 24 July, the 97th anniversary of the signature of the Treaty of Lausanne, which after the victory of the Republic in the Turkish War of Independence reversed the territorial losses of the World War I's Treaty of Sèvres.[135][130] White drapes covered the mosaics of the Virgin and Child in the apse.[131] Erbaş leaned on a sword while delivering his sermon, he also said "Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror dedicated this magnificent construction to believers to remain a mosque until the Day of Resurrection".[131] Erdoğan attended the midday prayers as many worshippers prayed outside; at one point the security cordon was breached and dozens of people broke through police lines.[131] It is the fourth Byzantine church converted from museum to a mosque during Erdoğan's rule.[136]
+
+Days before the final decision on the conversion was made, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople stated in a sermon that "the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque w[ould] disappoint millions of Christians around the world”, he also said that Hagia Sophia, which was "a vital center where East is embraced with the West", would "fracture these two worlds" in the event of conversion.[137][138]  The proposed conversion was decried by other Orthodox Christian leaders, the Russian Orthodox Church's Patriarch Kirill of Moscow stating that "a threat to Hagia Sophia [is] a threat to all of Christian civilization".[139][140]
+
+Following the Turkish government′s decision, UNESCO announced it "deeply regret[ed]" the conversion "made without prior discussion", and asked Turkey to "open a dialogue without delay", stating that the lack of negotiation was "regrettable".[28][124] UNESCO further announced that the "state of conservation" of Hagia Sophia would be "examined" at the next session of the World Heritage Committee, urging Turkey "to initiate dialogue without delay, in order to prevent any detrimental effect on the universal value of this exceptional heritage".[28] Ernesto Ottone, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Culture said "It is important to avoid any implementing measure, without prior discussion with UNESCO, that would affect physical access to the site, the structure of the buildings, the site’s moveable property, or the site’s management".[28] UNESCO's statement of 10 July said "these concerns were shared with the Republic of Turkey in several letters, and again yesterday evening with the representative of the Turkish Delegation" without a response.[28]
+
+The World Council of Churches, which claims to represent 500 million Christians of 350 denominations, condemned the decision to convert the building into a mosque, saying that would "inevitably create uncertainties, suspicions and mistrust"; the World Council of Churches urged Turkey′s president Erdoğan "to reconsider and reverse" his decision "in the interests of promoting mutual understanding, respect, dialogue and cooperation, and avoiding cultivating old animosities and divisions".[141][29][142] At the recitation of the Sunday Angelus prayer at St Peter's Square on 12 July Pope Francis said, "My thoughts go to Istanbul. I think of Santa Sophia and I am very pained" (Italian: Penso a Santa Sofia, a Istanbul, e sono molto addolorato).[a][144][30] The International Association of Byzantine Studies announced that its 21st International Congress, due to be held in Istanbul in 2021, will no longer be held there and is postponed to 2022.[32]
+
+Josep Borrell, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Vice-President of the European Commission, released a statement calling the decisions by the Council of State and Erdoğan "regrettable" and pointing out that "as a founding member of the Alliance of Civilisations, Turkey has committed to the promotion of inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue and to fostering of tolerance and co-existence."[145] According to Borrell, the European Union member states' twenty-seven foreign ministers "condemned the Turkish decision to convert such an emblematic monument as the Hagia Sophia" at meeting on 13 July, saying it "will inevitably fuel the mistrust, promote renewed division between religious communities and undermine our efforts at dialog and cooperation" and that "there was a broad support to call on the Turkish authorities to urgently reconsider and reverse this decision".[146][147] Greece denounced the conversion and considered it a breach of the UNESCO World Heritage titling.[115] Greek culture minister Lina Mendoni called it an "open provocation to the civilised world" which "absolutely confirms that there is no independent justice" in Erdoğan's Turkey, and that his Turkish nationalism "takes his country back six centuries".[31] Greece and Cyprus called for EU sanctions on Turkey.[148] Morgan Ortagus, the spokesperson for the United States Department of State noted that "We are disappointed by the decision by the government of Turkey to change the status of the Hagia Sophia."[31] Jean-Yves Le Drian, foreign minister of France, said his country "deplores" the move, saying "these decisions cast doubt on one of the most symbolic acts of modern and secular Turkey".[142] Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy head of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian Federation Council, said that it "will not do anything for the Muslim world. It does not bring nations together, but on the contrary brings them into collision" and calling the move a "mistake".[31] The former deputy prime minister of Italy, Matteo Salvini held a demonstration in protest outside the Turkish consulate in Milan, calling for all plans for accession of Turkey to the European Union to be terminated "once and for all".[149]  In East Jerusalem, a protest was held outside the Turkish consulate on the 13 July, with the burning of a Turkish flag and the display of the Greek flag and flag of the Greek Orthodox Church.[150] In a statement the Turkish foreign ministry condemned the burning of the flag, saying "nobody can disrespect or encroach our glorious flag".[151]
+
+Ersin Tatar, prime minister of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus which is recognized only by Turkey, welcomed the decision, calling it "sound" and "pleasing".[152][31] He further criticized the government of Cyprus, claiming that "the Greek Cypriot administration, who burned down our mosques, should not have a say in this".[152] Through a spokesman the Foreign Ministry of Iran welcomed the change, saying the decision was an "issue that should be considered as part of Turkey's national sovereignty" and "Turkey's internal affair".[153] Sergei Vershinin, deputy foreign minister of Russia, said that the matter was of one  of "internal affairs, in which, of course, neither we nor others should interfere."[154] The Arab Maghreb Union was supportive.[155] Ekrema Sabri, imam of the al-Aqsa Mosque, and Ahmed bin Hamad al-Khalili, grand mufti of Oman, both congratulated Turkey on the move.[155] The Muslim Brotherhood was also in favour of the news.[155] A spokesman for the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas called the verdict a "a proud moment for all Muslims".[156] Pakistani politician Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi of the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) welcomed the ruling, claiming it was "not only in accordance with the wishes of the people of Turkey but the entire Muslim world".[157] The Muslim Judicial Council group in South Africa praised the move, calling it "a historic turning point".[158] In Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania, there were prayers and celebrations topped by the sacrifice of a camel.[159] On the other hand, Shawki Allam, grand mufti of Egypt, ruled that conversion of the Hagia Sophia to a mosque is "impermissible".[160]
+
+When President Erdoğan announced that the first Muslim prayers would be held inside the building on 24 July, he added that "like all our mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be wide open to locals and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims." Presidential spokesman İbrahim Kalın said that the icons and mosaics of the building would be preserved, and that "in regards to the arguments of secularism, religious tolerance and coexistence, there are more than four hundred churches and synagogues open in Turkey today."[161] Ömer Çelik, spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), announced on 13 July that entry to Hagia Sophia would be free of charge and open to all visitors outside prayer times, during which Christian imagery in the building's mosaics would be covered by curtains or lasers.[149] In response to the criticisms of Pope Francis, Çelik said that the papacy was responsible for the greatest disrespect done to the site, during the 13th-century Roman Catholic Fourth Crusade's sack of Constantinople and the Latin Empire, during which the cathedral was pillaged.[149] The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told TRT Haber on 13 July that the government was surprised at the reaction of UNESCO, saying that "We have to protect our ancestors’ heritage. The function can be this way or that way – it does not matter".[162]
+
+On 14 July the prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said his government was "considering its response at all levels" to what he called Turkey's "unnecessary, petty initiative", and that "with this backward action, Turkey is opting to sever links with western world and its values".[163] In relation to both Hagia Sophia and the Cyprus–Turkey maritime zones dispute, Mitsotakis called for European sanctions against Turkey, referring to it as "a regional troublemaker, and which is evolving into a threat to the stability of the whole south-east Mediterranean region".[163] Dora Bakoyannis, Greek former foreign minister, said Turkey's actions had "crossed the Rubicon", distancing itself from the West.[164] On the day of the building's re-opening, Mitsotakis called it not a show of power but evidence of Turkey's weakness.[131]
+
+Hagia Sophia is one of the greatest surviving examples of Byzantine architecture.[4] Its interior is decorated with mosaics and marble pillars and coverings of great artistic value. The temple itself was so richly and artistically decorated that according to much later legend, Justinian proclaimed, "Solomon, I have outdone thee!" (Byzantine Greek: Νενίκηκά σε Σολομών). Justinian himself had overseen the completion of the greatest cathedral ever built up to that time, and it was to remain the largest cathedral for 1,000 years up until the completion of the cathedral in Seville in Spain.[165]
+
+The Hagia Sophia is of masonry construction. The structure has brick and mortar joints that are 1.5 times the width of the bricks. The mortar joints are composed of a combination of sand and minute ceramic pieces distributed evenly throughout the mortar joints. This combination of sand and potsherds was often used in Roman concrete, predecessor of modern concrete.[166]
+
+Justinian's basilica was at once the culminating architectural achievement of late antiquity and the first masterpiece of Byzantine architecture. Its influence, both architecturally and liturgically, was widespread and enduring in the Eastern Christianity, Western Christianity, and Islam alike.
+
+The vast interior has a complex structure. The nave is covered by a central dome which at its maximum is 55.6 m (182 ft 5 in) from floor level and rests on an arcade of 40 arched windows. Repairs to its structure have left the dome somewhat elliptical, with the diameter varying between 31.24 and 30.86 m (102 ft 6 in and 101 ft 3 in).[citation needed]
+
+At the western entrance side and eastern liturgical side, there are arched openings extended by half domes of identical diameter to the central dome, carried on smaller semi-domed exedrae; a hierarchy of dome-headed elements built up to create a vast oblong interior crowned by the central dome, with a clear span of 76.2 m (250 ft).[4]
+
+The theories of Hero of Alexandria, a Hellenistic mathematician of the 1st century AD, may have been utilized to address the challenges presented by building such an expansive dome over so large a space.[167] The idea is that 
+
+
+
+π
+
+
+{\displaystyle \pi }
+
+, which is not expressible as a rational number, was approximated and deliberately used as a less accurate rational value that approximates the irrational number 
+
+
+
+π
+
+
+{\displaystyle \pi }
+
+. This is appropriate for 22/7 which was used for solving circle problems in construction. When it is ascertained that the circle circumference is U=D*22/7, several elegant solutions are produced, among them those which use a diameter which is cancelling the denominator. As thus Svenshon and Stiffel proposed that the architects used Heron's proposed values for constructing vaults. Central for the erection of the dome of the Hagia Sophia was that the central square corresponds to a diagonal, which is expressible as a rational number approximating 
+
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+
+{\displaystyle {\sqrt {2}}}
+
+. If this was not rightly done, all related measures to the square would not be manageable by the instruments of the surveyors of those times. As thus for the calculation of the square measurements derived from the so-called side-and-diagonal number progression were used. With its help, approximations for 
+
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+
+{\displaystyle {\sqrt {2}}}
+
+ can be produced, which is essential for measuring all types of square or square-related objects and surfaces (i.e. 1/1, 3/2, 7/5, 17/12, 41/29, 99/70). With this method, the squares defined by the numbers 12 and 17, whereas 12 defines the side of the square and 17 its diagonal, has been used as a standard value as early as in cuneiform Babylonian texts.[168]
+
+As the great square in Hagia Sophia is 31 m long, it was previously thought, without any reassurance,[clarification needed] that this length corresponded to 100 Byzantine feet.[citation needed] Yet such a round figure for the square side would lead to a diagonal with the irrational length of 141.421... because of the factor 
+
+
+
+
+
+2
+
+
+
+
+{\displaystyle {\sqrt {2}}}
+
+. This would mean that the square and all dimensions related to it would not be manageable. It has now been realised that in this context, the diagonal is nothing else but the diameter of the circle defined by the vault's circumference, while at the same time, as Heron's circle calculations, in which the practical diameter-values 7 and 14 were used, that the diagonal of the square, or diameter of the circle has been calculated with the tenfold of the exemplary value of 14 or else 140 Byzantine feet. If the dimension of the dome diameter of the Hagia Sophia is constructed with a value that fits to the approximation of 
+
+
+
+π
+
+
+{\displaystyle \pi }
+
+ (22/7) all derived values become rational: 70*22/7=220; 105*22/7=330; 140*22/7=440, ... 210*22/7=660.[citation needed]
+
+Therefore, Svenshon suggested that the size of the side of the central square of Hagia Sophia is not 100 Byzantine feet, but instead 99. This measurement is not only rational, but is also embedded in the system of the side-and-diagonal number progression (70/99) and therefore a usable value by the applied mathematics of antiquity. It gives a diagonal of 140 which is manageable for constructing a huge dome as was done in the Hagia Sophia.[169]
+
+The Imperial Gate was the main entrance between the exo- and esonarthex. It was reserved exclusively for the Emperor. The Byzantine mosaic above the portal depicts Christ and an unnamed emperor. A long ramp from the northern part of the outer narthex leads up to the upper gallery.
+
+The upper gallery, the matroneum, is laid out in a horseshoe shape that encloses the nave on three sides and is interrupted by the apse. Several mosaics are preserved in the upper gallery, an area traditionally reserved for the Empress and her court. The best-preserved mosaics are located in the southern part of the gallery.
+
+The upper gallery contains runic graffiti presumed to be left by members of the Varangian Guard.
+
+Throughout history the Hagia Sophia has been a victim to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, and has also fallen victim to vandalism. Structural damage can easily be seen on its exterior surface. To ensure that the Hagia Sophia did not sustain any damage on the interior of the building, studies have been conducted using ground penetrating radar within the gallery of the Hagia Sophia. With the use of GPR (ground penetrating radar), teams discovered weak zones within the Hagia Sophia's gallery and also concluded that the curvature of the vault dome has been shifted out of proportion, compared to its original angular orientation.[170]
+
+The dome of Hagia Sophia has spurred particular interest for many art historians, architects and engineers because of the innovative way the original architects envisioned it. The dome is carried on four spherical triangular pendentives, one of the first large-scale uses of them. The pendentives are the corners of the square base of the dome, which curve upwards into the dome to support it, restraining the lateral forces of the dome and allowing its weight to flow downwards.[171][172] It was the largest pendentive dome in the world until the completion of St Peter's Basilica, and has a much lower height than any other dome of such a large diameter.
+
+The great dome at the Hagia Sophia is one hundred and seven feet in diameter and is only two feet thick. The main building material for the Hagia Sophia composed of brick and mortar. Brick aggregate was used to make roofs easier to construct. The aggregate weighs one hundred and fifty pounds per cubic foot, an average weight of masonry construction at the time. Due to the materials plasticity it was chosen over cut stone due to the fact that aggregate can be used over a longer distance.[173] According to Rowland Mainstone, "it is unlikely that the vaulting-shell is anywhere more than one normal brick in thickness".[174]
+
+The weight of the dome remained a problem for most of the building's existence. The original cupola collapsed entirely after the earthquake of 558; in 563 a new dome was built by Isidore the younger, a nephew of Isidore of Miletus. Unlike the original, this included 40 ribs and was raised 20 feet, in order to lower the lateral forces on the church walls. A larger section of the second dome collapsed as well, in two episodes, so that today only two sections of the present dome, in the north and south side, still date from the 562 reconstructions. Of the whole dome's 40 ribs, the surviving north section contains eight ribs, while the south section includes six ribs.[175]
+
+Although this design stabilizes the dome and the surrounding walls and arches, the actual construction of the walls of Hagia Sophia weakened the overall structure. The bricklayers used more mortar than brick, which is more effective if the mortar was allowed to settle as the building would have been more flexible; however, the builders raced to complete the building and left no time for the mortar to cure before they began the next layer. When the dome was erected, its weight caused the walls to lean outward because of the wet mortar underneath. When Isidore the Younger rebuilt the fallen cupola, he had first to build up the interior of the walls to make them vertical again. Additionally, the architect raised the height of the rebuilt dome by approximately 6 metres (20 ft) so that the lateral forces would not be as strong and its weight would be transmitted more effectively down into the walls. Moreover, he shaped the new cupola like a scalloped shell or the inside of an umbrella, with ribs that extend from the top down to the base. These ribs allow the weight of the dome to flow between the windows, down the pendentives, and ultimately to the foundation.[176]
+
+Hagia Sophia is famous for the light that reflects everywhere in the interior of the nave, giving the dome the appearance of hovering above. This effect was achieved by inserting forty windows around the base of the original structure. Moreover, the insertion of the windows in the dome structure reduced its weight.[176]
+
+Numerous buttresses have been added throughout the centuries. The flying buttresses to the west of the building, although thought to have been constructed by the Crusaders upon their visit to Constantinople, are actually built during the Byzantine era. This shows that the Romans had prior knowledge of flying buttresses which can also be seen at in Greece, at the Rotunda of Galerius in Thessaloniki and at the monastery of Hosios Loukas in Boeotia, and in Italy at the octagonal basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna.[176] Other buttresses were constructed during the Ottoman times under the guidance of the architect Sinan. A total of 24 buttresses were added.[177]
+
+The minarets were an Ottoman addition and not part of the original church's Byzantine design. They were built for notification of invitations for prayers (adhan) and announcements. Mehmed had built a wooden minaret over one of the half domes soon after Hagia Sophia's conversion from a cathedral to a mosque. This minaret does not exist today. One of the minarets (at southeast) was built from red brick and can be dated back from the reign of Mehmed or his successor Beyazıd II. The other three were built from white limestone and sandstone, of which the slender northeast column was erected by Bayezid II and the two identical larger minarets to the west were erected by Selim II and designed by the famous Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan. Both are 60 metres (200 ft) in height, and their thick and massive patterns complete Hagia Sophia's main structure. Many ornaments and details were added to these minarets on repairs during the 15th, 16th, and 19th centuries, which reflect each period's characteristics and ideals.[178][179]
+
+Originally, under Justinian's reign, the interior decorations consisted of abstract designs on marble slabs on the walls and floors, as well as mosaics on the curving vaults. Of these mosaics, one can still see the two archangels Gabriel and Michael in the spandrels (corners) of the bema. There were already a few figurative decorations, as attested by the late 6th-century ekphrasis of Paul the Silentiary, the Description of Hagia Sophia. The spandrels of the gallery are faced in inlaid thin slabs (opus sectile), showing patterns and figures of flowers and birds in precisely cut pieces of white marble set against a background of black marble. In later stages, figurative mosaics were added, which were destroyed during the iconoclastic controversy (726–843). Present mosaics are from the post-iconoclastic period.
+
+Apart from the mosaics, many figurative decorations were added during the second half of the 9th century: an image of Christ in the central dome; Eastern Orthodox saints, prophets and Church Fathers in the tympana below; historical figures connected with this church, such as Patriarch Ignatius; and some scenes from the Gospels in the galleries.Basil II let artists paint on each of the four pendentives a giant six-winged seraph.[64] The Ottomans covered their faces with a golden star,[64] but in 2009 one of them was restored to the original state.[180]
+
+The loggia of the empress is located in the centre of the gallery of the Hagia Sophia, above the Imperial Door and directly opposite the apse. From this matroneum (women's gallery), the empress and the court-ladies would watch the proceedings down below. A green stone disc of verd antique marks the spot where the throne of the empress stood.[181][182]
+
+Two huge marble lustration (ritual purification) urns were brought from Pergamon during the reign of Sultan Murad III. From the Hellenistic period, they are carved from single blocks of marble.[17]
+
+The Marble Door inside the Hagia Sophia is located in the southern upper enclosure or gallery. It was used by the participants in synods, who entered and left the meeting chamber through this door. It is said[by whom?] that each side is symbolic and that one side represents heaven while the other represents hell. Its panels are covered in fruits and fish motives. The door opens into a space that was used as a venue for solemn meetings and important resolutions of patriarchate officials.[183]
+
+The Nice Door is the oldest architectural element found in the Hagia Sophia dating back to the 2nd century BC. The decorations are of reliefs of geometric shapes as well as plants that are believed to have come from a pagan temple in Tarsus in Cilicia, part of the Cibyrrhaeot Theme in modern-day Mersin Province in southeastern Turkey. It was incorporated into the building by Emperor Theophilos in 838 where it is placed in the south exit in the inner narthex.[184]
+
+The Imperial Door is the door that would be used solely by the Emperor as well as his personal bodyguard and retinue. It is the largest door in the Hagia Sophia and has been dated to the 6th century. It is about 7 meters long and Byzantine sources say it was made with wood from Noah's Ark.[185]
+
+At the northwest of the building, there is a column with a hole in the middle covered by bronze plates. This column goes by different names; the "perspiring" or "sweating column", the "crying column", or the "wishing column". The column is said to be damp when touched and have supernatural powers.[186] The legend states that since Gregory the Wonderworker appeared near the column in the year 1200, it has been moist. It is believed that touching the moisture cures many illnesses.[187][188]
+
+The first mosaics which adorned the church were completed during the reign of Justin II.[189] Many of the non-figurative mosaics in the church come from this period. Most of the mosaics, however, were created in the 10th and 12th centuries,[190] following the periods of Byzantine Iconoclasm.
+
+During the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, the Latin Crusaders vandalized valuable items in every important Byzantine structure of the city, including the golden mosaics of the Hagia Sophia. Many of these items were shipped to Venice, whose Doge, Enrico Dandolo, had organized the invasion and sack of Constantinople after an agreement with Prince Alexios Angelos, the son of a deposed Byzantine emperor.
+
+Following the building's conversion into a mosque in 1453, many of its mosaics were covered with plaster, due to Islam's ban on representational imagery. This process was not completed at once, and reports exist from the 17th century in which travellers note that they could still see Christian images in the former church. In 1847–1849, the building was restored by two Swiss-Italian Fossati brothers, Gaspare and Giuseppe, and Sultan Abdulmejid I allowed them to also document any mosaics they might discover during this process, which were later archived in Swiss libraries.[191] This work did not include repairing the mosaics and after recording the details about an image, the Fossatis painted it over again. The Fossatis restored the mosaics of the two hexapteryga (singular Greek: ἑξαπτέρυγον, pr. hexapterygon, six-winged angel; it is uncertain whether they are seraphim or cherubim) located on the two east pendentives, covering their faces again before the end of the restoration.[192] The other two placed on the west pendentives are copies in paint created by the Fossatis since they could find no surviving remains of them.[192] As in this case, the architects reproduced in paint damaged decorative mosaic patterns, sometimes redesigning them in the process. The Fossati records are the primary sources about a number of mosaic images now believed to have been completely or partially destroyed in the 1894 Istanbul earthquake. These include a mosaic over a now-unidentified Door of the Poor, a large image of a jewel-encrusted cross, and many images of angels, saints, patriarchs, and church fathers. Most of the missing images were located in the building's two tympana.
+
+One mosaic they documented is Christ Pantocrator in a circle, which would indicate it to be a ceiling mosaic, possibly even of the main dome which was later covered and painted over with Islamic calligraphy that expounds God as the light of the universe. The Fossatis' drawings of the Hagia Sophia mosaics are today kept in the Archive of the Canton of Ticino.[193]
+
+Many mosaics were uncovered in the 1930s by a team from the Byzantine Institute of America led by Thomas Whittemore. The team chose to let a number of simple cross images remain covered by plaster but uncovered all major mosaics found.
+
+Because of its long history as both a church and a mosque, a particular challenge arises in the restoration process. Christian iconographic mosaics can be uncovered, but often at the expense of important and historic Islamic art. Restorers have attempted to maintain a balance between both Christian and Islamic cultures. In particular, much controversy rests upon whether the Islamic calligraphy on the dome of the cathedral should be removed, in order to permit the underlying Pantocrator mosaic of Christ as Master of the World, to be exhibited (assuming the mosaic still exists).[194]
+
+The Hagia Sophia has been a victim to natural disasters that have caused deterioration to the buildings structure and walls. The deterioration of the Hagia Sophia's walls can be directly relate to salt crystallization. The crystallization of salt is due to an intrusion of rainwater that is at fault for the Hagia Sophia's deteriorating inner and outer walls. Diverting excess rainwater is the main solution to solve the deteriorating walls at the Hagia Sophia.[195]
+
+Built between 532–537 a subsurface structure under the Hagia Sophia has been under investigation, using LaCoste-Romberg gravimeters to determine the depth of the subsurface structure and to discover other hidden cavities beneath the Hagia Sophia. The hidden cavities have also acted as a support system against earthquakes. With these findings using the LaCoste-Romberg gravimeters, it was also discovered that the Hagia Sophia's foundation is built on a slope of natural rock.[196]
+
+The Imperial Gate mosaic is located in the tympanum above that gate, which was used only by the emperors when entering the church. Based on style analysis, it has been dated to the late 9th or early 10th century. The emperor with a nimbus or halo could possibly represent emperor Leo VI the Wise or his son Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus bowing down before Christ Pantocrator, seated on a jewelled throne, giving his blessing and holding in his left hand an open book.[197] The text on the book reads: "Peace be with you" (John 20:19, 20:26) and "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12). On each side of Christ's shoulders is a circular medallion with busts: on his left the Archangel Gabriel, holding a staff, on his right his mother Mary.[198]
+
+The southwestern entrance mosaic, situated in the tympanum of the southwestern entrance, dates from the reign of Basil II.[199] It was rediscovered during the restorations of 1849 by the Fossatis. The Virgin sits on a throne without a back, her feet resting on a pedestal, embellished with precious stones. The Christ Child sits on her lap, giving his blessing and holding a scroll in his left hand. On her left side stands emperor Constantine in ceremonial attire, presenting a model of the city to Mary. The inscription next to him says: "Great emperor Constantine of the Saints". On her right side stands emperor Justinian I, offering a model of the Hagia Sophia. The medallions on both sides of the Virgin's head carry the nomina sacra MP and ΘΥ, abbreviations of the Greek: Μήτηρ του Θεοῦ, romanized: Mētēr Theou, lit. 'Mother of God'.[200]
+
+The Virgin and Child mosaic was the first of the post-iconoclastic mosaics. It was inaugurated on 29 March 867 by Patriarch Photius and the emperors Michael III and Basil I. This mosaic is situated in a high location on the half dome of the apse. Mary is sitting on a throne without a back, holding the Child Jesus on her lap. Her feet rest on a pedestal. Both the pedestal and the throne are adorned with precious stones. The portraits of the archangels Gabriel and Michael (largely destroyed) in the bema of the arch also date from the 9th century. The mosaics are set against the original golden background of the 6th century. These mosaics were believed to be a reconstruction of the mosaics of the 6th century that were previously destroyed during the iconoclastic era by the Byzantines of that time, as represented in the inaugural sermon by the patriarch Photios. However, no record of figurative decoration of Hagia Sophia exists before this time.[201]
+
+The Emperor Alexander mosaic is not easy to find for the first-time visitor, located on the second floor in a dark corner of the ceiling. It depicts the emperor Alexander in full regalia, holding a scroll in his right hand and a globus cruciger in his left. A drawing by the Fossatis showed that the mosaic survived until 1849 and that Thomas Whittemore, founder of the Byzantine Institute of America who was granted permission to preserve the mosaics, assumed that it had been destroyed in the earthquake of 1894. Eight years after his death, the mosaic was discovered in 1958 largely through the researches of Robert Van Nice. Unlike most of the other mosaics in Hagia Sophia, which had been covered over by ordinary plaster, the Alexander mosaic was simply painted over and reflected the surrounding mosaic patterns and thus was well hidden. It was duly cleaned by the Byzantine Institute's successor to Whittemore, Paul A. Underwood.[202][203]
+
+The Empress Zoe mosaic on the eastern wall of the southern gallery date from the 11th century. Christ Pantocrator, clad in the dark blue robe (as is the custom in Byzantine art), is seated in the middle against a golden background, giving his blessing with the right hand and holding the Bible in his left hand. On either side of his head are the nomina sacra IC and XC, meaning Iēsous Christos. He is flanked by Constantine IX Monomachus and Empress Zoe, both in ceremonial costumes. He is offering a purse, as a symbol of donation, he made to the church, while she is holding a scroll, symbol of the donations she made. The inscription over the head of the emperor says: "Constantine, pious emperor in Christ the God, king of the Romans, Monomachus". The inscription over the head of the empress reads as follows: "Zoë, the very pious Augusta". The previous heads have been scraped off and replaced by the three present ones. Perhaps the earlier mosaic showed her first husband Romanus III Argyrus or her second husband Michael IV. Another theory is that this mosaic was made for an earlier emperor and empress, with their heads changed into the present ones.[204]
+
+The Comnenus mosaic, also located on the eastern wall of the southern gallery, dates from 1122. The Virgin Mary is standing in the middle, depicted, as usual in Byzantine art, in a dark blue gown. She holds the Christ Child on her lap. He gives his blessing with his right hand while holding a scroll in his left hand. On her right side stands emperor John II Comnenus, represented in a garb embellished with precious stones. He holds a purse, symbol of an imperial donation to the church. his wife, the empress Irene of Hungary stands on the left side of the Virgin, wearing ceremonial garments and offering a document. Their eldest son Alexius Comnenus is represented on an adjacent pilaster. He is shown as a beardless youth, probably representing his appearance at his coronation aged seventeen. In this panel, one can already see a difference with the Empress Zoe mosaic that is one century older. There is a more realistic expression in the portraits instead of an idealized representation. The Empress Irene (born Piroska), daughter of Ladislaus I of Hungary, is shown with plaited blond hair, rosy cheeks, and grey eyes, revealing her Hungarian descent. The emperor is depicted in a dignified manner.[205]
+
+The Deësis mosaic (Δέησις, "Entreaty") probably dates from 1261. It was commissioned to mark the end of 57 years of Roman Catholic use and the return to the Eastern Orthodox faith. It is the third panel situated in the imperial enclosure of the upper galleries. It is widely considered the finest in Hagia Sophia, because of the softness of the features, the humane expressions and the tones of the mosaic. The style is close to that of the Italian painters of the late 13th or early 14th century, such as Duccio. In this panel the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist (Ioannes Prodromos), both shown in three-quarters profile, are imploring the intercession of Christ Pantocrator for humanity on Judgment Day. The bottom part of this mosaic is badly deteriorated.[206] This mosaic is considered as the beginning of a renaissance in Byzantine pictorial art.[207]
+
+The northern tympanum mosaics feature various saints. They have been able to survive due to their high and inaccessible location. They depict Patriarchs of Constantinople John Chrysostom and Ignatius standing, clothed in white robes with crosses, and holding richly jewelled Bibles. The figures of each patriarch, revered as saints, are identifiable by labels in Greek. The other mosaics in the other tympana have not survived probably due to the frequent earthquakes, as opposed to any deliberate destruction by the Ottoman conquerors.[208]
+
+The dome was decorated with four non-identical figures of the six-winged angels which protect the Throne of God; it is uncertain whether they are seraphim or cherubim. The mosaics survive in the eastern part of the dome, but since the ones on the western side were damaged during the Byzantine period, they have been renewed as frescoes. During the Ottoman period each seraph's (or cherub's) face was covered with metallic lids in the shape of stars, but these were removed to reveal the faces during renovations in 2009.[209]
+
+Mosaic in the northern tympanum depicting Saint John Chrysostom
+
+Six patriarchs mosaic in the southern tympanum as drawn by the Fossati brothers
+
+Moasics as drawn by the Fossati brothers
+
+Interior of the Hagia Sophia by John Singer Sargent, 1891
+
+Photograph by Sébah & Joaillier, c.1900–10
+
+Watercolour of the interior by Philippe Chaperon, 1893
+
+Detail of relief on the Marble Door.
+
+Imperial Gate from the nave
+
+19th-century centotaph of Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice, and commander of the 1204 Sack of Constantinople
+
+Ambigram ΝΙΨΟΝ��ΝΟΜΗΜΑΤΑΜΗΜΟΝΑΝΟΨΙΝ ("Wash your sins, not only the face") inscribed upon a holy water font
+
+Gate of the külliye, by John Frederick Lewis, 1838
+
+Fountain of Ahmed III from the gate of the külliye, by John Frederick Lewis, 1838
+
+Southern side of Hagia Sophia, looking east, by John Frederick Lewis, 1838
+
+From Verhandeling van de godsdienst der Mahometaanen, by Adriaan Reland, 1719
+
+Hagia Sophia from the south-west, 1914
+
+Hagia Sophia in the snow, December 2015
+
+Maschinengewehr 08 mounted on a minaret during World War II
+
+Many religious buildings have been modeled on the Hagia Sophia's core structure of a large central dome resting on pendentives and buttressed by two semi-domes.
+
+Many Byzantine churches were modeled on the Hagia Sophia including the namesake Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki, Greece. Under Justinian, the Hagia Irene was remodeled to have a dome similar to the Hagia Sophia.
+
+Several mosques commissioned by the Ottoman dynasty closely mimic the geometry of the Hagia Sophia, including the Süleymaniye Mosque and the Bayezid II Mosque. In many cases, Ottoman architects preferred to surround the central dome with four semi-domes rather than two.[210] This is true in the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, the New Mosque (Istanbul), and the Fatih Mosque. Like the original plan of the Hagia Sophia, many of these mosques are also entered through a colonnaded courtyard. However, the courtyard of the Hagia Sophia no longer exists.
+
+Neo-Byzantine churches modeled on the Hagia Sophia include the Kronstadt Naval Cathedral and Poti Cathedral which closely replicate the internal geometry of the Hagia Sophia. The interior of the Kronstadt Naval Cathedral is a nearly 1-to-1 copy of the Hagia Sophia. The marble revetment also closely mimics the source work. Like Ottoman mosques, many churches based on the Hagia Sophia include four semi-domes rather than two, such as the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade.
+
+Several churches combine the layout of the Hagia Sophia with a Latin cross plan. For instance, the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis (St. Louis), where the transept is formed by two semi-domes surrounding the main dome. This church also closely emulates the column capitals and mosaic styles of the Hagia Sophia. Other similar examples include the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia, St Sophia's Cathedral, London, Saint Clement Catholic Church, Chicago, and Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
+
+The Catedral Metropolitana Ortodoxa in São Paulo and the Église du Saint-Esprit (Paris) closely follow the interior layout of the Hagia Sophia. Both include four semi-domes, but the two lateral semi-domes are very shallow. In terms of size, the Église du Saint-Esprit is about two-thirds the scale of the Hagia Sophia.
+
+Synagogues based on the Hagia Sophia include the Congregation Emanu-El (San Francisco), Great Synagogue of Florence, and Hurva Synagogue.
+
+Articles
+
+Mosaics

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+Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), commonly known as Saint Louis or Louis the Saint, is the only King of France to be canonized in the Catholic Church. Louis was crowned in Reims at the age of 12, following the death of his father Louis VIII; his mother, Blanche of Castile, ruled the kingdom as regent until he reached maturity. During Louis's childhood, Blanche dealt with the opposition of rebellious vassals and obtained a definitive victory in the Albigensian Crusade, which had started 20 years earlier.
+
+As an adult, Louis IX faced recurring conflicts with some of his realm's most powerful nobles, such as Hugh X of Lusignan and Peter of Dreux. Simultaneously, Henry III of England invaded to restore his continental possessions, but Louis routed him at the Battle of Taillebourg. Louis annexed several provinces, notably parts of Aquitaine, Maine and Provence.
+
+Louis IX is one of the most notable European monarchs of the Middle Ages. His reign is remembered as a medieval golden age in which the Kingdom of France reached an economic as well as political peak. His fellow European rulers esteemed him highly, not only for his military pre-eminence and the wealth of his kingdom, but for his reputation of fairness and moral integrity: he was often asked to arbitrate their disputes.[1]
+
+He was a reformer and developed French royal justice, in which the king was the supreme judge to whom anyone could appeal to seek the amendment of a judgment. He banned trials by ordeal, tried to prevent the private wars that were plaguing the country, and introduced the presumption of innocence in criminal procedure. To enforce the application of this new legal system, Louis IX created provosts and bailiffs.
+
+After his unexpected recovery from a serious illness, and to honor a vow he made while ill, Louis IX led the Seventh and Eighth crusades against the Ayyubids, Bahriyya Mamluks and Hafsid Kingdom. He was captured in the first and ransomed. He died from dysentery during the latter, and was succeeded by his son Philip III.
+
+Louis' actions were inspired by Christian zeal and Catholic devotion. He was a just king: although he exacted what was due him, he had no wish to wrong anyone, from the lowest peasant to the richest vassal.[2] Renowned for his moderate lifestyle, reason, bravery and chivalrous politeness, he was a splendid knight whose kindness and engaging manner made him popular. He was therefore regarded as the ideal Christian ruler even if he was also occasionally rebuked by contemporaries as a "monk king".[3]  He decided to severely punish blasphemy (for which he set the punishment to mutilation of the tongue and lips).[4] He is the only canonized king of France, and there are consequently many places named after him.
+
+Much of what is known of Louis's life comes from Jean de Joinville's famous Life of Saint Louis. Joinville was a close friend, confidant, and counselor to the king. He participated as a witness in the papal inquest into Louis's life that resulted in his canonisation in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII.
+
+Two other important biographies were written by the king's confessor, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and his chaplain, William of Chartres. While several individuals wrote biographies in the decades following the king's death, only Jean of Joinville, Geoffrey of Beaulieu, and William of Chartres wrote from personal knowledge of the king, and all three are biased favorably to the king. The fourth important source of information is William of Saint-Parthus's 19th-century biography,[5] which he wrote using material from the papal inquest mentioned above.
+
+Louis was born on 25 April 1214 at Poissy, near Paris, the son of Louis the Lion and Blanche of Castile, and was baptised there in La Collégiale Notre-Dame church. His grandfather on his father's side was Philip II, king of France; while his grandfather on his mother's side was Alfonso VIII, king of Castile. Tutors of Blanche's choosing taught him most of what a king must know—Latin, public speaking, writing, military arts, and government.[6] He was nine years old when his grandfather Philip II died and his father ascended as Louis VIII.[7]
+
+Louis was 12 years old when his father died on 8 November 1226. He was crowned king within the month at Reims Cathedral. Because of Louis's youth, his mother ruled France as regent during his minority.[8] Louis's mother trained him to be a great leader and a good Christian. She used to say:[9]
+
+I love you, my dear son, as much as a mother can love her child; but I would rather see you dead at my feet than that you should ever commit a mortal sin.
+
+His younger brother Charles I of Sicily (1227–85) was created count of Anjou, thus founding the Capetian Angevin dynasty.
+
+No date is given for the beginning of Louis's personal rule. His contemporaries viewed his reign as co-rule between the king and his mother, though historians generally view the year 1234 as the year in which Louis began ruling personally, with his mother assuming a more advisory role.[1] She continued to have a strong influence on the king until her death in 1252.[8][10]
+
+On 27 May 1234, Louis married Margaret of Provence (1221 – 21 December 1295); she was crowned in the cathedral of Sens the next day.[11] Louis's marriage had political connections, as his wife was sister to Eleanor, who later married Henry III of England.  The new queen's religious zeal made her a well-suited partner for the king. He enjoyed her company, and was pleased to show her the many public works he was making in Paris, both for its defence and for its health. They enjoyed riding together, reading, and listening to music. His attention to Margaret aroused a certain amount of jealousy in his mother, who tried to keep the couple apart as much as she could.[12]
+
+In the 1230s, Nicholas Donin, a Jewish convert to Christianity, translated the Talmud and pressed 35 charges against it to Pope Gregory IX by quoting a series of passages about Jesus, Mary or Christianity that he considered blasphemous. There is a Talmudic passage, for example, where someone called Yeshu is sent to Hell to be boiled in excrement for eternity. Donin also selected an injunction of the Talmud that allegedly permits Jews to kill non-Jews.[citation needed]
+
+This led to the Disputation of Paris, which took place in 1240 at the court of Louis IX. Rabbi Yechiel of Paris was called on to defend the Talmud against Donin's accusations. Louis IX's Catholic representatives condemned the Talmud and burned thousands of copies.[13]
+
+When Louis was 15, his mother brought an end to the Albigensian Crusade in 1229. She signed an agreement with Count Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, which cleared the latter's father of wrongdoing.[14] Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse had been suspected of murdering a preacher on a mission to convert the Cathars.[15]
+
+Louis went on two crusades: in his mid-30s in 1248 (Seventh Crusade), and then again in his mid-50s in 1270 (Eighth Crusade).
+
+In 1248 Louis decided that his obligations as a son of the Church outweighed those of his throne, and he left his kingdom to participate in a Crusade, what for him was a disastrous six-year adventure. Since the base of Muslim power had shifted to Egypt, Louis did not march on the Holy Land. Any war against Islam was considered to fit the definition of a Crusade.[16]
+
+Louis and his followers landed in Egypt on 5 June 1249 and began his campaign with the rapid capture of the port of Damietta.[16][17] This attack caused some disruption in the Muslim Ayyubid empire, especially as the current sultan, Al-Malik as-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub, was on his deathbed. However, the march of Europeans from Damietta toward Cairo through the Nile River Delta went slowly. The seasonal rising of the Nile and the summer heat made it impossible for them to advance and follow up on their success.[18] During this time, the Ayyubid sultan died, and the sultan's wife Shajar al-Durr set in motion a sudden power shift that would make her Queen and eventually place the Egyptian army of the Mamluks in power.
+
+On 8 February 1250 Louis lost his army at the Battle of Al Mansurah[19] and was captured by the Egyptians. His release was eventually negotiated in return for a ransom of 400,000 livres tournois (at the time France's annual revenue was only about 1,250,000 livres tournois) and the surrender of the city of Damietta.[20]
+
+Following his release from Egyptian captivity, Louis spent four years in the Latin kingdoms of Acre, Caesarea, and Jaffa. He used his wealth to assist the Crusaders in rebuilding their defences[21] and conducted diplomacy with the Islamic powers of Syria and Egypt. In the spring of 1254 he and his surviving army returned to France.[16]
+
+Louis exchanged multiple letters and emissaries with Mongol rulers of the period. During his first crusade in 1248, Louis was approached by envoys from Eljigidei, the Mongol military commander stationed in Armenia and Persia.[22] Eljigidei suggested that King Louis should land in Egypt, while Eljigidei attacked Baghdad, to prevent the Saracens of Egypt and those of Syria from joining forces. Louis sent André de Longjumeau, a Dominican priest, as an emissary to the Great Khan Güyük Khan (r. 1246–48) in Mongolia. Güyük died before the emissary arrived at his court, however, and no action was taken by the two parties. Instead Güyükq's queen and now regent, Oghul Qaimish, politely turned down the diplomatic offer.[23]
+
+Louis dispatched another envoy to the Mongol court, the Franciscan William of Rubruck, who visited the Great Khan Möngke (1251–1259) in Mongolia. He spent several years at the Mongol court. In 1259, Berke, the ruler of the Golden Horde, westernmost part of the Mongolian Empire, demanded the submission of Louis.[24] By contrast, Mongolian emperors Möngke and Khubilai's brother, the Ilkhan Hulegu, sent a letter to the king of France seeking his military assistance, but the letter never reached France.[25]
+
+In a parliament held at Paris, 24 March 1267, Louis and his three sons "took the cross." On hearing the reports of the missionaries, Louis resolved to land at Tunis, and he ordered his younger brother, Charles of Anjou, to join him there. The crusaders, among whom was the English prince Edward Longshanks, landed at Carthage 17 July 1270, but disease broke out in the camp. Many died of dysentery, and on 25 August, Louis himself died.[21][26]
+
+Louis's patronage of the arts inspired much innovation in Gothic art and architecture. The style of his court was influential throughout Europe, both because of art objects purchased for export from Parisian masters, and by the marriage of the king's daughters and female relatives to foreign husbands. They became emissaries of Parisian models and styles elsewhere. Louis's personal chapel, the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, which was known for its intricate stained-glass windows, was copied more than once by his descendants elsewhere. Louis is believed to have ordered the production of the Morgan Bible, a masterpiece of medieval painting.
+
+During the so-called "golden century of Saint Louis", the kingdom of France was at its height in Europe, both politically and economically. Saint Louis was regarded as "primus inter pares", first among equals, among the kings and rulers of the continent. He commanded the largest army and ruled the largest and wealthiest kingdom, the European centre of arts and intellectual thought at the time. The foundations for the notable college of theology, later known as the Sorbonne, were laid in Paris about the year 1257.[18]
+
+The prestige and respect felt by Europeans for King Louis IX were due more to the appeal of his personality than to military domination. For his contemporaries, he was the quintessential example of the Christian prince and embodied the whole of Christendom in his person. His reputation for fairness and even saintliness was already well established while he was alive, and on many occasions he was chosen as an arbiter in quarrels among the rulers of Europe.[1]
+
+Shortly before 1256, Enguerrand IV, Lord of Coucy, arrested and without trial hanged three young squires of Laon, whom he accused of poaching in his forest. In 1256 Louis had the lord arrested and brought to the Louvre by his sergeants. Enguerrand demanded judgment by his peers and trial by battle, which the king refused because he thought it obsolete. Enguerrand was tried, sentenced, and ordered to pay 12,000 livres. Part of the money was to pay for masses to be said in perpetuity for the souls of the men he had hanged.
+
+In 1258, Louis and James I of Aragon signed the Treaty of Corbeil to end areas of contention between them. By this treaty, Louis renounced his feudal overlordship over the County of Barcelona and Roussillon, which was held by the King of Aragon. James in turn renounced his feudal overlordship over several counties in southern France, including Provence and Languedoc. In 1259 Louis signed the Treaty of Paris, by which Henry III of England was confirmed in his possession of territories in southwestern France, and Louis received the provinces of Anjou, Normandy (Normandie), Poitou, Maine, and Touraine.[8]
+
+The perception of Louis IX as the exemplary Christian prince was reinforced by his religious zeal. Louis was an extremely devout Catholic, and he built the Sainte-Chapelle ("Holy Chapel"),[1] located within the royal palace complex (now the Paris Hall of Justice), on the Île de la Cité in the centre of Paris. Sainte Chapelle, a prime example of the Rayonnant style of Gothic architecture, was erected as a shrine for what Louis believed to be the Crown of Thorns and a fragment of the True Cross, supposed precious relics of the Passion of Christ. He acquired these in 1239–41 from Emperor Baldwin II of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Louis agreed to pay off the imperial debt which Baldwin owed to Niccolo Quirino, a wealthy Venetian merchant, a debt to which Baldwin had pledged the Crown of Thorns as collateral.[27] Louis IX paid the exorbitant sum of 135,000 livres to clear this debt (the construction of the chapel, for comparison, cost only 60,000 livres).
+
+Louis IX took very seriously his mission as "lieutenant of God on Earth", with which he had been invested when he was crowned in Reims. To fulfill this duty, he conducted two crusades. They contributed to his prestige, even though both ended disastrously. Everything he did was for what he saw as the glory of God and the good of his people. He protected the poor and was never heard to speak ill of anyone. He excelled in penance, leaving a hair shirt and a scourge which he had used in private practice. He had a great love for the Church. He was merciful even to rebels. When he was urged to execute a prince who had followed his father in rebellion, he refused, saying: "A son cannot refuse to obey his father."[9]
+
+In 1230 the King forbade all forms of usury, defined at the time as any taking of interest and therefore covering most banking activities. When the original borrowers from Jewish and Lombard lenders could not be found, Louis exacted from those lenders a contribution toward the crusade which Pope Gregory was trying to launch.[18] At the urging of Pope Gregory IX, following the Disputation of Paris in 1240, Louis ordered in 1243 the burning in Paris of some 12,000 manuscript copies of the Talmud and other Jewish books. Eventually, the edict against the Talmud was overturned by Gregory IX's successor, Innocent IV.[28]
+
+Louis also expanded the scope of the Inquisition in France. He set the punishment for blasphemy to mutilation of the tongue and lips.[4] The area most affected by this expansion was southern France, where the Cathar sect had been strongest. The rate of confiscation of property from the Cathars and others reached its highest levels in the years before his first crusade, and slowed upon his return to France in 1254.
+
+In 1250, Louis headed a crusade to Egypt and was taken prisoner. During his captivity, he recited the Divine Office every day. After his release against ransom, he visited the Holy Land before returning to France.[9] In these deeds, Louis IX tried to fulfill what he believed was the duty of France as "the eldest daughter of the Church" (la fille aînée de l'Église), a tradition of protector of the Church going back to the Franks and Charlemagne, who had been crowned by Pope Leo III in Rome in 800. The kings of France were known in the church by the title "most Christian king" (Rex Christianissimus). The relationship between France and the papacy was at its peak in the 12th and 13th centuries. The popes called for most of the crusades from French soil.
+
+Louis was renowned for his charity. Beggars were fed from his table: he ate their leavings; washed their feet; ministered to the wants of lepers, who were generally ostracized; and daily fed over one hundred poor. He founded many hospitals and houses: the House of the Filles-Dieu for reformed prostitutes; the Quinze-Vingt for 300 blind men (1254), and hospitals at Pontoise, Vernon, and Compiégne.[29]
+
+St. Louis installed a house of the Trinitarian Order at  Fontainebleau, his chateau and estate near Paris. He chose Trinitarians as his chaplains, and was accompanied by them on his crusades. In his spiritual testament he wrote: "My dearest son, you should permit yourself to be tormented by every kind of martyrdom before you would allow yourself to commit a mortal sin."[9]
+
+Louis and Margaret's two royal children who died in infancy were first buried at the Cistercian abbey of Royaumont. In 1820 they were transferred and reinterred to Saint-Denis Basilica.[33]
+
+During his second crusade, Louis died at Tunis on 25 August 1270, in an epidemic of dysentery that swept through his army.[26][34][35] According to European custom, his body was subjected to the process known as mos Teutonicus prior to his remains being returned to France. (This was a postmortem funerary custom used in medieval Europe whereby the flesh was boiled from the body, so that the bones of the deceased could be transported hygienically from distant lands back home). This was not the common practice for Muslim burials. [36] Louis was succeeded by his son, Philip III.
+
+Louis's younger brother, Charles I of Naples, preserved his heart and intestines, and conveyed them for burial in the cathedral of Monreale near Palermo.[37] Louis's bones were carried overland in a lengthy processional across Sicily, Italy, the Alps, and France, until they were interred in the royal necropolis at Saint-Denis in May 1271.[38] Charles and Philip II later dispersed a number of relics to promote his veneration.[39]
+
+Pope Boniface VIII proclaimed the canonisation of Louis in 1297;[40] he is the only French king to be declared a saint.[41] Louis IX is often considered the model of the ideal Christian monarch.[40] The influence of his canonization was so great that many of his successors were named Louis after him.
+
+Named in his honour, the Sisters of Charity of St. Louis is a Roman Catholic religious order founded in Vannes, France, in 1803.[42] A similar order, the Sisters of St Louis, was founded in Juilly in 1842.[43][44]
+
+He is honoured as co-patron of the Third Order of St. Francis, which claims him as a member of the Order. Even in childhood, his compassion for the poor and suffering people were known to those who were close to him. When he became king, over a hundred poor people were served meals in his house on ordinary days. Often the king served these guests himself. Such acts of charity, coupled with Louis's devout religious practices, gave rise to the legend that he joined the Third Order of St. Francis. Though it is unlikely that Louis did join the order, his life and actions proclaimed him as one of them in spirit.[6]
+
+Many countries in which French speakers and Catholicism were prevalent named places after King Louis:
+
+The French royal Order of Saint Louis (1693–1790 and 1814–1830),[citation needed] the Île Saint-Louis,[48] and  a hospital in the 10th arrondissement of Paris[citation needed] also bear his name.The Cathedral Saint-Louis in Versailles;[citation needed] the Basilica of St. Louis, King of France completed in 1834 and the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis completed in 1914, both in St. Louis, Missouri;[citation needed] and the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans were also named for the king.[citation needed]  The national church of France in Rome also carries his name: San Luigi dei Francesi in Italian, or Saint Louis of France in English.[citation needed] Also the Cathedral of St Louis in Plovdiv, Bulgaria[citation needed], the Church of St Louis in Moscow, Russia,[citation needed] and rue Saint Louis of Pondicherry, India.[citation needed]
+
+A bas-relief of St. Louis is one of the carved portraits of historic lawmakers that adorns the chamber of the United States House of Representatives.
+
+Saint Louis is also portrayed on a frieze depicting a timeline of important lawgivers throughout world history, on the North Wall of the Courtroom at the Supreme Court of the United States.[49]
+
+A statue of St. Louis by the sculptor John Donoghue stands on the roofline of the New York State Appellate Division Court at 27 Madison Avenue in New York City.
+
+The Apotheosis of St. Louis is an equestrian statue of the saint, by Charles Henry Niehaus, that stands in front of the Saint Louis Art Museum in Forest Park.
+
+A heroic portrait by Baron Charles de Steuben hangs in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore.  An 1821 gift of King Louis XVIII of France, it depicts St. Louis burying his plague-stricken troops before the siege of Tunis at the beginning of the Eighth Crusade in 1270.
+

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+
+
+in Europe (agate grey)  –  [Legend]
+
+San Marino (/ˌsæn məˈriːnoʊ/ (listen), Italian: [sam maˈriːno]), officially the Republic of San Marino[1][2] (Italian: Repubblica di San Marino; Romagnol: Ripóbblica d' San Marein), also known as the Most Serene Republic of San Marino[2] (Italian: Serenissima Repubblica di San Marino), is a microstate in Southern Europe completely enclosed by Italy.[6]
+
+Located on the northeastern side of the Apennine Mountains, San Marino covers a land area of just over 61 km2 (24 sq mi), and has a population of 33,562.[7] Its capital is the City of San Marino and its largest settlement is Dogana. San Marino's official language is Italian.
+
+The country derives its name from Saint Marinus, a stonemason from the then Roman island of Rab, in modern-day Croatia. Born in AD 275, Marinus participated in the reconstruction of Rimini's city walls after their destruction by Liburnian pirates. Marinus then went on to found an independent monastic community on Monte Titano in AD 301; thus, San Marino lays claim to being the oldest extant sovereign state, as well as the oldest constitutional republic.[8]
+
+San Marino's politics are ruled by its constitution, which dictates that every six months San Marino's parliament must elect two Captains Regent. The Captain Regents have equal powers, and are free to exercise them within the limits of the constitution and parliamentary legislation until their term expires.
+
+The country's economy is mainly based on finance, industry, services and tourism. It is one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita, with a figure comparable to the most developed European regions. San Marino is considered to have a highly stable economy, with one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, no national debt and a budget surplus.[1]
+
+Saint Marinus left the island of Rab in present-day Croatia with his lifelong friend Leo, and went to the city of Rimini as a stonemason. After the Diocletianic Persecution following his Christian sermons, he escaped to the nearby Monte Titano, where he built a small church and thus founded what is now the city and state of San Marino.
+
+The official founding date is 3 September 301. In 1320 the community of Chiesanuova chose to join the country.[9] In 1463 San Marino was extended with the communities of Faetano, Fiorentino, Montegiardino, and Serravalle, after which the country's borders have remained unchanged.[10]
+
+In 1503, Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI occupied the Republic for six months until his father's successor, Pope Julius II, intervened and restored the country's independence.[11]
+
+On June 4, 1543 Fabiano di Monte San Savino, nephew of the later Pope Julius III, attempted to conquer the republic, but his infantry and cavalry failed as they got lost in a dense fog, which the Sammarinese attributed to Saint Quirinus, whose feast day it was.[12]
+
+After the Duchy of Urbino was annexed by the Papal States in 1625, San Marino became an enclave within the Papal States, something which led to its seeking the formal protection of the Papal States in 1631, but this never equalled a de facto Papal control of the republic.[13]
+
+The country was occupied on October 17, 1739 by the legate (Papal governor) of Ravenna, Cardinal Giulio Alberoni, but the independence was restored by Pope Clement XII on February 5, 1740, the feast day of Saint Agatha, after which she became a patron saint of the republic.[14]
+
+The advance of Napoleon's army in 1797 presented a brief threat to the independence of San Marino, but the country was saved from losing its liberty thanks to one of its regents, Antonio Onofri, who managed to gain the respect and friendship of Napoleon. Thanks to his intervention, Napoleon, in a letter delivered to Gaspard Monge, scientist and commissary of the French Government for Science and Art, promised to guarantee and protect the independence of the Republic, even offering to extend its territory according to its needs. The offer was declined by the regents, fearing future retaliation from other states' revanchism.[15][16]
+
+During the later phase of the Italian unification process in the 19th century, San Marino served as a refuge for many people persecuted because of their support for unification, including Giuseppe Garibaldi and his wife Anita.
+
+The government of San Marino made United States President Abraham Lincoln an honorary citizen. He wrote in reply, saying that the republic proved that "government founded on republican principles is capable of being so administered as to be secure and enduring."[17][18]
+
+During World War I, when Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915, San Marino remained neutral and Italy adopted a hostile view of Sammarinese neutrality, suspecting that San Marino could harbour Austrian spies who could be given access to its new radiotelegraph station. Italy tried to forcibly establish a detachment of Carabinieri in the republic and then cut the republic's telephone lines when it did not comply. Two groups of ten volunteers joined Italian forces in the fighting on the Italian front, the first as combatants and the second as a medical corps operating a Red Cross field hospital. The existence of this hospital later caused Austria-Hungary to suspend diplomatic relations with San Marino.[19]
+
+After the war, San Marino suffered from high rates of unemployment and inflation, leading to increased tensions between the lower and middle classes. The latter, fearing that the moderate government of San Marino would make concessions to the lower class majority, began to show support for the Sammarinese Fascist Party (Partito Fascista Sammarinese, PFS), founded in 1922 and styled largely on their Italian counterpart. PFS rule lasted from 1923 to 1943, and during this time they often sought support from Benito Mussolini's fascist government in Italy.[20]
+
+During World War II, San Marino remained neutral, although it was wrongly reported in an article from The New York Times that it had declared war on the United Kingdom on 17 September 1940.[21] The Sammarinese government later transmitted a message to the British government stating that they had not declared war on the United Kingdom.[22]
+
+Three days after the fall of Benito Mussolini in Italy, PFS rule collapsed and the new government declared neutrality in the conflict. The Fascists regained power on 1 April 1944 but kept neutrality intact. Despite that, on 26 June 1944, San Marino was bombed by the Royal Air Force, in the belief that San Marino had been overrun by German forces and was being used to amass stores and ammunition. The Sammarinese government declared on the same day that no military installations or equipment were located on its territory, and that no belligerent forces had been allowed to enter.[23] San Marino accepted thousands of civilian refugees when Allied forces went over the Gothic Line.[24] In September 1944, it was briefly occupied by German forces, who were defeated by Allied forces in the Battle of San Marino.
+
+San Marino had the world's first democratically elected communist government – a coalition between the Sammarinese Communist Party and the Sammarinese Socialist Party, which held office between 1945 and 1957.[25][26]
+
+San Marino is the world's smallest republic, although when Nauru gained independence in 1968 it challenged that claim, Nauru's land mass being only 21 km2 (8.1 sq mi). However Nauru's jurisdiction over its surrounding waters covers 431,000 km2 (166,000 sq mi), an area thousands of times greater than the territory of San Marino.[27] San Marino became a member of the Council of Europe in 1988 and of the United Nations in 1992. It is neither a member of the European Union nor of the Eurozone, although it uses the euro as its currency.
+
+During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, as of June 2020, San Marino had the highest death rate per capita of any country.[28]
+
+San Marino is an enclave (landlocked) surrounded by Italy in Southern Europe, on the border between the regions of Emilia Romagna and Marche and about 10 km (6.21 mi) from the Adriatic coast at Rimini. Its hilly topography, with no flat ground, is part of the Apennine mountain range. The highest point in the country, the summit of Monte Titano, is 749 m (2,457 feet) above sea level. San Marino has no still or contained bodies of water of any significant size.
+
+It is one of only three countries in the world to be completely enclosed by another country (the others being Vatican City, also enclosed by Italy, and Lesotho, enclosed by South Africa). It is the third smallest country in Europe, after Vatican City and Monaco, and the fifth smallest country in the world.[29]
+
+The climate of San Marino is a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfa), with continental influences, having warm summers and cool winters that are typical of inland areas of the central Italian peninsula. Snowfalls are common and heavy almost every winter, especially above 400–500 m (1,300–1,600 feet) of altitude.
+
+San Marino has the political framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic: the captains regent are both heads of state and heads of government, and there is a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Grand and General Council. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
+
+San Marino is considered to have the earliest written governing documents still in effect, as the Statues of 1600 are still at the core of its constitutional framework.[31]
+
+San Marino was originally led by the Arengo, initially formed from the heads of each family. In the 13th century, power was given to the Grand and General Council. In 1243, the first two captains regent were nominated by the Council. Still today, Captains Regent are elected every six months by the Council.
+
+The legislature of the republic is the Grand and General Council (Consiglio grande e generale). The Council is a unicameral legislature with 60 members. There are elections every five years by proportional representation in all nine administrative districts. These districts (townships) correspond to the old parishes of the republic. All citizens 18 years or older are eligible to vote.
+
+Besides general legislation, the Grand and General Council approves the budget and elects the captains regent, the State Congress (composed of ten secretaries with executive power), the Council of Twelve (which forms the judicial branch during the period of legislature of the Council), the Advising Commissions, and the Government Unions. The council also has the power to ratify treaties with other countries. The council is divided into five different Advising Commissions consisting of fifteen councilors who examine, propose, and discuss the implementation of new laws that are on their way to being presented on the floor of the council.
+
+Every six months, the council elects two captains regents to be the heads of state. The regents are chosen from opposing parties so that there is a balance of power. They serve a six-month term. The investiture of the captains regent takes place on 1 April and 1 October in every year. Once this term is over, citizens have three days in which to file complaints about the captains' activities. If they warrant it, judicial proceedings against the ex-head(s) of state can be initiated.
+
+The practice of having two heads of state, like Roman consuls, chosen in frequent elections, is derived directly from the customs of the Roman Republic. The Council is equivalent to the Roman Senate; the captains regent, to the consuls of ancient Rome. It is thought the inhabitants of the area came together as Roman rule collapsed to form a rudimentary government for their own protection from foreign rule.
+
+San Marino is a multi-party democratic republic. A new election law in 2008 raised the threshold for small parties entering Parliament, causing political parties to organise themselves into two alliances: the right-wing Pact for San Marino, led by the San Marinese Christian Democratic Party; and the left-wing Reforms and Freedom, led by the Party of Socialists and Democrats, a merger of the Socialist Party of San Marino and the former communist Party of Democrats. The 2008 general election was won by the Pact for San Marino with 35 seats in the Grand and General Council against Reforms and Freedom's 25.
+
+On 1 October 2007, Mirko Tomassoni was elected as among the heads of state, making him the first disabled person ever to have been elected as captain regent.[32]
+
+San Marino has had more female heads of state than any other country: 15 as of October 2014, including three who served twice. With regard to the legal profession, while the Order of Lawyers and Notaries of the Republic of San Marino [Ordine degli Avvocati e Notai della Repubblica di San Marino] exists, there is no clear indication as to how demographic groups have fared in the legal field.
+
+San Marino is divided into the following nine municipalities, known locally as castelli (meaning "castles"):
+
+There are also eight minor municipalities:
+
+The largest settlement of the Republic is Dogana, which is not an autonomous castello, but rather belongs to the Castello of Serravalle.
+
+In a similar way to an Italian comune, each castello includes a main settlement, called capoluogo, which is the seat of the castello, and some even smaller localities known as frazioni.
+
+The republic is made up of 43 parishes[33] named curacies (It: curazie):
+Cà Berlone, Cà Chiavello, Cà Giannino, Cà Melone, Cà Ragni, Cà Rigo, Cailungo, Caladino, Calligaria, Canepa, Capanne, Casole, Castellaro, Cerbaiola, Cinque Vie, Confine, Corianino, Crociale, Dogana, Falciano, Fiorina, Galavotto, Gualdicciolo, La Serra, Lesignano, Molarini, Montalbo, Monte Pulito, Murata, Pianacci, Piandivello, Poggio Casalino, Poggio Chiesanuova, Ponte Mellini, Rovereta, San Giovanni sotto le Penne, Santa Mustiola, Spaccio Giannoni, Teglio, Torraccia, Valdragone, Valgiurata and Ventoso.
+
+San Marino's military forces are among the smallest in the world. National defence is, by arrangement, the responsibility of Italy's armed forces. Different branches have varied functions, including: performing ceremonial duties; patrolling borders; mounting guard at government buildings; and assisting police in major criminal cases. The police are not included in the military of San Marino.
+
+Once at the heart of San Marino's army, the Crossbow Corps is now a ceremonial force of approximately 80 volunteers. Since 1295, the Crossbow Corps has provided demonstrations of crossbow shooting at festivals. Its uniform design is medieval. While still a statutory military unit, the Crossbow Corps has no military function today.
+
+The Guard of the Rock is a front-line military unit in the San Marino armed forces, a state border patrol, with responsibility for patrolling borders and defending them.[34] In their role as Fortress Guards they are responsible for guarding the Palazzo Pubblico in San Marino City, the seat of national government.
+
+In this role they are the forces most visible to tourists, and are known for their colourful ceremony of Changing the Guard.[34] Under the 1987 statute the Guard of the Rock are all enrolled as "Criminal Police Officers" (in addition to their military role) and assist the police in investigating major crime. The uniform of the Guard of the Rock is a distinctive red and green.[34]
+
+The Guard of the Grand and General Council commonly known as The Guard of the Council or locally as the "Guard of Nobles", formed in 1741,[34] is a volunteer unit with ceremonial duties. Due to its striking blue, white, and gold uniform, it is perhaps the best-known part of the Sammarinese military, and appears on countless postcard views of the republic. The functions of the Guard of the Council are to protect the captains regent, and to defend the Grand and General Council during its formal sessions. They also act as ceremonial bodyguards to government officials at both state and church festivals.
+
+In former times, all families with two or more adult male members were required to enroll half of them in the Company of Uniformed Militia. This unit remains the basic fighting force of the armed forces of San Marino, but is largely ceremonial. It is a matter of civic pride for many Sammarinese to belong to the force, and all citizens with at least six years residence in the republic are entitled to enroll.
+
+The uniform is dark blue, with a kepi bearing a blue and white plume. The ceremonial form of the uniform includes a white cross-strap, and white and blue sash, white epaulets, and white decorated cuffs.
+
+Formally this is part of the Army Militia,[34] and is the ceremonial military band of San Marino. It consists of approximately 60 musicians.[35] The uniform is similar to that of the Army Militia. Military Ensemble music accompanies most state occasions in the republic.
+
+Established in 1842, the Gendarmerie of San Marino is a militarised law enforcement agency.[34] Its members are full-time and have responsibility for the protection of citizens and property, and the preservation of law and order.
+
+The entire military corps of San Marino depends upon the co-operation of full-time forces and their retained (volunteer) colleagues, known as the Corpi Militari Volontari, or Voluntary Military Force.
+
+San Marino is a developed country[36] and although it is not a European Union member, it is allowed to use the euro as its currency by arrangement with the Council of the European Union; it is also granted the right to use its own designs on the national side of the euro coins. Before the euro, the Sammarinese lira was pegged to, and exchangeable with, the Italian lira. The small number of Sammarinese euro coins, as was the case with the lira before it, are primarily of interest to coin collectors.
+
+San Marino's per capita GDP and standard of living are comparable to that of Italy. Key industries include banking, electronics, and ceramics. The main agricultural products are wine and cheese. San Marino imports mainly staple goods from Italy.
+
+San Marino's postage stamps, which are valid for mail posted in the country, are mostly sold to philatelists and are an important source of income. San Marino is no longer a member of the Small European Postal Administration Cooperation.[37]
+
+It has the world's highest rate of car ownership, being the only country with more vehicles than people.
+
+The corporate profits tax rate in San Marino is 17%, capital gains are subject to a five percent tax, and active interest is subject to a 11% withholding tax. Several benefits apply to new businesses, which can strongly reduced the amount of taxes to be paid.
+
+The personal income tax (IGR, Italian: Imposta Generale sui Redditi) was introduced in 1984 and it was heavily reformed in 2013 with the goal of increasing fiscal revenue. The nominal tax rate ranges from 9% for an annual revenue below €10,000 to 35% for revenues above €80,000.
+
+In 1972, a value-added tax (VAT) system was introduced in Italy, and an equivalent tax was introduced also in San Marino, in accordance with the 1939 friendship treaty. However, this tax is not a standard value-added tax, but rather it is an import tax, thus, it is levied only on imported goods and raw resources. For this reason it is locally best known as single stage tax (Italian: imposta monofase), as it is only applied one time during importation, while VAT is applied at every exchange. Furthermore, while VAT also applies to services, the import tax only applies on physical goods. Another important difference is that while VAT is computed on the final price paid by the consumer, the import tax is levied on the importation cost paid by the company, which is generally much lower.
+
+Under the European Union customs agreement, San Marino import tax is considered equivalent to the European VAT system. A separate tax on services, with a rate of 3%, has been introduced in 2011. The introduction of a true VAT system, not dissimilar from the European one, is under development.
+
+The tourism sector contributes over 22% of San Marino's GDP,[38] with approximately 2 million tourists having visited in 2014.[39]
+
+San Marino and Italy have engaged in conventions since 1862,[40] dictating some economic activities in San Marino's territory.
+Cultivation of tobacco and production of goods which are subject to Italy's government monopoly are forbidden in San Marino. Direct import is forbidden; all goods coming from a third party have to travel through Italy before reaching the country. Although it is allowed to print its own postal stamps, San Marino is not allowed to coin its own currency and is obliged to use Italy's mint; the agreement does not affect the right of the Republic of San Marino to continue to issue gold coins denominated in Scudi[41] (legal value of 1 gold Scudo is 37.50 euros). Gambling is legal and regulated; however, casinos were outlawed prior to 2007. There is one legally operating casino.
+
+In exchange for these limitations, Italy provides San Marino with an annual stipend, and at cost, sea salt (not more than 250 tonnes per year), tobacco (40 tonnes), cigarettes (20 tonnes) and matches (unlimited amount).[42]
+
+At the border there are no formalities with Italy. However, at the tourist office visitors can purchase officially cancelled souvenir stamps for their passports.
+
+San Marino has a population of approximately 33,000, with 4,800 foreign residents, most of whom are Italian citizens. Another 12,000 Sammarinese live abroad (5,700 in Italy, 3,000 in the US, 1,900 in France and 1,600 in Argentina).
+
+The first census since 1976 was conducted in 2010. Results were expected by the end of 2011; however, 13% of families did not return their forms.
+
+The primary language spoken is Italian; Romagnol is also widely spoken.
+
+San Marino is a predominantly Catholic state[1]—over 97% of the population profess the Roman Catholic faith, but Catholicism is not an established religion. Approximately half of those who profess to be Catholic practice the faith.[43] There is no episcopal see in San Marino, although its name is part of the present diocesan title. Historically, the various parishes in San Marino were divided between two Italian dioceses, mostly in the Diocese of Montefeltro, and partly in the Diocese of Rimini. In 1977, the border between Montefeltro and Rimini was readjusted so that all of San Marino fell within the diocese of Montefeltro. The bishop of Montefeltro-San Marino resides in Pennabilli, in Italy's province of Pesaro e Urbino.
+
+There is a provision under the income tax rules that the taxpayers have the right to request for allocation of 0.3% of their income tax to the Catholic Church or to charities. The churches include the two religious groups of the Waldensian Church and Jehovah's Witnesses.
+
+The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro was until 1977 the historic diocese of Montefeltro. It is a suffragan of the archdiocese of Ravenna-Cervia.[44] The diocese includes all the parishes of San Marino. The earliest mention of Montefeltro, as Mona Feretri, is in the diplomas by which Charlemagne confirmed the donation of Pepin. The first known bishop of Montefeltro was Agatho (826), whose residence was at San Leo. Under Bishop Flaminios Dondi (1724) the see was again transferred to San Leo, but later it returned to Pennabilli. The historic diocese was a suffragan of the archdiocese of Urbino.[45] Since 1988, there is formally an apostolic nunciature to the republic, but it is vested in the nuncio to Italy.
+
+There has been a Jewish presence in San Marino for at least 600 years.[46] The first mention of Jews in San Marino dates to the late 14th century, in official documents recording the business transactions of Jews. There are many documents throughout the 15th to 17th centuries describing Jewish dealings and verifying the presence of a Jewish community in San Marino.[47] Jews were permitted official protection by the government.
+
+During World War II, San Marino provided a haven for more than 100,000 Italians and Jews (approximately 10 times the Sammarinese population at the time) from Nazi persecution. As of 2012[update], few Jews remain.[48] In 2019 it has been inaugurated the 'Chapel of three religions', the first ever building of its kind devoted to interfaith dialogue.[49]
+
+There are 220 km (140 mi) of roads in the country, the main road being the San Marino Highway. Authorities license private vehicles with distinctive Sammarinese license plates, which are white with blue figures and the coat of arms, usually a letter followed by up to four numbers. Many vehicles also carry the international vehicle identification code (in black on a white oval sticker), which is "RSM".
+
+There are no public airports in San Marino, but there is a small private airstrip located in Torraccia and an international heliport located in Borgo Maggiore. Most tourists who arrive by air land at Federico Fellini International Airport close to the city of Rimini, then make the transfer by bus.
+
+Two rivers flow through San Marino, but there is no major water transport, and no port or harbour.
+
+San Marino has limited public transport facilities. There is a regular bus service between Rimini and the city of San Marino that is popular with both tourists and workers commuting to San Marino from Italy. This service stops at approximately 20 locations in Rimini and within San Marino, with its two terminus stops at Rimini railway station and San Marino coach station.
+
+A limited licensed taxi service operates nationwide. There are seven licensed taxi companies operating in the republic,[50] and Italian taxis regularly operate within San Marino when carrying passengers picked up in Italian territory.
+
+There is a 1.5 km (0.93 mi) aerial tramway connecting the City of San Marino on top of Monte Titano with Borgo Maggiore, a major town in the republic, with the second largest population of any Sammarinese settlement. From here a further connection is available to the nation's largest settlement, Dogana, via the local bus service.
+
+Two aerial tramway cars (gondolas) operate, with service provided at roughly 15-minute intervals throughout the day. A third vehicle is available on the system, a service car for the use of engineers maintaining the tramway.
+
+Today, there is no railway in San Marino, but for a short period before World War II, it had a single narrow-gauge line called the Ferrovia Rimini–San Marino which connected the country with the Italian rail network at Rimini. Because of the difficulties in accessing the capital, City of San Marino, with its mountain-top location, the terminus station was planned to be located in the village of Valdragone, but was extended to reach the capital through a steep and winding track comprising many tunnels. The railway was opened on 12 June 1932.[51]
+An advanced system for its time, it was an electric railway, powered from overhead cables. It was well built and had a high frequency of passengers, but was almost completely destroyed during World War II. Many facilities such as bridges, tunnels, and stations remain visible today, and some have been converted to parks, public footpaths, or traffic routes.
+
+The Three Towers of San Marino are located on the three peaks of Monte Titano in the capital. They are depicted on both the flag of San Marino and its coat of arms. The three towers are: Guaita, the oldest of the three (it was constructed in the 11th century); the 13th-century Cesta, located on the highest of Monte Titano's summits; and the 14th-century Montale, on the smallest of Monte Titano's summits, still privately owned.
+
+The Università degli Studi della Repubblica di San Marino (University of the Republic of San Marino)[52] is the main university, which includes the Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici di San Marino (Graduate School of Historical Studies), a distinguished research and advanced international study centre governed by an international Scientific Committee coordinated by the emeritus historian Luciano Canfora. Other important institutes are the Istituto Musicale Sammarinese (Sammarinese Musical Institute)[53] and the Akademio Internacia de la Sciencoj San Marino or Accademia Internazionale delle Scienze San Marino (International Academy of Sciences San Marino).[54] The latter is known for adopting Esperanto as the language for teaching and for scientific publications; further, it makes wide use of electronic educational technology (also called e-learning).
+
+Italian author Umberto Eco had attempted to create a "university without physical structures" in San Marino.[55]
+
+In San Marino football is the most popular sport. Basketball and volleyball are also popular. The three sports have their own federations, the San Marino Football Federation, the San Marino Basketball Federation and the San Marino Volleyball Federation.
+
+The San Marino national football team has had little success, being made up of part-timers, never qualifying for a major tournament, and recording only one win in over 25 years of its history, a 1–0 victory in 2004 against Liechtenstein.[56] They have drawn four more, with their most notable result being a 1993 0–0 draw with Turkey during the European qualifiers for the 1994 FIFA World Cup.[57] In the same qualifying competition Davide Gualtieri scored a goal 8.3 seconds into a match against England; this goal held the record for the fastest in international football until 2016.[58][59]
+
+A Formula One race, the San Marino Grand Prix, was named after the state, although it did not take place there. Instead, it was held at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in the Italian town of Imola, about 100 km (60 mi) northwest of San Marino. Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna suffered fatal accidents a day apart during the 1994 Grand Prix. This international event was removed from the calendar in 2007.
+
+The San Marino and Rimini's Coast motorcycle Grand Prix was reinstated in the schedule in 2007 and takes place at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, as does San Marino's round of the World Superbike Championship.
+
+San Marino has a professional baseball team which plays in Italy's top division. It has participated in the European Cup tournament for the continent's top club sides several times, hosting the event in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2007. It won the championship in 2006 and was a runner-up in 2010.[60]
+
+Together with Italy, San Marino held the 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship, with teams playing at the Stadio Olimpico in Serravalle.
+
+San Marino has had little success at the Olympic Games, winning no medals.
+
+The cuisine of San Marino is extremely similar to Italian, especially that of the adjoining Emilia-Romagna and Marche regions, but it has a number of its own unique dishes and products. Its best known is probably the Torta Tre Monti ("Cake of the Three Mountains" or "Cake of the Three Towers"), a wafer layered cake covered in chocolate depicting the Three Towers of San Marino. The country also has a small wine industry.
+
+The site San Marino: Historic Centre and Mount Titano became part of the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008. The decision was taken during the 32nd Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee composed of 21 Countries convened in Québec, Canada.
+
+The country has a long and rich musical tradition, closely linked to that of Italy, but which is also highly independent in itself. A well-known 17th-century composer is Francesco Maria Marini. The pop singer Little Tony achieved considerable success in the United Kingdom and Italy in the 1950s and 1960s.
+
+San Marino has taken part in the Eurovision Song Contest ten times, achieving two final qualifications to date (with then-three, eventually four-time contestant and San Marino native Valentina Monetta with "Maybe" in 2014 and Turkish singer Serhat with "Say Na Na Na" who achieved 19th place in the final in 2019).
+
+Coordinates: 43°56′30″N 12°27′30″E / 43.94167°N 12.45833°E / 43.94167; 12.45833

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+in Europe (agate grey)  –  [Legend]
+
+San Marino (/ˌsæn məˈriːnoʊ/ (listen), Italian: [sam maˈriːno]), officially the Republic of San Marino[1][2] (Italian: Repubblica di San Marino; Romagnol: Ripóbblica d' San Marein), also known as the Most Serene Republic of San Marino[2] (Italian: Serenissima Repubblica di San Marino), is a microstate in Southern Europe completely enclosed by Italy.[6]
+
+Located on the northeastern side of the Apennine Mountains, San Marino covers a land area of just over 61 km2 (24 sq mi), and has a population of 33,562.[7] Its capital is the City of San Marino and its largest settlement is Dogana. San Marino's official language is Italian.
+
+The country derives its name from Saint Marinus, a stonemason from the then Roman island of Rab, in modern-day Croatia. Born in AD 275, Marinus participated in the reconstruction of Rimini's city walls after their destruction by Liburnian pirates. Marinus then went on to found an independent monastic community on Monte Titano in AD 301; thus, San Marino lays claim to being the oldest extant sovereign state, as well as the oldest constitutional republic.[8]
+
+San Marino's politics are ruled by its constitution, which dictates that every six months San Marino's parliament must elect two Captains Regent. The Captain Regents have equal powers, and are free to exercise them within the limits of the constitution and parliamentary legislation until their term expires.
+
+The country's economy is mainly based on finance, industry, services and tourism. It is one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita, with a figure comparable to the most developed European regions. San Marino is considered to have a highly stable economy, with one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, no national debt and a budget surplus.[1]
+
+Saint Marinus left the island of Rab in present-day Croatia with his lifelong friend Leo, and went to the city of Rimini as a stonemason. After the Diocletianic Persecution following his Christian sermons, he escaped to the nearby Monte Titano, where he built a small church and thus founded what is now the city and state of San Marino.
+
+The official founding date is 3 September 301. In 1320 the community of Chiesanuova chose to join the country.[9] In 1463 San Marino was extended with the communities of Faetano, Fiorentino, Montegiardino, and Serravalle, after which the country's borders have remained unchanged.[10]
+
+In 1503, Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI occupied the Republic for six months until his father's successor, Pope Julius II, intervened and restored the country's independence.[11]
+
+On June 4, 1543 Fabiano di Monte San Savino, nephew of the later Pope Julius III, attempted to conquer the republic, but his infantry and cavalry failed as they got lost in a dense fog, which the Sammarinese attributed to Saint Quirinus, whose feast day it was.[12]
+
+After the Duchy of Urbino was annexed by the Papal States in 1625, San Marino became an enclave within the Papal States, something which led to its seeking the formal protection of the Papal States in 1631, but this never equalled a de facto Papal control of the republic.[13]
+
+The country was occupied on October 17, 1739 by the legate (Papal governor) of Ravenna, Cardinal Giulio Alberoni, but the independence was restored by Pope Clement XII on February 5, 1740, the feast day of Saint Agatha, after which she became a patron saint of the republic.[14]
+
+The advance of Napoleon's army in 1797 presented a brief threat to the independence of San Marino, but the country was saved from losing its liberty thanks to one of its regents, Antonio Onofri, who managed to gain the respect and friendship of Napoleon. Thanks to his intervention, Napoleon, in a letter delivered to Gaspard Monge, scientist and commissary of the French Government for Science and Art, promised to guarantee and protect the independence of the Republic, even offering to extend its territory according to its needs. The offer was declined by the regents, fearing future retaliation from other states' revanchism.[15][16]
+
+During the later phase of the Italian unification process in the 19th century, San Marino served as a refuge for many people persecuted because of their support for unification, including Giuseppe Garibaldi and his wife Anita.
+
+The government of San Marino made United States President Abraham Lincoln an honorary citizen. He wrote in reply, saying that the republic proved that "government founded on republican principles is capable of being so administered as to be secure and enduring."[17][18]
+
+During World War I, when Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915, San Marino remained neutral and Italy adopted a hostile view of Sammarinese neutrality, suspecting that San Marino could harbour Austrian spies who could be given access to its new radiotelegraph station. Italy tried to forcibly establish a detachment of Carabinieri in the republic and then cut the republic's telephone lines when it did not comply. Two groups of ten volunteers joined Italian forces in the fighting on the Italian front, the first as combatants and the second as a medical corps operating a Red Cross field hospital. The existence of this hospital later caused Austria-Hungary to suspend diplomatic relations with San Marino.[19]
+
+After the war, San Marino suffered from high rates of unemployment and inflation, leading to increased tensions between the lower and middle classes. The latter, fearing that the moderate government of San Marino would make concessions to the lower class majority, began to show support for the Sammarinese Fascist Party (Partito Fascista Sammarinese, PFS), founded in 1922 and styled largely on their Italian counterpart. PFS rule lasted from 1923 to 1943, and during this time they often sought support from Benito Mussolini's fascist government in Italy.[20]
+
+During World War II, San Marino remained neutral, although it was wrongly reported in an article from The New York Times that it had declared war on the United Kingdom on 17 September 1940.[21] The Sammarinese government later transmitted a message to the British government stating that they had not declared war on the United Kingdom.[22]
+
+Three days after the fall of Benito Mussolini in Italy, PFS rule collapsed and the new government declared neutrality in the conflict. The Fascists regained power on 1 April 1944 but kept neutrality intact. Despite that, on 26 June 1944, San Marino was bombed by the Royal Air Force, in the belief that San Marino had been overrun by German forces and was being used to amass stores and ammunition. The Sammarinese government declared on the same day that no military installations or equipment were located on its territory, and that no belligerent forces had been allowed to enter.[23] San Marino accepted thousands of civilian refugees when Allied forces went over the Gothic Line.[24] In September 1944, it was briefly occupied by German forces, who were defeated by Allied forces in the Battle of San Marino.
+
+San Marino had the world's first democratically elected communist government – a coalition between the Sammarinese Communist Party and the Sammarinese Socialist Party, which held office between 1945 and 1957.[25][26]
+
+San Marino is the world's smallest republic, although when Nauru gained independence in 1968 it challenged that claim, Nauru's land mass being only 21 km2 (8.1 sq mi). However Nauru's jurisdiction over its surrounding waters covers 431,000 km2 (166,000 sq mi), an area thousands of times greater than the territory of San Marino.[27] San Marino became a member of the Council of Europe in 1988 and of the United Nations in 1992. It is neither a member of the European Union nor of the Eurozone, although it uses the euro as its currency.
+
+During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, as of June 2020, San Marino had the highest death rate per capita of any country.[28]
+
+San Marino is an enclave (landlocked) surrounded by Italy in Southern Europe, on the border between the regions of Emilia Romagna and Marche and about 10 km (6.21 mi) from the Adriatic coast at Rimini. Its hilly topography, with no flat ground, is part of the Apennine mountain range. The highest point in the country, the summit of Monte Titano, is 749 m (2,457 feet) above sea level. San Marino has no still or contained bodies of water of any significant size.
+
+It is one of only three countries in the world to be completely enclosed by another country (the others being Vatican City, also enclosed by Italy, and Lesotho, enclosed by South Africa). It is the third smallest country in Europe, after Vatican City and Monaco, and the fifth smallest country in the world.[29]
+
+The climate of San Marino is a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfa), with continental influences, having warm summers and cool winters that are typical of inland areas of the central Italian peninsula. Snowfalls are common and heavy almost every winter, especially above 400–500 m (1,300–1,600 feet) of altitude.
+
+San Marino has the political framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic: the captains regent are both heads of state and heads of government, and there is a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Grand and General Council. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
+
+San Marino is considered to have the earliest written governing documents still in effect, as the Statues of 1600 are still at the core of its constitutional framework.[31]
+
+San Marino was originally led by the Arengo, initially formed from the heads of each family. In the 13th century, power was given to the Grand and General Council. In 1243, the first two captains regent were nominated by the Council. Still today, Captains Regent are elected every six months by the Council.
+
+The legislature of the republic is the Grand and General Council (Consiglio grande e generale). The Council is a unicameral legislature with 60 members. There are elections every five years by proportional representation in all nine administrative districts. These districts (townships) correspond to the old parishes of the republic. All citizens 18 years or older are eligible to vote.
+
+Besides general legislation, the Grand and General Council approves the budget and elects the captains regent, the State Congress (composed of ten secretaries with executive power), the Council of Twelve (which forms the judicial branch during the period of legislature of the Council), the Advising Commissions, and the Government Unions. The council also has the power to ratify treaties with other countries. The council is divided into five different Advising Commissions consisting of fifteen councilors who examine, propose, and discuss the implementation of new laws that are on their way to being presented on the floor of the council.
+
+Every six months, the council elects two captains regents to be the heads of state. The regents are chosen from opposing parties so that there is a balance of power. They serve a six-month term. The investiture of the captains regent takes place on 1 April and 1 October in every year. Once this term is over, citizens have three days in which to file complaints about the captains' activities. If they warrant it, judicial proceedings against the ex-head(s) of state can be initiated.
+
+The practice of having two heads of state, like Roman consuls, chosen in frequent elections, is derived directly from the customs of the Roman Republic. The Council is equivalent to the Roman Senate; the captains regent, to the consuls of ancient Rome. It is thought the inhabitants of the area came together as Roman rule collapsed to form a rudimentary government for their own protection from foreign rule.
+
+San Marino is a multi-party democratic republic. A new election law in 2008 raised the threshold for small parties entering Parliament, causing political parties to organise themselves into two alliances: the right-wing Pact for San Marino, led by the San Marinese Christian Democratic Party; and the left-wing Reforms and Freedom, led by the Party of Socialists and Democrats, a merger of the Socialist Party of San Marino and the former communist Party of Democrats. The 2008 general election was won by the Pact for San Marino with 35 seats in the Grand and General Council against Reforms and Freedom's 25.
+
+On 1 October 2007, Mirko Tomassoni was elected as among the heads of state, making him the first disabled person ever to have been elected as captain regent.[32]
+
+San Marino has had more female heads of state than any other country: 15 as of October 2014, including three who served twice. With regard to the legal profession, while the Order of Lawyers and Notaries of the Republic of San Marino [Ordine degli Avvocati e Notai della Repubblica di San Marino] exists, there is no clear indication as to how demographic groups have fared in the legal field.
+
+San Marino is divided into the following nine municipalities, known locally as castelli (meaning "castles"):
+
+There are also eight minor municipalities:
+
+The largest settlement of the Republic is Dogana, which is not an autonomous castello, but rather belongs to the Castello of Serravalle.
+
+In a similar way to an Italian comune, each castello includes a main settlement, called capoluogo, which is the seat of the castello, and some even smaller localities known as frazioni.
+
+The republic is made up of 43 parishes[33] named curacies (It: curazie):
+Cà Berlone, Cà Chiavello, Cà Giannino, Cà Melone, Cà Ragni, Cà Rigo, Cailungo, Caladino, Calligaria, Canepa, Capanne, Casole, Castellaro, Cerbaiola, Cinque Vie, Confine, Corianino, Crociale, Dogana, Falciano, Fiorina, Galavotto, Gualdicciolo, La Serra, Lesignano, Molarini, Montalbo, Monte Pulito, Murata, Pianacci, Piandivello, Poggio Casalino, Poggio Chiesanuova, Ponte Mellini, Rovereta, San Giovanni sotto le Penne, Santa Mustiola, Spaccio Giannoni, Teglio, Torraccia, Valdragone, Valgiurata and Ventoso.
+
+San Marino's military forces are among the smallest in the world. National defence is, by arrangement, the responsibility of Italy's armed forces. Different branches have varied functions, including: performing ceremonial duties; patrolling borders; mounting guard at government buildings; and assisting police in major criminal cases. The police are not included in the military of San Marino.
+
+Once at the heart of San Marino's army, the Crossbow Corps is now a ceremonial force of approximately 80 volunteers. Since 1295, the Crossbow Corps has provided demonstrations of crossbow shooting at festivals. Its uniform design is medieval. While still a statutory military unit, the Crossbow Corps has no military function today.
+
+The Guard of the Rock is a front-line military unit in the San Marino armed forces, a state border patrol, with responsibility for patrolling borders and defending them.[34] In their role as Fortress Guards they are responsible for guarding the Palazzo Pubblico in San Marino City, the seat of national government.
+
+In this role they are the forces most visible to tourists, and are known for their colourful ceremony of Changing the Guard.[34] Under the 1987 statute the Guard of the Rock are all enrolled as "Criminal Police Officers" (in addition to their military role) and assist the police in investigating major crime. The uniform of the Guard of the Rock is a distinctive red and green.[34]
+
+The Guard of the Grand and General Council commonly known as The Guard of the Council or locally as the "Guard of Nobles", formed in 1741,[34] is a volunteer unit with ceremonial duties. Due to its striking blue, white, and gold uniform, it is perhaps the best-known part of the Sammarinese military, and appears on countless postcard views of the republic. The functions of the Guard of the Council are to protect the captains regent, and to defend the Grand and General Council during its formal sessions. They also act as ceremonial bodyguards to government officials at both state and church festivals.
+
+In former times, all families with two or more adult male members were required to enroll half of them in the Company of Uniformed Militia. This unit remains the basic fighting force of the armed forces of San Marino, but is largely ceremonial. It is a matter of civic pride for many Sammarinese to belong to the force, and all citizens with at least six years residence in the republic are entitled to enroll.
+
+The uniform is dark blue, with a kepi bearing a blue and white plume. The ceremonial form of the uniform includes a white cross-strap, and white and blue sash, white epaulets, and white decorated cuffs.
+
+Formally this is part of the Army Militia,[34] and is the ceremonial military band of San Marino. It consists of approximately 60 musicians.[35] The uniform is similar to that of the Army Militia. Military Ensemble music accompanies most state occasions in the republic.
+
+Established in 1842, the Gendarmerie of San Marino is a militarised law enforcement agency.[34] Its members are full-time and have responsibility for the protection of citizens and property, and the preservation of law and order.
+
+The entire military corps of San Marino depends upon the co-operation of full-time forces and their retained (volunteer) colleagues, known as the Corpi Militari Volontari, or Voluntary Military Force.
+
+San Marino is a developed country[36] and although it is not a European Union member, it is allowed to use the euro as its currency by arrangement with the Council of the European Union; it is also granted the right to use its own designs on the national side of the euro coins. Before the euro, the Sammarinese lira was pegged to, and exchangeable with, the Italian lira. The small number of Sammarinese euro coins, as was the case with the lira before it, are primarily of interest to coin collectors.
+
+San Marino's per capita GDP and standard of living are comparable to that of Italy. Key industries include banking, electronics, and ceramics. The main agricultural products are wine and cheese. San Marino imports mainly staple goods from Italy.
+
+San Marino's postage stamps, which are valid for mail posted in the country, are mostly sold to philatelists and are an important source of income. San Marino is no longer a member of the Small European Postal Administration Cooperation.[37]
+
+It has the world's highest rate of car ownership, being the only country with more vehicles than people.
+
+The corporate profits tax rate in San Marino is 17%, capital gains are subject to a five percent tax, and active interest is subject to a 11% withholding tax. Several benefits apply to new businesses, which can strongly reduced the amount of taxes to be paid.
+
+The personal income tax (IGR, Italian: Imposta Generale sui Redditi) was introduced in 1984 and it was heavily reformed in 2013 with the goal of increasing fiscal revenue. The nominal tax rate ranges from 9% for an annual revenue below €10,000 to 35% for revenues above €80,000.
+
+In 1972, a value-added tax (VAT) system was introduced in Italy, and an equivalent tax was introduced also in San Marino, in accordance with the 1939 friendship treaty. However, this tax is not a standard value-added tax, but rather it is an import tax, thus, it is levied only on imported goods and raw resources. For this reason it is locally best known as single stage tax (Italian: imposta monofase), as it is only applied one time during importation, while VAT is applied at every exchange. Furthermore, while VAT also applies to services, the import tax only applies on physical goods. Another important difference is that while VAT is computed on the final price paid by the consumer, the import tax is levied on the importation cost paid by the company, which is generally much lower.
+
+Under the European Union customs agreement, San Marino import tax is considered equivalent to the European VAT system. A separate tax on services, with a rate of 3%, has been introduced in 2011. The introduction of a true VAT system, not dissimilar from the European one, is under development.
+
+The tourism sector contributes over 22% of San Marino's GDP,[38] with approximately 2 million tourists having visited in 2014.[39]
+
+San Marino and Italy have engaged in conventions since 1862,[40] dictating some economic activities in San Marino's territory.
+Cultivation of tobacco and production of goods which are subject to Italy's government monopoly are forbidden in San Marino. Direct import is forbidden; all goods coming from a third party have to travel through Italy before reaching the country. Although it is allowed to print its own postal stamps, San Marino is not allowed to coin its own currency and is obliged to use Italy's mint; the agreement does not affect the right of the Republic of San Marino to continue to issue gold coins denominated in Scudi[41] (legal value of 1 gold Scudo is 37.50 euros). Gambling is legal and regulated; however, casinos were outlawed prior to 2007. There is one legally operating casino.
+
+In exchange for these limitations, Italy provides San Marino with an annual stipend, and at cost, sea salt (not more than 250 tonnes per year), tobacco (40 tonnes), cigarettes (20 tonnes) and matches (unlimited amount).[42]
+
+At the border there are no formalities with Italy. However, at the tourist office visitors can purchase officially cancelled souvenir stamps for their passports.
+
+San Marino has a population of approximately 33,000, with 4,800 foreign residents, most of whom are Italian citizens. Another 12,000 Sammarinese live abroad (5,700 in Italy, 3,000 in the US, 1,900 in France and 1,600 in Argentina).
+
+The first census since 1976 was conducted in 2010. Results were expected by the end of 2011; however, 13% of families did not return their forms.
+
+The primary language spoken is Italian; Romagnol is also widely spoken.
+
+San Marino is a predominantly Catholic state[1]—over 97% of the population profess the Roman Catholic faith, but Catholicism is not an established religion. Approximately half of those who profess to be Catholic practice the faith.[43] There is no episcopal see in San Marino, although its name is part of the present diocesan title. Historically, the various parishes in San Marino were divided between two Italian dioceses, mostly in the Diocese of Montefeltro, and partly in the Diocese of Rimini. In 1977, the border between Montefeltro and Rimini was readjusted so that all of San Marino fell within the diocese of Montefeltro. The bishop of Montefeltro-San Marino resides in Pennabilli, in Italy's province of Pesaro e Urbino.
+
+There is a provision under the income tax rules that the taxpayers have the right to request for allocation of 0.3% of their income tax to the Catholic Church or to charities. The churches include the two religious groups of the Waldensian Church and Jehovah's Witnesses.
+
+The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro was until 1977 the historic diocese of Montefeltro. It is a suffragan of the archdiocese of Ravenna-Cervia.[44] The diocese includes all the parishes of San Marino. The earliest mention of Montefeltro, as Mona Feretri, is in the diplomas by which Charlemagne confirmed the donation of Pepin. The first known bishop of Montefeltro was Agatho (826), whose residence was at San Leo. Under Bishop Flaminios Dondi (1724) the see was again transferred to San Leo, but later it returned to Pennabilli. The historic diocese was a suffragan of the archdiocese of Urbino.[45] Since 1988, there is formally an apostolic nunciature to the republic, but it is vested in the nuncio to Italy.
+
+There has been a Jewish presence in San Marino for at least 600 years.[46] The first mention of Jews in San Marino dates to the late 14th century, in official documents recording the business transactions of Jews. There are many documents throughout the 15th to 17th centuries describing Jewish dealings and verifying the presence of a Jewish community in San Marino.[47] Jews were permitted official protection by the government.
+
+During World War II, San Marino provided a haven for more than 100,000 Italians and Jews (approximately 10 times the Sammarinese population at the time) from Nazi persecution. As of 2012[update], few Jews remain.[48] In 2019 it has been inaugurated the 'Chapel of three religions', the first ever building of its kind devoted to interfaith dialogue.[49]
+
+There are 220 km (140 mi) of roads in the country, the main road being the San Marino Highway. Authorities license private vehicles with distinctive Sammarinese license plates, which are white with blue figures and the coat of arms, usually a letter followed by up to four numbers. Many vehicles also carry the international vehicle identification code (in black on a white oval sticker), which is "RSM".
+
+There are no public airports in San Marino, but there is a small private airstrip located in Torraccia and an international heliport located in Borgo Maggiore. Most tourists who arrive by air land at Federico Fellini International Airport close to the city of Rimini, then make the transfer by bus.
+
+Two rivers flow through San Marino, but there is no major water transport, and no port or harbour.
+
+San Marino has limited public transport facilities. There is a regular bus service between Rimini and the city of San Marino that is popular with both tourists and workers commuting to San Marino from Italy. This service stops at approximately 20 locations in Rimini and within San Marino, with its two terminus stops at Rimini railway station and San Marino coach station.
+
+A limited licensed taxi service operates nationwide. There are seven licensed taxi companies operating in the republic,[50] and Italian taxis regularly operate within San Marino when carrying passengers picked up in Italian territory.
+
+There is a 1.5 km (0.93 mi) aerial tramway connecting the City of San Marino on top of Monte Titano with Borgo Maggiore, a major town in the republic, with the second largest population of any Sammarinese settlement. From here a further connection is available to the nation's largest settlement, Dogana, via the local bus service.
+
+Two aerial tramway cars (gondolas) operate, with service provided at roughly 15-minute intervals throughout the day. A third vehicle is available on the system, a service car for the use of engineers maintaining the tramway.
+
+Today, there is no railway in San Marino, but for a short period before World War II, it had a single narrow-gauge line called the Ferrovia Rimini–San Marino which connected the country with the Italian rail network at Rimini. Because of the difficulties in accessing the capital, City of San Marino, with its mountain-top location, the terminus station was planned to be located in the village of Valdragone, but was extended to reach the capital through a steep and winding track comprising many tunnels. The railway was opened on 12 June 1932.[51]
+An advanced system for its time, it was an electric railway, powered from overhead cables. It was well built and had a high frequency of passengers, but was almost completely destroyed during World War II. Many facilities such as bridges, tunnels, and stations remain visible today, and some have been converted to parks, public footpaths, or traffic routes.
+
+The Three Towers of San Marino are located on the three peaks of Monte Titano in the capital. They are depicted on both the flag of San Marino and its coat of arms. The three towers are: Guaita, the oldest of the three (it was constructed in the 11th century); the 13th-century Cesta, located on the highest of Monte Titano's summits; and the 14th-century Montale, on the smallest of Monte Titano's summits, still privately owned.
+
+The Università degli Studi della Repubblica di San Marino (University of the Republic of San Marino)[52] is the main university, which includes the Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici di San Marino (Graduate School of Historical Studies), a distinguished research and advanced international study centre governed by an international Scientific Committee coordinated by the emeritus historian Luciano Canfora. Other important institutes are the Istituto Musicale Sammarinese (Sammarinese Musical Institute)[53] and the Akademio Internacia de la Sciencoj San Marino or Accademia Internazionale delle Scienze San Marino (International Academy of Sciences San Marino).[54] The latter is known for adopting Esperanto as the language for teaching and for scientific publications; further, it makes wide use of electronic educational technology (also called e-learning).
+
+Italian author Umberto Eco had attempted to create a "university without physical structures" in San Marino.[55]
+
+In San Marino football is the most popular sport. Basketball and volleyball are also popular. The three sports have their own federations, the San Marino Football Federation, the San Marino Basketball Federation and the San Marino Volleyball Federation.
+
+The San Marino national football team has had little success, being made up of part-timers, never qualifying for a major tournament, and recording only one win in over 25 years of its history, a 1–0 victory in 2004 against Liechtenstein.[56] They have drawn four more, with their most notable result being a 1993 0–0 draw with Turkey during the European qualifiers for the 1994 FIFA World Cup.[57] In the same qualifying competition Davide Gualtieri scored a goal 8.3 seconds into a match against England; this goal held the record for the fastest in international football until 2016.[58][59]
+
+A Formula One race, the San Marino Grand Prix, was named after the state, although it did not take place there. Instead, it was held at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in the Italian town of Imola, about 100 km (60 mi) northwest of San Marino. Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna suffered fatal accidents a day apart during the 1994 Grand Prix. This international event was removed from the calendar in 2007.
+
+The San Marino and Rimini's Coast motorcycle Grand Prix was reinstated in the schedule in 2007 and takes place at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, as does San Marino's round of the World Superbike Championship.
+
+San Marino has a professional baseball team which plays in Italy's top division. It has participated in the European Cup tournament for the continent's top club sides several times, hosting the event in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2007. It won the championship in 2006 and was a runner-up in 2010.[60]
+
+Together with Italy, San Marino held the 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship, with teams playing at the Stadio Olimpico in Serravalle.
+
+San Marino has had little success at the Olympic Games, winning no medals.
+
+The cuisine of San Marino is extremely similar to Italian, especially that of the adjoining Emilia-Romagna and Marche regions, but it has a number of its own unique dishes and products. Its best known is probably the Torta Tre Monti ("Cake of the Three Mountains" or "Cake of the Three Towers"), a wafer layered cake covered in chocolate depicting the Three Towers of San Marino. The country also has a small wine industry.
+
+The site San Marino: Historic Centre and Mount Titano became part of the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008. The decision was taken during the 32nd Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee composed of 21 Countries convened in Québec, Canada.
+
+The country has a long and rich musical tradition, closely linked to that of Italy, but which is also highly independent in itself. A well-known 17th-century composer is Francesco Maria Marini. The pop singer Little Tony achieved considerable success in the United Kingdom and Italy in the 1950s and 1960s.
+
+San Marino has taken part in the Eurovision Song Contest ten times, achieving two final qualifications to date (with then-three, eventually four-time contestant and San Marino native Valentina Monetta with "Maybe" in 2014 and Turkish singer Serhat with "Say Na Na Na" who achieved 19th place in the final in 2019).
+
+Coordinates: 43°56′30″N 12°27′30″E / 43.94167°N 12.45833°E / 43.94167; 12.45833

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+
+
+Paul the Apostle (Latin: Paulus; Greek: Παῦλος, romanized: Paulos; Coptic: ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ;
+c. 5 – c. 64/67),[2][5] commonly known as Saint Paul and also known by his Hebrew name Saul of Tarsus (Hebrew: שאול התרסי‎, romanized: Sha'ūl ha-Tarsī; Greek: Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, romanized: Saũlos Tarseús),[7][Acts 9:11]  was an apostle (although not one of the Twelve Apostles) who taught the gospel of Christ to the first-century world.[8] Paul is generally considered one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age[7][9] and from the mid-30s to the mid-50s AD he founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe.
+
+According to the New Testament book Acts of the Apostles (often simply called Acts), Paul persecuted some of the early disciples of Jesus, possibly Hellenised diaspora Jews converted to Christianity,[10] in the area of Jerusalem prior to his conversion.[note 1] In the narrative of Acts, Paul was traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus on a mission to "arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem" when the ascended Jesus appeared to him in a great light. He was struck blind, but after three days his sight was restored by Ananias of Damascus and Paul began to preach that Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish Messiah and the Son of God.[Acts 9:20–21] Approximately half of the book of Acts deals with Paul's life and works.
+
+Thirteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul.[11] Seven of the Pauline epistles are undisputed by scholars as being authentic, with varying degrees of argument about the remainder. Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is not asserted in the Epistle itself and was already doubted in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.[note 2] It was almost unquestioningly accepted from the 5th to the 16th centuries that Paul was the author of Hebrews,[12] but that view is now almost universally rejected by scholars.[12][13] The other six are believed by some scholars to have come from followers writing in his name, using material from Paul's surviving letters and letters written by him that no longer survive.[8][7][note 3] Other scholars argue that the idea of a pseudonymous author for the disputed epistles raises many problems.[15]
+
+Today, Paul's epistles continue to be vital roots of the theology, worship and pastoral life in the Latin and Protestant traditions of the West, as well as the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions of the East.[16] Paul's influence on Christian thought and practice has been characterized as being as "profound as it is pervasive", among that of many other apostles and missionaries involved in the spread of the Christian faith.[8]
+
+It has been popularly assumed that Saul's name was changed when he became a follower of Jesus Christ, but that is not the case.[17][18][19] His Jewish name was "Saul" (Hebrew: שאול, Modern: Sha'ûl, Tiberian: Šāʼûl), perhaps after the biblical King Saul,[17] a fellow Benjamite and the first king of Israel. According to the Book of Acts, he was a Roman citizen.[Acts 22:25–29] As a Roman citizen, he also bore the Latin name of "Paul" (essentially a Latin transliteration of Saul) – in biblical Greek: Παῦλος (Paulos),[20] and in Latin: Paulus.[note 4][Acts 16:37][22:25–28] It was typical for the Jews of that time to have two names: one Hebrew, the other Latin or Greek.[21][22][23]
+
+Jesus called him "Saul, Saul"[Acts 9:4; 22:7; 26:14] in "the Hebrew tongue" in the book of Acts, when he had the vision which led to his conversion on the Road to Damascus.[Acts 26:14] Later, in a vision to Ananias of Damascus, "the Lord" referred to him as "Saul, of Tarsus".[Acts 9:11] When Ananias came to restore his sight, he called him "Brother Saul".[Acts 9:17; 22:13]
+
+In Acts 13:9, Saul is called "Paul" for the first time on the island of Cyprus – much later than the time of his conversion. The author (Luke) indicates that the names were interchangeable: "Saul, who also is called Paul." He thereafter refers to him as Paul, apparently Paul's preference since he is called Paul in all other Bible books where he is mentioned, including those that he authored. Adopting his Roman name was typical of Paul's missionary style. His method was to put people at their ease and to approach them with his message in a language and style to which they could relate, as in 1 Cor 9:19–23.[18]
+
+The main source for information about Paul's life is the material found in his epistles and in Acts.[24] However, the epistles contain little information about Paul's pre-conversion past. The book of Acts recounts more information but leaves several parts of Paul's life out of its narrative, such as his probable but undocumented execution in Rome.[25] Some scholars believe Acts also contradicts Paul's epistles on multiple accounts, in particular concerning the frequency of Paul's visits to the church in Jerusalem.[26][27]
+
+Sources outside the New Testament that mention Paul include:
+
+The two main sources of information by which we have access to the earliest segments of Paul's career are the Bible's Book of Acts and the autobiographical elements of Paul's letters to the early Christian communities.[24] Paul was likely born between the years of 5 BC and 5 AD.[29] The Book of Acts indicates that Paul was a Roman citizen by birth, but Helmut Koester takes issue with the evidence presented by the text.[30][Acts 16:37][Acts 22:25–29]
+
+He was from a devout Jewish family[31] based in the city of Tarsus,[17] one of the largest trade centers on the Mediterranean coast.[32] It had been in existence several hundred years prior to his birth. It was renowned for its university. During the time of Alexander the Great, who died in 323 BC, Tarsus was the most influential city in Asia Minor.[31]
+
+Paul referred to himself as being "of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee".[Phil. 3:5][33] The Bible reveals very little about Paul's family. Acts quotes Paul referring to his family by saying he was "a Pharisee, born of Pharisees".[Acts 23:6][34] Paul's nephew, his sister's son, is mentioned in Acts 23:16. In Romans 16:7 he states that his relatives, Andronicus and Junia, were Christians before he was and were prominent among the Apostles.
+
+The family had a history of religious piety.[2 Timothy 1:3][note 5] Apparently the family lineage had been very attached to Pharisaic traditions and observances for generations.[Philippians 3:5–6] Acts says that he was an artisan involved in the leather or tent-making profession.[Acts 18:1–3][35] This was to become an initial connection with Priscilla and Aquila with whom he would partner in tentmaking[Acts 18:3] and later become very important teammates as fellow missionaries.[Rom. 16:4]
+
+Professor Robert Eisenman of California State University, Long Beach argues that Paul was a member of the family of Herod the Great.[36] Eisenman makes a connection between Paul and an individual identified by Josephus as "Saulus", a "kinsman of Agrippa".[37] Another oft-cited element of the case for Paul as a member of Herod's family is found in Romans 16:11 where Paul writes, "Greet Herodion, my kinsman".
+
+While he was still fairly young, he was sent to Jerusalem to receive his education at the school of Gamaliel,[Acts 22:3][33] one of the most noted rabbis in history. Although modern scholarship agrees that Paul was educated under the supervision of Gamaliel in Jerusalem,[33] he was not preparing to become a rabbi and probably never had any contact with the Hillelite school.[33] Some of his family may have resided in Jerusalem since later the son of one of his sisters saved his life there.[Acts 23:16][17] Nothing more is known of his biography until he takes an active part in the martyrdom of Stephen,[Acts 7:58–60; 22:20] a Hellenised diaspora Jew converted to Christianity.[10]
+
+Although we know from his biography and from Acts that Paul could and did speak Hebrew,[17] modern scholarship suggests that Koine Greek was his first language.[38][39] In his letters, Paul drew heavily on his knowledge of Stoic philosophy, using Stoic terms and metaphors to assist his new Gentile converts in their understanding of the Gospel and to explain his Christology.[40][41]
+
+Paul confesses that prior to his conversion[Gal. 1:13–14] [Phil. 3:6] [Acts 8:1–3]  he persecuted "beyond measure" the church of God, specifically Hellenised diaspora Jews converted to Christianity, who had returned to the area of Jerusalem.[42][note 1] According to James Dunn, the Jerusalem community consisted of "Hebrews," Jews speaking both Aramaic and Greek, and "Hellenists," Jews speaking only Greek, possibly diaspora Jews who had resettled in Jerusalem.[43] Paul's initial persecution of Christians probably was directed against these Greek-speaking "Hellenists" converted to Christianity due to their anti-Temple attitude.[44] Within the early Jewish Christian community, this also set them apart from the "Hebrews" and their continuing participation in the Temple cult.[44]
+
+Paul's conversion can be dated to 31–36[45][46][47] by his reference to it in one of his letters. In Galatians 1:16 Paul writes that God "was pleased to reveal his son to me." In 1 Corinthians 15:8, as he lists the order in which Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, Paul writes, "last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also."
+
+According to the account in Acts, it took place on the road to Damascus, where he reported having experienced a vision of the ascended Jesus. The account says that "He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' He asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The reply came, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting'."[Acts 9:4–5].
+
+According to the account in Acts 9:1–22, he was blinded for three days and had to be led into Damascus by the hand. During these three days, Saul took no food or water and spent his time in prayer to God. When Ananias of Damascus arrived, he laid his hands on him and said: "Brother Saul, the Lord, [even] Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost."[Acts 9:17] His sight was restored, he got up and was baptized.[Acts 9:18] This story occurs only in Acts, not in the Pauline epistles.[48]
+
+The author of Acts of the Apostles may have learned of Paul's conversion from the church in Jerusalem, or from the church in Antioch, or possibly from Paul himself.[49]
+
+According to Timo Eskola, early Christian theology and discourse was influenced by the Jewish Merkabah tradition.[50] Similarly, Alan Segal and Daniel Boyarin regard Paul's accounts of his conversion experience and his ascent to the heavens as the earliest first person accounts we have of a Merkabah mystic in Jewish or Christian literature. Conversely, Timothy Churchill has argued that Paul's Damascus road encounter does not fit the pattern of Merkabah.[51]
+
+According to Acts,
+
+And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, "He is the Son of God." And all who heard him were amazed and said, "Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?" But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.
+
+After his conversion, Paul went to Damascus, where Acts 9 states he was healed of his blindness and baptized by Ananias of Damascus.[52] Paul says that it was in Damascus that he barely escaped death.[2 Cor. 11:32] Paul also says that he then went first to Arabia, and then came back to Damascus.[Gal. 1:17][53] Paul's trip to Arabia is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, and some suppose he actually traveled to Mount Sinai for meditations in the desert.[54][55] He describes in Galatians how three years after his conversion he went to Jerusalem. There he met James and stayed with Simon Peter for 15 days.[Gal. 1:13–24] Paul located Mount Sinai in Arabia in Galatians 4:24–25.
+
+Paul asserted that he received the Gospel not from man, but directly by "the revelation of Jesus Christ".[Gal 1:11–16] He claimed almost total independence from the Jerusalem community[56] (possibly in the Cenacle), but agreed with it on the nature and content of the gospel.[Gal 1:22–24] He appeared eager to bring material support to Jerusalem from the various growing Gentile churches that he started. In his writings, Paul used the persecutions he endured to avow proximity and union with Jesus and as a validation of his teaching.
+
+Paul's narrative in Galatians states that 14 years after his conversion he went again to Jerusalem.[Gal. 2:1–10] It is not known what happened during this time, but both Acts and Galatians provide some details.[57] At the end of this time, Barnabas went to find Paul and brought him to Antioch.[58]Acts 11:26 The Christian community at Antioch had been established by Hellenised diaspora Jews converted to Christianity living in Jerusalem, who played an important role in reaching a Gentile, Greek audience, notably at Antioch, which had a large Jewish community and significant numbers of Gentile "God-fearers."[59] From Antioch the mission to the Gentiles started, which would fundamentally change the character of the early Christian movement, eventually turning it into a new, Gentile religion.[10]
+
+When a famine occurred in Judea, around 45–46,[60] Paul and Barnabas journeyed to Jerusalem to deliver financial support from the Antioch community.[61] According to Acts, Antioch had become an alternative center for Christians following the dispersion of the believers after the death of Stephen. It was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called "Christians".Acts 11:26
+
+The author of Acts arranges Paul's travels into three separate journeys. The first journey,[Acts 13–14] for which Paul and Barnabas were commissioned by the Antioch community,[62] and led initially by Barnabas,[note 6] took Barnabas and Paul from Antioch to Cyprus then into southern Asia Minor (Anatolia), and finally returning to Antioch. In Cyprus, Paul rebukes and blinds Elymas the magician[Acts 13:8–12] who was criticizing their teachings.
+
+They sail to Perga in Pamphylia. John Mark leaves them and returns to Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas go on to Pisidian Antioch. On Sabbath they go to the synagogue. The leaders invite them to speak. Paul reviews Israelite history from life in Egypt to King David. He introduces Jesus as a descendant of David brought to Israel by God. He said that his team came to town to bring the message of salvation. He recounts the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. He quotes from the Septuagint[63] to assert that Jesus was the promised Christos who brought them forgiveness for their sins. Both the Jews and the "God-fearing" Gentiles invited them to talk more next Sabbath. At that time almost the whole city gathered. This upset some influential Jews who spoke against them. Paul used the occasion to announce a change in his mission which from then on would be to the Gentiles.[Acts 13:13–48]
+
+Antioch served as a major Christian homebase for Paul's early missionary activities,[5] and he remained there for "a long time with the disciples"[Acts 14:28] at the conclusion of his first journey. The exact duration of Paul's stay in Antioch is unknown, with estimates ranging from nine months to as long as eight years.[64]
+
+In Raymond Brown's An Introduction to the New Testament (1997), a chronology of events in Paul's life is presented, illustrated from later 20th century writings of biblical scholars.[65] The first missionary journey of Paul is assigned a "traditional" (and majority) dating of 46–49 AD, compared to a "revisionist" (and minority) dating of after 37 AD.[66]
+
+A vital meeting between Paul and the Jerusalem church took place in the year 49 by "traditional" (and majority) dating, compared to a "revisionist" (and minority) dating of 47/51.[67] The meeting is described in Acts 15:2 and usually seen as the same event mentioned by Paul in Galatians 2:1.[25] The key question raised was whether Gentile converts needed to be circumcised.[68][Acts 15:2][Galatians 2:1] At this meeting, Paul states in his letter to the Galatians, Peter, James, and John accepted Paul's mission to the Gentiles.
+
+The Jerusalem meetings are mentioned in Acts, and also in Paul's letters.[69] For example, the Jerusalem visit for famine relief[Acts 11:27–30] apparently corresponds to the "first visit" (to Peter and James only).[Gal. 1:18–20][69] F. F. Bruce suggested that the "fourteen years" could be from Paul's conversion rather than from his first visit to Jerusalem.[70]
+
+Despite the agreement achieved at the Council of Jerusalem, Paul recounts how he later publicly confronted Peter in a dispute sometimes called the "Incident at Antioch", over Peter's reluctance to share a meal with Gentile Christians in Antioch because they did not strictly adhere to Jewish customs.[68]
+
+Writing later of the incident, Paul recounts, "I opposed [Peter] to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong", and says he told Peter, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?"[Gal. 2:11–14] Paul also mentions that even Barnabas, his traveling companion and fellow apostle until that time, sided with Peter.[68]
+
+The final outcome of the incident remains uncertain. The Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that Paul won the argument, because "Paul's account of the incident leaves no doubt that Peter saw the justice of the rebuke".[68] However Paul himself never mentions a victory and L. Michael White's From Jesus to Christianity draws the opposite conclusion: "The blowup with Peter was a total failure of political bravado, and Paul soon left Antioch as persona non grata, never again to return".[71]
+
+The primary source account of the Incident at Antioch is Paul's letter to the Galatians.[Gal. 2:11–14]
+
+Paul left for his second missionary journey from Jerusalem, in late Autumn 49,[74] after the meeting of the Council of Jerusalem where the circumcision question was debated. On their trip around the Mediterranean Sea, Paul and his companion Barnabas stopped in Antioch where they had a sharp argument about taking John Mark with them on their trips. The book of Acts said that John Mark had left them in a previous trip and gone home. Unable to resolve the dispute, Paul and Barnabas decided to separate; Barnabas took John Mark with him, while Silas joined Paul.
+
+Paul and Silas initially visited Tarsus (Paul's birthplace), Derbe and Lystra. In Lystra, they met Timothy, a disciple who was spoken well of, and decided to take him with them. Paul and his companions, Silas and Timothy, had plans to journey to the southwest portion of Asia Minor to preach the gospel but during the night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him to go to Macedonia to help them. After seeing the vision, Paul and his companions left for Macedonia to preach the gospel to them.[Acts 16:6–10] The Church kept growing, adding believers, and strengthening in faith daily.[Acts 16:5]
+
+In Philippi, Paul cast a spirit of divination out of a servant girl, whose masters were then unhappy about the loss of income her soothsaying provided.[Acts 16:16–24] They turned the city against the missionaries, and Paul and Silas were put in jail. After a miraculous earthquake, the gates of the prison fell apart and Paul and Silas could have escaped but remained; this event led to the conversion of the jailor.[Acts 16:25–40] They continued traveling, going by Berea and then to Athens, where Paul preached to the Jews and God-fearing Greeks in the synagogue and to the Greek intellectuals in the Areopagus. Paul continued from Athens to Corinth.
+
+Around 50–52, Paul spent 18 months in Corinth. The reference in Acts to Proconsul Gallio helps ascertain this date (cf. Gallio Inscription).[25] In Corinth, Paul met Priscilla and Aquila,[Acts 18:2] who became faithful believers and helped Paul through his other missionary journeys. The couple followed Paul and his companions to Ephesus, and stayed there to start one of the strongest and most faithful churches at that time.[Acts 18:18–21]
+
+In 52, departing from Corinth, Paul stopped at the nearby village of Cenchreae to have his hair cut off, because of a vow he had earlier taken.[Acts 18:18] It is possible this was to be a final haircut prior to fulfilling his vow to become a Nazirite for a defined period of time.[75] With Priscilla and Aquila, the missionaries then sailed to Ephesus[Acts 18:19–21] and then Paul alone went on to Caesarea to greet the Church there. He then traveled north to Antioch, where he stayed for some time (Greek: ποιησας χρονον, perhaps about a year), before leaving again on a third missionary journey.[citation needed] Some New Testament texts[note 7] suggest that he also visited Jerusalem during this period for one of the Jewish feasts, possibly Pentecost.[Acts 18:21] Textual critic Henry Alford and others consider the reference to a Jerusalem visit to be genuine[76] and it accords with Acts 21:29, according to which Paul and Trophimus the Ephesian had previously been seen in Jerusalem.
+
+According to Acts, Paul began his third missionary journey by travelling all around the region of Galatia and Phrygia to strengthen, teach and rebuke the believers. Paul then traveled to Ephesus, an important center of early Christianity, and stayed there for almost three years, probably working there as a tentmaker,[Acts 20:34] as he had done when he stayed in Corinth. He is claimed to have performed numerous miracles, healing people and casting out demons, and he apparently organized missionary activity in other regions.[25] Paul left Ephesus after an attack from a local silversmith resulted in a pro-Artemis riot involving most of the city.[25] During his stay in Ephesus, Paul wrote four letters to the church in Corinth.[78] The Jerusalem Bible suggests that the letter to the church in Philippi was also written from Ephesus.[79]
+
+Paul went through Macedonia into Achaea[Acts 20:1–2] and stayed in Greece, probably Corinth, for three months[Acts 20:1–2] during 56–57 AD.[25] Commentators generally agree that Paul dictated his Epistle to the Romans during this period.[80] He then made ready to continue on to Syria, but he changed his plans and traveled back through Macedonia because of some Jews who had made a plot against him. In Romans 15:19 Paul wrote that he visited Illyricum, but he may have meant what would now be called Illyria Graeca,[81] which was at that time a division of the Roman province of Macedonia.[82] On their way back to Jerusalem, Paul and his companions visited other cities such as Philippi, Troas, Miletus, Rhodes, and Tyre. Paul finished his trip with a stop in Caesarea, where he and his companions stayed with Philip the Evangelist before finally arriving at Jerusalem.[Acts 21:8–10] [21:15]
+
+According to Charles Woods' studies of Albania from 1918, when St. Paul he arrived in Illyria, he stated "Round about unto Illyricum I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ".[83]
+
+Among the writings of the early Christians, Pope Clement I said that Paul was "Herald (of the Gospel of Christ) in the West", and that "he had gone to the extremity of the west".[84] John Chrysostom indicated that Paul preached in Spain: "For after he had been in Rome, he returned to Spain, but whether he came thence again into these parts, we know not".[85] Cyril of Jerusalem said that Paul, "fully preached the Gospel, and instructed even imperial Rome, and carried the earnestness of his preaching as far as Spain, undergoing conflicts innumerable, and performing Signs and wonders".[86] The Muratorian fragment mentions "the departure of Paul from the city [of Rome] [5a] (39) when he journeyed to Spain".[87]
+
+This table is adapted from White, From Jesus to Christianity.[69] Note that the matching of Paul's travels in the Acts and the travels in his Epistles is done for the reader's convenience and is not approved of by all scholars.
+
+In 57, upon completion of his third missionary journey, Paul arrived in Jerusalem for his fifth and final visit with a collection of money for the local community. Acts reports that he initially was warmly received. However, Acts goes on to recount how Paul was warned by James and the elders that he was gaining a reputation for being against the Law, saying "they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs". Paul underwent a purification ritual to give the Jews no grounds to bring accusations against him for not following their law.[Acts 21:17–26]
+
+After seven days in Jerusalem, some "Jews from Asia" (most likely from Roman Asia) accused Paul of defiling the temple by bringing gentiles into it. He was seized and dragged out of the temple by an angry mob. He narrowly escaped being killed by surrendering to a group of Roman centurions, who arrested him, put him in chains and took him to the tribune.[Acts 21:27–36]
+
+When a plot to kill Paul on his way to an appearance before the Jews was discovered, he was transported by night to Caesarea Maritima. He was held as a prisoner there for two years by Marcus Antonius Felix, until a new governor, Porcius Festus, reopened his case in 59. When Festus suggested that he be sent back to Jerusalem for further trial, Paul exercised his right as a Roman citizen to "appeal unto Caesar".[25] Finally, Paul and his companions sailed for Rome where Paul was to stand trial for his alleged crimes.[88]
+
+Acts recounts that on the way to Rome for his appeal as a Roman citizen to Caesar, Paul was shipwrecked on "Melita" (Malta),[Acts 27:39–44] where the islanders showed him "unusual kindness" and where he was met by Publius.[Acts 28:1–10] From Malta, he travelled to Rome via Syracuse, Rhegium and Puteoli.[Acts 28:11–14]
+
+He finally arrived in Rome around 60, where he spent another two years under house arrest.[88] The narrative of Acts ends with Paul preaching in Rome for two years from his rented home while awaiting trial.[Acts 28:30–31]
+
+Irenaeus wrote in the 2nd century that Peter and Paul had been the founders of the church in Rome and had appointed Linus as succeeding bishop.[89] Paul was not a bishop of Rome, nor did he bring Christianity to Rome since there were already Christians in Rome when he arrived there.[Acts 28:14–15] Also, Paul wrote his letter to the church at Rome before he had visited Rome.[Romans 1:1, 7, 11–13; 15:23–29] Paul only played a supporting part in the life of the church in Rome.[90]
+
+The date of Paul's death is believed to have occurred after the Great Fire of Rome in July 64, but before the last year of Nero's reign, in 68.[2] According to the First Epistle of Clement (95–96 AD)[91], Ignatius (110 AD)[92] and Dionysius of Corinth (166–174 AD)[93][94] Paul was martyred. The apocryphal Acts of Paul (160 AD)[95], Tertullian (200 AD)[96], Eusebius of Caesarea (320 AD)[97], Lactantius (318 AD)[98], Jerome (392 AD)[99], John Chrysostom (c. 349–407)[100] and Sulpicius Severus (403 AD)[101] describe the martyrdom of Paul citing that Nero condemned Paul to death by decapitation at Rome.
+
+A legend later[when?] developed that his martyrdom occurred at the Aquae Salviae, on the Via Laurentina. According to this legend, after Paul was decapitated, his severed head rebounded three times, giving rise to a source of water each time that it touched the ground, which is how the place earned the name "San Paolo alle Tre Fontane" ("St Paul at the Three Fountains").[102][103]
+
+According to further legend, Paul's body was buried outside the walls of Rome, at the second mile on the Via Ostiensis, on the estate owned by a Christian woman named Lucina. It was here, in the fourth century, that the Emperor Constantine the Great built a first church. Then, between the fourth and fifth centuries it was considerably enlarged by the Emperors Valentinian I, Valentinian II, Theodosius I, and Arcadius. The present-day Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls was built there in the early 19th century.[102]
+
+Caius in his Disputation Against Proclus (198 AD) mentions this of the places in which the remains of the apostles Peter and Paul were deposited: "I can point out the trophies of the apostles. For if you are willing to go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way, you will find the trophies of those who founded this Church".[104]
+
+Jerome in his De Viris Illustribus (392 AD) writing on Paul's biography, mentions that "Paul was buried in the Ostian Way at Rome".[99]
+
+In 2002, an 8-foot (2.4 m)-long marble sarcophagus, inscribed with the words "PAULO APOSTOLO MART" ("Paul apostle martyr") was discovered during excavations around the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls on the Via Ostiensis. Vatican archaeologists declared this to be the tomb of Paul the Apostle in 2005.[105] In June 2009, Pope Benedict XVI announced excavation results concerning the tomb. The sarcophagus was not opened but was examined by means of a probe, which revealed pieces of incense, purple and blue linen, and small bone fragments. The bone was radiocarbon-dated to the 1st or 2nd century. According to the Vatican, these findings support the conclusion that the tomb is Paul's.[106][107]
+
+Various Christian writers have suggested more details about Paul's life.
+
+1 Clement, a letter written by the Roman bishop Clement of Rome around the year 90, reports this about Paul:
+
+By reason of jealousy and strife Paul by his example pointed out the prize of patient endurance. After that he had been seven times in bonds, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, had preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble renown which was the reward of his faith, having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reached the farthest bounds of the West; and when he had borne his testimony before the rulers, so he departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having been found a notable pattern of patient endurance.
+
+Commenting on this passage, Raymond Brown writes that while it "does not explicitly say" that Paul was martyred in Rome, "such a martyrdom is the most reasonable interpretation".[108] Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote in the 4th century, states that Paul was beheaded in the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero.[109] This event has been dated either to the year 64, when Rome was devastated by a fire, or a few years later, to 67. According to one tradition, the church of San Paolo alle Tre Fontane marks the place of Paul's execution. A Roman Catholic liturgical solemnity of Peter and Paul, celebrated on June 29, commemorates his martyrdom, and reflects a tradition (preserved by Eusebius) that Peter and Paul were martyred at the same time.[110] The Roman liturgical calendar for the following day now remembers all Christians martyred in these early persecutions; formerly, June 30 was the feast day for St. Paul.[111] Persons or religious orders with special affinity for St. Paul can still celebrate their patron on June 30.
+
+The apocryphal Acts of Paul and the apocryphal Acts of Peter suggest that Paul survived Rome and traveled further west. Some think that Paul could have revisited Greece and Asia Minor after his trip to Spain, and might then have been arrested in Troas, and taken to Rome and executed.[2 Tim. 4:13][note 5] A tradition holds that Paul was interred with Saint Peter ad Catacumbas by the via Appia until moved to what is now the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History, writes that Pope Vitalian in 665 gave Paul's relics (including a cross made from his prison chains) from the crypts of Lucina to King Oswy of Northumbria, northern Britain. Paul is considered the patron saint of London.
+
+The Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul is celebrated on January 25.[112]
+
+The New Testament offers little if any information about the physical appearance of Paul, but several descriptions can be found in apocryphal texts. In the Acts of Paul[113] he is described as "A man of small stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked".[114] In the Latin version of the Acts of Paul and Thecla it is added that he had a red, florid face.[114]
+
+In The History of the Contending of Saint Paul his countenance is described as "ruddy with the ruddiness of the skin of the pomegranate".[115] The Acts of Saint Peter confirms that Paul had a bald and shining head, with red hair.[116]
+As summarised by Barnes,[117] Chrysostom records that Paul's stature was low, his body crooked and his head bald. Lucian, in his Philopatris, describes Paul as "corpore erat parvo (he was small), contracto (contracted), incurvo (crooked), tricubitali (of three cubits, or four feet six)".[21]
+
+Nicephorus claims that Paul was a little man, crooked, and almost bent like a bow, with a pale countenance, long and wrinkled, and a bald head. Pseudo-Chrysostom echoes Lucian's height of Paul, referring to him as "the man of three cubits".[21]
+
+Catholicism portal
+
+Of the 27 books in the New Testament, 14 have been attributed to Paul; 7 of these are widely considered authentic and Paul's own, while the authorship of the other 7 is disputed.[118][119][120] The undisputed letters are considered the most important sources since they contain what everyone agrees to be Paul's own statements about his life and thoughts. Theologian Mark Powell writes that Paul directed these 7 letters to specific occasions at particular churches. As an example, if the Corinthian church had not experienced problems concerning its celebration of the Lord's Supper,[1 Cor. 11:17–34] today we would not know that Paul even believed in that observance or had any opinions about it one way or the other. Powell asks if we might be ignorant of other matters simply because no crises arose that prompted Paul to comment on them.[121]
+
+In Paul's writings, he provides the first written account of what it is to be a Christian and thus a description of Christian spirituality. His letters have been characterized as being the most influential books of the New Testament after the Gospels of Matthew and John.[7][note 10]
+
+Seven of the 13 letters that bear Paul's name – Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon – are almost universally accepted as being entirely authentic (dictated by Paul himself).[7][118][119][120] They are considered the best source of information on Paul's life and especially his thought.[7]
+
+Four of the letters (Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) are widely considered pseudepigraphical, while the authorship of the other two is subject to debate.[118] Colossians and 2 Thessalonians are possibly "Deutero-Pauline" meaning they may have been written by Paul's followers after his death. Similarly, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus may be "Trito-Pauline" meaning they may have been written by members of the Pauline school a generation after his death. According to their theories, these disputed letters may have come from followers writing in Paul's name, often using material from his surviving letters. These scribes also may have had access to letters written by Paul that no longer survive.[7]
+
+The authenticity of Colossians has been questioned on the grounds that it contains an otherwise unparalleled description (among his writings) of Jesus as "the image of the invisible God", a Christology found elsewhere only in John's gospel.[122] However, the personal notes in the letter connect it to Philemon, unquestionably the work of Paul. Internal evidence shows close connection with Philippians.[21]
+
+Ephesians is a letter that is very similar to Colossians, but is almost entirely lacking in personal reminiscences. Its style is unique. It lacks the emphasis on the cross to be found in other Pauline writings, reference to the Second Coming is missing, and Christian marriage is exalted in a way which contrasts with the reference in 1 Cor. 7:8–9. Finally, according to R.E. Brown, it exalts the Church in a way suggestive of a second generation of Christians, "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets" now past.[123]
+
+The defenders of its Pauline authorship argue that it was intended to be read by a number of different churches and that it marks the final stage of the development of Paul's thinking. It has been said, too, that the moral portion of the Epistle, consisting of the last two chapters, has the closest affinity with similar portions of other Epistles, while the whole admirably fits in with the known details of Paul's life, and throws considerable light upon them.[124]
+
+Three main reasons have been advanced by those who question Paul's authorship of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus – also known as the Pastoral Epistles.
+
+Although approximately half of Acts deals with Paul's life and works, the Book of Acts does not refer to Paul writing letters. Historians believe that the author of Acts did not have access to any of Paul's letters. One piece of evidence suggesting this is that Acts never directly quotes from the Pauline epistles. Discrepancies between the Pauline epistles and Acts would further support the conclusion that the author of Acts did not have access to those epistles when composing Acts.[126][127]
+
+British Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby contended that the Paul as described in the book of Acts and the view of Paul gleaned from his own writings are very different people. Some difficulties have been noted in the account of his life. Paul as described in the Book of Acts is much more interested in factual history, less in theology; ideas such as justification by faith are absent as are references to the Spirit, according to Maccoby. He also pointed out that there are no references to John the Baptist in the Pauline Epistles, although Paul mentions him several times in the book of Acts.
+
+Others have objected that the language of the speeches is too Lukan in style to reflect anyone else's words. Moreover, George Shillington writes that the author of Acts most likely created the speeches accordingly and they bear his literary and theological marks.[128] Conversely, Howard Marshall writes that the speeches were not entirely the inventions of the author and while they may not be accurate word-for-word, the author nevertheless records the general idea of them.[129]
+
+F. C. Baur (1792–1860), professor of theology at Tübingen in Germany, the first scholar to critique Acts and the Pauline Epistles, and founder of the Tübingen School of theology, argued that Paul, as the "Apostle to the Gentiles", was in violent opposition to the original 12 Apostles. Baur considers the Acts of the Apostles were late and unreliable. This debate has continued ever since, with Adolf Deissmann (1866–1937) and Richard Reitzenstein (1861–1931) emphasising Paul's Greek inheritance and Albert Schweitzer stressing his dependence on Judaism.
+
+In the opening verses of Romans 1, Paul provides a litany of his own apostolic appointment to preach among the Gentiles[Gal. 1:16] and his post-conversion convictions about the risen Christ.[7] Paul described himself as set apart for the gospel of God and called to be an apostle and a servant of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ had revealed Himself to Paul, just as He had appeared to Peter, to James, to the Twelve, after his Resurrection.[1 Cor. 9:1] Paul experienced this as an unforeseen, sudden, startling change, due to all-powerful grace, not as the fruit of his reasoning or thoughts.[Gal. 1:12–15] [1 Cor. 15:10]
+
+Paul also describes himself as inflicted with a debilitating physical condition akin to having a handicap which he refers to as "a thorn in the flesh";[2 Cor. 12:7]
+
+There are debates as to whether Paul understood himself as commissioned to take the gospel to the Gentiles at the moment of his conversion.[130] Before his conversion he believed his violent persecution of the church to be an indication of his zeal for his religion;[Phil. 3:6] after his conversion he believed Jewish hostility toward the church was sinful opposition, that would incur God's wrath.[1 Thess. 2:14–16][131] Paul believed he was halted by Christ, when his fury was at its height.[Acts 9:1–2] It was "through zeal" that he persecuted the Church,[Philippians 3:6] and he obtained mercy because he had "acted ignorantly in unbelief".[1 Tim. 1:13][note 5]
+
+Paul's writings emphasized the crucifixion, Christ's resurrection and the Parousia or second coming of Christ.[45] Paul saw Jesus as Lord (kyrios), the true messiah and the Son of God, who was promised by God beforehand, through his prophets in the holy Scriptures. While being a biological descendant from David ("according to the flesh"),[Rom. 1:3] He was declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.
+
+According to E. P. Sanders, Paul "preached the death, resurrection, and lordship of Jesus Christ, and he proclaimed that faith in Jesus guarantees a share in his life."[7]
+In Paul's view, "Jesus’ death was not a defeat but was for the believers’ benefit,"[7] a sacrifice which substitutes for the lifes of others, and frees them from the bondage of sin. Believers participate in Christ's death and resurrection by their baptism. The resurrection of Jesus was of primary importance to Paul, bringing the promise of salvation to believers. Paul taught that, when Christ returned, those who had died believing in Christ as the saviour of mankind would be brought back to life, while those still alive would be "caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air" [1 Thes. 4:14–18][7]
+
+Sanders concludes that Paul's writings reveal what he calls the essence of the Christian message: "(1) God sent his Son; (2) the Son was crucified and resurrected for the benefit of humanity; (3) the Son would soon return; and (4) those who belonged to the Son would live with him forever. Paul’s gospel, like those of others, also included (5) the admonition to live by the highest moral standard: “May your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”  ([1 Thes. 5:23])"[7]
+
+In Paul's writings, the public, corporate devotional patterns towards Jesus in the early Christian community are reflective of Paul's perspective on the divine status of Jesus in what scholars have termed a "binitarian" pattern of devotion. For Paul, Jesus receives prayer (1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 12:8–9; 1 Thess. 3:11), the presence of Jesus is confessionally invoked by believers (1 Cor. 16:22; Romans 10:9–13; Phil. 2:10–11), people are baptized in Jesus’ name (1 Cor. 6:11; Rom. 6:3), Jesus is the reference in Christian fellowship for a religious ritual meal (the Lord's Supper; 1 Cor. 11:17–34 – in pagan cults, the reference for ritual meals is always to a deity), and Jesus is the source of continuing prophetic oracles to believers (1 Thess. 4:15–17).[132]
+
+Paul taught that Christians are redeemed from sin by Jesus' death and resurrection. His death was an expiation as well as a propitiation, and by Christ's blood peace is made between God and man.[133] By grace, through faith,[Ephesiahs 2:8–9] a Christian shares in Jesus' death and in his victory over death, gaining as a free gift a new, justified status of sonship.[Galatians 4:4–7]
+
+According to Krister Stendahl, the main concern of Paul's writings on Jesus' role, and salvation by faith, is not the individual conscience of human sinners, and their doubts about being chosen by God or not, but the problem of the inclusion of gentile (Greek) Torah observers into God's covenant.[134][135][136][137][note 11] 'Dying for our sins' refers to the problem of gentile Torah-observers, who, despite their faithfulness, cannot fully observe commandments, including circumcision, and are therefore 'sinners', excluded from God's covenant.[138] Jesus' death and resurrection solved this problem of the exclusion of the gentles from God's covenant, as indicated by Rom 3:21–26.[139]
+
+Paul's conversion fundamentally changed his basic beliefs regarding God's covenant and the inclusion of Gentiles into this covenant. Paul believed Jesus' death was a voluntary sacrifice, that reconciled sinners with God.[Rom. 5:6–10][Phil. 2:8] The law only reveals the extent of people's enslavement to the power of sin – a power that must be broken by Christ.[Rom. 3:20b][7:7–12] Before his conversion Paul believed Gentiles were outside the covenant that God made with Israel; after his conversion he believed Gentiles and Jews were united as the people of God in Christ Jesus.[Gal. 3:28] Before his conversion he believed circumcision was the rite through which males became part of Israel, an exclusive community of God's chosen people;[Phil. 3:3–5] after his conversion he believed that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but that the new creation is what counts in the sight of God,[Gal 6:15] and that this new creation is a work of Christ in the life of believers, making them part of the church, an inclusive community of Jews and Gentiles reconciled with God through faith.[Rom 6:4]
+
+According to E.P. Sanders, who initiated the New Perspective on Paul with his 1977 publication Paul and Palestinian Judaism, Paul saw the faithful redeemed by participation in Jesus' death and rising. Though "Jesus’ death substituted for that of others and thereby freed believers from sin and guilt," a metaphor derived from "ancient sacrificial theology,"[7][note 12] the essence of Paul's writing is not in the "legal terms" regarding the expiation of sin, but the act of "participation in Christ through dying and rising with him."[note 13] According to Sanders, "those who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his death, and thus they escape the power of sin [...] he died so that the believers may die with him and consequently live with him."[7] By this participation in Christ's death and rising, "one receives forgiveness for past offences, is liberated from the powers of sin, and receives the Spirit."
+
+Some scholars see Paul (or Saul) as completely in line with 1st-century Judaism (a Pharisee and student of Gamaliel as presented by Acts),[144] others see him as opposed to 1st-century Judaism (see Marcionism), while the majority see him as somewhere in between these two extremes, opposed to insistence on keeping the "Ritual Laws" (for example the circumcision controversy in early Christianity) as necessary for entrance into God's New Covenant,[145][146] but in full agreement on "Divine Law". These views of Paul are paralleled by the views of Biblical law in Christianity.
+
+— Professor James D. Tabor for the Huffington Post[147]
+
+Paul is critical both theologically and empirically of claims of moral or lineal superiority [Rom. 2:16–26] of Jews while conversely strongly sustaining the notion of a special place for the Children of Israel.[9–11] Paul's theology of the gospel accelerated the separation of the messianic sect of Christians from Judaism, a development contrary to Paul's own intent. He wrote that faith in Christ was alone decisive in salvation for Jews and Gentiles alike, making the schism between the followers of Christ and mainstream Jews inevitable and permanent. He argued that Gentile converts did not need to become Jews, get circumcised, follow Jewish dietary restrictions, or otherwise observe Mosaic laws to be saved.[25] According to Fredriksen, Paul's opposition to male circumcison for Gentiles is in line with Old Testament predictions that "in the last days the gentile nations would come to the God of Israel, as gentiles (e.g., Zechariah 8:20–23), not as proselytes to Israel."[148] For Paul, Gentile male circumcison was therefore an affront to God's intentions.[148] According to Hurtado,  "Paul saw himself as what Munck called a salvation-historical figure in his own right," who was "personally and singularly deputized by God to bring about the predicted ingathering (the "fullness") of the nations (Romans 11:25)."[148]
+
+According to Sanders, Paul insists that salvation is received by the grace of God; according to Sanders, this insistence is in line with Judaism of ca. 200 NCE until 200 CE, which saw God's covenant with Israel as an act of grace of God. Observance of the Law is needed to maintain the covenant, but the covenant is not earned by observing the Law, but by the grace of God.[143]
+
+Sanders' publications[145][149] have since been taken up by Professor James Dunn who coined the phrase "The New Perspective on Paul".[150] N.T. Wright,[151] the Anglican Bishop of Durham, notes a difference in emphasis between Galatians and Romans, the latter being much more positive about the continuing covenant between God and his ancient people than the former. Wright also contends that performing Christian works is not insignificant but rather proof of having attained the redemption of Jesus Christ by grace (free gift received by faith).[Rom. 2:13ff] He concludes that Paul distinguishes between performing Christian works which are signs of ethnic identity and others which are a sign of obedience to Christ.[151]
+
+According to Bart Ehrman, Paul believed that Jesus would return within his lifetime.[152] Paul expected that Christians who had died in the meantime would be resurrected to share in God's kingdom, and he believed that the saved would be transformed, assuming heavenly, imperishable bodies.[1 Cor. 15:51–53]
+
+Paul's teaching about the end of the world is expressed most clearly in his letters to the Christians at Thessalonica. He assures them that the dead will rise first and be followed by those left alive.[1 Thes. 4:16ff] This suggests an imminent end but he is unspecific about times and seasons, and encourages his hearers to expect a delay.[153] The form of the end will be a battle between Jesus and the man of lawlessness[2 Thess. 2:3][note 5] whose conclusion is the triumph of Christ.
+
+Before his conversion he believed God's messiah would put an end to the old age of evil, and initiate a new age of righteousness; after his conversion he believed this would happen in stages that had begun with the resurrection of Jesus, but the old age would continue until Jesus returns.[Rom. 16:25] [1 Cor. 10:11] [Gal. 1:4][131]
+
+The second chapter of the first letter to Timothy – one of the six disputed letters – is used by many churches to deny women a vote in church affairs, reject women from serving as teachers of adult Bible classes, prevent them from serving as missionaries, and generally disenfranchise women from the duties and privileges of church leadership.[154]
+
+9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;
+10 But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.
+11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
+12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
+13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
+14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
+15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
+
+The KJV translation of this passage taken literally says that women in the churches are to have no leadership roles vis-à-vis men.[155]
+
+Fuller Seminary theologian J. R. Daniel Kirk[156] finds evidence in Paul's letters of a much more inclusive view of women. He writes that Romans 16 is a tremendously important witness to the important role of women in the early church. Paul praises Phoebe for her work as a deaconess and Junia who is described by Paul in Scripture as being respected among the Apostles.[Romans 16:7] It is Kirk's observation that recent studies have led many scholars to conclude that the passage in 1 Corinthians 14 ordering women to "be silent" during worship was a later addition, apparently by a different author, and not part of Paul's original letter to the Corinthians.
+
+Other scholars, such as Giancarlo Biguzzi, believe that Paul's restriction on women speaking in 1 Corinthians 14 is genuine to Paul but applies to a particular case where there were local problems of women – who were not allowed in that culture to become educated – asking questions or chatting during worship services. He does not believe it to be a general prohibition on any woman speaking in worship settings since in 1 Corinthians Paul affirms the right (responsibility) of women to prophesy.[1 Cor. 11][157]
+
+Biblical prophecy is more than "fore-telling": two-thirds of its inscripturated form involves "forth-telling", that is, setting the truth, justice, mercy, and righteousness of God against the backdrop of every form of denial of the same. Thus, to speak prophetically was to speak boldly against every form of moral, ethical, political, economic, and religious disenfranchisement observed in a culture that was intent on building its own pyramid of values vis-a-vis God's established system of truth and ethics.[158]
+
+There were women prophets in the highly patriarchal times throughout the Old Testament.[158] The most common term for prophet in the Old Testament is nabi in the masculine form, and nebiah in the Hebrew feminine form, is used six times of women who performed the same task of receiving and proclaiming the message given by God. These women include Miriam, Aaron and Moses' sister,[Exod 15:20] Deborah,[Judges 4:4] the prophet Isaiah's wife,[Isa. 8:3] and Huldah, the one who interpreted the Book of the Law discovered in the temple during the days of Josiah.[2 Kings 22:14] [2 Chron. 34:22] There were false prophetesses just as there were false prophets. The prophetess Noadiah was among those who tried to intimidate Nehemiah.[Neh 6:14] Apparently they held equal rank in prophesying right along with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Elisha, Aaron, and Samuel.[158]
+
+Kirk's third example of a more inclusive view is Galatians 3:28:
+
+There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
+
+In pronouncing an end within the church to the divisions which are common in the world around it, he concludes by highlighting the fact that "there were New Testament women who taught and had authority in the early churches, that this teaching and authority was sanctioned by Paul, and that Paul himself offers a theological paradigm within which overcoming the subjugation of women is an anticipated outcome".[159]
+
+Classicist Evelyn Stagg and theologian Frank Stagg believe that Paul was attempting to "Christianize" the societal household or domestic codes that significantly oppressed women and empowered men as the head of the household. The Staggs present a serious study of what has been termed the New Testament domestic code, also known as the Haustafel.[160] The two main passages that explain these "household duties" are Paul's letters to the Ephesians 5:22–6:5 and to the Colossians 3:18–4:1. An underlying Household Code is also reflected in four additional Pauline letters and 1 Peter: 1 Timothy 2:1ff., 8ff.; 3:1ff., 8ff.; 5:17ff.; 6:1f.; Titus 2:1–10 and 1 Peter 2:13–3:9. Biblical scholars have typically treated the Haustafel in Ephesians as a resource in the debate over the role of women in ministry and in the home.[161]
+Margaret MacDonald argues that the Haustafel, particularly as it appears in Ephesians, was aimed at "reducing the tension between community members and outsiders".[162]
+
+E. P. Sanders has labeled the Apostle's remark in 1 Cor. 14:34–36 about women not making any sound during worship as "Paul's intemperate outburst that women should be silent in the churches".[145][149] Women, in fact, played a very significant part in Paul's missionary endeavors:
+
+Most Christian traditions[165][166][167] say Paul clearly portrays homosexuality as sinful in two specific locations: Romans 1:26–27, and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. Another passage addresses the topic more obliquely: 1 Timothy 1:8–11. Since the nineteenth century, however, most scholars have concluded that 1 Timothy (along with 2 Timothy and Titus) is not original to Paul, but rather an unknown Christian writing in Paul's name some time in the late-first-to-mid-2nd century.[168][169]
+
+Paul's influence on Christian thinking arguably has been more significant than any other New Testament author.[7] Paul declared that "Christ is the end of the law",[Romans 10:4] exalted the Christian church as the body of Christ, and depicted the world outside the Church as under judgment.[25] Paul's writings include the earliest reference to the "Lord's Supper",[1 Corinthians 10:14–17]11:17–34 a rite traditionally identified as the Christian communion or Eucharist. In the East, church fathers attributed the element of election in Romans 9 to divine foreknowledge.[25] The themes of predestination found in Western Christianity do not appear in Eastern theology.
+
+Paul had a strong influence on early Christianity. Hurtado notes that Paul regarded his own Christological views and those of his predecessors and that of the Jerusalem Church as essentially similar. According to Hurtado, this "work[s] against the claims by some scholars that Pauline Christianity represents a sharp departure from the religiousness of Judean 'Jesus movements'."[170]
+
+Marcionism, regarded as heresy by contemporary mainstream Christianity, was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144.[note 14] Marcion asserted that Paul was the only apostle who had rightly understood the new message of salvation as delivered by Christ.[171]
+
+Marcion believed Jesus was the savior sent by God, and Paul the Apostle was his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and the God of Israel. Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament.
+
+In his account of his conversion experience, Augustine gave his life to Christ after reading Romans 13.[172][173] Augustine's foundational work on the gospel as a gift (grace), on morality as life in the Spirit, on predestination, and on original sin all derives from Paul, especially Romans.[25]
+
+In his account of his conversion Martin Luther wrote about righteousness in Romans 1 praising Romans as the perfect gospel, in which the Reformation was birthed.[174] Martin Luther's interpretation of Paul's writings influenced Luther's doctrine of sola fide.
+
+John Calvin said the Book of Romans opens to anyone an understanding to the whole Scripture.[175]
+
+— Professor James D. Tabor for the Huffington post[176]
+
+In his commentary The Epistle to the Romans (Ger. Der Römerbrief; particularly in the thoroughly re-written second edition of 1922) Karl Barth argued that the God who is revealed in the cross of Jesus challenges and overthrows any attempt to ally God with human cultures, achievements, or possessions.
+
+In addition to the many questions about the true origins of some of Paul's teachings posed by historical figures as noted above, some modern theologians also hold that the teachings of Paul differ markedly from those of Jesus as found in the Gospels.[177] Barrie Wilson states that Paul differs from Jesus in terms of the origin of his message, his teachings and his practices.[178] Some have even gone so far as to claim that, due to these apparent differences in teachings, that Paul was actually no less than the "second founder" of Christianity (Jesus being its first).[179][180]
+
+As in the Eastern tradition in general, Western humanists interpret the reference to election in Romans 9 as reflecting divine foreknowledge.[25]
+
+Jewish interest in Paul is a recent phenomenon. Before the positive historical reevaluations of Jesus by some Jewish thinkers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he had hardly featured in the popular Jewish imagination and little had been written about him by the religious leaders and scholars. Arguably, he is absent from the Talmud and rabbinical literature, although he makes an appearance in some variants of the medieval polemic Toledot Yeshu (as a particularly effective spy for the rabbis).[181]
+
+However, with Jesus no longer regarded as the paradigm of gentile Christianity, Paul's position became more important in Jewish historical reconstructions of their religion's relationship with Christianity. He has featured as the key to building barriers (e.g. Heinrich Graetz and Martin Buber) or bridges (e.g. Isaac Mayer Wise and Claude G. Montefiore) in interfaith relations,[182] as part of an intra-Jewish debate about what constitutes Jewish authenticity (e.g. Joseph Klausner and Hans Joachim Schoeps),[183] and on occasion as a dialogical partner (e.g. Richard L. Rubenstein and Daniel Boyarin).[184]
+
+He features in an oratorio (by Felix Mendelssohn), a painting (by Ludwig Meidner) and a play (by Franz Werfel),[185] and there have been several novels about Paul (by Shalom Asch and Samuel Sandmel).[186] Jewish philosophers (including Baruch Spinoza, Leo Shestov, and Jacob Taubes)[187] and Jewish psychoanalysts (including Sigmund Freud and Hanns Sachs)[188] have engaged with the apostle as one of the most influential figures in Western thought. Scholarly surveys of Jewish interest in Paul include those by Hagner 1980, pp. 143–65, Meissner 1996, Langton 2010, Langton 2011a, pp. 55–72 and Langton 2011b, pp. 585–87.
+
+In the second (and possibly late first) century, Gnosticism was a competing religious tradition to Christianity which shared some elements of theology.
+
+Elaine Pagels concentrated on how the Gnostics interpreted Paul's letters and how evidence from gnostic sources may challenge the assumption that Paul wrote his letters to combat "gnostic opponents" and to repudiate their statement that they possess secret wisdom.[189]
+
+Muslims have long believed that Paul purposefully corrupted the original revealed teachings of Jesus,[190][191][192] through the introduction of such elements as paganism,[193] the making of Christianity into a theology of the cross,[194] and introducing original sin and the need for redemption.[195]
+
+Sayf ibn Umar claimed that certain rabbis persuaded Paul to deliberately misguide early Christians by introducing what Ibn Hazm viewed as objectionable doctrines into Christianity.[196][197] Ibn Hazm repeated Sayf's claims.[198] The Karaite scholar Jacob Qirqisani also believed that Paul created Christianity by introducing the doctrine of Trinity.[196] Paul has been criticized by some modern Muslim thinkers. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas wrote that Paul misrepresented the message of Jesus,[192] and Rashid Rida accused Paul of introducing shirk (polytheism) into Christianity.[193] Mohammad Ali Jouhar quoted Adolf von Harnack's critical writings of Paul.[194]
+
+In Sunni Muslim polemics, Paul plays the same role (of deliberately corrupting the early teachings of Jesus) as a later Jew, Abdullah ibn Saba', would play in seeking to destroy the message of Islam from within (by introducing proto-Shi'ite beliefs).[197][198][199] Among those who supported this view were scholars Ibn Taymiyyah (who believed while Paul ultimately succeeded, Ibn Saba failed) and Ibn Hazm (who claimed that the Jews even admitted to Paul's sinister purpose).[196]
+
+Among the critics of Paul the Apostle was Thomas Jefferson, a Deist, who wrote that Paul was the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."[200] Christian anarchists Tolstoy 1891, p. 17 and Hennacy 2010 took a similar view.
+

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+
+
+Paul the Apostle (Latin: Paulus; Greek: Παῦλος, romanized: Paulos; Coptic: ⲡⲁⲩⲗⲟⲥ;
+c. 5 – c. 64/67),[2][5] commonly known as Saint Paul and also known by his Hebrew name Saul of Tarsus (Hebrew: שאול התרסי‎, romanized: Sha'ūl ha-Tarsī; Greek: Σαῦλος Ταρσεύς, romanized: Saũlos Tarseús),[7][Acts 9:11]  was an apostle (although not one of the Twelve Apostles) who taught the gospel of Christ to the first-century world.[8] Paul is generally considered one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age[7][9] and from the mid-30s to the mid-50s AD he founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe.
+
+According to the New Testament book Acts of the Apostles (often simply called Acts), Paul persecuted some of the early disciples of Jesus, possibly Hellenised diaspora Jews converted to Christianity,[10] in the area of Jerusalem prior to his conversion.[note 1] In the narrative of Acts, Paul was traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus on a mission to "arrest them and bring them back to Jerusalem" when the ascended Jesus appeared to him in a great light. He was struck blind, but after three days his sight was restored by Ananias of Damascus and Paul began to preach that Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish Messiah and the Son of God.[Acts 9:20–21] Approximately half of the book of Acts deals with Paul's life and works.
+
+Thirteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament have traditionally been attributed to Paul.[11] Seven of the Pauline epistles are undisputed by scholars as being authentic, with varying degrees of argument about the remainder. Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is not asserted in the Epistle itself and was already doubted in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.[note 2] It was almost unquestioningly accepted from the 5th to the 16th centuries that Paul was the author of Hebrews,[12] but that view is now almost universally rejected by scholars.[12][13] The other six are believed by some scholars to have come from followers writing in his name, using material from Paul's surviving letters and letters written by him that no longer survive.[8][7][note 3] Other scholars argue that the idea of a pseudonymous author for the disputed epistles raises many problems.[15]
+
+Today, Paul's epistles continue to be vital roots of the theology, worship and pastoral life in the Latin and Protestant traditions of the West, as well as the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox traditions of the East.[16] Paul's influence on Christian thought and practice has been characterized as being as "profound as it is pervasive", among that of many other apostles and missionaries involved in the spread of the Christian faith.[8]
+
+It has been popularly assumed that Saul's name was changed when he became a follower of Jesus Christ, but that is not the case.[17][18][19] His Jewish name was "Saul" (Hebrew: שאול, Modern: Sha'ûl, Tiberian: Šāʼûl), perhaps after the biblical King Saul,[17] a fellow Benjamite and the first king of Israel. According to the Book of Acts, he was a Roman citizen.[Acts 22:25–29] As a Roman citizen, he also bore the Latin name of "Paul" (essentially a Latin transliteration of Saul) – in biblical Greek: Παῦλος (Paulos),[20] and in Latin: Paulus.[note 4][Acts 16:37][22:25–28] It was typical for the Jews of that time to have two names: one Hebrew, the other Latin or Greek.[21][22][23]
+
+Jesus called him "Saul, Saul"[Acts 9:4; 22:7; 26:14] in "the Hebrew tongue" in the book of Acts, when he had the vision which led to his conversion on the Road to Damascus.[Acts 26:14] Later, in a vision to Ananias of Damascus, "the Lord" referred to him as "Saul, of Tarsus".[Acts 9:11] When Ananias came to restore his sight, he called him "Brother Saul".[Acts 9:17; 22:13]
+
+In Acts 13:9, Saul is called "Paul" for the first time on the island of Cyprus – much later than the time of his conversion. The author (Luke) indicates that the names were interchangeable: "Saul, who also is called Paul." He thereafter refers to him as Paul, apparently Paul's preference since he is called Paul in all other Bible books where he is mentioned, including those that he authored. Adopting his Roman name was typical of Paul's missionary style. His method was to put people at their ease and to approach them with his message in a language and style to which they could relate, as in 1 Cor 9:19–23.[18]
+
+The main source for information about Paul's life is the material found in his epistles and in Acts.[24] However, the epistles contain little information about Paul's pre-conversion past. The book of Acts recounts more information but leaves several parts of Paul's life out of its narrative, such as his probable but undocumented execution in Rome.[25] Some scholars believe Acts also contradicts Paul's epistles on multiple accounts, in particular concerning the frequency of Paul's visits to the church in Jerusalem.[26][27]
+
+Sources outside the New Testament that mention Paul include:
+
+The two main sources of information by which we have access to the earliest segments of Paul's career are the Bible's Book of Acts and the autobiographical elements of Paul's letters to the early Christian communities.[24] Paul was likely born between the years of 5 BC and 5 AD.[29] The Book of Acts indicates that Paul was a Roman citizen by birth, but Helmut Koester takes issue with the evidence presented by the text.[30][Acts 16:37][Acts 22:25–29]
+
+He was from a devout Jewish family[31] based in the city of Tarsus,[17] one of the largest trade centers on the Mediterranean coast.[32] It had been in existence several hundred years prior to his birth. It was renowned for its university. During the time of Alexander the Great, who died in 323 BC, Tarsus was the most influential city in Asia Minor.[31]
+
+Paul referred to himself as being "of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee".[Phil. 3:5][33] The Bible reveals very little about Paul's family. Acts quotes Paul referring to his family by saying he was "a Pharisee, born of Pharisees".[Acts 23:6][34] Paul's nephew, his sister's son, is mentioned in Acts 23:16. In Romans 16:7 he states that his relatives, Andronicus and Junia, were Christians before he was and were prominent among the Apostles.
+
+The family had a history of religious piety.[2 Timothy 1:3][note 5] Apparently the family lineage had been very attached to Pharisaic traditions and observances for generations.[Philippians 3:5–6] Acts says that he was an artisan involved in the leather or tent-making profession.[Acts 18:1–3][35] This was to become an initial connection with Priscilla and Aquila with whom he would partner in tentmaking[Acts 18:3] and later become very important teammates as fellow missionaries.[Rom. 16:4]
+
+Professor Robert Eisenman of California State University, Long Beach argues that Paul was a member of the family of Herod the Great.[36] Eisenman makes a connection between Paul and an individual identified by Josephus as "Saulus", a "kinsman of Agrippa".[37] Another oft-cited element of the case for Paul as a member of Herod's family is found in Romans 16:11 where Paul writes, "Greet Herodion, my kinsman".
+
+While he was still fairly young, he was sent to Jerusalem to receive his education at the school of Gamaliel,[Acts 22:3][33] one of the most noted rabbis in history. Although modern scholarship agrees that Paul was educated under the supervision of Gamaliel in Jerusalem,[33] he was not preparing to become a rabbi and probably never had any contact with the Hillelite school.[33] Some of his family may have resided in Jerusalem since later the son of one of his sisters saved his life there.[Acts 23:16][17] Nothing more is known of his biography until he takes an active part in the martyrdom of Stephen,[Acts 7:58–60; 22:20] a Hellenised diaspora Jew converted to Christianity.[10]
+
+Although we know from his biography and from Acts that Paul could and did speak Hebrew,[17] modern scholarship suggests that Koine Greek was his first language.[38][39] In his letters, Paul drew heavily on his knowledge of Stoic philosophy, using Stoic terms and metaphors to assist his new Gentile converts in their understanding of the Gospel and to explain his Christology.[40][41]
+
+Paul confesses that prior to his conversion[Gal. 1:13–14] [Phil. 3:6] [Acts 8:1–3]  he persecuted "beyond measure" the church of God, specifically Hellenised diaspora Jews converted to Christianity, who had returned to the area of Jerusalem.[42][note 1] According to James Dunn, the Jerusalem community consisted of "Hebrews," Jews speaking both Aramaic and Greek, and "Hellenists," Jews speaking only Greek, possibly diaspora Jews who had resettled in Jerusalem.[43] Paul's initial persecution of Christians probably was directed against these Greek-speaking "Hellenists" converted to Christianity due to their anti-Temple attitude.[44] Within the early Jewish Christian community, this also set them apart from the "Hebrews" and their continuing participation in the Temple cult.[44]
+
+Paul's conversion can be dated to 31–36[45][46][47] by his reference to it in one of his letters. In Galatians 1:16 Paul writes that God "was pleased to reveal his son to me." In 1 Corinthians 15:8, as he lists the order in which Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, Paul writes, "last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also."
+
+According to the account in Acts, it took place on the road to Damascus, where he reported having experienced a vision of the ascended Jesus. The account says that "He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' He asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The reply came, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting'."[Acts 9:4–5].
+
+According to the account in Acts 9:1–22, he was blinded for three days and had to be led into Damascus by the hand. During these three days, Saul took no food or water and spent his time in prayer to God. When Ananias of Damascus arrived, he laid his hands on him and said: "Brother Saul, the Lord, [even] Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost."[Acts 9:17] His sight was restored, he got up and was baptized.[Acts 9:18] This story occurs only in Acts, not in the Pauline epistles.[48]
+
+The author of Acts of the Apostles may have learned of Paul's conversion from the church in Jerusalem, or from the church in Antioch, or possibly from Paul himself.[49]
+
+According to Timo Eskola, early Christian theology and discourse was influenced by the Jewish Merkabah tradition.[50] Similarly, Alan Segal and Daniel Boyarin regard Paul's accounts of his conversion experience and his ascent to the heavens as the earliest first person accounts we have of a Merkabah mystic in Jewish or Christian literature. Conversely, Timothy Churchill has argued that Paul's Damascus road encounter does not fit the pattern of Merkabah.[51]
+
+According to Acts,
+
+And immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, "He is the Son of God." And all who heard him were amazed and said, "Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?" But Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.
+
+After his conversion, Paul went to Damascus, where Acts 9 states he was healed of his blindness and baptized by Ananias of Damascus.[52] Paul says that it was in Damascus that he barely escaped death.[2 Cor. 11:32] Paul also says that he then went first to Arabia, and then came back to Damascus.[Gal. 1:17][53] Paul's trip to Arabia is not mentioned anywhere else in the Bible, and some suppose he actually traveled to Mount Sinai for meditations in the desert.[54][55] He describes in Galatians how three years after his conversion he went to Jerusalem. There he met James and stayed with Simon Peter for 15 days.[Gal. 1:13–24] Paul located Mount Sinai in Arabia in Galatians 4:24–25.
+
+Paul asserted that he received the Gospel not from man, but directly by "the revelation of Jesus Christ".[Gal 1:11–16] He claimed almost total independence from the Jerusalem community[56] (possibly in the Cenacle), but agreed with it on the nature and content of the gospel.[Gal 1:22–24] He appeared eager to bring material support to Jerusalem from the various growing Gentile churches that he started. In his writings, Paul used the persecutions he endured to avow proximity and union with Jesus and as a validation of his teaching.
+
+Paul's narrative in Galatians states that 14 years after his conversion he went again to Jerusalem.[Gal. 2:1–10] It is not known what happened during this time, but both Acts and Galatians provide some details.[57] At the end of this time, Barnabas went to find Paul and brought him to Antioch.[58]Acts 11:26 The Christian community at Antioch had been established by Hellenised diaspora Jews converted to Christianity living in Jerusalem, who played an important role in reaching a Gentile, Greek audience, notably at Antioch, which had a large Jewish community and significant numbers of Gentile "God-fearers."[59] From Antioch the mission to the Gentiles started, which would fundamentally change the character of the early Christian movement, eventually turning it into a new, Gentile religion.[10]
+
+When a famine occurred in Judea, around 45–46,[60] Paul and Barnabas journeyed to Jerusalem to deliver financial support from the Antioch community.[61] According to Acts, Antioch had become an alternative center for Christians following the dispersion of the believers after the death of Stephen. It was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called "Christians".Acts 11:26
+
+The author of Acts arranges Paul's travels into three separate journeys. The first journey,[Acts 13–14] for which Paul and Barnabas were commissioned by the Antioch community,[62] and led initially by Barnabas,[note 6] took Barnabas and Paul from Antioch to Cyprus then into southern Asia Minor (Anatolia), and finally returning to Antioch. In Cyprus, Paul rebukes and blinds Elymas the magician[Acts 13:8–12] who was criticizing their teachings.
+
+They sail to Perga in Pamphylia. John Mark leaves them and returns to Jerusalem. Paul and Barnabas go on to Pisidian Antioch. On Sabbath they go to the synagogue. The leaders invite them to speak. Paul reviews Israelite history from life in Egypt to King David. He introduces Jesus as a descendant of David brought to Israel by God. He said that his team came to town to bring the message of salvation. He recounts the story of Jesus' death and resurrection. He quotes from the Septuagint[63] to assert that Jesus was the promised Christos who brought them forgiveness for their sins. Both the Jews and the "God-fearing" Gentiles invited them to talk more next Sabbath. At that time almost the whole city gathered. This upset some influential Jews who spoke against them. Paul used the occasion to announce a change in his mission which from then on would be to the Gentiles.[Acts 13:13–48]
+
+Antioch served as a major Christian homebase for Paul's early missionary activities,[5] and he remained there for "a long time with the disciples"[Acts 14:28] at the conclusion of his first journey. The exact duration of Paul's stay in Antioch is unknown, with estimates ranging from nine months to as long as eight years.[64]
+
+In Raymond Brown's An Introduction to the New Testament (1997), a chronology of events in Paul's life is presented, illustrated from later 20th century writings of biblical scholars.[65] The first missionary journey of Paul is assigned a "traditional" (and majority) dating of 46–49 AD, compared to a "revisionist" (and minority) dating of after 37 AD.[66]
+
+A vital meeting between Paul and the Jerusalem church took place in the year 49 by "traditional" (and majority) dating, compared to a "revisionist" (and minority) dating of 47/51.[67] The meeting is described in Acts 15:2 and usually seen as the same event mentioned by Paul in Galatians 2:1.[25] The key question raised was whether Gentile converts needed to be circumcised.[68][Acts 15:2][Galatians 2:1] At this meeting, Paul states in his letter to the Galatians, Peter, James, and John accepted Paul's mission to the Gentiles.
+
+The Jerusalem meetings are mentioned in Acts, and also in Paul's letters.[69] For example, the Jerusalem visit for famine relief[Acts 11:27–30] apparently corresponds to the "first visit" (to Peter and James only).[Gal. 1:18–20][69] F. F. Bruce suggested that the "fourteen years" could be from Paul's conversion rather than from his first visit to Jerusalem.[70]
+
+Despite the agreement achieved at the Council of Jerusalem, Paul recounts how he later publicly confronted Peter in a dispute sometimes called the "Incident at Antioch", over Peter's reluctance to share a meal with Gentile Christians in Antioch because they did not strictly adhere to Jewish customs.[68]
+
+Writing later of the incident, Paul recounts, "I opposed [Peter] to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong", and says he told Peter, "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?"[Gal. 2:11–14] Paul also mentions that even Barnabas, his traveling companion and fellow apostle until that time, sided with Peter.[68]
+
+The final outcome of the incident remains uncertain. The Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that Paul won the argument, because "Paul's account of the incident leaves no doubt that Peter saw the justice of the rebuke".[68] However Paul himself never mentions a victory and L. Michael White's From Jesus to Christianity draws the opposite conclusion: "The blowup with Peter was a total failure of political bravado, and Paul soon left Antioch as persona non grata, never again to return".[71]
+
+The primary source account of the Incident at Antioch is Paul's letter to the Galatians.[Gal. 2:11–14]
+
+Paul left for his second missionary journey from Jerusalem, in late Autumn 49,[74] after the meeting of the Council of Jerusalem where the circumcision question was debated. On their trip around the Mediterranean Sea, Paul and his companion Barnabas stopped in Antioch where they had a sharp argument about taking John Mark with them on their trips. The book of Acts said that John Mark had left them in a previous trip and gone home. Unable to resolve the dispute, Paul and Barnabas decided to separate; Barnabas took John Mark with him, while Silas joined Paul.
+
+Paul and Silas initially visited Tarsus (Paul's birthplace), Derbe and Lystra. In Lystra, they met Timothy, a disciple who was spoken well of, and decided to take him with them. Paul and his companions, Silas and Timothy, had plans to journey to the southwest portion of Asia Minor to preach the gospel but during the night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him to go to Macedonia to help them. After seeing the vision, Paul and his companions left for Macedonia to preach the gospel to them.[Acts 16:6–10] The Church kept growing, adding believers, and strengthening in faith daily.[Acts 16:5]
+
+In Philippi, Paul cast a spirit of divination out of a servant girl, whose masters were then unhappy about the loss of income her soothsaying provided.[Acts 16:16–24] They turned the city against the missionaries, and Paul and Silas were put in jail. After a miraculous earthquake, the gates of the prison fell apart and Paul and Silas could have escaped but remained; this event led to the conversion of the jailor.[Acts 16:25–40] They continued traveling, going by Berea and then to Athens, where Paul preached to the Jews and God-fearing Greeks in the synagogue and to the Greek intellectuals in the Areopagus. Paul continued from Athens to Corinth.
+
+Around 50–52, Paul spent 18 months in Corinth. The reference in Acts to Proconsul Gallio helps ascertain this date (cf. Gallio Inscription).[25] In Corinth, Paul met Priscilla and Aquila,[Acts 18:2] who became faithful believers and helped Paul through his other missionary journeys. The couple followed Paul and his companions to Ephesus, and stayed there to start one of the strongest and most faithful churches at that time.[Acts 18:18–21]
+
+In 52, departing from Corinth, Paul stopped at the nearby village of Cenchreae to have his hair cut off, because of a vow he had earlier taken.[Acts 18:18] It is possible this was to be a final haircut prior to fulfilling his vow to become a Nazirite for a defined period of time.[75] With Priscilla and Aquila, the missionaries then sailed to Ephesus[Acts 18:19–21] and then Paul alone went on to Caesarea to greet the Church there. He then traveled north to Antioch, where he stayed for some time (Greek: ποιησας χρονον, perhaps about a year), before leaving again on a third missionary journey.[citation needed] Some New Testament texts[note 7] suggest that he also visited Jerusalem during this period for one of the Jewish feasts, possibly Pentecost.[Acts 18:21] Textual critic Henry Alford and others consider the reference to a Jerusalem visit to be genuine[76] and it accords with Acts 21:29, according to which Paul and Trophimus the Ephesian had previously been seen in Jerusalem.
+
+According to Acts, Paul began his third missionary journey by travelling all around the region of Galatia and Phrygia to strengthen, teach and rebuke the believers. Paul then traveled to Ephesus, an important center of early Christianity, and stayed there for almost three years, probably working there as a tentmaker,[Acts 20:34] as he had done when he stayed in Corinth. He is claimed to have performed numerous miracles, healing people and casting out demons, and he apparently organized missionary activity in other regions.[25] Paul left Ephesus after an attack from a local silversmith resulted in a pro-Artemis riot involving most of the city.[25] During his stay in Ephesus, Paul wrote four letters to the church in Corinth.[78] The Jerusalem Bible suggests that the letter to the church in Philippi was also written from Ephesus.[79]
+
+Paul went through Macedonia into Achaea[Acts 20:1–2] and stayed in Greece, probably Corinth, for three months[Acts 20:1–2] during 56–57 AD.[25] Commentators generally agree that Paul dictated his Epistle to the Romans during this period.[80] He then made ready to continue on to Syria, but he changed his plans and traveled back through Macedonia because of some Jews who had made a plot against him. In Romans 15:19 Paul wrote that he visited Illyricum, but he may have meant what would now be called Illyria Graeca,[81] which was at that time a division of the Roman province of Macedonia.[82] On their way back to Jerusalem, Paul and his companions visited other cities such as Philippi, Troas, Miletus, Rhodes, and Tyre. Paul finished his trip with a stop in Caesarea, where he and his companions stayed with Philip the Evangelist before finally arriving at Jerusalem.[Acts 21:8–10] [21:15]
+
+According to Charles Woods' studies of Albania from 1918, when St. Paul he arrived in Illyria, he stated "Round about unto Illyricum I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ".[83]
+
+Among the writings of the early Christians, Pope Clement I said that Paul was "Herald (of the Gospel of Christ) in the West", and that "he had gone to the extremity of the west".[84] John Chrysostom indicated that Paul preached in Spain: "For after he had been in Rome, he returned to Spain, but whether he came thence again into these parts, we know not".[85] Cyril of Jerusalem said that Paul, "fully preached the Gospel, and instructed even imperial Rome, and carried the earnestness of his preaching as far as Spain, undergoing conflicts innumerable, and performing Signs and wonders".[86] The Muratorian fragment mentions "the departure of Paul from the city [of Rome] [5a] (39) when he journeyed to Spain".[87]
+
+This table is adapted from White, From Jesus to Christianity.[69] Note that the matching of Paul's travels in the Acts and the travels in his Epistles is done for the reader's convenience and is not approved of by all scholars.
+
+In 57, upon completion of his third missionary journey, Paul arrived in Jerusalem for his fifth and final visit with a collection of money for the local community. Acts reports that he initially was warmly received. However, Acts goes on to recount how Paul was warned by James and the elders that he was gaining a reputation for being against the Law, saying "they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs". Paul underwent a purification ritual to give the Jews no grounds to bring accusations against him for not following their law.[Acts 21:17–26]
+
+After seven days in Jerusalem, some "Jews from Asia" (most likely from Roman Asia) accused Paul of defiling the temple by bringing gentiles into it. He was seized and dragged out of the temple by an angry mob. He narrowly escaped being killed by surrendering to a group of Roman centurions, who arrested him, put him in chains and took him to the tribune.[Acts 21:27–36]
+
+When a plot to kill Paul on his way to an appearance before the Jews was discovered, he was transported by night to Caesarea Maritima. He was held as a prisoner there for two years by Marcus Antonius Felix, until a new governor, Porcius Festus, reopened his case in 59. When Festus suggested that he be sent back to Jerusalem for further trial, Paul exercised his right as a Roman citizen to "appeal unto Caesar".[25] Finally, Paul and his companions sailed for Rome where Paul was to stand trial for his alleged crimes.[88]
+
+Acts recounts that on the way to Rome for his appeal as a Roman citizen to Caesar, Paul was shipwrecked on "Melita" (Malta),[Acts 27:39–44] where the islanders showed him "unusual kindness" and where he was met by Publius.[Acts 28:1–10] From Malta, he travelled to Rome via Syracuse, Rhegium and Puteoli.[Acts 28:11–14]
+
+He finally arrived in Rome around 60, where he spent another two years under house arrest.[88] The narrative of Acts ends with Paul preaching in Rome for two years from his rented home while awaiting trial.[Acts 28:30–31]
+
+Irenaeus wrote in the 2nd century that Peter and Paul had been the founders of the church in Rome and had appointed Linus as succeeding bishop.[89] Paul was not a bishop of Rome, nor did he bring Christianity to Rome since there were already Christians in Rome when he arrived there.[Acts 28:14–15] Also, Paul wrote his letter to the church at Rome before he had visited Rome.[Romans 1:1, 7, 11–13; 15:23–29] Paul only played a supporting part in the life of the church in Rome.[90]
+
+The date of Paul's death is believed to have occurred after the Great Fire of Rome in July 64, but before the last year of Nero's reign, in 68.[2] According to the First Epistle of Clement (95–96 AD)[91], Ignatius (110 AD)[92] and Dionysius of Corinth (166–174 AD)[93][94] Paul was martyred. The apocryphal Acts of Paul (160 AD)[95], Tertullian (200 AD)[96], Eusebius of Caesarea (320 AD)[97], Lactantius (318 AD)[98], Jerome (392 AD)[99], John Chrysostom (c. 349–407)[100] and Sulpicius Severus (403 AD)[101] describe the martyrdom of Paul citing that Nero condemned Paul to death by decapitation at Rome.
+
+A legend later[when?] developed that his martyrdom occurred at the Aquae Salviae, on the Via Laurentina. According to this legend, after Paul was decapitated, his severed head rebounded three times, giving rise to a source of water each time that it touched the ground, which is how the place earned the name "San Paolo alle Tre Fontane" ("St Paul at the Three Fountains").[102][103]
+
+According to further legend, Paul's body was buried outside the walls of Rome, at the second mile on the Via Ostiensis, on the estate owned by a Christian woman named Lucina. It was here, in the fourth century, that the Emperor Constantine the Great built a first church. Then, between the fourth and fifth centuries it was considerably enlarged by the Emperors Valentinian I, Valentinian II, Theodosius I, and Arcadius. The present-day Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls was built there in the early 19th century.[102]
+
+Caius in his Disputation Against Proclus (198 AD) mentions this of the places in which the remains of the apostles Peter and Paul were deposited: "I can point out the trophies of the apostles. For if you are willing to go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way, you will find the trophies of those who founded this Church".[104]
+
+Jerome in his De Viris Illustribus (392 AD) writing on Paul's biography, mentions that "Paul was buried in the Ostian Way at Rome".[99]
+
+In 2002, an 8-foot (2.4 m)-long marble sarcophagus, inscribed with the words "PAULO APOSTOLO MART" ("Paul apostle martyr") was discovered during excavations around the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls on the Via Ostiensis. Vatican archaeologists declared this to be the tomb of Paul the Apostle in 2005.[105] In June 2009, Pope Benedict XVI announced excavation results concerning the tomb. The sarcophagus was not opened but was examined by means of a probe, which revealed pieces of incense, purple and blue linen, and small bone fragments. The bone was radiocarbon-dated to the 1st or 2nd century. According to the Vatican, these findings support the conclusion that the tomb is Paul's.[106][107]
+
+Various Christian writers have suggested more details about Paul's life.
+
+1 Clement, a letter written by the Roman bishop Clement of Rome around the year 90, reports this about Paul:
+
+By reason of jealousy and strife Paul by his example pointed out the prize of patient endurance. After that he had been seven times in bonds, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, had preached in the East and in the West, he won the noble renown which was the reward of his faith, having taught righteousness unto the whole world and having reached the farthest bounds of the West; and when he had borne his testimony before the rulers, so he departed from the world and went unto the holy place, having been found a notable pattern of patient endurance.
+
+Commenting on this passage, Raymond Brown writes that while it "does not explicitly say" that Paul was martyred in Rome, "such a martyrdom is the most reasonable interpretation".[108] Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote in the 4th century, states that Paul was beheaded in the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero.[109] This event has been dated either to the year 64, when Rome was devastated by a fire, or a few years later, to 67. According to one tradition, the church of San Paolo alle Tre Fontane marks the place of Paul's execution. A Roman Catholic liturgical solemnity of Peter and Paul, celebrated on June 29, commemorates his martyrdom, and reflects a tradition (preserved by Eusebius) that Peter and Paul were martyred at the same time.[110] The Roman liturgical calendar for the following day now remembers all Christians martyred in these early persecutions; formerly, June 30 was the feast day for St. Paul.[111] Persons or religious orders with special affinity for St. Paul can still celebrate their patron on June 30.
+
+The apocryphal Acts of Paul and the apocryphal Acts of Peter suggest that Paul survived Rome and traveled further west. Some think that Paul could have revisited Greece and Asia Minor after his trip to Spain, and might then have been arrested in Troas, and taken to Rome and executed.[2 Tim. 4:13][note 5] A tradition holds that Paul was interred with Saint Peter ad Catacumbas by the via Appia until moved to what is now the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome. Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History, writes that Pope Vitalian in 665 gave Paul's relics (including a cross made from his prison chains) from the crypts of Lucina to King Oswy of Northumbria, northern Britain. Paul is considered the patron saint of London.
+
+The Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul is celebrated on January 25.[112]
+
+The New Testament offers little if any information about the physical appearance of Paul, but several descriptions can be found in apocryphal texts. In the Acts of Paul[113] he is described as "A man of small stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked".[114] In the Latin version of the Acts of Paul and Thecla it is added that he had a red, florid face.[114]
+
+In The History of the Contending of Saint Paul his countenance is described as "ruddy with the ruddiness of the skin of the pomegranate".[115] The Acts of Saint Peter confirms that Paul had a bald and shining head, with red hair.[116]
+As summarised by Barnes,[117] Chrysostom records that Paul's stature was low, his body crooked and his head bald. Lucian, in his Philopatris, describes Paul as "corpore erat parvo (he was small), contracto (contracted), incurvo (crooked), tricubitali (of three cubits, or four feet six)".[21]
+
+Nicephorus claims that Paul was a little man, crooked, and almost bent like a bow, with a pale countenance, long and wrinkled, and a bald head. Pseudo-Chrysostom echoes Lucian's height of Paul, referring to him as "the man of three cubits".[21]
+
+Catholicism portal
+
+Of the 27 books in the New Testament, 14 have been attributed to Paul; 7 of these are widely considered authentic and Paul's own, while the authorship of the other 7 is disputed.[118][119][120] The undisputed letters are considered the most important sources since they contain what everyone agrees to be Paul's own statements about his life and thoughts. Theologian Mark Powell writes that Paul directed these 7 letters to specific occasions at particular churches. As an example, if the Corinthian church had not experienced problems concerning its celebration of the Lord's Supper,[1 Cor. 11:17–34] today we would not know that Paul even believed in that observance or had any opinions about it one way or the other. Powell asks if we might be ignorant of other matters simply because no crises arose that prompted Paul to comment on them.[121]
+
+In Paul's writings, he provides the first written account of what it is to be a Christian and thus a description of Christian spirituality. His letters have been characterized as being the most influential books of the New Testament after the Gospels of Matthew and John.[7][note 10]
+
+Seven of the 13 letters that bear Paul's name – Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon – are almost universally accepted as being entirely authentic (dictated by Paul himself).[7][118][119][120] They are considered the best source of information on Paul's life and especially his thought.[7]
+
+Four of the letters (Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) are widely considered pseudepigraphical, while the authorship of the other two is subject to debate.[118] Colossians and 2 Thessalonians are possibly "Deutero-Pauline" meaning they may have been written by Paul's followers after his death. Similarly, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus may be "Trito-Pauline" meaning they may have been written by members of the Pauline school a generation after his death. According to their theories, these disputed letters may have come from followers writing in Paul's name, often using material from his surviving letters. These scribes also may have had access to letters written by Paul that no longer survive.[7]
+
+The authenticity of Colossians has been questioned on the grounds that it contains an otherwise unparalleled description (among his writings) of Jesus as "the image of the invisible God", a Christology found elsewhere only in John's gospel.[122] However, the personal notes in the letter connect it to Philemon, unquestionably the work of Paul. Internal evidence shows close connection with Philippians.[21]
+
+Ephesians is a letter that is very similar to Colossians, but is almost entirely lacking in personal reminiscences. Its style is unique. It lacks the emphasis on the cross to be found in other Pauline writings, reference to the Second Coming is missing, and Christian marriage is exalted in a way which contrasts with the reference in 1 Cor. 7:8–9. Finally, according to R.E. Brown, it exalts the Church in a way suggestive of a second generation of Christians, "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets" now past.[123]
+
+The defenders of its Pauline authorship argue that it was intended to be read by a number of different churches and that it marks the final stage of the development of Paul's thinking. It has been said, too, that the moral portion of the Epistle, consisting of the last two chapters, has the closest affinity with similar portions of other Epistles, while the whole admirably fits in with the known details of Paul's life, and throws considerable light upon them.[124]
+
+Three main reasons have been advanced by those who question Paul's authorship of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus – also known as the Pastoral Epistles.
+
+Although approximately half of Acts deals with Paul's life and works, the Book of Acts does not refer to Paul writing letters. Historians believe that the author of Acts did not have access to any of Paul's letters. One piece of evidence suggesting this is that Acts never directly quotes from the Pauline epistles. Discrepancies between the Pauline epistles and Acts would further support the conclusion that the author of Acts did not have access to those epistles when composing Acts.[126][127]
+
+British Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby contended that the Paul as described in the book of Acts and the view of Paul gleaned from his own writings are very different people. Some difficulties have been noted in the account of his life. Paul as described in the Book of Acts is much more interested in factual history, less in theology; ideas such as justification by faith are absent as are references to the Spirit, according to Maccoby. He also pointed out that there are no references to John the Baptist in the Pauline Epistles, although Paul mentions him several times in the book of Acts.
+
+Others have objected that the language of the speeches is too Lukan in style to reflect anyone else's words. Moreover, George Shillington writes that the author of Acts most likely created the speeches accordingly and they bear his literary and theological marks.[128] Conversely, Howard Marshall writes that the speeches were not entirely the inventions of the author and while they may not be accurate word-for-word, the author nevertheless records the general idea of them.[129]
+
+F. C. Baur (1792–1860), professor of theology at Tübingen in Germany, the first scholar to critique Acts and the Pauline Epistles, and founder of the Tübingen School of theology, argued that Paul, as the "Apostle to the Gentiles", was in violent opposition to the original 12 Apostles. Baur considers the Acts of the Apostles were late and unreliable. This debate has continued ever since, with Adolf Deissmann (1866–1937) and Richard Reitzenstein (1861–1931) emphasising Paul's Greek inheritance and Albert Schweitzer stressing his dependence on Judaism.
+
+In the opening verses of Romans 1, Paul provides a litany of his own apostolic appointment to preach among the Gentiles[Gal. 1:16] and his post-conversion convictions about the risen Christ.[7] Paul described himself as set apart for the gospel of God and called to be an apostle and a servant of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ had revealed Himself to Paul, just as He had appeared to Peter, to James, to the Twelve, after his Resurrection.[1 Cor. 9:1] Paul experienced this as an unforeseen, sudden, startling change, due to all-powerful grace, not as the fruit of his reasoning or thoughts.[Gal. 1:12–15] [1 Cor. 15:10]
+
+Paul also describes himself as inflicted with a debilitating physical condition akin to having a handicap which he refers to as "a thorn in the flesh";[2 Cor. 12:7]
+
+There are debates as to whether Paul understood himself as commissioned to take the gospel to the Gentiles at the moment of his conversion.[130] Before his conversion he believed his violent persecution of the church to be an indication of his zeal for his religion;[Phil. 3:6] after his conversion he believed Jewish hostility toward the church was sinful opposition, that would incur God's wrath.[1 Thess. 2:14–16][131] Paul believed he was halted by Christ, when his fury was at its height.[Acts 9:1–2] It was "through zeal" that he persecuted the Church,[Philippians 3:6] and he obtained mercy because he had "acted ignorantly in unbelief".[1 Tim. 1:13][note 5]
+
+Paul's writings emphasized the crucifixion, Christ's resurrection and the Parousia or second coming of Christ.[45] Paul saw Jesus as Lord (kyrios), the true messiah and the Son of God, who was promised by God beforehand, through his prophets in the holy Scriptures. While being a biological descendant from David ("according to the flesh"),[Rom. 1:3] He was declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.
+
+According to E. P. Sanders, Paul "preached the death, resurrection, and lordship of Jesus Christ, and he proclaimed that faith in Jesus guarantees a share in his life."[7]
+In Paul's view, "Jesus’ death was not a defeat but was for the believers’ benefit,"[7] a sacrifice which substitutes for the lifes of others, and frees them from the bondage of sin. Believers participate in Christ's death and resurrection by their baptism. The resurrection of Jesus was of primary importance to Paul, bringing the promise of salvation to believers. Paul taught that, when Christ returned, those who had died believing in Christ as the saviour of mankind would be brought back to life, while those still alive would be "caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air" [1 Thes. 4:14–18][7]
+
+Sanders concludes that Paul's writings reveal what he calls the essence of the Christian message: "(1) God sent his Son; (2) the Son was crucified and resurrected for the benefit of humanity; (3) the Son would soon return; and (4) those who belonged to the Son would live with him forever. Paul’s gospel, like those of others, also included (5) the admonition to live by the highest moral standard: “May your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”  ([1 Thes. 5:23])"[7]
+
+In Paul's writings, the public, corporate devotional patterns towards Jesus in the early Christian community are reflective of Paul's perspective on the divine status of Jesus in what scholars have termed a "binitarian" pattern of devotion. For Paul, Jesus receives prayer (1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 12:8–9; 1 Thess. 3:11), the presence of Jesus is confessionally invoked by believers (1 Cor. 16:22; Romans 10:9–13; Phil. 2:10–11), people are baptized in Jesus’ name (1 Cor. 6:11; Rom. 6:3), Jesus is the reference in Christian fellowship for a religious ritual meal (the Lord's Supper; 1 Cor. 11:17–34 – in pagan cults, the reference for ritual meals is always to a deity), and Jesus is the source of continuing prophetic oracles to believers (1 Thess. 4:15–17).[132]
+
+Paul taught that Christians are redeemed from sin by Jesus' death and resurrection. His death was an expiation as well as a propitiation, and by Christ's blood peace is made between God and man.[133] By grace, through faith,[Ephesiahs 2:8–9] a Christian shares in Jesus' death and in his victory over death, gaining as a free gift a new, justified status of sonship.[Galatians 4:4–7]
+
+According to Krister Stendahl, the main concern of Paul's writings on Jesus' role, and salvation by faith, is not the individual conscience of human sinners, and their doubts about being chosen by God or not, but the problem of the inclusion of gentile (Greek) Torah observers into God's covenant.[134][135][136][137][note 11] 'Dying for our sins' refers to the problem of gentile Torah-observers, who, despite their faithfulness, cannot fully observe commandments, including circumcision, and are therefore 'sinners', excluded from God's covenant.[138] Jesus' death and resurrection solved this problem of the exclusion of the gentles from God's covenant, as indicated by Rom 3:21–26.[139]
+
+Paul's conversion fundamentally changed his basic beliefs regarding God's covenant and the inclusion of Gentiles into this covenant. Paul believed Jesus' death was a voluntary sacrifice, that reconciled sinners with God.[Rom. 5:6–10][Phil. 2:8] The law only reveals the extent of people's enslavement to the power of sin – a power that must be broken by Christ.[Rom. 3:20b][7:7–12] Before his conversion Paul believed Gentiles were outside the covenant that God made with Israel; after his conversion he believed Gentiles and Jews were united as the people of God in Christ Jesus.[Gal. 3:28] Before his conversion he believed circumcision was the rite through which males became part of Israel, an exclusive community of God's chosen people;[Phil. 3:3–5] after his conversion he believed that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but that the new creation is what counts in the sight of God,[Gal 6:15] and that this new creation is a work of Christ in the life of believers, making them part of the church, an inclusive community of Jews and Gentiles reconciled with God through faith.[Rom 6:4]
+
+According to E.P. Sanders, who initiated the New Perspective on Paul with his 1977 publication Paul and Palestinian Judaism, Paul saw the faithful redeemed by participation in Jesus' death and rising. Though "Jesus’ death substituted for that of others and thereby freed believers from sin and guilt," a metaphor derived from "ancient sacrificial theology,"[7][note 12] the essence of Paul's writing is not in the "legal terms" regarding the expiation of sin, but the act of "participation in Christ through dying and rising with him."[note 13] According to Sanders, "those who are baptized into Christ are baptized into his death, and thus they escape the power of sin [...] he died so that the believers may die with him and consequently live with him."[7] By this participation in Christ's death and rising, "one receives forgiveness for past offences, is liberated from the powers of sin, and receives the Spirit."
+
+Some scholars see Paul (or Saul) as completely in line with 1st-century Judaism (a Pharisee and student of Gamaliel as presented by Acts),[144] others see him as opposed to 1st-century Judaism (see Marcionism), while the majority see him as somewhere in between these two extremes, opposed to insistence on keeping the "Ritual Laws" (for example the circumcision controversy in early Christianity) as necessary for entrance into God's New Covenant,[145][146] but in full agreement on "Divine Law". These views of Paul are paralleled by the views of Biblical law in Christianity.
+
+— Professor James D. Tabor for the Huffington Post[147]
+
+Paul is critical both theologically and empirically of claims of moral or lineal superiority [Rom. 2:16–26] of Jews while conversely strongly sustaining the notion of a special place for the Children of Israel.[9–11] Paul's theology of the gospel accelerated the separation of the messianic sect of Christians from Judaism, a development contrary to Paul's own intent. He wrote that faith in Christ was alone decisive in salvation for Jews and Gentiles alike, making the schism between the followers of Christ and mainstream Jews inevitable and permanent. He argued that Gentile converts did not need to become Jews, get circumcised, follow Jewish dietary restrictions, or otherwise observe Mosaic laws to be saved.[25] According to Fredriksen, Paul's opposition to male circumcison for Gentiles is in line with Old Testament predictions that "in the last days the gentile nations would come to the God of Israel, as gentiles (e.g., Zechariah 8:20–23), not as proselytes to Israel."[148] For Paul, Gentile male circumcison was therefore an affront to God's intentions.[148] According to Hurtado,  "Paul saw himself as what Munck called a salvation-historical figure in his own right," who was "personally and singularly deputized by God to bring about the predicted ingathering (the "fullness") of the nations (Romans 11:25)."[148]
+
+According to Sanders, Paul insists that salvation is received by the grace of God; according to Sanders, this insistence is in line with Judaism of ca. 200 NCE until 200 CE, which saw God's covenant with Israel as an act of grace of God. Observance of the Law is needed to maintain the covenant, but the covenant is not earned by observing the Law, but by the grace of God.[143]
+
+Sanders' publications[145][149] have since been taken up by Professor James Dunn who coined the phrase "The New Perspective on Paul".[150] N.T. Wright,[151] the Anglican Bishop of Durham, notes a difference in emphasis between Galatians and Romans, the latter being much more positive about the continuing covenant between God and his ancient people than the former. Wright also contends that performing Christian works is not insignificant but rather proof of having attained the redemption of Jesus Christ by grace (free gift received by faith).[Rom. 2:13ff] He concludes that Paul distinguishes between performing Christian works which are signs of ethnic identity and others which are a sign of obedience to Christ.[151]
+
+According to Bart Ehrman, Paul believed that Jesus would return within his lifetime.[152] Paul expected that Christians who had died in the meantime would be resurrected to share in God's kingdom, and he believed that the saved would be transformed, assuming heavenly, imperishable bodies.[1 Cor. 15:51–53]
+
+Paul's teaching about the end of the world is expressed most clearly in his letters to the Christians at Thessalonica. He assures them that the dead will rise first and be followed by those left alive.[1 Thes. 4:16ff] This suggests an imminent end but he is unspecific about times and seasons, and encourages his hearers to expect a delay.[153] The form of the end will be a battle between Jesus and the man of lawlessness[2 Thess. 2:3][note 5] whose conclusion is the triumph of Christ.
+
+Before his conversion he believed God's messiah would put an end to the old age of evil, and initiate a new age of righteousness; after his conversion he believed this would happen in stages that had begun with the resurrection of Jesus, but the old age would continue until Jesus returns.[Rom. 16:25] [1 Cor. 10:11] [Gal. 1:4][131]
+
+The second chapter of the first letter to Timothy – one of the six disputed letters – is used by many churches to deny women a vote in church affairs, reject women from serving as teachers of adult Bible classes, prevent them from serving as missionaries, and generally disenfranchise women from the duties and privileges of church leadership.[154]
+
+9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array;
+10 But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.
+11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
+12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
+13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
+14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
+15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.
+
+The KJV translation of this passage taken literally says that women in the churches are to have no leadership roles vis-à-vis men.[155]
+
+Fuller Seminary theologian J. R. Daniel Kirk[156] finds evidence in Paul's letters of a much more inclusive view of women. He writes that Romans 16 is a tremendously important witness to the important role of women in the early church. Paul praises Phoebe for her work as a deaconess and Junia who is described by Paul in Scripture as being respected among the Apostles.[Romans 16:7] It is Kirk's observation that recent studies have led many scholars to conclude that the passage in 1 Corinthians 14 ordering women to "be silent" during worship was a later addition, apparently by a different author, and not part of Paul's original letter to the Corinthians.
+
+Other scholars, such as Giancarlo Biguzzi, believe that Paul's restriction on women speaking in 1 Corinthians 14 is genuine to Paul but applies to a particular case where there were local problems of women – who were not allowed in that culture to become educated – asking questions or chatting during worship services. He does not believe it to be a general prohibition on any woman speaking in worship settings since in 1 Corinthians Paul affirms the right (responsibility) of women to prophesy.[1 Cor. 11][157]
+
+Biblical prophecy is more than "fore-telling": two-thirds of its inscripturated form involves "forth-telling", that is, setting the truth, justice, mercy, and righteousness of God against the backdrop of every form of denial of the same. Thus, to speak prophetically was to speak boldly against every form of moral, ethical, political, economic, and religious disenfranchisement observed in a culture that was intent on building its own pyramid of values vis-a-vis God's established system of truth and ethics.[158]
+
+There were women prophets in the highly patriarchal times throughout the Old Testament.[158] The most common term for prophet in the Old Testament is nabi in the masculine form, and nebiah in the Hebrew feminine form, is used six times of women who performed the same task of receiving and proclaiming the message given by God. These women include Miriam, Aaron and Moses' sister,[Exod 15:20] Deborah,[Judges 4:4] the prophet Isaiah's wife,[Isa. 8:3] and Huldah, the one who interpreted the Book of the Law discovered in the temple during the days of Josiah.[2 Kings 22:14] [2 Chron. 34:22] There were false prophetesses just as there were false prophets. The prophetess Noadiah was among those who tried to intimidate Nehemiah.[Neh 6:14] Apparently they held equal rank in prophesying right along with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Elisha, Aaron, and Samuel.[158]
+
+Kirk's third example of a more inclusive view is Galatians 3:28:
+
+There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
+
+In pronouncing an end within the church to the divisions which are common in the world around it, he concludes by highlighting the fact that "there were New Testament women who taught and had authority in the early churches, that this teaching and authority was sanctioned by Paul, and that Paul himself offers a theological paradigm within which overcoming the subjugation of women is an anticipated outcome".[159]
+
+Classicist Evelyn Stagg and theologian Frank Stagg believe that Paul was attempting to "Christianize" the societal household or domestic codes that significantly oppressed women and empowered men as the head of the household. The Staggs present a serious study of what has been termed the New Testament domestic code, also known as the Haustafel.[160] The two main passages that explain these "household duties" are Paul's letters to the Ephesians 5:22–6:5 and to the Colossians 3:18–4:1. An underlying Household Code is also reflected in four additional Pauline letters and 1 Peter: 1 Timothy 2:1ff., 8ff.; 3:1ff., 8ff.; 5:17ff.; 6:1f.; Titus 2:1–10 and 1 Peter 2:13–3:9. Biblical scholars have typically treated the Haustafel in Ephesians as a resource in the debate over the role of women in ministry and in the home.[161]
+Margaret MacDonald argues that the Haustafel, particularly as it appears in Ephesians, was aimed at "reducing the tension between community members and outsiders".[162]
+
+E. P. Sanders has labeled the Apostle's remark in 1 Cor. 14:34–36 about women not making any sound during worship as "Paul's intemperate outburst that women should be silent in the churches".[145][149] Women, in fact, played a very significant part in Paul's missionary endeavors:
+
+Most Christian traditions[165][166][167] say Paul clearly portrays homosexuality as sinful in two specific locations: Romans 1:26–27, and 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. Another passage addresses the topic more obliquely: 1 Timothy 1:8–11. Since the nineteenth century, however, most scholars have concluded that 1 Timothy (along with 2 Timothy and Titus) is not original to Paul, but rather an unknown Christian writing in Paul's name some time in the late-first-to-mid-2nd century.[168][169]
+
+Paul's influence on Christian thinking arguably has been more significant than any other New Testament author.[7] Paul declared that "Christ is the end of the law",[Romans 10:4] exalted the Christian church as the body of Christ, and depicted the world outside the Church as under judgment.[25] Paul's writings include the earliest reference to the "Lord's Supper",[1 Corinthians 10:14–17]11:17–34 a rite traditionally identified as the Christian communion or Eucharist. In the East, church fathers attributed the element of election in Romans 9 to divine foreknowledge.[25] The themes of predestination found in Western Christianity do not appear in Eastern theology.
+
+Paul had a strong influence on early Christianity. Hurtado notes that Paul regarded his own Christological views and those of his predecessors and that of the Jerusalem Church as essentially similar. According to Hurtado, this "work[s] against the claims by some scholars that Pauline Christianity represents a sharp departure from the religiousness of Judean 'Jesus movements'."[170]
+
+Marcionism, regarded as heresy by contemporary mainstream Christianity, was an Early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144.[note 14] Marcion asserted that Paul was the only apostle who had rightly understood the new message of salvation as delivered by Christ.[171]
+
+Marcion believed Jesus was the savior sent by God, and Paul the Apostle was his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and the God of Israel. Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament.
+
+In his account of his conversion experience, Augustine gave his life to Christ after reading Romans 13.[172][173] Augustine's foundational work on the gospel as a gift (grace), on morality as life in the Spirit, on predestination, and on original sin all derives from Paul, especially Romans.[25]
+
+In his account of his conversion Martin Luther wrote about righteousness in Romans 1 praising Romans as the perfect gospel, in which the Reformation was birthed.[174] Martin Luther's interpretation of Paul's writings influenced Luther's doctrine of sola fide.
+
+John Calvin said the Book of Romans opens to anyone an understanding to the whole Scripture.[175]
+
+— Professor James D. Tabor for the Huffington post[176]
+
+In his commentary The Epistle to the Romans (Ger. Der Römerbrief; particularly in the thoroughly re-written second edition of 1922) Karl Barth argued that the God who is revealed in the cross of Jesus challenges and overthrows any attempt to ally God with human cultures, achievements, or possessions.
+
+In addition to the many questions about the true origins of some of Paul's teachings posed by historical figures as noted above, some modern theologians also hold that the teachings of Paul differ markedly from those of Jesus as found in the Gospels.[177] Barrie Wilson states that Paul differs from Jesus in terms of the origin of his message, his teachings and his practices.[178] Some have even gone so far as to claim that, due to these apparent differences in teachings, that Paul was actually no less than the "second founder" of Christianity (Jesus being its first).[179][180]
+
+As in the Eastern tradition in general, Western humanists interpret the reference to election in Romans 9 as reflecting divine foreknowledge.[25]
+
+Jewish interest in Paul is a recent phenomenon. Before the positive historical reevaluations of Jesus by some Jewish thinkers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he had hardly featured in the popular Jewish imagination and little had been written about him by the religious leaders and scholars. Arguably, he is absent from the Talmud and rabbinical literature, although he makes an appearance in some variants of the medieval polemic Toledot Yeshu (as a particularly effective spy for the rabbis).[181]
+
+However, with Jesus no longer regarded as the paradigm of gentile Christianity, Paul's position became more important in Jewish historical reconstructions of their religion's relationship with Christianity. He has featured as the key to building barriers (e.g. Heinrich Graetz and Martin Buber) or bridges (e.g. Isaac Mayer Wise and Claude G. Montefiore) in interfaith relations,[182] as part of an intra-Jewish debate about what constitutes Jewish authenticity (e.g. Joseph Klausner and Hans Joachim Schoeps),[183] and on occasion as a dialogical partner (e.g. Richard L. Rubenstein and Daniel Boyarin).[184]
+
+He features in an oratorio (by Felix Mendelssohn), a painting (by Ludwig Meidner) and a play (by Franz Werfel),[185] and there have been several novels about Paul (by Shalom Asch and Samuel Sandmel).[186] Jewish philosophers (including Baruch Spinoza, Leo Shestov, and Jacob Taubes)[187] and Jewish psychoanalysts (including Sigmund Freud and Hanns Sachs)[188] have engaged with the apostle as one of the most influential figures in Western thought. Scholarly surveys of Jewish interest in Paul include those by Hagner 1980, pp. 143–65, Meissner 1996, Langton 2010, Langton 2011a, pp. 55–72 and Langton 2011b, pp. 585–87.
+
+In the second (and possibly late first) century, Gnosticism was a competing religious tradition to Christianity which shared some elements of theology.
+
+Elaine Pagels concentrated on how the Gnostics interpreted Paul's letters and how evidence from gnostic sources may challenge the assumption that Paul wrote his letters to combat "gnostic opponents" and to repudiate their statement that they possess secret wisdom.[189]
+
+Muslims have long believed that Paul purposefully corrupted the original revealed teachings of Jesus,[190][191][192] through the introduction of such elements as paganism,[193] the making of Christianity into a theology of the cross,[194] and introducing original sin and the need for redemption.[195]
+
+Sayf ibn Umar claimed that certain rabbis persuaded Paul to deliberately misguide early Christians by introducing what Ibn Hazm viewed as objectionable doctrines into Christianity.[196][197] Ibn Hazm repeated Sayf's claims.[198] The Karaite scholar Jacob Qirqisani also believed that Paul created Christianity by introducing the doctrine of Trinity.[196] Paul has been criticized by some modern Muslim thinkers. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas wrote that Paul misrepresented the message of Jesus,[192] and Rashid Rida accused Paul of introducing shirk (polytheism) into Christianity.[193] Mohammad Ali Jouhar quoted Adolf von Harnack's critical writings of Paul.[194]
+
+In Sunni Muslim polemics, Paul plays the same role (of deliberately corrupting the early teachings of Jesus) as a later Jew, Abdullah ibn Saba', would play in seeking to destroy the message of Islam from within (by introducing proto-Shi'ite beliefs).[197][198][199] Among those who supported this view were scholars Ibn Taymiyyah (who believed while Paul ultimately succeeded, Ibn Saba failed) and Ibn Hazm (who claimed that the Jews even admitted to Paul's sinister purpose).[196]
+
+Among the critics of Paul the Apostle was Thomas Jefferson, a Deist, who wrote that Paul was the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."[200] Christian anarchists Tolstoy 1891, p. 17 and Hennacy 2010 took a similar view.
+

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+The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican (Italian: Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano), or simply Saint Peter's Basilica (Latin: Basilica Sancti Petri), is a church built in the Renaissance style located in Vatican City, the papal enclave which is within the city of Rome.
+
+Designed principally by Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Carlo Maderno and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, St. Peter's is the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture[2] and the largest church in the world.[3] While it is neither the mother church of the Catholic Church nor the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome (these equivalent titles being held by the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome), St. Peter's is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic shrines. It has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world"[4] and as "the greatest of all churches of Christendom".[2][5]
+
+Catholic tradition holds that the basilica is the burial site of Saint Peter, chief among Jesus's apostles and also the first Bishop of Rome (Pope). Saint Peter's tomb is supposedly directly below the high altar of the basilica. For this reason, many popes have been interred at St. Peter's since the Early Christian period. A church has stood on this site since the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. Old St. Peter's Basilica dates from the 4th century AD. Construction of the present basilica began on 18 April 1506 and was completed on 18 November 1626.[6]
+
+St. Peter's is famous as a place of pilgrimage and for its liturgical functions. The pope presides at a number of liturgies throughout the year both within the basilica or the adjoining St. Peter's Square; these liturgies draw audiences numbering from 15,000 to over 80,000 people.[7] St. Peter's has many historical associations, with the Early Christian Church, the Papacy, the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-reformation and numerous artists, especially Michelangelo. As a work of architecture, it is regarded as the greatest building of its age.[8] St. Peter's is one of the four churches in the world that hold the rank of major basilica, all four of which are in Rome. Contrary to popular misconception, it is not a cathedral because it is not the seat of a bishop; the cathedra of the pope as Bishop of Rome is at Saint John Lateran.[9]
+
+St. Peter's is a church built in the Renaissance style located in the Vatican City west of the River Tiber and near the Janiculum Hill and Hadrian's Mausoleum. Its central dome dominates the skyline of Rome. The basilica is approached via St. Peter's Square, a forecourt in two sections, both surrounded by tall colonnades. The first space is oval and the second trapezoidal. The façade of the basilica, with a giant order of columns, stretches across the end of the square and is approached by steps on which stand two 5.55 metres (18.2 ft) statues of the 1st-century apostles to Rome, Saints Peter and Paul.[10][11]
+
+The basilica is cruciform in shape, with an elongated nave in the Latin cross form but the early designs were for a centrally planned structure and this is still in evidence in the architecture. The central space is dominated both externally and internally by one of the largest domes in the world. The entrance is through a narthex, or entrance hall, which stretches across the building. One of the decorated bronze doors leading from the narthex is the Holy Door, only opened during jubilees.[10]
+
+The interior dimensions are vast when compared to other churches.[6] One author wrote: "Only gradually does it dawn upon us – as we watch people draw near to this or that monument, strangely they appear to shrink; they are, of course, dwarfed by the scale of everything in the building. This in its turn overwhelms us."[12]
+
+The nave which leads to the central dome is in three bays, with piers supporting a barrel-vault, the highest of any church. The nave is framed by wide aisles which have a number of chapels off them. There are also chapels surrounding the dome. Moving around the basilica in a clockwise direction they are: The Baptistery, the Chapel of the Presentation of the Virgin, the larger Choir Chapel, the altar of the Transfiguration, the Clementine Chapel with the altar of Saint Gregory, the Sacristy Entrance, the Altar of the Lie, the left transept with altars to the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, Saint Joseph and Saint Thomas, the altar of the Sacred Heart, the Chapel of the Madonna of Column, the altar of Saint Peter and the Paralytic, the apse with the Chair of Saint Peter, the altar of Saint Peter raising Tabitha, the altar of St. Petronilla, the altar of the Archangel Michael, the altar of the Navicella, the right transept with altars of Saint Erasmus, Saints Processo and Martiniano, and Saint Wenceslas, the altar of St. Jerome, the altar of Saint Basil, the Gregorian Chapel with the altar of the Madonna of Succour, the larger Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, the Chapel of Saint Sebastian and the Chapel of the Pietà.[10] The Monuments, in a clockwise direction, are to: Maria Clementina Sobieski, The Stuarts, Benedict XV, John XXIII, St. Pius X, Innocent VIII, Leo XI, Innocent XI, Pius VII, Pius VIII, Alexander VII, Alexander VIII, Paul III, Urban VIII, Clement X, Clement XIII, Benedict XIV, St Peter (Bronze Statue), Gregory XVI, Gregory XIV, Gregory XIII, Matilda of Canossa, Innocent XII, Pius XII, Pius XI, Christina of Sweden, Leo XII.  
+At the heart of the basilica, beneath the high altar, is the Confessio or Chapel of the Confession, in reference to the confession of faith by St. Peter, which led to his martyrdom. Two curving marble staircases lead to this underground chapel at the level of the Constantinian church and immediately above the purported burial place of Saint Peter.
+
+The entire interior of St. Peter's is lavishly decorated with marble, reliefs, architectural sculpture and gilding. The basilica contains a large number of tombs of popes and other notable people, many of which are considered outstanding artworks. There are also a number of sculptures in niches and chapels, including Michelangelo's Pietà. The central feature is a baldachin, or canopy over the Papal Altar, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The apse culminates in a sculptural ensemble, also by Bernini, and containing the symbolic Chair of Saint Peter.
+
+One observer wrote: "St Peter's Basilica is the reason why Rome is still the center of the civilized world. For religious, historical, and architectural reasons it by itself justifies a journey to Rome, and its interior offers a palimpsest of artistic styles at their best ..."[13]
+
+The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson described St. Peter's as "an ornament of the earth ... the sublime of the beautiful."[14]
+
+St. Peter's Basilica is one of the papal basilicas (previously styled "patriarchal basilicas")[15] and one of the four Major Basilicas of Rome, the other Major Basilicas (all of which are also Papal Basilicas) being the Basilicas of St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul outside the Walls. The rank of major basilica confers on St. Peter's Basilica precedence before all minor basilicas worldwide. However, unlike all the other Papal Major Basilicas, it is wholly within the territory, and thus the sovereign jurisdiction, of the Vatican City State, and not that of Italy.[16] This is in contrast to the other three Papal Major Basilicas, which are within Italian territory and not the territory of the Vatican City State. (Lateran Treaty of 1929, Article 15 (Ibidem)) However, the Holy See fully owns these three basilicas, and Italy is legally obligated to recognize its full ownership thereof (Lateran Treaty of 1929, Article 13 (Ibidem)) and to concede to all of them "the immunity granted by International Law to the headquarters of the diplomatic agents of foreign States" (Lateran Treaty of 1929, Article 15 (Ibidem)).
+
+It is the most prominent building in the Vatican City. Its dome is a dominant feature of the skyline of Rome. Probably the largest church in Christendom,[3] it covers an area of 2.3 hectares (5.7 acres). One of the holiest sites of Christianity and Catholic Tradition, it is traditionally the burial site of its titular, St. Peter, who was the head of the twelve Apostles of Jesus and, according to tradition, the first Bishop of Antioch and later the first Bishop of Rome, rendering him the first Pope. Although the New Testament does not mention St. Peter's martyrdom in Rome, tradition, based on the writings of the Fathers of the Church,[clarification needed] holds that his tomb is below the baldachin and altar of the Basilica in the "Confession". For this reason, many Popes have, from the early years of the Church, been buried near Pope St. Peter in the necropolis beneath the Basilica. Construction of the current basilica, over the old Constantinian basilica, began on 18 April 1506 and finished in 1615. At length, on 18 November 1626 Pope Urban VIII solemnly dedicated the Basilica.[6]
+
+St. Peter's Basilica is neither the Pope's official seat nor first in rank among the Major Basilicas of Rome. This honour is held by the Pope's cathedral, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran which is the mother church of all churches in communion with the Catholic Church. However, St. Peter's is certainly the Pope's principal church in terms of use because most Papal liturgies and ceremonies take place there due to its size, proximity to the Papal residence, and location within the Vatican City proper. The "Chair of Saint Peter", or cathedra, an ancient chair sometimes presumed to have been used by St. Peter himself, but which was a gift from Charles the Bald and used by many popes, symbolizes the continuing line of apostolic succession from St. Peter to the reigning Pope. It occupies an elevated position in the apse of the Basilica, supported symbolically by the Doctors of the Church and enlightened symbolically by the Holy Spirit.[17]
+
+As one of the constituent structures of the historically and architecturally significant Vatican City, St. Peter's Basilica was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 under criteria (i), (ii), (iv), and (vi).[18] With an exterior area of 21,095 square metres (227,060 sq ft),[19] an interior area of 15,160 square metres (163,200 sq ft),[20][21] St. Peter's Basilica is the largest Christian church building in the world by the two latter metrics and the second largest by the first as of 2016[update]. The top of its dome, at 448.1 feet (136.6 m), also places it as the second tallest building in Rome as of 2016[update].[22] The dome's soaring height placed it among the tallest buildings of the Old World, and it continues to hold the title of tallest dome in the world. Though the largest dome in the world by diameter at the time of its completion, it no longer holds this distinction.[23]
+
+After the crucifixion of Jesus, it is recorded in the Biblical book of the Acts of the Apostles that one of his twelve disciples, Simon known as Saint Peter, a fisherman from Galilee, took a leadership position among Jesus' followers and was of great importance in the founding of the Christian Church. The name Peter is "Petrus" in Latin and "Petros" in Greek, deriving from "petra" which means "stone" or "rock" in Greek, and is the literal translation of the Aramaic "Kepa", the name given to Simon by Jesus. (John 1:42, and see Matthew 16:18)
+
+Catholic tradition holds that Peter, after a ministry of thirty-four years, travelled to Rome and met his martyrdom there along with Paul on 13 October 64 AD during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero. His execution was one of the many martyrdoms of Christians following the Great Fire of Rome. According to Origen, Peter was crucified head downwards, by his own request because he considered himself unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus.[24] The crucifixion took place near an ancient Egyptian obelisk in the Circus of Nero.[25]  The obelisk now stands in St. Peter's Square and is revered as a "witness" to Peter's death. It is one of several ancient Obelisks of Rome.[26]
+
+According to tradition, Peter's remains were buried just outside the Circus, on the Mons Vaticanus across the Via Cornelia from the Circus, less than 150 metres (490 ft) from his place of death. The Via Cornelia was a road which ran east-to-west along the north wall of the Circus on land now covered by the southern portions of the Basilica and St. Peter's Square. A shrine was built on this site some years later. Almost three hundred years later, Old St. Peter's Basilica was constructed over this site.[25]
+
+The area now covered by the Vatican City had been a cemetery for some years before the Circus of Nero was built. It was a burial ground for the numerous executions in the Circus and contained many Christian burials, because for many years after the burial of Saint Peter many Christians chose to be buried near Peter.
+
+In 1939, in the reign of Pope Pius XII, 10 years of archeological research began under the crypt of the basilica in an area inaccessible since the 9th century. The excavations revealed the remains of shrines of different periods at different levels, from Clement VIII (1594)  to Callixtus II (1123) and Gregory I (590–604), built over an aedicula containing fragments of bones that were folded in a tissue with gold decorations, tinted with the precious murex purple. Although it could not be determined with certainty that the bones were those of Peter, the rare vestments suggested a burial of great importance. On 23 December 1950, in his pre-Christmas radio broadcast to the world, Pope Pius XII announced the discovery of Saint Peter's tomb.[27]
+
+Old St. Peter's Basilica was the 4th-century church begun by the Emperor Constantine the Great between 319 and 333 AD.[28] It was of typical basilical form, a wide nave and two aisles on each side and an apsidal end, with the addition of a transept or bema, giving the building the shape of a tau cross. It was over 103.6 metres (340 ft) long, and the entrance was preceded by a large colonnaded atrium. This church had been built over the small shrine believed to mark the burial place of St. Peter, though the tomb was "smashed" in 846 AD.[29]  It contained a very large number of burials and memorials, including those of most of the popes from St. Peter to the 15th century. Like all of the earliest churches in Rome, both this church and its successor had the entrance to the east and the apse at the west end of the building.[30] Since the construction of the current basilica, the name Old St. Peter's Basilica has been used for its predecessor to distinguish the two buildings.[31]
+
+By the end of the 15th century, having been neglected during the period of the Avignon Papacy, the old basilica had fallen into disrepair. It appears that the first pope to consider rebuilding, or at least making radical changes was Pope Nicholas V (1447–55). He commissioned work on the old building from Leone Battista Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino and also had Rossellino design a plan for an entirely new basilica, or an extreme modification of the old. His reign was frustrated by political problems and when he died, little had been achieved.[25]  He had, however, ordered the demolition of the Colosseum and by the time of his death, 2,522 cartloads of stone had been transported for use in the new building.[25][32] The foundations were completed for a new transept and choir to form a domed Latin cross with the preserved nave and side aisles of the old basilica. Some walls for the choir had also been built.[33]
+
+Pope Julius II planned far more for St Peter's than Nicholas V's program of repair or modification. Julius was at that time planning his own tomb, which was to be designed and adorned with sculpture by Michelangelo and placed within St Peter's.[34]  In 1505 Julius made a decision to demolish the ancient basilica and replace it with a monumental structure to house his enormous tomb and "aggrandize himself in the popular imagination".[8]  A competition was held, and a number of the designs have survived at the Uffizi Gallery. A succession of popes and architects followed in the next 120 years, their combined efforts resulting in the present building. The scheme begun by Julius II continued through the reigns of Leo X (1513–1521), Hadrian VI (1522–1523). Clement VII (1523–1534), Paul III (1534–1549), Julius III (1550–1555), Marcellus II (1555), Paul IV (1555–1559), Pius IV (1559–1565), Pius V (saint) (1565–1572), Gregory XIII (1572–1585), Sixtus V (1585–1590), Urban VII (1590), Gregory XIV (1590–1591), Innocent IX (1591), Clement VIII (1592–1605), Leo XI (1605), Paul V (1605–1621), Gregory XV (1621–1623), Urban VIII (1623–1644) and Innocent X (1644–1655).
+
+One method employed to finance the building of St. Peter's Basilica was the granting of indulgences in return for contributions. A major promoter of this method of fund-raising was Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, who had to clear debts owed to the Roman Curia by contributing to the rebuilding program. To facilitate this, he appointed the German Dominican preacher Johann Tetzel, whose salesmanship provoked a scandal.[35]
+
+A German Augustinian priest, Martin Luther, wrote to Archbishop Albrecht arguing against this "selling of indulgences". He also included his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", which came to be known as The 95 Theses.[36] This became a factor in starting the Reformation, the birth of Protestantism.
+
+Pope Julius' scheme for the grandest building in Christendom[8] was the subject of a competition for which a number of entries remain intact in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. It was the design of Donato Bramante that was selected, and for which the foundation stone was laid in 1506. This plan was in the form of an enormous Greek Cross with a dome inspired by that of the huge circular Roman temple, the Pantheon.[8] The main difference between Bramante's design and that of the Pantheon is that where the dome of the Pantheon is supported by a continuous wall, that of the new basilica was to be supported only on four large piers. This feature was maintained in the ultimate design. Bramante's dome was to be surmounted by a lantern with its own small dome but otherwise very similar in form to the Early Renaissance lantern of Florence Cathedral designed for Brunelleschi's dome by Michelozzo.[37]
+
+Bramante had envisioned that the central dome would be surrounded by four lower domes at the diagonal axes. The equal chancel, nave and transept arms were each to be of two bays ending in an apse. At each corner of the building was to stand a tower, so that the overall plan was square, with the apses projecting at the cardinal points. Each apse had two large radial buttresses, which squared off its semi-circular shape.[38]
+
+When Pope Julius died in 1513, Bramante was replaced with Giuliano da Sangallo and Fra Giocondo, who both died in 1515 (Bramante himself having died the previous year). Raphael was confirmed as architect of St. Peter's on 1 August 1514.[39] The main change in his plan is the nave of five bays, with a row of complex apsidal chapels off the aisles on either side. Raphael's plan for the chancel and transepts made the squareness of the exterior walls more definite by reducing the size of the towers, and the semi-circular apses more clearly defined by encircling each with an ambulatory.[40]
+
+In 1520 Raphael also died, aged 37, and his successor Baldassare Peruzzi maintained changes that Raphael had proposed to the internal arrangement of the three main apses, but otherwise reverted to the Greek Cross plan and other features of Bramante.[41] This plan did not go ahead because of various difficulties of both Church and state. In 1527 Rome was sacked and plundered by Emperor Charles V. Peruzzi died in 1536 without his plan being realized.[8]
+
+At this point Antonio da Sangallo the Younger submitted a plan which combines features of Peruzzi, Raphael and Bramante in its design and extends the building into a short nave with a wide façade and portico of dynamic projection. His proposal for the dome was much more elaborate of both structure and decoration than that of Bramante and included ribs on the exterior. Like Bramante, Sangallo proposed that the dome be surmounted by a lantern which he redesigned to a larger and much more elaborate form.[42] Sangallo's main practical contribution was to strengthen Bramante's piers which had begun to crack.[25]
+
+On 1 January 1547 in the reign of Pope Paul III, Michelangelo, then in his seventies, succeeded Sangallo the Younger as "Capomaestro", the superintendent of the building program at St Peter's.[43] He is to be regarded as the principal designer of a large part of the building as it stands today, and as bringing the construction to a point where it could be carried through. He did not take on the job with pleasure; it was forced upon him by Pope Paul, frustrated at the death of his chosen candidate, Giulio Romano and the refusal of Jacopo Sansovino to leave Venice. Michelangelo wrote "I undertake this only for the love of God and in honour of the Apostle." He insisted that he should be given a free hand to achieve the ultimate aim by whatever means he saw fit.[25]
+
+Michelangelo took over a building site at which four piers, enormous beyond any constructed since ancient Roman times, were rising behind the remaining nave of the old basilica. He also inherited the numerous schemes designed and redesigned by some of the greatest architectural and engineering minds of the 16th century. There were certain common elements in these schemes. They all called for a dome to equal that engineered by Brunelleschi a century earlier and which has since dominated the skyline of Renaissance Florence, and they all called for a strongly symmetrical plan of either Greek Cross form, like the iconic St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, or of a Latin Cross with the transepts of identical form to the chancel, as at Florence Cathedral.
+
+Even though the work had progressed only a little in 40 years, Michelangelo did not simply dismiss the ideas of the previous architects. He drew on them in developing a grand vision. Above all, Michelangelo recognized the essential quality of Bramante's original design. He reverted to the Greek Cross and, as Helen Gardner expresses it: "Without destroying the centralising features of Bramante's plan, Michelangelo, with a few strokes of the pen converted its snowflake complexity into massive, cohesive unity."[44]
+
+As it stands today, St. Peter's has been extended with a nave by Carlo Maderno. It is the chancel end (the ecclesiastical "Eastern end") with its huge centrally placed dome that is the work of Michelangelo. Because of its location within the Vatican State and because the projection of the nave screens the dome from sight when the building is approached from the square in front of it, the work of Michelangelo is best appreciated from a distance. What becomes apparent is that the architect has greatly reduced the clearly defined geometric forms of Bramante's plan of a square with square projections, and also of Raphael's plan of a square with semi-circular projections.[45] Michelangelo has blurred the definition of the geometry by making the external masonry of massive proportions and filling in every corner with a small vestry or stairwell. The effect created is of a continuous wall-surface that is folded or fractured at different angles, but lacks the right-angles which usually define change of direction at the corners of a building. This exterior is surrounded by a giant order of Corinthian pilasters all set at slightly different angles to each other, in keeping with the ever-changing angles of the wall's surface. Above them the huge cornice ripples in a continuous band, giving the appearance of keeping the whole building in a state of compression.[46]
+
+The dome of St. Peter's rises to a total height of 136.57 metres (448.1 ft) from the floor of the basilica to the top of the external cross. It is the tallest dome in the world.[47] Its internal diameter is 41.47 metres (136.1 ft), slightly smaller than two of the three other huge domes that preceded it, those of the Pantheon of Ancient Rome, 43.3 metres (142 ft), and Florence Cathedral of the Early Renaissance, 44 metres (144 ft). It has a greater diameter by approximately 30 feet (9.1 m) than Constantinople's Hagia Sophia church, completed in 537. It was to the domes of the Pantheon and Florence duomo that the architects of St. Peter's looked for solutions as to how to go about building what was conceived, from the outset, as the greatest dome of Christendom.
+
+The dome of the Pantheon stands on a circular wall with no entrances or windows except a single door. The whole building is as high as it is wide. Its dome is constructed in a single shell of concrete, made light by the inclusion of a large amount of the volcanic stones tuff and pumice. The inner surface of the dome is deeply coffered which has the effect of creating both vertical and horizontal ribs, while lightening the overall load. At the summit is an ocular opening 8 metres (26 ft) across which provides light to the interior.[8]
+
+Bramante's plan for the dome of St. Peter's (1506) follows that of the Pantheon very closely, and like that of the Pantheon, was designed to be constructed in Tufa Concrete for which he had rediscovered a formula. With the exception of the lantern that surmounts it, the profile is very similar, except that in this case the supporting wall becomes a drum raised high above ground level on four massive piers. The solid wall, as used at the Pantheon, is lightened at St. Peter's by Bramante piercing it with windows and encircling it with a peristyle.
+
+In the case of Florence Cathedral, the desired visual appearance of the pointed dome existed for many years before Brunelleschi made its construction feasible.[48] Its double-shell construction of bricks locked together in herringbone pattern (re-introduced from Byzantine architecture), and the gentle upward slope of its eight stone ribs made it possible for the construction to take place without the massive wooden formwork necessary to construct hemispherical arches. While its appearance, with the exception of the details of the lantern, is entirely Gothic, its engineering was highly innovative, and the product of a mind that had studied the huge vaults and remaining dome of Ancient Rome.[37]
+
+Sangallo's plan (1513), of which a large wooden model still exists, looks to both these predecessors. He realized the value of both the coffering at the Pantheon and the outer stone ribs at Florence Cathedral. He strengthened and extended the peristyle of Bramante into a series of arched and ordered openings around the base, with a second such arcade set back in a tier above the first. In his hands, the rather delicate form of the lantern, based closely on that in Florence, became a massive structure, surrounded by a projecting base, a peristyle and surmounted by a spire of conic form.[42] According to James Lees-Milne the design was "too eclectic, too pernickety and too tasteless to have been a success".[25]
+
+Michelangelo redesigned the dome in 1547, taking into account all that had gone before. His dome, like that of Florence, is constructed of two shells of brick, the outer one having 16 stone ribs, twice the number at Florence but far fewer than in Sangallo's design. As with the designs of Bramante and Sangallo, the dome is raised from the piers on a drum. The encircling peristyle of Bramante and the arcade of Sangallo are reduced to 16 pairs of Corinthian columns, each of 15 metres (49 ft) high which stand proud of the building, connected by an arch. Visually they appear to buttress each of the ribs, but structurally they are probably quite redundant. The reason for this is that the dome is ovoid in shape, rising steeply as does the dome of Florence Cathedral, and therefore exerting less outward thrust than does a hemispherical dome, such as that of the Pantheon, which, although it is not buttressed, is countered by the downward thrust of heavy masonry which extends above the circling wall.[8][25]
+
+The ovoid profile of the dome has been the subject of much speculation and scholarship over the past century. Michelangelo died in 1564, leaving the drum of the dome complete, and Bramante's piers much bulkier than originally designed, each 18 metres (59 ft) across. Following his death, the work continued under his assistant Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola with Giorgio Vasari appointed by Pope Pius V as a watchdog to make sure that Michelangelo's plans were carried out exactly. Despite Vignola's knowledge of Michelangelo's intentions, little happened in this period. In 1585 the energetic Pope Sixtus appointed Giacomo della Porta who was to be assisted by Domenico Fontana. The five-year reign of Sixtus was to see the building advance at a great rate.[25]
+
+Michelangelo left a few drawings, including an early drawing of the dome, and some details. There were also detailed engravings published in 1569 by Stefan du Pérac who claimed that they were the master's final solution. Michelangelo, like Sangallo before him, also left a large wooden model. Giacomo della Porta subsequently altered this model in several ways. The major change restored an earlier design, in which the outer dome appears to rise above, rather than rest directly on the base.[50] Most of the other changes were of a cosmetic nature, such as the adding of lion's masks over the swags on the drum in honour of Pope Sixtus and adding a circlet of finials around the spire at the top of the lantern, as proposed by Sangallo.[25]
+
+A drawing by Michelangelo indicates that his early intentions were towards an ovoid dome, rather than a hemispherical one.[44]  In an engraving in Galasso Alghisi' treatise (1563), the dome may be represented as ovoid, but the perspective is ambiguous.[51] Stefan du Pérac's engraving (1569) shows a hemispherical dome, but this was perhaps an inaccuracy of the engraver. The profile of the wooden model is more ovoid than that of the engravings, but less so than the finished product. It has been suggested that Michelangelo on his death bed reverted to the more pointed shape. However, Lees-Milne cites Giacomo della Porta as taking full responsibility for the change and as indicating to Pope Sixtus that Michelangelo was lacking in the scientific understanding of which he himself was capable.[25]
+
+Helen Gardner suggests that Michelangelo made the change to the hemispherical dome of lower profile in order to establish a balance between the dynamic vertical elements of the encircling giant order of pilasters and a more static and reposeful dome. Gardner also comments, "The sculpturing of architecture [by Michelangelo] ... here extends itself up from the ground through the attic stories and moves on into the drum and dome, the whole building being pulled together into a unity from base to summit."[44]
+
+It is this sense of the building being sculptured, unified and "pulled together" by the encircling band of the deep cornice that led Eneide Mignacca to conclude that the ovoid profile, seen now in the end product, was an essential part of Michelangelo's first (and last) concept. The sculptor/architect has, figuratively speaking, taken all the previous designs in hand and compressed their contours as if the building were a lump of clay. The dome must appear to thrust upwards because of the apparent pressure created by flattening the building's angles and restraining its projections.[46] If this explanation is the correct one, then the profile of the dome is not merely a structural solution, as perceived by Giacomo della Porta; it is part of the integrated design solution that is about visual tension and compression. In one sense, Michelangelo's dome may appear to look backward to the Gothic profile of Florence Cathedral and ignore the Classicism of the Renaissance, but on the other hand, perhaps more than any other building of the 16th century, it prefigures the architecture of the Baroque.[46]
+
+Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana brought the dome to completion in 1590, the last year of the reign of Sixtus V. His successor, Gregory XIV, saw Fontana complete the lantern and had an inscription to the honour of Sixtus V placed around its inner opening. The next pope, Clement VIII, had the cross raised into place, an event which took all day, and was accompanied by the ringing of the bells of all the city's churches. In the arms of the cross are set two lead caskets, one containing a fragment of the True Cross and a relic of St. Andrew and the other containing medallions of the Holy Lamb.[25]
+
+In the mid-18th century, cracks appeared in the dome, so four iron chains were installed between the two shells to bind it, like the rings that keep a barrel from bursting. As many as ten chains have been installed at various times, the earliest possibly planned by Michelangelo himself as a precaution, as Brunelleschi did at Florence Cathedral.
+
+Around the inside of the dome is written, in letters 1.4 metres (4.6 ft) high:
+
+TV ES PETRVS ET SVPER HANC PETRAM AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM. TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI CAELORVM("... you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. ... I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven ..." Vulgate, Matthew 16:18–19.)
+
+Beneath the lantern is the inscription:
+
+S. PETRI GLORIAE SIXTVS PP. V. A. M. D. XC. PONTIF. V.(To the glory of St Peter; Sixtus V, pope, in the year 1590, the fifth of his pontificate.)
+
+On 7 December 2007, a fragment of a red chalk drawing of a section of the dome of the basilica, almost certainly by the hand of Michelangelo, was discovered in the Vatican archives.[52] The drawing shows a small precisely drafted section of the plan of the entablature above two of the radial columns of the cupola drum. Michelangelo is known to have destroyed thousands of his drawings before his death.[53] The rare survival of this example is probably due to its fragmentary state and the fact that detailed mathematical calculations had been made over the top of the drawing.[52]
+
+On 18 February 1606, under Pope Paul V, the dismantling of the remaining parts of the Constantinian basilica began.[25] The marble cross that had been set at the top of the pediment by Pope Sylvester and Constantine the Great was lowered to the ground. The timbers were salvaged for the roof of the Borghese Palace and two rare black marble columns, the largest of their kind, were carefully stored and later used in the narthex. The tombs of various popes were opened, treasures removed and plans made for re-interment in the new basilica.[25]
+
+The Pope had appointed Carlo Maderno in 1602. He was a nephew of Domenico Fontana and had demonstrated himself as a dynamic architect. Maderno's idea was to ring Michelangelo's building with chapels, but the Pope was hesitant about deviating from the master's plan, even though he had been dead for forty years. The Fabbrica or building committee, a group drawn from various nationalities and generally despised by the Curia who viewed the basilica as belonging to Rome rather than Christendom, were in a quandary as to how the building should proceed. One of the matters that influenced their thinking was the Counter-Reformation which increasingly associated a Greek Cross plan with paganism and saw the Latin Cross as truly symbolic of Christianity.[25] The central plan also did not have a "dominant orientation toward the east."[54]
+
+Another influence on the thinking of both the Fabbrica and the Curia was a certain guilt at the demolition of the ancient building. The ground on which it and its various associated chapels, vestries and sacristies had stood for so long was hallowed. The only solution was to build a nave that encompassed the whole space. In 1607 a committee of ten architects was called together, and a decision was made to extend Michelangelo's building into a nave. Maderno's plans for both the nave and the facade were accepted. The building began on 7 May 1607, and proceeded at a great rate, with an army of 700 labourers being employed. The following year, the façade was begun, in December 1614 the final touches were added to the stucco decoration of the vault and early in 1615 the partition wall between the two sections was pulled down. All the rubble was carted away, and the nave was ready for use by Palm Sunday.[25]
+
+The facade designed by Maderno, is 114.69 metres (376.3 ft) wide and 45.55 metres (149.4 ft) high and is built of travertine stone, with a giant order of Corinthian columns and a central pediment rising in front of a tall attic surmounted by thirteen statues: Christ flanked by eleven of the Apostles (except Saint Peter, whose statue is left of the stairs) and John the Baptist.
+[55]
+The inscription below the cornice on the 1 metre (3.3 ft) tall frieze reads:
+
+IN HONOREM PRINCIPIS APOST PAVLVS V BVRGHESIVS ROMANVS PONT MAX AN MDCXII PONT VII(In honour of the Prince of Apostles, Paul V Borghese, a Roman, Supreme Pontiff, in the year 1612, the seventh of his pontificate)
+
+(Paul V (Camillo Borghese), born in Rome but of a Sienese family, liked to emphasize his "Romanness.")
+
+The facade is often cited as the least satisfactory part of the design of St. Peter's. The reasons for this, according to James Lees-Milne, are that it was not given enough consideration by the Pope and committee because of the desire to get the building completed quickly, coupled with the fact that Maderno was hesitant to deviate from the pattern set by Michelangelo at the other end of the building. Lees-Milne describes the problems of the façade as being too broad for its height, too cramped in its details and too heavy in the attic story. The breadth is caused by modifying the plan to have towers on either side. These towers were never executed above the line of the facade because it was discovered that the ground was not sufficiently stable to bear the weight. One effect of the facade and lengthened nave is to screen the view of the dome, so that the building, from the front, has no vertical feature, except from a distance.[25]
+
+Behind the façade of St. Peter's stretches a long portico or "narthex" such as was occasionally found in Italian churches. This is the part of Maderno's design with which he was most satisfied. Its long barrel vault is decorated with ornate stucco and gilt, and successfully illuminated by small windows between pendentives, while the ornate marble floor is beamed with light reflected in from the piazza. At each end of the narthex is a theatrical space framed by ionic columns and within each is set a statue, an equestrian figure of Charlemagne (18th century) by Cornacchini in the south end and The Vision of Constantine (1670) by Bernini in the north end.
+
+Five portals, of which three are framed by huge salvaged antique columns, lead into the basilica. The central portal has a bronze door created by Antonio Averulino c. 1440 for the old basilica[56] and somewhat enlarged to fit the new space.
+
+To the single bay of Michelangelo's Greek Cross, Maderno added a further three bays. He made the dimensions slightly different from Michelangelo's bay, thus defining where the two architectural works meet. Maderno also tilted the axis of the nave slightly. This was not by accident, as suggested by his critics. An ancient Egyptian obelisk had been erected in the square outside, but had not been quite aligned with Michelangelo's building, so Maderno compensated, in order that it should, at least, align with the Basilica's façade.[25]
+
+The nave has huge paired pilasters, in keeping with Michelangelo's work. The size of the interior is so "stupendously large" that it is hard to get a sense of scale within the building.[25][57] The four cherubs who flutter against the first piers of the nave, carrying between them two holy water basins, appear of quite normal cherubic size, until approached. Then it becomes apparent that each one is over 2 metres high and that real children cannot reach the basins unless they scramble up the marble draperies. The aisles each have two smaller chapels and a larger rectangular chapel, the Chapel of the Sacrament and the Choir Chapel. These are lavishly decorated with marble, stucco, gilt, sculpture and mosaic. Remarkably, all of the large altarpieces, with the exception of the Holy Trinity by Pietro da Cortona in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, have been reproduced in mosaic.  Two precious paintings from the old basilica, Our Lady of Perpetual Help and Our Lady of the Column are still being used as altarpieces.
+
+Maderno's last work at St. Peter's was to design a crypt-like space or "Confessio" under the dome, where the cardinals and other privileged persons could descend in order to be nearer to the burial place of the apostle. Its marble steps are remnants of the old basilica and around its balustrade are 95 bronze lamps.
+
+The design of St. Peter's Basilica, and in particular its dome, has greatly influenced church architecture in Western Christendom. Within Rome, the huge domed church of Sant'Andrea della Valle was designed by Giacomo della Porta before the completion of St Peter's Basilica, and subsequently worked on by Carlo Maderno. This was followed by the domes of San Carlo ai Catinari, Sant'Agnese in Agone, and many others. Christopher Wren's dome at St Paul's Cathedral (London, England), the domes of Karlskirche (Vienna, Austria), St. Nicholas Church (Prague, Czech Republic), and the Pantheon (Paris, France) all pay homage to St Peter's Basilica.
+
+The 19th and early-20th-century architectural revivals brought about the building of a great number of churches that imitate elements of St Peter's to a greater or lesser degree, including St. Mary of the Angels in Chicago, St. Josaphat's Basilica in Milwaukee, Immaculate Heart of Mary in Pittsburgh and Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral in Montreal, which replicates many aspects of St Peter's on a smaller scale. Post-Modernism has seen free adaptations of St Peter's in the Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń, and the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro.
+
+As a young boy Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) visited St. Peter's with the painter Annibale Carracci and stated his wish to build "a mighty throne for the apostle". His wish came true. As a young man, in 1626, he received the patronage of Pope Urban VIII and worked on the embellishment of the Basilica for 50 years. Appointed as Maderno's successor in 1629, he was to become regarded as the greatest architect and sculptor of the Baroque period. Bernini's works at St. Peter's include the baldachin (baldaquin, from Italian: baldacchino), the Chapel of the Sacrament, the plan for the niches and loggias in the piers of the dome and the chair of St. Peter.[25][44]
+
+Bernini's first work at St. Peter's was to design the baldacchino, a pavilion-like structure 28.74 metres (94.3 ft) tall and claimed to be the largest piece of bronze in the world, which stands beneath the dome and above the altar. Its design is based on the ciborium, of which there are many in the churches of Rome, serving to create a sort of holy space above and around the table on which the Sacrament is laid for the Eucharist and emphasizing the significance of this ritual. These ciboria are generally of white marble, with inlaid coloured stone. Bernini's concept was for something very different. He took his inspiration in part from the baldachin or canopy carried above the head of the pope in processions, and in part from eight ancient columns that had formed part of a screen in the old basilica. Their twisted barley-sugar shape had a special significance as they were modelled on those of the Temple of Jerusalem and donated by the Emperor Constantine. Based on these columns, Bernini created four huge columns of bronze, twisted and decorated with laurel leaves and bees, which were the emblem of Pope Urban.
+
+The baldacchino is surmounted not with an architectural pediment, like most baldacchini, but with curved Baroque brackets supporting a draped canopy, like the brocade canopies carried in processions above precious iconic images. In this case, the draped canopy is of bronze, and all the details, including the olive leaves, bees, and the portrait heads of Urban's niece in childbirth and her newborn son, are picked out in gold leaf. The baldacchino stands as a vast free-standing sculptural object, central to and framed by the largest space within the building. It is so large that the visual effect is to create a link between the enormous dome which appears to float above it, and the congregation at floor level of the basilica. It is penetrated visually from every direction, and is visually linked to the Cathedra Petri in the apse behind it and to the four piers containing large statues that are at each diagonal.[25][44]
+
+As part of the scheme for the central space of the church, Bernini had the huge piers, begun by Bramante and completed by Michelangelo, hollowed out into niches, and had staircases made inside them, leading to four balconies. There was much dismay from those who thought that the dome might fall, but it did not. On the balconies Bernini created showcases, framed by the eight ancient twisted columns, to display the four most precious relics of the basilica: the spear of Longinus, said to have pierced the side of Christ, the veil of Veronica, with the miraculous image of the face of Christ, a fragment of the True Cross discovered in Jerusalem by Constantine's mother, Helena, and a relic of Saint Andrew, the brother of Saint Peter. In each of the niches that surround the central space of the basilica was placed a huge statue of the saint associated with the relic above. Only Saint Longinus is the work of Bernini.[25] (See below)
+
+Urban had long been a critic of Bernini's predecessor, Carlo Maderno. His disapproval of the architect's work stemmed largely from the Maderno's design for the longitudinal nave of St. Peters, which was widely condemned for obscuring Michelangelo's dome. When the Pope gave the commission to Bernini he therefore requested that a new design for the facade's bell towers to be submitted for consideration. Baldinucci describes Bernini's tower as consisting of "two orders of columns and pilasters, the first order being Corinthian" and "a third or attic story formed of pilasters and two columns on either side of the open archway in the center".
+
+Urban desired the towers to be completed by a very specific date: 29 June 1641, the feast day dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. To this end an order was issued which stated that "all work should take a second seat to that of the campanile." The south tower was completed on time even in spite of these issues, but records show that in the wake of the unveiling the Pope was not content with what he saw and he ordered the top level of Bernini's tower removed so that the structure could be made even grander. The tower continued to grow, and as the construction began to settle, the first cracks started to appear followed by Urban's infamous public admonishment of his architect.
+
+In 1642 all work on both towers came to a halt. Bernini had to pay the cost for the demolition; eventually the idea of completing the bell towers was abandoned.
+
+Bernini then turned his attention to another precious relic, the so-called Cathedra Petri or "throne of St. Peter" a chair which was often claimed to have been used by the apostle, but appears to date from the 12th century. As the chair itself was fast deteriorating and was no longer serviceable, Pope Alexander VII determined to enshrine it in suitable splendor as the object upon which the line of successors to Peter was based. Bernini created a large bronze throne in which it was housed, raised high on four looping supports held effortlessly by massive bronze statues of four Doctors of the Church, Saints Ambrose and Augustine representing the Latin Church and Athanasius and John Chrysostom, the Greek Church. The four figures are dynamic with sweeping robes and expressions of adoration and ecstasy. Behind and above the cathedra, a blaze of light comes in through a window of yellow alabaster, illuminating, at its centre, the Dove of the Holy Spirit. The elderly painter, Andrea Sacchi, had urged Bernini to make the figures large, so that they would be seen well from the central portal of the nave. The chair was enshrined in its new home with great celebration of 16 January 1666.[25][44]
+
+Bernini's final work for St. Peter's, undertaken in 1676, was the decoration of the Chapel of the Sacrament.[58] To hold the sacramental Host, he designed a miniature version in gilt bronze of Bramante's Tempietto, the little chapel that marks the place of the death of St. Peter. On either side is an angel, one gazing in rapt adoration and the other looking towards the viewer in welcome. Bernini died in 1680 in his 82nd year.[25]
+
+To the east of the basilica is the Piazza di San Pietro, (St. Peter's Square). The present arrangement, constructed between 1656 and 1667, is the Baroque inspiration of Bernini who inherited a location already occupied by an Egyptian obelisk which was centrally placed, (with some contrivance) to Maderno's facade.[59] The obelisk, known as "The Witness", at 25.31 metres (83.0 ft) and a total height, including base and the cross on top, of 40 metres (130 ft), is the second largest standing obelisk, and the only one to remain standing since its removal from Egypt and re-erection at the Circus of Nero in 37 AD, where it is thought to have stood witness to the crucifixion of Saint Peter.[60] Its removal to its present location by order of Pope Sixtus V and engineered by Domenico Fontana on 28 September 1586, was an operation fraught with difficulties and nearly ending in disaster when the ropes holding the obelisk began to smoke from the friction. Fortunately this problem was noticed by Benedetto Bresca, a sailor of Sanremo, and for his swift intervention, his town was granted the privilege of providing the palms that are used at the basilica each Palm Sunday.[25]
+
+The other object in the old square with which Bernini had to contend was a large fountain designed by Maderno in 1613 and set to one side of the obelisk, making a line parallel with the facade. Bernini's plan uses this horizontal axis as a major feature of his unique, spatially dynamic and highly symbolic design. The most obvious solutions were either a rectangular piazza of vast proportions so that the obelisk stood centrally and the fountain (and a matching companion) could be included, or a trapezoid piazza which fanned out from the facade of the basilica like that in front of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. The problems of the square plan are that the necessary width to include the fountain would entail the demolition of numerous buildings, including some of the Vatican, and would minimize the effect of the facade. The trapezoid plan, on the other hand, would maximize the apparent width of the facade, which was already perceived as a fault of the design.[44]
+
+Bernini's ingenious solution was to create a piazza in two sections. That part which is nearest the basilica is trapezoid, but rather than fanning out from the facade, it narrows. This gives the effect of countering the visual perspective. It means that from the second part of the piazza, the building looks nearer than it is, the breadth of the facade is minimized and its height appears greater in proportion to its width. The second section of the piazza is a huge elliptical circus which gently slopes downwards to the obelisk at its centre. The two distinct areas are framed by a colonnade formed by doubled pairs of columns supporting an entablature of the simple Tuscan Order.
+
+The part of the colonnade that is around the ellipse does not entirely encircle it, but reaches out in two arcs, symbolic of the arms of "the Catholic Church reaching out to welcome its communicants".[44]  The obelisk and Maderno's fountain mark the widest axis of the ellipse. Bernini balanced the scheme with another fountain in 1675. The approach to the square used to be through a jumble of old buildings, which added an element of surprise to the vista that opened up upon passing through the colonnade. Nowadays a long wide street, the Via della Conciliazione, built by Mussolini after the conclusion of the Lateran Treaties, leads from the River Tiber to the piazza and gives distant views of St. Peter's as the visitor approaches, with the basilica acting as a terminating vista.[25]
+
+Bernini's transformation of the site is entirely Baroque in concept. Where Bramante and Michelangelo conceived a building that stood in "self-sufficient isolation", Bernini made the whole complex "expansively relate to its environment".[44] Banister Fletcher says "No other city has afforded such a wide-swept approach to its cathedral church, no other architect could have conceived a design of greater nobility ... (it is) the greatest of all atriums before the greatest of all churches of Christendom."[8]
+
+The top of the facade of St. Peter's Basilica has two clocks and several sculptures. The clocks were created to replace Bernini's bell towers which had to be torn down due to insufficient support. The left clock shows Rome time, the one of the right shows European mean time. The statues are Christ the Redeemer, St. John the Baptist and 11 Apostles. From the left: St. Thadeus, St. Matthew, St. Philip, St. Thomas, St. James the Greater, St. John the Baptist, The Redeemer, St. Andrew, St. John the Evangelist, St. James the Lesser, St. Bartholomew, St. Simeon, and St. Matthias. Above the Roman clock is the coat of arms for the city-state of Vatican City since 1931 held by two angels. The European mean time clock only shows an hour hand and it is about half an hour behind the rome time. The European mean time also be an attempt to keep the Devil guessing about "the day and the hour."
+
+The Basilica has 6 bells, placed in the room under the Roman clock, only 3 of them are visible from ground level while the rest are hidden behind the bourdon. They range from the smallest which is 260 kg to the massive bourdon that approximately weighs 9 tonnes. From 1931, the bells are operated electrically, thus permitting even the largest bell to be tolled from a distance. The oldest bell Rota dates from 1288 and the bourdon called Campanone is rung at Christmas and Easter, on the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, and every time the Pope imparts the "Urbi et Orbi" blessing to the city and to the world. Campanone also announces the election of a new pope.
+
+There are over 100 tombs within St. Peter's Basilica (extant to various extents), many located beneath the Basilica. These include 91 popes, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, and the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Exiled Catholic British royalty James Francis Edward Stuart and his two sons, Charles Edward Stuart and Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Bishop of Frascati, are buried here, having been granted asylum by Pope Clement XI. Also buried here are Maria Clementina Sobieska, wife of James Francis Edward Stuart, Queen Christina of Sweden, who abdicated her throne in order to convert to Catholicism, and Countess Matilda of Tuscany, supporter of the Papacy during the Investiture Controversy. The most recent interment was Pope John Paul II, on 8 April 2005. Beneath, near the crypt, is the recently discovered vaulted 4th-century "Tomb of the Julii". (See below for some descriptions of tombs).
+
+Recently installed commemorative plaques read above the door as follows:
+
+PAVLVS VI PONT MAX HVIVS PATRIARCALIS VATICANAE BASILICAE PORTAM SANCTAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO IVBILAEI MCMLXXVPaul VI, Pontifex Maximus, opened and closed the holy door of this patriarchal Vatican basilica in the jubilee year of 1975.
+
+IOANNES PAVLVS II P.M. PORTAM SANCTAM ANNO IVBILAEI MCMLXXVI A PAVLO PP VI RESERVATAM ET CLAVSAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO IVB HVMANE REDEMP MCMLXXXIII–MCMLXXXIVJohn Paul II, Pontifex Maximus, opened and closed again the holy door closed and set apart by Pope Paul VI in 1976 in the jubilee year of human redemption 1983–1984.
+
+IOANNES PAVLVS II P.M. ITERVM PORTAM SANCTAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO MAGNI IVBILAEI AB INCARNATIONE DOMINI MM–MMIJohn Paul II, Pontifex Maximus, again opened and closed the holy door in the year of the great jubilee, from the incarnation of the Lord 2000–2001.
+
+FRANCISCVS PP. PORTAM SANCTAM ANNO MAGNI IVB MM–MMI A IOANNE PAVLO PP. II RESERVATAM ET CLAVSAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO IVB MISERICORDIAE MMXV–MMXVIPope Francis opened and closed again the holy door, closed and set apart by Pope John Paul II in the year of the great jubilee 2000–2001, in the jubilee year of Mercy 2015–2016.
+
+Older commemorative plaques are removed to make way for the new plaque when the holy door is opened and sealed.
+
+Saint Helenaby Andrea Bolgi
+
+Saint Longinusby Bernini
+
+Saint Andrewby Francois Duquesnoy
+
+Saint Veronicaby Francesco Mochi
+
+The Holy Door is opened only for great celebrations.
+
+The tomb of Alexander VII, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1671–1678.[62]
+
+The bronze statue of Saint Peter holding the keys of heaven, attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio.
+
+The Pietà  by Michelangelo, 1498–99, is in the north aisle.
+
+List of archpriests of the Vatican Basilica:[63]

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+The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican (Italian: Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano), or simply Saint Peter's Basilica (Latin: Basilica Sancti Petri), is a church built in the Renaissance style located in Vatican City, the papal enclave which is within the city of Rome.
+
+Designed principally by Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Carlo Maderno and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, St. Peter's is the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture[2] and the largest church in the world.[3] While it is neither the mother church of the Catholic Church nor the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome (these equivalent titles being held by the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome), St. Peter's is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic shrines. It has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world"[4] and as "the greatest of all churches of Christendom".[2][5]
+
+Catholic tradition holds that the basilica is the burial site of Saint Peter, chief among Jesus's apostles and also the first Bishop of Rome (Pope). Saint Peter's tomb is supposedly directly below the high altar of the basilica. For this reason, many popes have been interred at St. Peter's since the Early Christian period. A church has stood on this site since the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. Old St. Peter's Basilica dates from the 4th century AD. Construction of the present basilica began on 18 April 1506 and was completed on 18 November 1626.[6]
+
+St. Peter's is famous as a place of pilgrimage and for its liturgical functions. The pope presides at a number of liturgies throughout the year both within the basilica or the adjoining St. Peter's Square; these liturgies draw audiences numbering from 15,000 to over 80,000 people.[7] St. Peter's has many historical associations, with the Early Christian Church, the Papacy, the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-reformation and numerous artists, especially Michelangelo. As a work of architecture, it is regarded as the greatest building of its age.[8] St. Peter's is one of the four churches in the world that hold the rank of major basilica, all four of which are in Rome. Contrary to popular misconception, it is not a cathedral because it is not the seat of a bishop; the cathedra of the pope as Bishop of Rome is at Saint John Lateran.[9]
+
+St. Peter's is a church built in the Renaissance style located in the Vatican City west of the River Tiber and near the Janiculum Hill and Hadrian's Mausoleum. Its central dome dominates the skyline of Rome. The basilica is approached via St. Peter's Square, a forecourt in two sections, both surrounded by tall colonnades. The first space is oval and the second trapezoidal. The façade of the basilica, with a giant order of columns, stretches across the end of the square and is approached by steps on which stand two 5.55 metres (18.2 ft) statues of the 1st-century apostles to Rome, Saints Peter and Paul.[10][11]
+
+The basilica is cruciform in shape, with an elongated nave in the Latin cross form but the early designs were for a centrally planned structure and this is still in evidence in the architecture. The central space is dominated both externally and internally by one of the largest domes in the world. The entrance is through a narthex, or entrance hall, which stretches across the building. One of the decorated bronze doors leading from the narthex is the Holy Door, only opened during jubilees.[10]
+
+The interior dimensions are vast when compared to other churches.[6] One author wrote: "Only gradually does it dawn upon us – as we watch people draw near to this or that monument, strangely they appear to shrink; they are, of course, dwarfed by the scale of everything in the building. This in its turn overwhelms us."[12]
+
+The nave which leads to the central dome is in three bays, with piers supporting a barrel-vault, the highest of any church. The nave is framed by wide aisles which have a number of chapels off them. There are also chapels surrounding the dome. Moving around the basilica in a clockwise direction they are: The Baptistery, the Chapel of the Presentation of the Virgin, the larger Choir Chapel, the altar of the Transfiguration, the Clementine Chapel with the altar of Saint Gregory, the Sacristy Entrance, the Altar of the Lie, the left transept with altars to the Crucifixion of Saint Peter, Saint Joseph and Saint Thomas, the altar of the Sacred Heart, the Chapel of the Madonna of Column, the altar of Saint Peter and the Paralytic, the apse with the Chair of Saint Peter, the altar of Saint Peter raising Tabitha, the altar of St. Petronilla, the altar of the Archangel Michael, the altar of the Navicella, the right transept with altars of Saint Erasmus, Saints Processo and Martiniano, and Saint Wenceslas, the altar of St. Jerome, the altar of Saint Basil, the Gregorian Chapel with the altar of the Madonna of Succour, the larger Chapel of the Holy Sacrament, the Chapel of Saint Sebastian and the Chapel of the Pietà.[10] The Monuments, in a clockwise direction, are to: Maria Clementina Sobieski, The Stuarts, Benedict XV, John XXIII, St. Pius X, Innocent VIII, Leo XI, Innocent XI, Pius VII, Pius VIII, Alexander VII, Alexander VIII, Paul III, Urban VIII, Clement X, Clement XIII, Benedict XIV, St Peter (Bronze Statue), Gregory XVI, Gregory XIV, Gregory XIII, Matilda of Canossa, Innocent XII, Pius XII, Pius XI, Christina of Sweden, Leo XII.  
+At the heart of the basilica, beneath the high altar, is the Confessio or Chapel of the Confession, in reference to the confession of faith by St. Peter, which led to his martyrdom. Two curving marble staircases lead to this underground chapel at the level of the Constantinian church and immediately above the purported burial place of Saint Peter.
+
+The entire interior of St. Peter's is lavishly decorated with marble, reliefs, architectural sculpture and gilding. The basilica contains a large number of tombs of popes and other notable people, many of which are considered outstanding artworks. There are also a number of sculptures in niches and chapels, including Michelangelo's Pietà. The central feature is a baldachin, or canopy over the Papal Altar, designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini. The apse culminates in a sculptural ensemble, also by Bernini, and containing the symbolic Chair of Saint Peter.
+
+One observer wrote: "St Peter's Basilica is the reason why Rome is still the center of the civilized world. For religious, historical, and architectural reasons it by itself justifies a journey to Rome, and its interior offers a palimpsest of artistic styles at their best ..."[13]
+
+The American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson described St. Peter's as "an ornament of the earth ... the sublime of the beautiful."[14]
+
+St. Peter's Basilica is one of the papal basilicas (previously styled "patriarchal basilicas")[15] and one of the four Major Basilicas of Rome, the other Major Basilicas (all of which are also Papal Basilicas) being the Basilicas of St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul outside the Walls. The rank of major basilica confers on St. Peter's Basilica precedence before all minor basilicas worldwide. However, unlike all the other Papal Major Basilicas, it is wholly within the territory, and thus the sovereign jurisdiction, of the Vatican City State, and not that of Italy.[16] This is in contrast to the other three Papal Major Basilicas, which are within Italian territory and not the territory of the Vatican City State. (Lateran Treaty of 1929, Article 15 (Ibidem)) However, the Holy See fully owns these three basilicas, and Italy is legally obligated to recognize its full ownership thereof (Lateran Treaty of 1929, Article 13 (Ibidem)) and to concede to all of them "the immunity granted by International Law to the headquarters of the diplomatic agents of foreign States" (Lateran Treaty of 1929, Article 15 (Ibidem)).
+
+It is the most prominent building in the Vatican City. Its dome is a dominant feature of the skyline of Rome. Probably the largest church in Christendom,[3] it covers an area of 2.3 hectares (5.7 acres). One of the holiest sites of Christianity and Catholic Tradition, it is traditionally the burial site of its titular, St. Peter, who was the head of the twelve Apostles of Jesus and, according to tradition, the first Bishop of Antioch and later the first Bishop of Rome, rendering him the first Pope. Although the New Testament does not mention St. Peter's martyrdom in Rome, tradition, based on the writings of the Fathers of the Church,[clarification needed] holds that his tomb is below the baldachin and altar of the Basilica in the "Confession". For this reason, many Popes have, from the early years of the Church, been buried near Pope St. Peter in the necropolis beneath the Basilica. Construction of the current basilica, over the old Constantinian basilica, began on 18 April 1506 and finished in 1615. At length, on 18 November 1626 Pope Urban VIII solemnly dedicated the Basilica.[6]
+
+St. Peter's Basilica is neither the Pope's official seat nor first in rank among the Major Basilicas of Rome. This honour is held by the Pope's cathedral, the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran which is the mother church of all churches in communion with the Catholic Church. However, St. Peter's is certainly the Pope's principal church in terms of use because most Papal liturgies and ceremonies take place there due to its size, proximity to the Papal residence, and location within the Vatican City proper. The "Chair of Saint Peter", or cathedra, an ancient chair sometimes presumed to have been used by St. Peter himself, but which was a gift from Charles the Bald and used by many popes, symbolizes the continuing line of apostolic succession from St. Peter to the reigning Pope. It occupies an elevated position in the apse of the Basilica, supported symbolically by the Doctors of the Church and enlightened symbolically by the Holy Spirit.[17]
+
+As one of the constituent structures of the historically and architecturally significant Vatican City, St. Peter's Basilica was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984 under criteria (i), (ii), (iv), and (vi).[18] With an exterior area of 21,095 square metres (227,060 sq ft),[19] an interior area of 15,160 square metres (163,200 sq ft),[20][21] St. Peter's Basilica is the largest Christian church building in the world by the two latter metrics and the second largest by the first as of 2016[update]. The top of its dome, at 448.1 feet (136.6 m), also places it as the second tallest building in Rome as of 2016[update].[22] The dome's soaring height placed it among the tallest buildings of the Old World, and it continues to hold the title of tallest dome in the world. Though the largest dome in the world by diameter at the time of its completion, it no longer holds this distinction.[23]
+
+After the crucifixion of Jesus, it is recorded in the Biblical book of the Acts of the Apostles that one of his twelve disciples, Simon known as Saint Peter, a fisherman from Galilee, took a leadership position among Jesus' followers and was of great importance in the founding of the Christian Church. The name Peter is "Petrus" in Latin and "Petros" in Greek, deriving from "petra" which means "stone" or "rock" in Greek, and is the literal translation of the Aramaic "Kepa", the name given to Simon by Jesus. (John 1:42, and see Matthew 16:18)
+
+Catholic tradition holds that Peter, after a ministry of thirty-four years, travelled to Rome and met his martyrdom there along with Paul on 13 October 64 AD during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero. His execution was one of the many martyrdoms of Christians following the Great Fire of Rome. According to Origen, Peter was crucified head downwards, by his own request because he considered himself unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus.[24] The crucifixion took place near an ancient Egyptian obelisk in the Circus of Nero.[25]  The obelisk now stands in St. Peter's Square and is revered as a "witness" to Peter's death. It is one of several ancient Obelisks of Rome.[26]
+
+According to tradition, Peter's remains were buried just outside the Circus, on the Mons Vaticanus across the Via Cornelia from the Circus, less than 150 metres (490 ft) from his place of death. The Via Cornelia was a road which ran east-to-west along the north wall of the Circus on land now covered by the southern portions of the Basilica and St. Peter's Square. A shrine was built on this site some years later. Almost three hundred years later, Old St. Peter's Basilica was constructed over this site.[25]
+
+The area now covered by the Vatican City had been a cemetery for some years before the Circus of Nero was built. It was a burial ground for the numerous executions in the Circus and contained many Christian burials, because for many years after the burial of Saint Peter many Christians chose to be buried near Peter.
+
+In 1939, in the reign of Pope Pius XII, 10 years of archeological research began under the crypt of the basilica in an area inaccessible since the 9th century. The excavations revealed the remains of shrines of different periods at different levels, from Clement VIII (1594)  to Callixtus II (1123) and Gregory I (590–604), built over an aedicula containing fragments of bones that were folded in a tissue with gold decorations, tinted with the precious murex purple. Although it could not be determined with certainty that the bones were those of Peter, the rare vestments suggested a burial of great importance. On 23 December 1950, in his pre-Christmas radio broadcast to the world, Pope Pius XII announced the discovery of Saint Peter's tomb.[27]
+
+Old St. Peter's Basilica was the 4th-century church begun by the Emperor Constantine the Great between 319 and 333 AD.[28] It was of typical basilical form, a wide nave and two aisles on each side and an apsidal end, with the addition of a transept or bema, giving the building the shape of a tau cross. It was over 103.6 metres (340 ft) long, and the entrance was preceded by a large colonnaded atrium. This church had been built over the small shrine believed to mark the burial place of St. Peter, though the tomb was "smashed" in 846 AD.[29]  It contained a very large number of burials and memorials, including those of most of the popes from St. Peter to the 15th century. Like all of the earliest churches in Rome, both this church and its successor had the entrance to the east and the apse at the west end of the building.[30] Since the construction of the current basilica, the name Old St. Peter's Basilica has been used for its predecessor to distinguish the two buildings.[31]
+
+By the end of the 15th century, having been neglected during the period of the Avignon Papacy, the old basilica had fallen into disrepair. It appears that the first pope to consider rebuilding, or at least making radical changes was Pope Nicholas V (1447–55). He commissioned work on the old building from Leone Battista Alberti and Bernardo Rossellino and also had Rossellino design a plan for an entirely new basilica, or an extreme modification of the old. His reign was frustrated by political problems and when he died, little had been achieved.[25]  He had, however, ordered the demolition of the Colosseum and by the time of his death, 2,522 cartloads of stone had been transported for use in the new building.[25][32] The foundations were completed for a new transept and choir to form a domed Latin cross with the preserved nave and side aisles of the old basilica. Some walls for the choir had also been built.[33]
+
+Pope Julius II planned far more for St Peter's than Nicholas V's program of repair or modification. Julius was at that time planning his own tomb, which was to be designed and adorned with sculpture by Michelangelo and placed within St Peter's.[34]  In 1505 Julius made a decision to demolish the ancient basilica and replace it with a monumental structure to house his enormous tomb and "aggrandize himself in the popular imagination".[8]  A competition was held, and a number of the designs have survived at the Uffizi Gallery. A succession of popes and architects followed in the next 120 years, their combined efforts resulting in the present building. The scheme begun by Julius II continued through the reigns of Leo X (1513–1521), Hadrian VI (1522–1523). Clement VII (1523–1534), Paul III (1534–1549), Julius III (1550–1555), Marcellus II (1555), Paul IV (1555–1559), Pius IV (1559–1565), Pius V (saint) (1565–1572), Gregory XIII (1572–1585), Sixtus V (1585–1590), Urban VII (1590), Gregory XIV (1590–1591), Innocent IX (1591), Clement VIII (1592–1605), Leo XI (1605), Paul V (1605–1621), Gregory XV (1621–1623), Urban VIII (1623–1644) and Innocent X (1644–1655).
+
+One method employed to finance the building of St. Peter's Basilica was the granting of indulgences in return for contributions. A major promoter of this method of fund-raising was Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, who had to clear debts owed to the Roman Curia by contributing to the rebuilding program. To facilitate this, he appointed the German Dominican preacher Johann Tetzel, whose salesmanship provoked a scandal.[35]
+
+A German Augustinian priest, Martin Luther, wrote to Archbishop Albrecht arguing against this "selling of indulgences". He also included his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences", which came to be known as The 95 Theses.[36] This became a factor in starting the Reformation, the birth of Protestantism.
+
+Pope Julius' scheme for the grandest building in Christendom[8] was the subject of a competition for which a number of entries remain intact in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. It was the design of Donato Bramante that was selected, and for which the foundation stone was laid in 1506. This plan was in the form of an enormous Greek Cross with a dome inspired by that of the huge circular Roman temple, the Pantheon.[8] The main difference between Bramante's design and that of the Pantheon is that where the dome of the Pantheon is supported by a continuous wall, that of the new basilica was to be supported only on four large piers. This feature was maintained in the ultimate design. Bramante's dome was to be surmounted by a lantern with its own small dome but otherwise very similar in form to the Early Renaissance lantern of Florence Cathedral designed for Brunelleschi's dome by Michelozzo.[37]
+
+Bramante had envisioned that the central dome would be surrounded by four lower domes at the diagonal axes. The equal chancel, nave and transept arms were each to be of two bays ending in an apse. At each corner of the building was to stand a tower, so that the overall plan was square, with the apses projecting at the cardinal points. Each apse had two large radial buttresses, which squared off its semi-circular shape.[38]
+
+When Pope Julius died in 1513, Bramante was replaced with Giuliano da Sangallo and Fra Giocondo, who both died in 1515 (Bramante himself having died the previous year). Raphael was confirmed as architect of St. Peter's on 1 August 1514.[39] The main change in his plan is the nave of five bays, with a row of complex apsidal chapels off the aisles on either side. Raphael's plan for the chancel and transepts made the squareness of the exterior walls more definite by reducing the size of the towers, and the semi-circular apses more clearly defined by encircling each with an ambulatory.[40]
+
+In 1520 Raphael also died, aged 37, and his successor Baldassare Peruzzi maintained changes that Raphael had proposed to the internal arrangement of the three main apses, but otherwise reverted to the Greek Cross plan and other features of Bramante.[41] This plan did not go ahead because of various difficulties of both Church and state. In 1527 Rome was sacked and plundered by Emperor Charles V. Peruzzi died in 1536 without his plan being realized.[8]
+
+At this point Antonio da Sangallo the Younger submitted a plan which combines features of Peruzzi, Raphael and Bramante in its design and extends the building into a short nave with a wide façade and portico of dynamic projection. His proposal for the dome was much more elaborate of both structure and decoration than that of Bramante and included ribs on the exterior. Like Bramante, Sangallo proposed that the dome be surmounted by a lantern which he redesigned to a larger and much more elaborate form.[42] Sangallo's main practical contribution was to strengthen Bramante's piers which had begun to crack.[25]
+
+On 1 January 1547 in the reign of Pope Paul III, Michelangelo, then in his seventies, succeeded Sangallo the Younger as "Capomaestro", the superintendent of the building program at St Peter's.[43] He is to be regarded as the principal designer of a large part of the building as it stands today, and as bringing the construction to a point where it could be carried through. He did not take on the job with pleasure; it was forced upon him by Pope Paul, frustrated at the death of his chosen candidate, Giulio Romano and the refusal of Jacopo Sansovino to leave Venice. Michelangelo wrote "I undertake this only for the love of God and in honour of the Apostle." He insisted that he should be given a free hand to achieve the ultimate aim by whatever means he saw fit.[25]
+
+Michelangelo took over a building site at which four piers, enormous beyond any constructed since ancient Roman times, were rising behind the remaining nave of the old basilica. He also inherited the numerous schemes designed and redesigned by some of the greatest architectural and engineering minds of the 16th century. There were certain common elements in these schemes. They all called for a dome to equal that engineered by Brunelleschi a century earlier and which has since dominated the skyline of Renaissance Florence, and they all called for a strongly symmetrical plan of either Greek Cross form, like the iconic St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, or of a Latin Cross with the transepts of identical form to the chancel, as at Florence Cathedral.
+
+Even though the work had progressed only a little in 40 years, Michelangelo did not simply dismiss the ideas of the previous architects. He drew on them in developing a grand vision. Above all, Michelangelo recognized the essential quality of Bramante's original design. He reverted to the Greek Cross and, as Helen Gardner expresses it: "Without destroying the centralising features of Bramante's plan, Michelangelo, with a few strokes of the pen converted its snowflake complexity into massive, cohesive unity."[44]
+
+As it stands today, St. Peter's has been extended with a nave by Carlo Maderno. It is the chancel end (the ecclesiastical "Eastern end") with its huge centrally placed dome that is the work of Michelangelo. Because of its location within the Vatican State and because the projection of the nave screens the dome from sight when the building is approached from the square in front of it, the work of Michelangelo is best appreciated from a distance. What becomes apparent is that the architect has greatly reduced the clearly defined geometric forms of Bramante's plan of a square with square projections, and also of Raphael's plan of a square with semi-circular projections.[45] Michelangelo has blurred the definition of the geometry by making the external masonry of massive proportions and filling in every corner with a small vestry or stairwell. The effect created is of a continuous wall-surface that is folded or fractured at different angles, but lacks the right-angles which usually define change of direction at the corners of a building. This exterior is surrounded by a giant order of Corinthian pilasters all set at slightly different angles to each other, in keeping with the ever-changing angles of the wall's surface. Above them the huge cornice ripples in a continuous band, giving the appearance of keeping the whole building in a state of compression.[46]
+
+The dome of St. Peter's rises to a total height of 136.57 metres (448.1 ft) from the floor of the basilica to the top of the external cross. It is the tallest dome in the world.[47] Its internal diameter is 41.47 metres (136.1 ft), slightly smaller than two of the three other huge domes that preceded it, those of the Pantheon of Ancient Rome, 43.3 metres (142 ft), and Florence Cathedral of the Early Renaissance, 44 metres (144 ft). It has a greater diameter by approximately 30 feet (9.1 m) than Constantinople's Hagia Sophia church, completed in 537. It was to the domes of the Pantheon and Florence duomo that the architects of St. Peter's looked for solutions as to how to go about building what was conceived, from the outset, as the greatest dome of Christendom.
+
+The dome of the Pantheon stands on a circular wall with no entrances or windows except a single door. The whole building is as high as it is wide. Its dome is constructed in a single shell of concrete, made light by the inclusion of a large amount of the volcanic stones tuff and pumice. The inner surface of the dome is deeply coffered which has the effect of creating both vertical and horizontal ribs, while lightening the overall load. At the summit is an ocular opening 8 metres (26 ft) across which provides light to the interior.[8]
+
+Bramante's plan for the dome of St. Peter's (1506) follows that of the Pantheon very closely, and like that of the Pantheon, was designed to be constructed in Tufa Concrete for which he had rediscovered a formula. With the exception of the lantern that surmounts it, the profile is very similar, except that in this case the supporting wall becomes a drum raised high above ground level on four massive piers. The solid wall, as used at the Pantheon, is lightened at St. Peter's by Bramante piercing it with windows and encircling it with a peristyle.
+
+In the case of Florence Cathedral, the desired visual appearance of the pointed dome existed for many years before Brunelleschi made its construction feasible.[48] Its double-shell construction of bricks locked together in herringbone pattern (re-introduced from Byzantine architecture), and the gentle upward slope of its eight stone ribs made it possible for the construction to take place without the massive wooden formwork necessary to construct hemispherical arches. While its appearance, with the exception of the details of the lantern, is entirely Gothic, its engineering was highly innovative, and the product of a mind that had studied the huge vaults and remaining dome of Ancient Rome.[37]
+
+Sangallo's plan (1513), of which a large wooden model still exists, looks to both these predecessors. He realized the value of both the coffering at the Pantheon and the outer stone ribs at Florence Cathedral. He strengthened and extended the peristyle of Bramante into a series of arched and ordered openings around the base, with a second such arcade set back in a tier above the first. In his hands, the rather delicate form of the lantern, based closely on that in Florence, became a massive structure, surrounded by a projecting base, a peristyle and surmounted by a spire of conic form.[42] According to James Lees-Milne the design was "too eclectic, too pernickety and too tasteless to have been a success".[25]
+
+Michelangelo redesigned the dome in 1547, taking into account all that had gone before. His dome, like that of Florence, is constructed of two shells of brick, the outer one having 16 stone ribs, twice the number at Florence but far fewer than in Sangallo's design. As with the designs of Bramante and Sangallo, the dome is raised from the piers on a drum. The encircling peristyle of Bramante and the arcade of Sangallo are reduced to 16 pairs of Corinthian columns, each of 15 metres (49 ft) high which stand proud of the building, connected by an arch. Visually they appear to buttress each of the ribs, but structurally they are probably quite redundant. The reason for this is that the dome is ovoid in shape, rising steeply as does the dome of Florence Cathedral, and therefore exerting less outward thrust than does a hemispherical dome, such as that of the Pantheon, which, although it is not buttressed, is countered by the downward thrust of heavy masonry which extends above the circling wall.[8][25]
+
+The ovoid profile of the dome has been the subject of much speculation and scholarship over the past century. Michelangelo died in 1564, leaving the drum of the dome complete, and Bramante's piers much bulkier than originally designed, each 18 metres (59 ft) across. Following his death, the work continued under his assistant Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola with Giorgio Vasari appointed by Pope Pius V as a watchdog to make sure that Michelangelo's plans were carried out exactly. Despite Vignola's knowledge of Michelangelo's intentions, little happened in this period. In 1585 the energetic Pope Sixtus appointed Giacomo della Porta who was to be assisted by Domenico Fontana. The five-year reign of Sixtus was to see the building advance at a great rate.[25]
+
+Michelangelo left a few drawings, including an early drawing of the dome, and some details. There were also detailed engravings published in 1569 by Stefan du Pérac who claimed that they were the master's final solution. Michelangelo, like Sangallo before him, also left a large wooden model. Giacomo della Porta subsequently altered this model in several ways. The major change restored an earlier design, in which the outer dome appears to rise above, rather than rest directly on the base.[50] Most of the other changes were of a cosmetic nature, such as the adding of lion's masks over the swags on the drum in honour of Pope Sixtus and adding a circlet of finials around the spire at the top of the lantern, as proposed by Sangallo.[25]
+
+A drawing by Michelangelo indicates that his early intentions were towards an ovoid dome, rather than a hemispherical one.[44]  In an engraving in Galasso Alghisi' treatise (1563), the dome may be represented as ovoid, but the perspective is ambiguous.[51] Stefan du Pérac's engraving (1569) shows a hemispherical dome, but this was perhaps an inaccuracy of the engraver. The profile of the wooden model is more ovoid than that of the engravings, but less so than the finished product. It has been suggested that Michelangelo on his death bed reverted to the more pointed shape. However, Lees-Milne cites Giacomo della Porta as taking full responsibility for the change and as indicating to Pope Sixtus that Michelangelo was lacking in the scientific understanding of which he himself was capable.[25]
+
+Helen Gardner suggests that Michelangelo made the change to the hemispherical dome of lower profile in order to establish a balance between the dynamic vertical elements of the encircling giant order of pilasters and a more static and reposeful dome. Gardner also comments, "The sculpturing of architecture [by Michelangelo] ... here extends itself up from the ground through the attic stories and moves on into the drum and dome, the whole building being pulled together into a unity from base to summit."[44]
+
+It is this sense of the building being sculptured, unified and "pulled together" by the encircling band of the deep cornice that led Eneide Mignacca to conclude that the ovoid profile, seen now in the end product, was an essential part of Michelangelo's first (and last) concept. The sculptor/architect has, figuratively speaking, taken all the previous designs in hand and compressed their contours as if the building were a lump of clay. The dome must appear to thrust upwards because of the apparent pressure created by flattening the building's angles and restraining its projections.[46] If this explanation is the correct one, then the profile of the dome is not merely a structural solution, as perceived by Giacomo della Porta; it is part of the integrated design solution that is about visual tension and compression. In one sense, Michelangelo's dome may appear to look backward to the Gothic profile of Florence Cathedral and ignore the Classicism of the Renaissance, but on the other hand, perhaps more than any other building of the 16th century, it prefigures the architecture of the Baroque.[46]
+
+Giacomo della Porta and Domenico Fontana brought the dome to completion in 1590, the last year of the reign of Sixtus V. His successor, Gregory XIV, saw Fontana complete the lantern and had an inscription to the honour of Sixtus V placed around its inner opening. The next pope, Clement VIII, had the cross raised into place, an event which took all day, and was accompanied by the ringing of the bells of all the city's churches. In the arms of the cross are set two lead caskets, one containing a fragment of the True Cross and a relic of St. Andrew and the other containing medallions of the Holy Lamb.[25]
+
+In the mid-18th century, cracks appeared in the dome, so four iron chains were installed between the two shells to bind it, like the rings that keep a barrel from bursting. As many as ten chains have been installed at various times, the earliest possibly planned by Michelangelo himself as a precaution, as Brunelleschi did at Florence Cathedral.
+
+Around the inside of the dome is written, in letters 1.4 metres (4.6 ft) high:
+
+TV ES PETRVS ET SVPER HANC PETRAM AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM MEAM. TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI CAELORVM("... you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. ... I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven ..." Vulgate, Matthew 16:18–19.)
+
+Beneath the lantern is the inscription:
+
+S. PETRI GLORIAE SIXTVS PP. V. A. M. D. XC. PONTIF. V.(To the glory of St Peter; Sixtus V, pope, in the year 1590, the fifth of his pontificate.)
+
+On 7 December 2007, a fragment of a red chalk drawing of a section of the dome of the basilica, almost certainly by the hand of Michelangelo, was discovered in the Vatican archives.[52] The drawing shows a small precisely drafted section of the plan of the entablature above two of the radial columns of the cupola drum. Michelangelo is known to have destroyed thousands of his drawings before his death.[53] The rare survival of this example is probably due to its fragmentary state and the fact that detailed mathematical calculations had been made over the top of the drawing.[52]
+
+On 18 February 1606, under Pope Paul V, the dismantling of the remaining parts of the Constantinian basilica began.[25] The marble cross that had been set at the top of the pediment by Pope Sylvester and Constantine the Great was lowered to the ground. The timbers were salvaged for the roof of the Borghese Palace and two rare black marble columns, the largest of their kind, were carefully stored and later used in the narthex. The tombs of various popes were opened, treasures removed and plans made for re-interment in the new basilica.[25]
+
+The Pope had appointed Carlo Maderno in 1602. He was a nephew of Domenico Fontana and had demonstrated himself as a dynamic architect. Maderno's idea was to ring Michelangelo's building with chapels, but the Pope was hesitant about deviating from the master's plan, even though he had been dead for forty years. The Fabbrica or building committee, a group drawn from various nationalities and generally despised by the Curia who viewed the basilica as belonging to Rome rather than Christendom, were in a quandary as to how the building should proceed. One of the matters that influenced their thinking was the Counter-Reformation which increasingly associated a Greek Cross plan with paganism and saw the Latin Cross as truly symbolic of Christianity.[25] The central plan also did not have a "dominant orientation toward the east."[54]
+
+Another influence on the thinking of both the Fabbrica and the Curia was a certain guilt at the demolition of the ancient building. The ground on which it and its various associated chapels, vestries and sacristies had stood for so long was hallowed. The only solution was to build a nave that encompassed the whole space. In 1607 a committee of ten architects was called together, and a decision was made to extend Michelangelo's building into a nave. Maderno's plans for both the nave and the facade were accepted. The building began on 7 May 1607, and proceeded at a great rate, with an army of 700 labourers being employed. The following year, the façade was begun, in December 1614 the final touches were added to the stucco decoration of the vault and early in 1615 the partition wall between the two sections was pulled down. All the rubble was carted away, and the nave was ready for use by Palm Sunday.[25]
+
+The facade designed by Maderno, is 114.69 metres (376.3 ft) wide and 45.55 metres (149.4 ft) high and is built of travertine stone, with a giant order of Corinthian columns and a central pediment rising in front of a tall attic surmounted by thirteen statues: Christ flanked by eleven of the Apostles (except Saint Peter, whose statue is left of the stairs) and John the Baptist.
+[55]
+The inscription below the cornice on the 1 metre (3.3 ft) tall frieze reads:
+
+IN HONOREM PRINCIPIS APOST PAVLVS V BVRGHESIVS ROMANVS PONT MAX AN MDCXII PONT VII(In honour of the Prince of Apostles, Paul V Borghese, a Roman, Supreme Pontiff, in the year 1612, the seventh of his pontificate)
+
+(Paul V (Camillo Borghese), born in Rome but of a Sienese family, liked to emphasize his "Romanness.")
+
+The facade is often cited as the least satisfactory part of the design of St. Peter's. The reasons for this, according to James Lees-Milne, are that it was not given enough consideration by the Pope and committee because of the desire to get the building completed quickly, coupled with the fact that Maderno was hesitant to deviate from the pattern set by Michelangelo at the other end of the building. Lees-Milne describes the problems of the façade as being too broad for its height, too cramped in its details and too heavy in the attic story. The breadth is caused by modifying the plan to have towers on either side. These towers were never executed above the line of the facade because it was discovered that the ground was not sufficiently stable to bear the weight. One effect of the facade and lengthened nave is to screen the view of the dome, so that the building, from the front, has no vertical feature, except from a distance.[25]
+
+Behind the façade of St. Peter's stretches a long portico or "narthex" such as was occasionally found in Italian churches. This is the part of Maderno's design with which he was most satisfied. Its long barrel vault is decorated with ornate stucco and gilt, and successfully illuminated by small windows between pendentives, while the ornate marble floor is beamed with light reflected in from the piazza. At each end of the narthex is a theatrical space framed by ionic columns and within each is set a statue, an equestrian figure of Charlemagne (18th century) by Cornacchini in the south end and The Vision of Constantine (1670) by Bernini in the north end.
+
+Five portals, of which three are framed by huge salvaged antique columns, lead into the basilica. The central portal has a bronze door created by Antonio Averulino c. 1440 for the old basilica[56] and somewhat enlarged to fit the new space.
+
+To the single bay of Michelangelo's Greek Cross, Maderno added a further three bays. He made the dimensions slightly different from Michelangelo's bay, thus defining where the two architectural works meet. Maderno also tilted the axis of the nave slightly. This was not by accident, as suggested by his critics. An ancient Egyptian obelisk had been erected in the square outside, but had not been quite aligned with Michelangelo's building, so Maderno compensated, in order that it should, at least, align with the Basilica's façade.[25]
+
+The nave has huge paired pilasters, in keeping with Michelangelo's work. The size of the interior is so "stupendously large" that it is hard to get a sense of scale within the building.[25][57] The four cherubs who flutter against the first piers of the nave, carrying between them two holy water basins, appear of quite normal cherubic size, until approached. Then it becomes apparent that each one is over 2 metres high and that real children cannot reach the basins unless they scramble up the marble draperies. The aisles each have two smaller chapels and a larger rectangular chapel, the Chapel of the Sacrament and the Choir Chapel. These are lavishly decorated with marble, stucco, gilt, sculpture and mosaic. Remarkably, all of the large altarpieces, with the exception of the Holy Trinity by Pietro da Cortona in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, have been reproduced in mosaic.  Two precious paintings from the old basilica, Our Lady of Perpetual Help and Our Lady of the Column are still being used as altarpieces.
+
+Maderno's last work at St. Peter's was to design a crypt-like space or "Confessio" under the dome, where the cardinals and other privileged persons could descend in order to be nearer to the burial place of the apostle. Its marble steps are remnants of the old basilica and around its balustrade are 95 bronze lamps.
+
+The design of St. Peter's Basilica, and in particular its dome, has greatly influenced church architecture in Western Christendom. Within Rome, the huge domed church of Sant'Andrea della Valle was designed by Giacomo della Porta before the completion of St Peter's Basilica, and subsequently worked on by Carlo Maderno. This was followed by the domes of San Carlo ai Catinari, Sant'Agnese in Agone, and many others. Christopher Wren's dome at St Paul's Cathedral (London, England), the domes of Karlskirche (Vienna, Austria), St. Nicholas Church (Prague, Czech Republic), and the Pantheon (Paris, France) all pay homage to St Peter's Basilica.
+
+The 19th and early-20th-century architectural revivals brought about the building of a great number of churches that imitate elements of St Peter's to a greater or lesser degree, including St. Mary of the Angels in Chicago, St. Josaphat's Basilica in Milwaukee, Immaculate Heart of Mary in Pittsburgh and Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral in Montreal, which replicates many aspects of St Peter's on a smaller scale. Post-Modernism has seen free adaptations of St Peter's in the Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń, and the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro.
+
+As a young boy Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) visited St. Peter's with the painter Annibale Carracci and stated his wish to build "a mighty throne for the apostle". His wish came true. As a young man, in 1626, he received the patronage of Pope Urban VIII and worked on the embellishment of the Basilica for 50 years. Appointed as Maderno's successor in 1629, he was to become regarded as the greatest architect and sculptor of the Baroque period. Bernini's works at St. Peter's include the baldachin (baldaquin, from Italian: baldacchino), the Chapel of the Sacrament, the plan for the niches and loggias in the piers of the dome and the chair of St. Peter.[25][44]
+
+Bernini's first work at St. Peter's was to design the baldacchino, a pavilion-like structure 28.74 metres (94.3 ft) tall and claimed to be the largest piece of bronze in the world, which stands beneath the dome and above the altar. Its design is based on the ciborium, of which there are many in the churches of Rome, serving to create a sort of holy space above and around the table on which the Sacrament is laid for the Eucharist and emphasizing the significance of this ritual. These ciboria are generally of white marble, with inlaid coloured stone. Bernini's concept was for something very different. He took his inspiration in part from the baldachin or canopy carried above the head of the pope in processions, and in part from eight ancient columns that had formed part of a screen in the old basilica. Their twisted barley-sugar shape had a special significance as they were modelled on those of the Temple of Jerusalem and donated by the Emperor Constantine. Based on these columns, Bernini created four huge columns of bronze, twisted and decorated with laurel leaves and bees, which were the emblem of Pope Urban.
+
+The baldacchino is surmounted not with an architectural pediment, like most baldacchini, but with curved Baroque brackets supporting a draped canopy, like the brocade canopies carried in processions above precious iconic images. In this case, the draped canopy is of bronze, and all the details, including the olive leaves, bees, and the portrait heads of Urban's niece in childbirth and her newborn son, are picked out in gold leaf. The baldacchino stands as a vast free-standing sculptural object, central to and framed by the largest space within the building. It is so large that the visual effect is to create a link between the enormous dome which appears to float above it, and the congregation at floor level of the basilica. It is penetrated visually from every direction, and is visually linked to the Cathedra Petri in the apse behind it and to the four piers containing large statues that are at each diagonal.[25][44]
+
+As part of the scheme for the central space of the church, Bernini had the huge piers, begun by Bramante and completed by Michelangelo, hollowed out into niches, and had staircases made inside them, leading to four balconies. There was much dismay from those who thought that the dome might fall, but it did not. On the balconies Bernini created showcases, framed by the eight ancient twisted columns, to display the four most precious relics of the basilica: the spear of Longinus, said to have pierced the side of Christ, the veil of Veronica, with the miraculous image of the face of Christ, a fragment of the True Cross discovered in Jerusalem by Constantine's mother, Helena, and a relic of Saint Andrew, the brother of Saint Peter. In each of the niches that surround the central space of the basilica was placed a huge statue of the saint associated with the relic above. Only Saint Longinus is the work of Bernini.[25] (See below)
+
+Urban had long been a critic of Bernini's predecessor, Carlo Maderno. His disapproval of the architect's work stemmed largely from the Maderno's design for the longitudinal nave of St. Peters, which was widely condemned for obscuring Michelangelo's dome. When the Pope gave the commission to Bernini he therefore requested that a new design for the facade's bell towers to be submitted for consideration. Baldinucci describes Bernini's tower as consisting of "two orders of columns and pilasters, the first order being Corinthian" and "a third or attic story formed of pilasters and two columns on either side of the open archway in the center".
+
+Urban desired the towers to be completed by a very specific date: 29 June 1641, the feast day dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. To this end an order was issued which stated that "all work should take a second seat to that of the campanile." The south tower was completed on time even in spite of these issues, but records show that in the wake of the unveiling the Pope was not content with what he saw and he ordered the top level of Bernini's tower removed so that the structure could be made even grander. The tower continued to grow, and as the construction began to settle, the first cracks started to appear followed by Urban's infamous public admonishment of his architect.
+
+In 1642 all work on both towers came to a halt. Bernini had to pay the cost for the demolition; eventually the idea of completing the bell towers was abandoned.
+
+Bernini then turned his attention to another precious relic, the so-called Cathedra Petri or "throne of St. Peter" a chair which was often claimed to have been used by the apostle, but appears to date from the 12th century. As the chair itself was fast deteriorating and was no longer serviceable, Pope Alexander VII determined to enshrine it in suitable splendor as the object upon which the line of successors to Peter was based. Bernini created a large bronze throne in which it was housed, raised high on four looping supports held effortlessly by massive bronze statues of four Doctors of the Church, Saints Ambrose and Augustine representing the Latin Church and Athanasius and John Chrysostom, the Greek Church. The four figures are dynamic with sweeping robes and expressions of adoration and ecstasy. Behind and above the cathedra, a blaze of light comes in through a window of yellow alabaster, illuminating, at its centre, the Dove of the Holy Spirit. The elderly painter, Andrea Sacchi, had urged Bernini to make the figures large, so that they would be seen well from the central portal of the nave. The chair was enshrined in its new home with great celebration of 16 January 1666.[25][44]
+
+Bernini's final work for St. Peter's, undertaken in 1676, was the decoration of the Chapel of the Sacrament.[58] To hold the sacramental Host, he designed a miniature version in gilt bronze of Bramante's Tempietto, the little chapel that marks the place of the death of St. Peter. On either side is an angel, one gazing in rapt adoration and the other looking towards the viewer in welcome. Bernini died in 1680 in his 82nd year.[25]
+
+To the east of the basilica is the Piazza di San Pietro, (St. Peter's Square). The present arrangement, constructed between 1656 and 1667, is the Baroque inspiration of Bernini who inherited a location already occupied by an Egyptian obelisk which was centrally placed, (with some contrivance) to Maderno's facade.[59] The obelisk, known as "The Witness", at 25.31 metres (83.0 ft) and a total height, including base and the cross on top, of 40 metres (130 ft), is the second largest standing obelisk, and the only one to remain standing since its removal from Egypt and re-erection at the Circus of Nero in 37 AD, where it is thought to have stood witness to the crucifixion of Saint Peter.[60] Its removal to its present location by order of Pope Sixtus V and engineered by Domenico Fontana on 28 September 1586, was an operation fraught with difficulties and nearly ending in disaster when the ropes holding the obelisk began to smoke from the friction. Fortunately this problem was noticed by Benedetto Bresca, a sailor of Sanremo, and for his swift intervention, his town was granted the privilege of providing the palms that are used at the basilica each Palm Sunday.[25]
+
+The other object in the old square with which Bernini had to contend was a large fountain designed by Maderno in 1613 and set to one side of the obelisk, making a line parallel with the facade. Bernini's plan uses this horizontal axis as a major feature of his unique, spatially dynamic and highly symbolic design. The most obvious solutions were either a rectangular piazza of vast proportions so that the obelisk stood centrally and the fountain (and a matching companion) could be included, or a trapezoid piazza which fanned out from the facade of the basilica like that in front of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. The problems of the square plan are that the necessary width to include the fountain would entail the demolition of numerous buildings, including some of the Vatican, and would minimize the effect of the facade. The trapezoid plan, on the other hand, would maximize the apparent width of the facade, which was already perceived as a fault of the design.[44]
+
+Bernini's ingenious solution was to create a piazza in two sections. That part which is nearest the basilica is trapezoid, but rather than fanning out from the facade, it narrows. This gives the effect of countering the visual perspective. It means that from the second part of the piazza, the building looks nearer than it is, the breadth of the facade is minimized and its height appears greater in proportion to its width. The second section of the piazza is a huge elliptical circus which gently slopes downwards to the obelisk at its centre. The two distinct areas are framed by a colonnade formed by doubled pairs of columns supporting an entablature of the simple Tuscan Order.
+
+The part of the colonnade that is around the ellipse does not entirely encircle it, but reaches out in two arcs, symbolic of the arms of "the Catholic Church reaching out to welcome its communicants".[44]  The obelisk and Maderno's fountain mark the widest axis of the ellipse. Bernini balanced the scheme with another fountain in 1675. The approach to the square used to be through a jumble of old buildings, which added an element of surprise to the vista that opened up upon passing through the colonnade. Nowadays a long wide street, the Via della Conciliazione, built by Mussolini after the conclusion of the Lateran Treaties, leads from the River Tiber to the piazza and gives distant views of St. Peter's as the visitor approaches, with the basilica acting as a terminating vista.[25]
+
+Bernini's transformation of the site is entirely Baroque in concept. Where Bramante and Michelangelo conceived a building that stood in "self-sufficient isolation", Bernini made the whole complex "expansively relate to its environment".[44] Banister Fletcher says "No other city has afforded such a wide-swept approach to its cathedral church, no other architect could have conceived a design of greater nobility ... (it is) the greatest of all atriums before the greatest of all churches of Christendom."[8]
+
+The top of the facade of St. Peter's Basilica has two clocks and several sculptures. The clocks were created to replace Bernini's bell towers which had to be torn down due to insufficient support. The left clock shows Rome time, the one of the right shows European mean time. The statues are Christ the Redeemer, St. John the Baptist and 11 Apostles. From the left: St. Thadeus, St. Matthew, St. Philip, St. Thomas, St. James the Greater, St. John the Baptist, The Redeemer, St. Andrew, St. John the Evangelist, St. James the Lesser, St. Bartholomew, St. Simeon, and St. Matthias. Above the Roman clock is the coat of arms for the city-state of Vatican City since 1931 held by two angels. The European mean time clock only shows an hour hand and it is about half an hour behind the rome time. The European mean time also be an attempt to keep the Devil guessing about "the day and the hour."
+
+The Basilica has 6 bells, placed in the room under the Roman clock, only 3 of them are visible from ground level while the rest are hidden behind the bourdon. They range from the smallest which is 260 kg to the massive bourdon that approximately weighs 9 tonnes. From 1931, the bells are operated electrically, thus permitting even the largest bell to be tolled from a distance. The oldest bell Rota dates from 1288 and the bourdon called Campanone is rung at Christmas and Easter, on the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, and every time the Pope imparts the "Urbi et Orbi" blessing to the city and to the world. Campanone also announces the election of a new pope.
+
+There are over 100 tombs within St. Peter's Basilica (extant to various extents), many located beneath the Basilica. These include 91 popes, Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, and the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Exiled Catholic British royalty James Francis Edward Stuart and his two sons, Charles Edward Stuart and Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Bishop of Frascati, are buried here, having been granted asylum by Pope Clement XI. Also buried here are Maria Clementina Sobieska, wife of James Francis Edward Stuart, Queen Christina of Sweden, who abdicated her throne in order to convert to Catholicism, and Countess Matilda of Tuscany, supporter of the Papacy during the Investiture Controversy. The most recent interment was Pope John Paul II, on 8 April 2005. Beneath, near the crypt, is the recently discovered vaulted 4th-century "Tomb of the Julii". (See below for some descriptions of tombs).
+
+Recently installed commemorative plaques read above the door as follows:
+
+PAVLVS VI PONT MAX HVIVS PATRIARCALIS VATICANAE BASILICAE PORTAM SANCTAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO IVBILAEI MCMLXXVPaul VI, Pontifex Maximus, opened and closed the holy door of this patriarchal Vatican basilica in the jubilee year of 1975.
+
+IOANNES PAVLVS II P.M. PORTAM SANCTAM ANNO IVBILAEI MCMLXXVI A PAVLO PP VI RESERVATAM ET CLAVSAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO IVB HVMANE REDEMP MCMLXXXIII–MCMLXXXIVJohn Paul II, Pontifex Maximus, opened and closed again the holy door closed and set apart by Pope Paul VI in 1976 in the jubilee year of human redemption 1983–1984.
+
+IOANNES PAVLVS II P.M. ITERVM PORTAM SANCTAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO MAGNI IVBILAEI AB INCARNATIONE DOMINI MM–MMIJohn Paul II, Pontifex Maximus, again opened and closed the holy door in the year of the great jubilee, from the incarnation of the Lord 2000–2001.
+
+FRANCISCVS PP. PORTAM SANCTAM ANNO MAGNI IVB MM–MMI A IOANNE PAVLO PP. II RESERVATAM ET CLAVSAM APERVIT ET CLAVSIT ANNO IVB MISERICORDIAE MMXV–MMXVIPope Francis opened and closed again the holy door, closed and set apart by Pope John Paul II in the year of the great jubilee 2000–2001, in the jubilee year of Mercy 2015–2016.
+
+Older commemorative plaques are removed to make way for the new plaque when the holy door is opened and sealed.
+
+Saint Helenaby Andrea Bolgi
+
+Saint Longinusby Bernini
+
+Saint Andrewby Francois Duquesnoy
+
+Saint Veronicaby Francesco Mochi
+
+The Holy Door is opened only for great celebrations.
+
+The tomb of Alexander VII, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1671–1678.[62]
+
+The bronze statue of Saint Peter holding the keys of heaven, attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio.
+
+The Pietà  by Michelangelo, 1498–99, is in the north aisle.
+
+List of archpriests of the Vatican Basilica:[63]

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+in Europe (dark grey)  –  [Legend]
+
+Vatican City /ˈvætɪkən/ (listen), officially the Vatican City State (Italian: Stato della Città del Vaticano;[g] Latin: Status Civitatis Vaticanae),[h][i] is the Holy See's independent city-state enclaved within Rome, Italy.[12] Vatican City became independent from Italy with the Lateran Treaty (1929), and it is a distinct territory under "full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction" of the Holy See, itself a sovereign entity of international law, which maintains the city state's temporal, diplomatic, and spiritual independence.[j][13] With an area of 49 hectares (121 acres)[b] and a population of about 805,[c] it is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population.[14]
+
+As governed by the Holy See, the Vatican City is an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state (a type of theocracy) ruled by the pope who is the bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church.[3][15] The highest state functionaries are all Catholic clergy of various national origins. Except the Avignon Papacy (1309–1437), the popes have generally resided at the Apostolic Palace within what is now Vatican City, although at times residing instead in the Quirinal Palace in Rome or elsewhere.
+
+The Holy See dates back to Early Christianity and is the principal episcopal see of the Catholic Church, with approximately 1.313 billion baptised Catholic Christians in the world as of 2017[update] in the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches.[16] The independent Vatican City-state, on the other hand, came into existence on 11 February 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy, which spoke of it as a new creation,[17] not as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756–1870), which had previously encompassed much of central Italy.
+
+Within the Vatican City are religious and cultural sites such as St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican Museums. They feature some of the world's most famous paintings and sculptures. The unique economy of Vatican City is supported financially by the sale of postage stamps and souvenirs, fees for admission to museums, and sales of publications.
+
+The name Vatican City was first used in the Lateran Treaty, signed on 11 February 1929, which established the modern city-state named after Vatican Hill, the geographic location of the state. "Vatican" is derived from the name of an Etruscan settlement, Vatica or Vaticum located in the general area the Romans called Ager Vaticanus, "Vatican territory".[18]
+
+The official Italian name of the city is Città del Vaticano or, more formally, Stato della Città del Vaticano, meaning "Vatican City State". Although the Holy See (which is distinct from the Vatican City) and the Catholic Church use Ecclesiastical Latin in official documents, the Vatican City uses Italian.[citation needed] The Latin name is Status Civitatis Vaticanae;[19][20] this is used in official documents by the Holy See, the Church and the Pope.
+
+The name "Vatican" was already in use in the time of the Roman Republic for the Ager Vaticanus, a marshy area on the west bank of the Tiber across from the city of Rome, located between the Janiculum, the Vatican Hill and Monte Mario, down to the Aventine Hill and up to the confluence of the Cremera creek.[21]
+
+Because of its vicinity to their arch-fiend, the Etruscan city of Veii (another naming for the Ager Vaticanus was Ripa Veientana or Ripa Etrusca) and for being subjected to the floods of the Tiber, the Romans considered this originally uninhabited part of Rome unsalubrious and ominous.[22]
+
+The particularly low quality of Vatican wine, even after the reclamation of the area, was commented on by the poet Martial (40 – between 102 and 104 AD).[23] Tacitus wrote, that in AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, when the northern army that brought Vitellius to power arrived in Rome, "a large proportion camped in the unhealthy districts of the Vatican, which resulted in many deaths among the common soldiery; and the Tiber being close by, the inability of the Gauls and Germans to bear the heat and the consequent greed with which they drank from the stream weakened their bodies, which were already an easy prey to disease".[24]
+
+The toponym Ager Vaticanus is attested until the 1st century AD: afterwards, another toponym appeared, Vaticanus, denoting an area much more restricted: the Vatican hill, today's St. Peter's Square, and possibly today's Via della Conciliazione.[21]
+
+Under the Roman Empire, many villas were constructed there, after Agrippina the Elder (14 BC–18 October AD 33) drained the area and laid out her gardens in the early 1st century AD. In AD 40, her son, Emperor Caligula (31 August AD 12–24 January AD 41; r. 37–41) built in her gardens a circus for charioteers (AD 40) that was later completed by Nero, the Circus Gaii et Neronis,[25] usually called, simply, the Circus of Nero.[26]
+
+The Vatican Obelisk was originally taken by Caligula from Heliopolis in Egypt to decorate the spina of his circus and is thus its last visible remnant.[27] This area became the site of martyrdom of many Christians after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. Ancient tradition holds that it was in this circus that Saint Peter was crucified upside-down.[28]
+
+Opposite the circus was a cemetery separated by the Via Cornelia. Funeral monuments and mausoleums, and small tombs, as well as altars to pagan gods of all kinds of polytheistic religions, were constructed lasting until before the construction of the Constantinian Basilica of St. Peter in the first half of the 4th century. A shrine dedicated to the Phrygian goddess Cybele and her consort Attis remained active long after the ancient Basilica of St. Peter was built nearby.[29]
+Remains of this ancient necropolis were brought to light sporadically during renovations by various popes throughout the centuries, increasing in frequency during the Renaissance until it was systematically excavated by orders of Pope Pius XII from 1939 to 1941. The Constantinian basilica was built in 326 over what was believed to be the tomb of Saint Peter, buried in that cemetery.[30]
+
+From then on, the area became more populated in connection with activity at the basilica. A palace was constructed nearby as early as the 5th century during the pontificate of Pope Symmachus (reigned 498–514).[31]
+
+Popes gradually came to have a secular role as governors of regions near Rome. They ruled the Papal States, which covered a large portion of the Italian peninsula, for more than a thousand years until the mid-19th century, when all the territory belonging to the papacy was seized by the newly created Kingdom of Italy.
+
+For most of this time the popes did not live at the Vatican. The Lateran Palace, on the opposite side of Rome, was their habitual residence for about a thousand years. From 1309 to 1377, they lived at Avignon in France. On their return to Rome they chose to live at the Vatican. They moved to the Quirinal Palace in 1583, after work on it was completed under Pope Paul V (1605–1621), but on the capture of Rome in 1870 retired to the Vatican, and what had been their residence became that of the King of Italy.
+
+In 1870, the Pope's holdings were left in an uncertain situation when Rome itself was annexed by the Piedmont-led forces which had united the rest of Italy, after a nominal resistance by the papal forces. Between 1861 and 1929 the status of the Pope was referred to as the "Roman Question".
+
+Italy made no attempt to interfere with the Holy See within the Vatican walls. However, it confiscated church property in many places. In 1871, the Quirinal Palace was confiscated by the King of Italy and became the royal palace. Thereafter, the popes resided undisturbed within the Vatican walls, and certain papal prerogatives were recognized by the Law of Guarantees, including the right to send and receive ambassadors. But the Popes did not recognise the Italian king's right to rule in Rome, and they refused to leave the Vatican compound until the dispute was resolved in 1929; Pope Pius IX (1846–1878), the last ruler of the Papal States, was referred to as a "prisoner in the Vatican". Forced to give up secular power, the popes focused on spiritual issues.[32]
+
+This situation was resolved on 11 February 1929, when the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy was signed by Prime Minister and Head of Government Benito Mussolini on behalf of King Victor Emmanuel III and by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri for Pope Pius XI.[17][13][33] The treaty, which became effective on 7 June 1929, established the independent state of Vatican City and reaffirmed the special status of Catholic Christianity in Italy.[34]
+
+The Holy See, which ruled Vatican City, pursued a policy of neutrality during World War II, under the leadership of Pope Pius XII. Although German troops occupied the city of Rome after the September 1943 Armistice of Cassibile, and the Allies from 1944, they respected Vatican City as neutral territory.[35] One of the main diplomatic priorities of the bishop of Rome was to prevent the bombing of the city; so sensitive was the pontiff that he protested even the British air dropping of pamphlets over Rome, claiming that the few landing within the city-state violated the Vatican's neutrality.[36] The British policy, as expressed in the minutes of a Cabinet meeting, was: "that we should on no account molest the Vatican City, but that our action as regards the rest of Rome would depend upon how far the Italian government observed the rules of war".[36]
+
+After the US entered into the war, the US opposed such a bombing, fearful of offending Catholic members of its military forces, but said that "they could not stop the British from bombing Rome if the British so decided". The US military even exempted Catholic pilots and crew from air raids on Rome and other Church holdings, unless voluntarily agreed upon. Notably, with the exception of Rome, and presumably the possibility of the Vatican, no Catholic US pilot or air crew refused a mission within German-held Italy. The British uncompromisingly said "they would bomb Rome whenever the needs of the war demanded".[37] In December 1942, the UK's envoy suggested to the Holy See that Rome be declared an "open city", a suggestion that the Holy See took more seriously than was probably meant by the UK, who did not want Rome to be an open city, but Mussolini rejected the suggestion when the Holy See put it to him. In connection with the Allied invasion of Sicily, 500 US aircraft bombed Rome on 19 July 1943, aiming particularly at the railway hub. Some 1,500 people were killed; Pius XII himself, who had been described in the previous month as "worried sick" about the possible bombing, viewed the aftermath. Another raid took place on 13 August 1943, after Mussolini had been ousted from power.[38] On the following day, the new government declared Rome an open city, after consulting the Holy See on the wording of the declaration, but the UK had decided that they would never recognize Rome as an open city.[39]
+
+Pius XII had refrained from creating cardinals during the war. By the end of World War II, there were several prominent vacancies: Cardinal Secretary of State, Camerlengo, Chancellor, and Prefect for the Congregation for the Religious among them.[40] Pius XII created 32 cardinals in early 1946, having announced his intentions to do so in his preceding Christmas message.
+
+The Pontifical Military Corps, except for the Swiss Guard, was disbanded by will of Paul VI, as expressed in a letter of 14 September 1970.[41] The Gendarmerie Corps was transformed into a civilian police and security force.
+
+In 1984, a new concordat between the Holy See and Italy modified certain provisions of the earlier treaty, including the position of Catholic Christianity as the Italian state religion, a position given to it by a statute of the Kingdom of Sardinia of 1848.[34]
+
+Construction in 1995 of a new guest house, Domus Sanctae Marthae, adjacent to St Peter's Basilica was criticized by Italian environmental groups, backed by Italian politicians. They claimed the new building would block views of the Basilica from nearby Italian apartments.[42] For a short while the plans strained the relations between the Vatican and the Italian government. The head of the Vatican's Department of Technical Services robustly rejected challenges to the Vatican State's right to build within its borders.[42]
+
+The name "Vatican" was already in use in the time of the Roman Republic for the Ager Vaticanus, a marshy area on the west bank of the Tiber across from the city of Rome, located between the Janiculum, the Vatican Hill and Monte Mario, down to the Aventine Hill and up to the confluence of the Cremera creek.[21] The territory of Vatican City is part of the Vatican Hill, and of the adjacent former Vatican Fields. It is in this territory that St. Peter's Basilica, the Apostolic Palace, the Sistine Chapel, and museums were built, along with various other buildings. The area was part of the Roman rione of Borgo until 1929. Being separated from the city, on the west bank of the river Tiber, the area was an outcrop of the city that was protected by being included within the walls of Leo IV (847–855), and later expanded by the current fortification walls, built under Paul III (1534–1549), Pius IV (1559–1565), and Urban VIII (1623–1644).
+
+When the Lateran Treaty of 1929 that gave the state its form was being prepared, the boundaries of the proposed territory were influenced by the fact that much of it was all but enclosed by this loop. For some tracts of the frontier, there was no wall, but the line of certain buildings supplied part of the boundary, and for a small part of the frontier a modern wall was constructed.
+
+The territory includes St. Peter's Square, distinguished from the territory of Italy only by a white line along the limit of the square, where it touches Piazza Pio XII. St. Peter's Square is reached through the Via della Conciliazione which runs from close to the Tiber to St. Peter's. This grand approach was constructed by Benito Mussolini after the conclusion of the Lateran Treaty.
+
+According to the Lateran Treaty, certain properties of the Holy See that are located in Italian territory, most notably the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo and the major basilicas, enjoy extraterritorial status similar to that of foreign embassies.[43][44] These properties, scattered all over Rome and Italy, house essential offices and institutions necessary to the character and mission of the Holy See.[44]
+
+Castel Gandolfo and the named basilicas are patrolled internally by police agents of Vatican City State and not by Italian police. According to the Lateran Treaty (Art. 3) St. Peter's Square, up to but not including the steps leading to the basilica, is normally patrolled by the Italian police.[43]
+
+There are no passport controls for visitors entering Vatican City from the surrounding Italian territory. There is free public access to Saint Peter's Square and Basilica and, on the occasion of papal general audiences, to the hall in which they are held. For these audiences and for major ceremonies in Saint Peter's Basilica and Square, tickets free of charge must be obtained beforehand. The Vatican Museums, incorporating the Sistine Chapel, usually charge an entrance fee. There is no general public access to the gardens, but guided tours for small groups can be arranged to the gardens and excavations under the basilica. Other places are open to only those individuals who have business to transact there.
+
+Vatican City's climate is the same as Rome's: a temperate, Mediterranean climate Csa with mild, rainy winters from October to mid-May and hot, dry summers from May to September. Some minor local features, principally mists and dews, are caused by the anomalous bulk of St Peter's Basilica, the elevation, the fountains, and the size of the large paved square.
+
+In July 2007, the Vatican accepted a proposal by two firms based respectively in San Francisco and Budapest,[47] whereby it would become the first carbon neutral state by offsetting its carbon dioxide emissions with the creation of a Vatican Climate Forest in Hungary,[48] as a purely symbolic gesture[49] to encourage Catholics to do more to safeguard the planet.[50] Nothing came of the project.[51][52]
+
+On 26 November 2008, the Vatican itself put into effect a plan announced in May 2007 to cover the roof of the Paul VI Audience Hall with solar panels.[53][54]
+
+Within the territory of Vatican City are the Vatican Gardens (Italian: Giardini Vaticani),[55] which account for about half of this territory. The gardens, established during the Renaissance and Baroque era, are decorated with fountains and sculptures.
+
+The gardens cover approximately 23 hectares (57 acres). The highest point is 60 metres (197 ft) above mean sea level. Stone walls bound the area in the north, south and west.
+
+The gardens date back to medieval times when orchards and vineyards extended to the north of the Papal Apostolic Palace.[56] In 1279, Pope Nicholas III (Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, 1277–1280) moved his residence back to the Vatican from the Lateran Palace and enclosed this area with walls.[57] He planted an orchard (pomerium), a lawn (pratellum), and a garden (viridarium).[57]
+
+The politics of Vatican City takes place in an absolute elective monarchy, in which the head of the Catholic Church takes power. The pope exercises principal legislative, executive, and judicial power over the State of Vatican City (an entity distinct from the Holy See), which is a rare case of a non-hereditary monarchy.[58]
+
+Vatican City is one of the few widely recognized independent states that has not become a member of the United Nations.[59] The Holy See, which is distinct from Vatican City State, has permanent observer status with all the rights of a full member except for a vote in the UN General Assembly.
+
+The government of Vatican City has a unique structure. The pope is the sovereign of the state. Legislative authority is vested in the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, a body of cardinals appointed by the pope for five-year periods. Executive power is in the hands of the president of that commission, assisted by the general secretary and deputy general secretary. The state's foreign relations are entrusted to the Holy See's Secretariat of State and diplomatic service. Nevertheless, the pope has absolute power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches over Vatican City. He is the only absolute monarch in Europe.
+
+There are departments that deal with health, security, telecommunications, etc.[60]
+
+The Cardinal Camerlengo presides over the Apostolic Camera to which is entrusted the administration of the property and protection of other papal temporal powers and rights of the Holy See during the period of the empty throne or sede vacante (papal vacancy). Those of the Vatican State remain under the control of the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City. Acting with three other cardinals chosen by lot every three days, one from each order of cardinals (cardinal bishop, cardinal priest, and cardinal deacon), he in a sense performs during that period the functions of head of state of Vatican City.[citation needed] All the decisions these four cardinals take must be approved by the College of Cardinals as a whole.
+
+The nobility that was closely associated with the Holy See at the time of the Papal States continued to be associated with the Papal Court after the loss of these territories, generally with merely nominal duties (see Papal Master of the Horse, Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, Hereditary officers of the Roman Curia, Black Nobility). They also formed the ceremonial Noble Guard. In the first decades of the existence of the Vatican City State, executive functions were entrusted to some of them, including that of delegate for the State of Vatican City (now denominated president of the Commission for Vatican City). But with the motu proprio Pontificalis Domus of 28 March 1968,[61] Pope Paul VI abolished the honorary positions that had continued to exist until then, such as Quartermaster general and Master of the Horse.[62]
+
+Vatican City State, created in 1929 by the Lateran Pacts, provides the Holy See with a temporal jurisdiction and independence within a small territory. It is distinct from the Holy See. The state can thus be deemed a significant but not essential instrument of the Holy See. The Holy See itself has existed continuously as a juridical entity since Roman Imperial times and has been internationally recognized as a powerful and independent sovereign entity since Late Antiquity to the present, without interruption even at times when it was deprived of territory (e.g. 1870 to 1929). The Holy See has the oldest active continuous diplomatic service in the world, dating back to at least AD 325 with its legation to the Council of Nicea.[63]
+
+The Pope is ex officio head of state[64] of Vatican City since the 1860s, functions dependent on his primordial function as bishop of the diocese of Rome. The term "Holy See" refers not to the Vatican state but to the Pope's spiritual and pastoral governance, largely exercised through the Roman Curia.[65] His official title with regard to Vatican City is Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City.
+
+Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was elected on 13 March 2013. His principal subordinate government official for Vatican City as well as the country's head of government is the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, who since 1952 exercises the functions previously belonging to the Governor of Vatican City. Since 2001, the president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State also has the title of president of the Governorate of the State of Vatican City. The president is Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, who was appointed on 1 October 2011.
+
+Legislative functions are delegated to the unicameral Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, led by the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State. Its seven members are cardinals appointed by the Pope for terms of five years. Acts of the commission must be approved by the Pope, through the Holy See's Secretariat of State, and before taking effect must be published in a special appendix of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Most of the content of this appendix consists of routine executive decrees, such as approval for a new set of postage stamps.
+
+Executive authority is delegated to the Governorate of Vatican City. The Governorate consists of the President of the Pontifical Commission—using the title "President of the Governorate of Vatican City"—a general secretary, and a Vice general secretary, each appointed by the Pope for five-year terms. Important actions of the Governorate must be confirmed by the Pontifical Commission and by the Pope through the Secretariat of State.
+
+The Governorate oversees the central governmental functions through several departments and offices. The directors and officials of these offices are appointed by the Pope for five-year terms. These organs concentrate on material questions concerning the state's territory, including local security, records, transportation, and finances. The Governorate oversees a modern security and police corps, the Corpo della Gendarmeria dello Stato della Città del Vaticano.
+
+Judicial functions are delegated to a supreme court, an appellate court, a tribunal (Tribunal of Vatican City State), and a trial judge. At the Vatican's request, sentences imposed can be served in Italy (see the section on crime, below).
+
+The international postal country code prefix is SCV, and the only postal code is 00120 – altogether SCV-00120.[66]
+
+As the Vatican City is an enclave within Italy, its military defence is provided by the Italian Armed Forces. However, there is no formal defence treaty with Italy, as the Vatican City is a neutral state. Vatican City has no armed forces of its own, although the Swiss Guard is a military corps of the Holy See responsible for the personal security of the Pope, and residents in the state. Soldiers of the Swiss Guard are entitled to hold Vatican City State passports and nationality. Swiss mercenaries were historically recruited by Popes as part of an army for the Papal States, and the Pontifical Swiss Guard was founded by Pope Julius II on 22 January 1506 as the pope's personal bodyguard and continues to fulfill that function. It is listed in the Annuario Pontificio under "Holy See", not under "State of Vatican City". At the end of 2005, the Guard had 134 members. Recruitment is arranged by a special agreement between the Holy See and Switzerland. All recruits must be Catholic, unmarried males with Swiss citizenship who have completed their basic training with the Swiss Armed Forces with certificates of good conduct, be between the ages of 19 and 30, and be at least 174 cm (5 ft 9 in) in height. Members are equipped with small arms and the traditional halberd (also called the Swiss voulge), and trained in bodyguarding tactics. The Palatine Guard and the Noble Guard, the last armed forces of the Vatican City State, were disbanded by Pope Paul VI in 1970.[41] As Vatican City has listed every building in its territory on the International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict theoretically renders it immune to armed attack.[67]
+
+Civil defence is the responsibility of the Corps of Firefighters of the Vatican City State, the national fire brigade. Dating its origins to the early nineteenth century, the Corps in its present form was established in 1941. It is responsible for fire fighting, as well as a range of civil defence scenarios including flood, natural disaster, and mass casualty management. The Corps is governmentally supervised through the Directorate for Security Services and Civil Defence, which is also responsible for the Gendarmerie (see below).
+
+The Gendarmerie Corps (Corpo della Gendarmeria) is the gendarmerie, or police and security force, of Vatican City and the extraterritorial properties of the Holy See.[68] The corps is responsible for security, public order, border control, traffic control, criminal investigation, and other general police duties in Vatican City including providing security for the Pope outside of Vatican City. The corps has 130 personnel and is a part of the Directorate for Security Services and Civil Defence (which also includes the Vatican Fire Brigade), an organ of the Governorate of Vatican City.[69][70]
+
+Vatican City State is a recognized national territory under international law, but it is the Holy See that conducts diplomatic relations on its behalf, in addition to the Holy See's own diplomacy, entering into international agreements in its regard. Vatican City thus has no diplomatic service of its own.
+
+Because of space limitations, Vatican City is one of the few countries in the world that is unable to host embassies. Foreign embassies to the Holy See are located in the city of Rome; only during the Second World War were the staff of some embassies accredited to the Holy See given what hospitality was possible within the narrow confines of Vatican City—embassies such as that of the United Kingdom while Rome was held by the Axis Powers and Germany's when the Allies controlled Rome.
+
+The size of Vatican City is thus unrelated to the large global reach exercised by the Holy See as an entity quite distinct from the state.[71]
+
+However, Vatican City State itself participates in some international organizations whose functions relate to the state as a geographical entity, distinct from the non-territorial legal persona of the Holy See. These organizations are much less numerous than those in which the Holy See participates either as a member or with observer status. They include the following eight, in each of which Vatican City State holds membership:[72][73]
+
+It also participates in:[72]
+
+The Vatican City State is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In Europe only Belarus is also a non-party, non-signatory state.
+
+Further, the Vatican City State is not a member of the European Court of Human Rights. Again, only Belarus is also not a member in Europe.
+
+The OECD's "Common Reporting Standard" (CRS) aiming at preventing tax evasion and money laundering has also not been signed.[75][76][77] The Vatican City State has been criticized for its money laundering practises in the past decades.[78][79][80] The only other country in Europe that has not agreed to sign the CRS is Belarus.
+
+The Vatican City State is also one of few countries in the world that does not provide any publicly available financial data to the IMF.[81]
+
+The Vatican City State budget includes the Vatican Museums and post office and is supported financially by the sale of stamps, coins, medals and tourist mementos; by fees for admission to museums; and by publications sales.[k] The incomes and living standards of lay workers are comparable to those of counterparts who work in the city of Rome.[82] Other industries include printing, the production of mosaics, and the manufacture of staff uniforms. There is a Vatican Pharmacy.
+
+The Institute for Works of Religion (IOR, Istituto per le Opere di Religione), also known as the Vatican Bank, is a financial agency situated in the Vatican that conducts worldwide financial activities. It has multilingual ATMs with instructions in Latin, possibly the only ATM in the world with this feature.[83]
+
+Vatican City issues its own coins and stamps. It has used the euro as its currency since 1 January 1999, owing to a special agreement with the European Union (council decision 1999/98). Euro coins and notes were introduced on 1 January 2002—the Vatican does not issue euro banknotes. Issuance of euro-denominated coins is strictly limited by treaty, though somewhat more than usual is allowed in a year in which there is a change in the papacy.[84] Because of their rarity, Vatican euro coins are highly sought by collectors.[85] Until the adoption of the Euro, Vatican coinage and stamps were denominated in their own Vatican lira currency, which was on par with the Italian lira.
+
+Vatican City State, which employs nearly 2,000 people, had a surplus of 6.7 million euros in 2007 but ran a deficit in 2008 of over 15 million euros.[86]
+
+In 2012, the US Department of State's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report listed Vatican City for the first time among the nations of concern for money-laundering, placing it in the middle category, which includes countries such as Ireland, but not among the most vulnerable countries, which include the United States itself, Germany, Italy, and Russia.[87]
+
+On 24 February 2014 the Vatican announced it was establishing a secretariat for the economy, to be responsible for all economic, financial and administrative activities of the Holy See and the Vatican City State, headed by Cardinal George Pell. This followed the charging of two senior clerics including a monsignor with money laundering offences. Pope Francis also appointed an auditor-general authorized to carry out random audits of any agency at any time, and engaged a US financial services company to review the Vatican's 19,000 accounts to ensure compliance with international money laundering practices. The pontiff also ordered that the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See would be the Vatican's central bank, with responsibilities similar to other central banks around the world.[88]
+
+As of 2019, Vatican City had a total population of 825, including 453 residents (regardless of citizenship) and 372 Vatican citizens residing elsewhere (diplomats of the Holy See to other countries and cardinals residing in Rome).[9][89] The population is composed of clergy, other religious members, and lay people serving the state (such as the Swiss Guard) and their family members.[90] All citizens, residents and places of worship in the city are Catholic. The city also receives thousands of tourists and workers every day.
+
+Vatican City has no formally enacted official language, but, unlike the Holy See which most often uses Latin for the authoritative version of its official documents, Vatican City uses only Italian in its legislation and official communications.[91] Italian is also the everyday language used by most of those who work in the state. In the Swiss Guard, Swiss German is the language used for giving commands, but the individual guards take their oath of loyalty in their own languages: German, French, Italian or Romansh. The official websites of the Holy See[92] and of Vatican City[93] are primarily in Italian, with versions of their pages in a large number of languages to varying extents.
+
+Unlike citizenship of other states, which is based either on jus sanguinis (birth from a citizen, even outside the state's territory) or on jus soli (birth within the territory of the state), citizenship of Vatican City is granted jus officii, namely on the grounds of appointment to work in a certain capacity in the service of the Holy See. It usually ceases upon cessation of the appointment. Citizenship is also extended to the spouse and children of a citizen, provided they are living together in the city.[89] Some individuals are also authorized to reside in the city but do not qualify or choose not to request citizenship.[89] Anyone who loses Vatican citizenship and does not possess other citizenship automatically becomes an Italian citizen as provided in the Lateran Treaty.[43]
+
+The Holy See, not being a country, issues only diplomatic and service passports, whereas Vatican City issues normal passports for its citizens.
+
+In statistics comparing countries in various per capita or per area metrics, the Vatican City is often an outlier—these can stem from the state's small size and ecclesiastical function.[94] For example, as most of the roles which would confer citizenship are reserved for men, the gender ratio of the citizenship is several men per woman.[95] Further oddities are petty crimes against tourists resulting in a very high per-capita crime rate,[96] and the city-state leading the world in per-capita wine consumption.[94] A jocular illustration of these anomalies is sometimes made by calculating a "Popes per km2" statistic, which is greater than two because the country is less than half a square kilometre in area.[97]
+
+Vatican City is home to some of the most famous art in the world. St. Peter's Basilica, whose successive architects include Bramante, Michelangelo, Giacomo della Porta, Maderno and Bernini, is a renowned work of Renaissance architecture. The Sistine Chapel is famous for its frescos, which include works by Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Botticelli as well as the ceiling and Last Judgment by Michelangelo. Artists who decorated the interiors of the Vatican include Raphael and Fra Angelico.
+
+The Vatican Apostolic Library and the collections of the Vatican Museums are of the highest historical, scientific and cultural importance. In 1984, the Vatican was added by UNESCO to the List of World Heritage Sites; it is the only one to consist of an entire state.[98] Furthermore, it is the only site to date registered with the UNESCO as a centre containing monuments in the "International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection" according to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.[98]
+
+Michelangelo's Pietà, in the Basilica, is one of the Vatican's best known artworks
+
+Michelangelo's frescos on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, "an artistic vision without precedent"[99]
+
+The elaborately decorated Sistine Hall in the Vatican Library
+
+Main courtyard of the Vatican Museums
+
+There is a football championship, called the Vatican City Championship, with eight teams, including, for example, the Swiss Guard's FC Guardia and police and museum guard teams.[100]
+
+Vatican City has a reasonably well-developed transport network considering its size (consisting mostly of a piazza and walkways). As a state that is 1.05 kilometres (0.65 miles) long and 0.85 kilometres (0.53 miles) wide,[101] it has a small transportation system with no airports or highways. The only aviation facility in Vatican City is the Vatican City Heliport. Vatican City is one of the few independent countries without an airport, and is served by the airports that serve the city of Rome, Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport and to a lesser extent Ciampino Airport.[102]
+
+There is a standard gauge railway, mainly used to transport freight, connected to Italy's network at Rome's Saint Peter's station by an 852-metre-long (932 yd) spur, 300 metres (330 yd) of which is within Vatican territory.[102] Pope John XXIII was the first Pope to make use of the railway; Pope John Paul II rarely used it.[102]
+
+The closest metro station is Ottaviano – San Pietro – Musei Vaticani.[103]
+
+The City is served by an independent, modern telephone system named the Vatican Telephone Service,[104] and a postal system (Poste Vaticane) that started operating on 13 February 1929. On 1 August, the state started to release its own postal stamps, under the authority of the Philatelic and Numismatic Office of the Vatican City State.[105] The City's postal service is sometimes said to be "the best in the world",[106] and faster than the postal service in Rome.[106]
+
+The Vatican also controls its own Internet top-level domain, which is registered as (.va). Broadband service is widely provided within Vatican City. Vatican City has also been given a radio ITU prefix, HV, and this is sometimes used by amateur radio operators.
+
+Vatican Radio, which was organized by Guglielmo Marconi, broadcasts on short-wave, medium-wave and FM frequencies and on the Internet.[107] Its main transmission antennae are located in Italian territory, and exceed Italian environmental protection levels of emission. For this reason, the Vatican Radio has been sued. Television services are provided through another entity, the Vatican Television Center.[108]
+
+L'Osservatore Romano is the multilingual semi-official newspaper of the Holy See. It is published by a private corporation under the direction of Catholic laymen, but reports on official information. However, the official texts of documents are in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official gazette of the Holy See, which has an appendix for documents of the Vatican City State.
+
+Vatican Radio, the Vatican Television Center, and L'Osservatore Romano are organs not of the Vatican State but of the Holy See, and are listed as such in the Annuario Pontificio, which places them in the section "Institutions linked with the Holy See", ahead of the sections on the Holy See's diplomatic service abroad and the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, after which is placed the section on the State of Vatican City.
+
+In 2008, the Vatican began an "ecological island" for renewable waste and has continued the initiative throughout the papacy of Francis. These innovations included, for example, the installation of a solar power system on the roof of the Paul VI Audience Hall. In July 2019, it was announced that Vatican City would ban the use and sale of single-use plastics as soon as its supply was depleted, well before the 2021 deadline established by the European Union. It is estimated that 50–55% of Vatican City's municipal solid waste is properly sorted and recycled, with the goal of reaching the EU standard of 70–75%[109]
+
+Crime in Vatican City consists largely of purse snatching, pickpocketing and shoplifting by outsiders.[110] The tourist foot-traffic in St. Peter's Square is one of the main locations for pickpockets in Vatican City.[111] If crimes are committed in Saint Peter's Square, the perpetrators may be arrested and tried by the Italian authorities, since that area is normally patrolled by Italian police.[112]
+
+Under the terms of article 22 of the Lateran Treaty,[113] Italy will, at the request of the Holy See, punish individuals for crimes committed within Vatican City and will itself proceed against the person who committed the offence, if that person takes refuge in Italian territory. Persons accused of crimes recognized as such both in Italy and in Vatican City that are committed in Italian territory will be handed over to the Italian authorities if they take refuge in Vatican City or in buildings that enjoy immunity under the treaty.[113][114]
+
+Vatican City has no prison system, apart from a few detention cells for pre-trial detention.[115] People convicted of committing crimes in the Vatican serve terms in Italian prisons (Polizia Penitenziaria), with costs covered by the Vatican.[116]

en/5239.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,143 @@
+Coordinates: 13°15′N 61°12′W / 13.250°N 61.200°W / 13.250; -61.200
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (/ˌɡrɛnəˈdiːnz/ (listen)), also frequently known simply as Saint Vincent, is an Anglo-Caribbean country of several islands in the Lesser Antilles island arc, in the southeast Windward Islands, which lies in the West Indies at the southern end of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea where the latter meets the Atlantic Ocean.
+
+Its 369 km2 (142 sq mi) territory consists of the main island of Saint Vincent and the northern two-thirds of the Grenadines, a chain of 32 smaller islands. Some of the Grenadines are inhabited — Bequia, Mustique, Union Island, Canouan, Palm Island, Mayreau, Young Island — while others are not: Tobago Cays, Petit Saint Vincent, Baliceaux, Bettowia, Quatre, Petite Mustique, Savan and Petit Nevis. Most of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines lies within the Hurricane Alley.
+
+To the north of Saint Vincent lies Saint Lucia, to the east is Barbados, and Grenada lies to the south. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a densely populated country for its size (over 300 inhabitants/km2) with approximately 110,211 inhabitants.[1][2]
+
+Kingstown is the capital and main port. Saint Vincent has a British colonial history, and is now part of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, CARICOM, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
+
+Christopher Columbus, the first European to discover the island, named it after St. Vincent of Saragossa, whose feast day it was on the day Columbus first saw it (22 January 1498). The name of the Grenadines refers to the Spanish city of Granada, but to differentiate it from the island of the same name, the diminutive was used. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Carib natives who inhabited the island of St. Vincent called it Youloumain, in honour of Youlouca, the spirit of the rainbows, who they believed inhabited the island.[5][6]
+
+Before the arrival of Europeans and Africans in the 16th century, various Amerindian groups passed through or settled on St. Vincent and the Grenadines, including the Ciboney, Arawak, and Carib people.[7][8] The island now known as Saint Vincent was originally named Youloumain[9] by the native Island Caribs who called themselves Kalina/Carina ("l" and "r" being pronounced the same in their language).[citation needed]
+
+It is thought that Christopher Columbus sighted the island in 1498, giving it the name St Vincent.[5] The indigenous Garifuna people, who became known as the "Black Caribs", aggressively prevented European settlement on Saint Vincent.[10][6]
+
+Various attempts by the English and Dutch to claim the island proved unsuccessful, and it was the French who were first able to colonise the island, settling in the town of Barrouallie on the leeward side of St Vincent in 1719.[10] The French brought with them enslaved African prisoners of war to work the plantations of sugar, coffee, indigo, tobacco, cotton and cocoa.[11]
+
+The British captured the island and drove out the French from Barrouallie during the Seven Years' War, a claim confirmed with the Treaty of Paris (1763).[10] On taking control of the island in 1763, the British laid the foundations of Fort Charlotte and also brought with them enslaved African prisoners of war to work on the island plantations. The Black Caribs however, opposed to the British presence, went into open conflict against the British, starting the First Carib War which lasted from 1772 to 1773.[10]
+
+During the Anglo-French War (1778–1783) the French recaptured St Vincent in 1779.  However, the British regained control under the Treaty of Versailles (1783).[10][6]
+
+The uneasy peace between the British and the Black Caribs led to the Second Carib War, which lasted from 1795 to 1796.[10] The Black Caribs were led by Garifuna Paramount Chief Joseph Chatoyer and they were supported by the French, notably the radical Victor Hugues from the island of Martinique. Their revolt and uprising was eventually put to an end in 1797 by British General Sir Ralph Abercromby; a peace treaty agreement was made which resulted in almost 5,000 Black Caribs being exiled to Roatán, an island off the coast of Honduras, and to Belize and Baliceaux in the Grenadines.[6]
+
+In 1806 the building of Fort Charlotte was completed.[citation needed]
+
+The volcano La Soufrière erupted in 1812, resulting in considerable destruction[12][6]
+
+The British abolished slavery in Saint Vincent (as well as in the other British West Indies colonies) in 1834, and an apprenticeship period followed which ended in 1838.[6][10] After its end, labour shortages on the plantations resulted, and this was initially addressed by the immigration of indentured servants; in the late 1840s many Portuguese immigrants arrived from Madeira and between 1861 and 1888 shiploads of Indian labourers arrived.[10] Conditions remained harsh for both former slaves and immigrant agricultural workers, as depressed world sugar prices kept the economy stagnant until the turn of the century. The economy then went into a period of decline with many landowners abandoning their estates and leaving the land to be cultivated by liberated slaves.[citation needed]
+
+The Opobo king Jaja of Nigeria was exiled to St. Vincent after his 1887 arrest by the British for shipping cargoes of palm oil directly to Liverpool without the intermediation of the National African Company.[citation needed]
+
+In 1902, the volcano La Soufrière erupted, killing 1,500-2,000 people; much farmland was damaged, and the economy deteriorated.[6][10][12]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines passed through various stages of colonial status under the British. A representative assembly was authorised in 1776, Crown Colony government was installed in 1877, a legislative council was created in 1925 with a limited franchise,[10] and universal adult suffrage was granted in 1951.[10] During the period of its control of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Britain made several attempts to unify the island with other Windward Islands as a single entity, with the aim of simplifying British control in the Anglo-Caribbean region through a single unified administration.[10] In the 1960s, the British again tried to unify all of its regional islands including Saint Vincent into one united single entity under British control, unified politically. The unification was to be called the West Indies Federation and was driven by a desire to gain independence from British government.  However, the attempt collapsed in 1962.[10]
+
+Saint Vincent was granted "associate statehood" status by Britain on 27 October 1969.[10]  This gave Saint Vincent complete control over its own internal affairs but was short of full independence in law.[citation needed]
+
+In April 1979 La Soufrière erupted again. Although no one was killed, thousands were evacuated and again there was extensive agricultural damage.[12]
+
+On 27 October 1979 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines became the last of the Windward Islands to gain full independence,[10][6] and this date is now the country's Independence Day, a public holiday.[5] The country opted to remain within the British Commonwealth, retaining Queen Elizabeth as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.[citation needed]
+
+Milton Cato of the centre-left Saint Vincent Labour Party (SVLP) was the country's first Prime Minister (he had been Premier since 1974), ruling until he was defeated in the 1984 Vincentian general election by James Fitz-Allen Mitchell of the centre-right New Democratic Party (NDP).[10] During Cato's time in office there was a brief rebellion on Union Island in December 1979 led by Lennox 'Bumba' Charles; apparently inspired by the recent revolution on Grenada, Charles alleged neglect of Union by the central government.  However, the revolt was swiftly put down and Charles arrested.[13][14] There were also a series of strikes in the early 1980s.[6] James Mitchell remained Prime Minister for 16 years until 2000, winning three consecutive elections.[10] Mitchell was at the forefront of attempts to improve regional integration.[6] In 1980 and 1987 hurricanes damaged many banana and coconut plantations. Hurricane seasons were also very active in 1998 and 1999, with Hurricane Lenny in 1999 causing extensive damage to the west coast of the island.
+
+In 2000 Arnhim Eustace became Prime Minister after taking over the leadership of the NDP following Mitchell's retirement; he was defeated a year later by Ralph Gonsalves of the Unity Labour Party (the successor party to the SVLP).[15][10] Gonsalves—a left-winger known in the country as "Comrade Ralph"[16][17]—has argued that European nations owe Caribbean nations reparations for their role in the Atlantic slave trade.[18] Gonsalves won a second term in 2005,[16] a third term in 2010,[16] and a fourth term in 2015.[19]
+
+In 2009, a referendum was held on a proposal to adopt a new constitution that would make the country a republic, replacing Queen Elizabeth II as head of state with a non-executive President, a proposal supported by Prime Minister Gonsalves. A two-thirds majority was required, and it was defeated by 29,019 votes (55.64 per cent) to 22,493 (43.13 per cent).[20][10]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines lies to the west of Barbados, south of Saint Lucia and north of Grenada in the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, an island arc of the Caribbean Sea. The islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines include the main island of Saint Vincent 344 km2 (133 sq mi) and the northern two-thirds of the Grenadines 45 km2 (17 sq mi), which are a chain of smaller islands stretching south from Saint Vincent to Grenada. There are 32 islands and cays that make up St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). Nine are inhabited, including the mainland St Vincent and the Grenadines islands: Young Island, Bequia, Mustique, Canouan, Union Island, Mayreau, Petit St Vincent and Palm Island. Prominent uninhabited islands of the Grenadines include Petit Nevis, used by whalers, and Petit Mustique, which was the centre of a prominent real-estate scam in the early 2000s.[21]
+
+The capital of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is Kingstown, Saint Vincent.[5] The main island of Saint Vincent measures 26 km (16 mi) long, 15 km (9.3 mi) in width and 344 km2 (133 sq mi) in area. From the most northern to the most southern points, the Grenadine islands belonging to Saint Vincent span 60.4 km (37.5 mi), with a combined area of 45 km2 (17 sq mi).[citation needed]
+
+The island of Saint Vincent is volcanic and heavily forested, and includes little level ground.[5] The windward side of the island is very rocky and steep, while the leeward side has more sandy beaches and bays.[citation needed] Saint Vincent's highest peak is La Soufrière volcano at 1,234 m (4,049 ft).[5] Other major mountains on St Vincent are (from north to south) Richmond Peak, Mount Brisbane, Colonarie Mountain, Grand Bonhomme, Petit Bonhomme and Mount St Andrew.[citation needed]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, with Elizabeth II as Queen of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.[5] She does not reside in the islands and is represented as head of state in the country by the Governor-General of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, currently Susan Dougan (since 1 August 2019).[22]
+
+The office of Governor-General has mostly ceremonial functions including the opening of the islands' House of Assembly and the appointment of various government officials. Control of the government rests with the elected Prime Minister and his or her cabinet. The current Prime Minister is Ralph Gonsalves, elected in 2001 as head of the Unity Labour Party.[23]
+
+The legislative branch of government is the unicameral House of Assembly of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, seating 15 elected members representing single-member constituencies and six appointed members known as Senators. The parliamentary term of office is five years, although the Prime Minister may call elections at any time.[5]
+
+The judicial branch of government is divided into district courts, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court and the Privy Council in London being the court of last resort.[5]
+
+The two political parties with parliamentary representation are the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Unity Labour Party (ULP). The parliamentary opposition is made up of the largest minority stakeholder in the general elections, headed by the leader of the opposition. The current opposition leader is Godwin Friday.[5]
+
+Saint Vincent has no formal armed forces, although the Royal Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force includes a Special Service Unit as well as a militia that has a supporting role on the island.
+
+In 2017, Saint Vincent signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[24]
+
+Administratively, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is divided into six parishes. Five parishes are on Saint Vincent, while the sixth is made up of the Grenadine islands. Kingstown is located in the Parish of Saint George and is the capital city and central administrative centre of the country.[5]
+
+Acts of gross indecency, which may be defined to include homosexual activity, are illegal in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.[25] Section 148 of the Criminal Code states that "Any person, who in public or private, commits an act of gross indecency with another person of the same sex, or procures or attempts to procure another person of the same sex to commit an act of gross indecency with him or her, is guilty of an offence and liable to imprisonment for five years".[26]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines maintains close ties to Canada, the United Kingdom and the US, and cooperates with regional political and economic organisations such as the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and CARICOM.[27] The island nation's sixth embassy overseas was opened on 8 August 2019 in Taipei, after Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves' official visit to the Republic of China; the other five are located in London, Washington D.C., Havana, Caracas and Brussels.
+
+On 6 July 1994 at Sherbourne Conference Centre, St Michael, Barbados, as a representative of the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, then (James Mitchell, who was subsequently knighted) signed the Double Taxation Relief (CARICOM) Treaties.[27] There were seven other signatories to the agreement on that day. The countries which were represented were Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
+
+An eighth country signed the agreement on 19 August 2016, Guyana.
+
+This treaty covered taxes, residence, tax jurisdictions, capital gains, business profits, interest, dividends, royalties and other areas.[27]
+
+On 30 June 2014, St. Vincent and the Grenadines signed a Model 1 agreement with the United States of America with respect to Foreign Account Tax Compliance (Act) or FATCA.[28]
+
+According to the updated site as of 16 January 2017, on 13 May 2016 the agreement went to "In Force" status.
+
+St Vincent and the Grenadines is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).
+
+In September 2017, at the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly, the Prime Ministers of the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines called for UN action on alleged human rights abuses committed on Western New Guinea's indigenous Papuans.[29] Western New Guinea has been occupied by Indonesia since 1963.[30] More than 100,000 Papuans have died during a 50-year Papua conflict.[31]
+
+The Charter of the OAS was signed in Bogotá in 1948 and was amended by several Protocols which were named after the city and the year in which the Protocol was signed, such as "Managua" in "1993" forming part of the name of the Protocol.[32]
+
+St Vincent and the Grenadines entered the OAS system on 27 October 1981 according to the OAS website.[33]
+
+The last Summits of the Americas, the seventh, was held in Panama City, Panama in 2015 with the eighth summit being held in Lima, Peru in 2018 according to the website of the Summits of Americas.[34]
+
+With St Vincent and the Grenadines having at least two groups of indigenous persons[35] it is expected that there will be contributions from the SVG's on this topic at the next ILSAs.[36]
+
+The position of the OAS with respect to indigenous persons appears to be developing over the years. The following statements appear to capture the position of the OAS with respect to the ILSA: "The OAS has supported and participated in the organisation of Indigenous Leaders Summits of Americas (ILSA)" according to the OAS's website. The most recent "statement made by the Heads of State of the hemisphere was in the Declaration of Commitments of Port of Spain in 2009 – Paragraph 86 according to the OAS's website."[37]
+
+The Draft American Declaration of the Rights of the Indigenous Persons appear to be a working document. The last "Meeting for Negotiations in the Quest for Consensus on this area appeared to be Meeting Number (18) eighteen and is listed as being held in May 2015 according to the website."[38]
+
+In 2013, Saint Vincent called for European nations to pay reparations for the slave trade.[39]
+
+Saint Vincent protests against Venezuela's claim to give full effect to Aves (Bird) Island, which creates a Venezuelan EEZ/continental shelf extending over a large portion of the Caribbean Sea.[5]
+
+Agriculture, dominated by banana production, is the most important sector of this lower-middle-income economy. The services sector, based mostly on a growing tourist industry, is also important. The government has been relatively unsuccessful at introducing new industries, and the unemployment rate remains high at 19.8% in the 1991 census[40] to 15% in 2001.[41] The continuing dependence on a single crop represents the biggest obstacle to the islands' development as tropical storms wiped out substantial portions of bananas in many years.
+
+There is a small manufacturing sector and a small offshore financial sector serving international businesses, and its secrecy laws have caused some international concern.[citation needed] There are increasing demands for international financial services like stock exchange and financial intermediaries financial activities in the country.  In addition, the natives of Bequia are permitted to hunt up to four humpback whales per year under IWC subsistence quotas.
+
+The tourism sector has considerable potential for development. The recent filming of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies on the island has helped to expose the country to more potential visitors and investors. Recent growth has been stimulated by strong activity in the construction sector and an improvement in tourism.[42]
+
+Argyle International Airport is the country's new international airport.[43] The new facility opened on 14 February 2017,[44] replacing the existing E.T. Joshua Airport. The airport is on the island's east coast about 8.3 km (5.17 miles) from Kingstown.
+
+In 2010, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines had 21,700 telephone land lines. Its land telephone system is fully automatic and covers the entire island and all of the inhabited Grenadine islands.[41] In 2002, there were 10,000 mobile phones.[45] By 2010, this number had increased to 131,800.[41] Mobile phone service is available in most areas of Saint Vincent as well as the Grenadines.
+
+Saint Vincent has two ISPs (Digicel, Flow) that provide cellular telephone and internet service.[46]
+
+The population as estimated in 2018 was 110,211.[1][2] The ethnic composition was 66% African descent, 19% of mixed descent, 6% East Indian, 4% Europeans (mainly Portuguese), 2% Island Carib and 3% others.[5] Most Vincentians are the descendants of African people brought to the island to work on plantations. There are other ethnic groups such as Portuguese (from Madeira) and East Indians, both brought in to work on the plantations after the abolishing of slavery by the British living on the island. There is also a growing Chinese population.[citation needed]
+
+English is the official language. Most Vincentians speak Vincentian Creole.[47] English is used in education, government, religion, and other formal domains, while Creole (or 'dialect' as it is referred to locally) is used in informal situations such as in the home and among friends.[48]
+
+According to the 2001 census, 81.5% of the population of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines identified themselves as Christian, 6.7% has another religion and 8.8% has no religion or did not state a religion (1.5%).[49]
+
+Anglicanism constitutes the largest religious category, with 17.8% of the population. Pentecostals are the second largest group (17.6%). The next largest group are Methodists (10.9% of the population), followed by Seventh-day Adventists (10.2%) and Baptists (10.0%). Other Christians include Jehovah's Witnesses (0.6%), Roman Catholics (7.5%), Evangelicals (2.8%), Church of God (2.5%), Brethren Christian (1.3%), and the Salvation Army (0.3%).[citation needed]
+
+Between 1991 and 2001 the number of Anglicans, Brethren, Methodists and Roman Catholics decreased, while the number of Pentecostals, Evangelicals and Seventh-day Adventists increased.[citation needed]
+
+The number of non-Christians is small. These religious groups include the Rastafarians (1.5% of the population), Hindus and Muslims(1.5%).[50]
+
+Cricket, rugby and association football are most popular among men whereas netball is most popular among women. Basketball, volleyball and tennis are also very popular.[51]
+
+The country's prime football league is the NLA Premier League, which provides its national (association) football team with most players. A notable Vincentian footballer is Ezra Hendrickson, former national team captain who played at several Major League Soccer clubs in the United States and is now an assistant coach with the Seattle Sounders FC.[52]
+
+The country regularly participates at the Caribbean Basketball Championship where a men's team and a women's team compete. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines also has its own national rugby union team which is ranked 84th in the world. Other notable sports played at the regional level include track and field.[citation needed]
+
+Music popular in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines includes big drum, calypso, soca, steelpan and reggae. String band music, quadrille and traditional storytelling are also popular.  One of the most successful St Vincent natives is Kevin Lyttle.  He was named Cultural Ambassador for the Island 19 September 2013.[53]
+
+The national anthem of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is "Saint Vincent, Land so beautiful", adopted upon independence in 1979.[citation needed]
+
+Saint Vincent has twelve FM radio stations including 88.9 Adoration Fm,[54] 89.1 Jem Radio, 89.7 NBC Radio, 95.7 and 105.7 Praise FM, 96.7 Nice Radio, 97.1 Hot 97, 98.3 Star FM, 99.9 We FM, 103.7 Hitz, 102.7 EZee radio, 104.3 Xtreme FM and 106.9 Boom FM. Several Internet radio stations including Chronicles Christian Radio.[55] It has one television broadcast station ZBG-TV (SVGTV)[56] and one cable television provider.
+
+St Vincent and the Grenadines Broadcasting Co-operation is the parent company for SVGTV, Magic 103.7.[57]
+
+Related articles

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+
+
+The Balearic Islands (/ˌbæliˈærɪk/ BAL-ee-ARR-ik, also US: /ˌbɑːl-/ BAHL-, UK: /bəˈlɪərɪk/ bə-LEER-ik;[1][2] Catalan: Illes Balears [ˈiʎəz bələˈas]; Spanish: Islas Baleares[3][4][5] [ˈizlaz βaleˈaɾes])[6] are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.
+
+The four largest islands are Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, and Formentera. Many minor islands and islets are close to the larger islands, including Cabrera, Dragonera, and S'Espalmador. The islands have a Mediterranean climate, and the four major islands are all popular tourist destinations. Ibiza, in particular, is known as an international party destination, attracting many of the world's most popular DJs to its nightclubs.[7] The islands' culture and cuisine are similar to those of the rest of Spain but have their own distinctive features.
+
+The archipelago forms an autonomous community and a province of Spain, with Palma de Mallorca as the capital. The 2007 Statute of Autonomy declares the Balearic Islands as one nationality of Spain.[8] The co-official languages in the Balearic Islands are Catalan and Spanish.
+
+The official name of the Balearic Islands in Catalan is Illes Balears, while in Spanish, they are known as the Islas Baleares. The term "Balearic" derives from Greek (Γυμνησίαι/Gymnesiae and Βαλλιαρεῖς/Balliareis).[9] In Latin, it is Baleares.
+
+Of the various theories on the origins of the two ancient Greek and Latin names for the islands—Gymnasiae and Baleares—classical sources provide two.
+
+According to the Lycophron's Alexandra verses, the islands were called Γυμνησίαι/Gymnesiae (γυμνός/gymnos, meaning naked in Greek) because its inhabitants were often nude, probably because of the year-round benevolent climate.
+
+The Greek and Roman writers generally derive the name of the people from their skill as slingers (βαλεαρεῖς/baleareis, from βάλλω/ballo: ancient Greek meaning "to launch"), although Strabo regards the name as of Phoenician origin. He observed it was the Phoenician equivalent for lightly armoured soldiers the Greeks would have called γυμνῆτας/gymnetas.[10] The root bal does point to a Phoenician origin; perhaps the islands were sacred to the god Baal[original research?] and the resemblance to the Greek root ΒΑΛ (in βάλλω/ballo) is accidental. Indeed, it was usual Greek practice to assimilate local names into their own language. But the common Greek name of the islands is not Βαλεαρεῖς/Baleareis, but Γυμνησίαι/Gymnesiai. The former was the name used by the natives, as well as by the Carthaginians and Romans,[11] while the latter probably derives from the light equipment of the Balearic troops γυμνῆται/gymnetae.[10]
+
+The Balearic Islands are on a raised platform called the Balearic Promontory, and were formed by uplift. They are cut by a network of northwest to southeast faults.[12][13]
+
+The main islands of the autonomous community are Majorca (Mallorca), Menorca/Minorca (Menorca), Ibiza (Eivissa/Ibiza), and Formentera, all popular tourist destinations. Amongst the minor islands is Cabrera, the location of the Cabrera Archipelago Maritime-Terrestrial National Park.
+
+The islands can be further grouped, with Majorca, Menorca, and Cabrera as the Gymnesian Islands (Illes Gimnèsies), and Ibiza and Formentera as the Pityusic Islands (Illes Pitiüses officially in Catalan), also referred to as the Pityuses (or sometimes informally in English as the Pine Islands). Many minor islands or islets are close to the biggest islands, such as Es Conills, Es Vedrà, Sa Conillera, Dragonera, S'Espalmador, S'Espardell, Ses Bledes, Santa Eulària, Plana, Foradada, Tagomago, Na Redona, Colom, L'Aire, etc.
+
+The Balearic Front is a sea density regime north of the Balearic Islands on the shelf slope of the Balearic Islands, which is responsible for some of the surface-flow characteristics of the Balearic Sea.[14]
+
+Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, the Balearic Islands unsurprisingly have typical Mediterranean climates. The below-listed climatic data of the capital Palma are typical for the archipelago, with minor differences to other stations in Majorca, Ibiza, and Menorca.[15]
+
+Little is recorded on the earliest inhabitants of the islands, though many legends exist. The story, preserved by Lycophron, that certain shipwrecked Greek Boeotians were cast nude on the islands, was evidently invented to account for the name Gymnesiae (Ancient Greek: Γυμνήσιαι). In addition, Diodorus Siculus writes that the Greeks called the islands Gymnesiae because the inhabitants were naked (γυμνοί) during the summer time.[17] Also, a tradition holds that the islands were colonised by Rhodes after the Trojan War.[10]
+
+The islands had a very mixed population, of whose habits several strange stories are told. In some stories,  the people were said to go naked or were clad only in sheepskins—whence the name of the islands (an instance of folk etymology)—until the Phoenicians clothed them with broad-bordered tunics. In other stories, they were naked only in the heat of summer.
+
+Other legends allow that the inhabitants lived in hollow rocks and artificial caves, that they were remarkable for their love of women and would give three or four men as the ransom for one woman, that they had no gold or silver coin, and forbade the importation of the precious metals, so that those of them who served as mercenaries took their pay in wine and women instead of money. Their marriage and funeral customs, peculiar to Roman observers, are related by Diodorus Siculus (v. 18 book 6 chapter 5).
+
+In ancient times, the islanders of the Gymnesian Islands (Illes Gimnèsies) constructed talayots, and were famous for their skill with the sling. As slingers, they served as mercenaries, first under the Carthaginians, and afterwards under the Romans. They went into battle ungirt, with only a small buckler, and a javelin burnt at the end, and in some cases tipped with a small iron point; but their effective weapons were their slings, of which each man carried three, wound round his head (Strabo p. 168; Eustath.), or, as seen in other sources, one round the head, one round the body, and one in the hand. (Diodorus) The three slings were of different lengths, for stones of different sizes; the largest they hurled with as much force as if it were flung from a catapult; and they seldom missed their mark. To this exercise they were trained from infancy, in order to earn their livelihood as mercenary soldiers. It is said that the mothers allowed their children to eat bread only when they had struck it off a post with the sling.[18]
+
+The Phoenicians took possession of the islands in very early times;[19] a remarkable trace of their colonisation is preserved in the town of Mago (Maó in Menorca). After the fall of Carthage in 146 BC, the islands seem to have been virtually independent. Notwithstanding their celebrity in war, the people were generally very quiet and inoffensive.[20] The Romans, however, easily found a pretext for charging them with complicity with the Mediterranean pirates, and they were conquered by Q. Caecilius Metellus, thence surnamed Balearicus, in 123 BC.[21] Metellus settled 3,000 Roman and Spanish colonists on the larger island, and founded the cities of Palma and Pollentia.[22] The islands belonged, under the Roman Empire, to the conventus of Carthago Nova (modern Cartagena), in the province of Hispania Tarraconensis, of which province they formed the fourth district, under the government of a praefectus pro legato. An inscription of the time of Nero mentions the PRAEF. PRAE LEGATO INSULAR. BALIARUM. (Orelli, No. 732, who, with Muratori, reads pro for prae.) They were afterwards made a separate province, called Hispania Balearica, probably in the division of the empire under Constantine.[23]
+
+The two largest islands (the Balearic Islands, in their historical sense) had numerous excellent harbours, though rocky at their mouth, and requiring care in entering them (Strabo, Eustath.; Port Mahon is one of the finest harbours in the world). Both were extremely fertile in all produce, except wine and olive oil.[24] They were celebrated for their cattle, especially for the mules of the lesser island; they had an immense number of rabbits, and were free from all venomous reptiles.[25] Amongst the snails valued by the Romans as a diet was a species from the Balearic isles called cavaticae because they were bred in caves.[26] Their chief mineral product was the red earth, called sinope, which was used by painters.[27] Their resin and pitch are mentioned by Dioscorides.[28] The population of the two islands is stated by Diodorus at 30,000.
+
+The part of the Mediterranean east of Spain, around the Balearic Isles, was called Mare Balearicum,[29] or Sinus Balearicus.[30]
+
+The Vandals under Genseric conquered the Islands sometime between 461 and 468 during their war on the Roman Empire. However, in late 533 or early 534, following the Battle of Ad Decimum, the troops of Belisarius reestablished control of the islands for the Romans. Imperial power receded precipitately in the western Mediterranean after the fall of Carthage and the Exarchate of Africa to the Umayyad Caliphate in 698, and in 707 the islands submitted to the terms of an Umayyad fleet, which allowed the residents to maintain their traditions and religion as well as a high degree of autonomy. Now nominally both Byzantine and Umayyad, the de facto independent islands occupied a strategic and profitable grey area between the competing religions and kingdoms of the western Mediterranean. The prosperous islands were thoroughly sacked by the Swedish Viking King Björn Ironside and his brother Hastein during their Mediterranean raid of 859–862.
+
+In 902, the heavy use of the islands as a pirate base provoked the Emirate of Córdoba, nominally the island's overlords, to invade and incorporate the islands into their state. However, the Cordoban emirate disintegrated in civil war and partition in the early eleventh century, breaking into smaller states called taifa. Mujahid al-Siqlabi, the ruler of the Taifa of Dénia, sent a fleet and seized control of the islands in 1015, using it as the base for subsequent expeditions to Sardinia and Pisa. In 1050, the island's governor Abd Allah ibn Aglab rebelled and established the independent Taifa of Mallorca.
+
+For centuries, the Balearic sailors and pirates had been masters of the western Mediterranean. But the expanding influence of the Italian maritime republics and the shift of power on the Iberian peninsula from the Muslim states to the Christian states left the islands vulnerable. A crusade was launched in 1113. Led by Ugo da Parlascio Ebriaco and Archbishop Pietro Moriconi of the Republic of Pisa, the expedition included 420 ships, a large army and a personal envoy from Pope Paschal II. In addition to the Pisans (who had been promised suzerainty over the islands by the Pope), the expedition included forces from the Italian cities of Florence, Lucca, Pistoia, Rome, Siena, and Volterra, from Sardinia and Corsica, Catalan forces under Ramon Berenguer, Hug II of Empúries, and Ramon Folc II of Cardona came from Spain and Occitan forces under William V of Montpellier, Aimery II of Narbonne, and Raymond I of Baux came from France. The expedition also received strong support from Constantine I of Logudoro and his base of Porto Torres.
+
+The crusade sacked Palma in 1115 and generally reduced the islands, ending its period as a great sea power, but then withdrew. Within a year, the now shattered islands were conquered by the Berber Almoravid dynasty, whose aggressive, militant approach to religion mirrored that of the crusaders and departed from the island's history as a tolerant haven under Cordoba and the taifa. The Almoravids were conquered and deposed in North Africa and on the Iberian Peninsula by the rival Almohad Dynasty of Marrakech in 1147. Muhammad ibn Ganiya, the Almoravid claimant, fled to Palma and established his capital there. His dynasty, the Banu Ghaniya, sought allies in their effort to recover their kingdom from the Almohads, leading them to grant Genoa and Pisa their first commercial concessions on the islands. In 1184, an expedition was sent to recapture Ifriqiya (the coastal areas of what is today Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and western Libya) but ended in defeat. Fearing reprisals, the inhabitants of the Balearics rebelled against the Almoravids and accepted Almohad suzerainty in 1187.
+
+On the last day of 1229, King James I of Aragon captured Palma after a three-month siege. The rest of Mallorca quickly followed. Menorca fell in 1232 and Ibiza in 1235. In 1236, James traded most of the islands to Peter I, Count of Urgell for Urgell, which he incorporated into his kingdom. Peter ruled from Palma, but after his death without issue in 1258, the islands reverted by the terms of the deal to the Crown of Aragon.
+
+James died in 1276, having partitioned his domains between his sons in his will. The will created a new Kingdom of Mallorca from the Balearic islands and the mainland counties of Roussillon or Montpellier, which was left to his son James II. However, the terms of the will specified that the new kingdom be a vassal state to the Crown of Aragon, which was left to his older brother Peter. Chafing under the vassalage, James joined forces with the Pope Martin IV and Philip III of France against his brother in the Aragonese Crusade, leading to a 10-year Aragonese occupation before the islands were restored in the 1295 Treaty of Anagni. The tension between the kingdoms continued through the generations until James' grandson James III was killed by the invading army of Peter's grandson Peter IV at the 1349 Battle of Llucmajor. The Balearic Islands were then incorporated directly into the Crown of Aragon.
+
+In 1469, Ferdinand II of Aragon (king of Aragon) and Isabella I of Castile (queen of Castile) were married. After their deaths, their respective territories (until then governed separately) were governed jointly, in the person of their grandson, the Emperor Charles V. This can be considered the foundation of the modern Spanish state, albeit a decentralised one wherein the various component territories within the united crowns retained their particular historic laws and privileges.
+
+The Balearic Islands were frequently attacked by Ottomans and Barbary pirates from North Africa; Formentera was even temporarily abandoned by its population. In 1514, 1515 and 1521, the coasts of the Balearic Islands and the Spanish mainland were raided by Turkish privateers under the command of the Ottoman admiral, Hayreddin Barbarossa. The Balearic Islands were ravaged in 1558 by Ottoman corsair Turgut Reis, and 4,000 people were taken into slavery.[31]
+
+The island of Menorca was a British dependency for most of the 18th century as a result of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. This treaty—signed by the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Portugal as well as the Kingdom of Spain, to end the conflict caused by the War of the Spanish Succession—gave Gibraltar and Menorca to the Kingdom of Great Britain, Sardinia to Austria (both territories had been part of the Crown of Aragon for more than four centuries), and Sicily to the House of Savoy. In addition, Flanders and other European territories of the Spanish Crown were given to Austria. The island fell to French forces, under Armand de Vignerot du Plessis in June 1756 and was occupied by them for the duration of the Seven Years' War.
+
+The British re-occupied the island after the war but, with their military forces diverted away by the American War of Independence, it fell to a Franco-Spanish force after a seven-month siege (1781–82). Spain retained it under the Treaty of Paris in 1783. However, during the French Revolutionary Wars, when Spain became an ally of France, it came under French rule.
+
+Menorca was finally returned to Spain by the Treaty of Amiens during the French Revolutionary Wars, following the last British occupation, which lasted from 1798 to 1802. The continued presence of British naval forces, however, meant that the Balearic Islands were never occupied by the French during the Napoleonic Wars.
+
+The cuisine of the islands can be grouped as part of wider Catalan, Spanish or Mediterranean cuisines. It features much pastry, cheese, wine, pork and seafood. Sobrassada is a local pork sausage. Lobster stew from Menorca, is one of their most well-sought after dishes, attracting even King Juan Carlos I to the islands.[32] Mayonnaise is said to originate from the Menorcan city of Maó,[33] which also produces its own cheese. Local pastries include Ensaimada, Flaó and Coca.
+
+Both Catalan and Spanish are official languages in the islands. Catalan is designated as a "llengua pròpia", literally "own language" in its statute of autonomy. The Balearic dialect features several differences from standard Catalan. Practically all residents of the Balearic Islands speak Spanish fluently. In 2003 74.6% of the Islands' residents also knew how to speak Catalan and 93.1% could understand it.[34] Other languages, such as English, German, French and Italian, are often spoken by locals, especially those who work in the tourism industry.
+
+Circa 2017 there were 1,115,999 residents of the Balearics; 16.7% of the islands' population were foreign (non-Spanish). At that time the islands had 23,919 Moroccans, 19,209 Germans, 16,877 Italians, and 14,981 British registered in town halls. The next-largest foreign groups were the Romanians; the Bulgarians; the Argentines, numbering at 6,584; the French; the Colombians; and the Ecuadoreans, numbering at 5,437.[37]
+
+Circa 2016 the islands had 1,107,220 total residents; the figures of Germans and British respectively were 20,451 and 16,134. Between 2016 and 2017 people from other parts of Spain moved to the Balearics, while the foreign population declined by 2,000. In 2007 there were 29,189 Germans, 19,803 British, 17,935 Moroccans, 13,100 Ecuadoreans, 11,933 Italians, and 11,129 Argentines. The numbers of Germans, British, and South Americans declined between 2007 and 2017 while the largest-increasing populations were the Moroccans, Italians, and Romanians.[37]
+
+Each one of the three main islands is administered, along with its surrounding minor islands and islets, by an insular council (consell insular in Catalan) of the same name. These four insular councils are the first level of subdivision in the autonomous community (and province) of the Baleares.
+
+Before the administrative reform of 1977, the two insular councils of Ibiza and Formentera were forming in a single one (covering the whole group of the Pitiusic Islands).
+
+This level is further subdivided into six comarques only in the insular council of Mallorca; the three other insular councils are not subdivided into separate comarques, but are themselves assimilated each one to a comarca covering the same territory as the insular council.
+
+These nine comarques are then subdivided into municipalities (municipis), with the exception of Formentera, which is at the same time an insular council, a comarca, and a municipality.
+
+Note that the maritime and terrestrial natural reserves in the Balearic Islands are not owned by the municipalities, even if they fall within their territory, but are owned and managed by the respective insular councils from which they depend.
+
+Those municipalities are further subdivided into civil parishes (parròquies), that are slightly larger than the traditional religious parishes, themselves subdivided (only in Ibiza and Formentera) into administrative villages (named véndes in Catalan); each vénda is grouping several nearby hamlets (casaments) and their immediate surrounding lands—these casaments are traditionally formed by grouping together several cubic houses to form a defensive parallelepiped with windows open to the east (against heat), sharing their collected precious water resources, whose residents are deciding and planning some common collective works.
+
+However, these last levels of subdivisions of municipalities do not have their own local administration: they are mostly as the natural economical units for agricultural exploitation (and consequently referenced in local norms for constructions and urbanisation as well) and are the reference space for families (so they may be appended to the names of peoples and their land and housing properties) and are still used in statistics. Historically, these structures have been used for defensive purpose as well, and were more tied to the local Catholic church and parishes (notably after the Reconquista).
+
+The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the autonomous community was 32.5 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 2.7% of Spanish economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 29,700 euros or 98% of the EU27 average in the same year.[38]
+
+There are approximately 79 ferries between Mallorca and other destinations every week, most of them to mainland Spain.
+
+The islands' most successful football club is RCD Mallorca from Palma, currently playing in the first-tier La Liga after promotion in 2019. Founded in 1916, it is the oldest club in the islands, and won its only Copa del Rey title in 2003[39] and was the runner-up in the 1999 European Cup Winners' Cup.[40]
+
+Tennis player Rafael Nadal, winner of 19 Grand Slam single titles, and former world no. 1 tennis player Carlos Moyá are both from Majorca. Rafael Nadal's uncle, Miguel Ángel Nadal, is a former Spanish international footballer. Other famous sportsmen include basketball player Rudy Fernández and motorcycle road racer Jorge Lorenzo, who won the 2010, 2012 and 2015 MotoGP World Championships.
+
+Whale watching is also expected for expanding future tourism of the islands.[41][42]
+
+Ibiza also recently became one of the world's top yachting hubs attracting a wide among of charter yachts[43] and the world's second most expensive marina in the world.
+
+Serra de Tramuntana
+
+View of the Serra de Tramuntana mountain range, Majorca
+
+Port de Sóller on the northwest coast of Majorca
+
+La Almudaina was a royal palace of the kings of Majorca, Aragon and Spain
+
+Valldemossa Charterhouse was royal palace of the king Sancho of Majorca
+
+Talaiotic culture

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+Coordinates: 13°15′N 61°12′W / 13.250°N 61.200°W / 13.250; -61.200
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (/ˌɡrɛnəˈdiːnz/ (listen)), also frequently known simply as Saint Vincent, is an Anglo-Caribbean country of several islands in the Lesser Antilles island arc, in the southeast Windward Islands, which lies in the West Indies at the southern end of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea where the latter meets the Atlantic Ocean.
+
+Its 369 km2 (142 sq mi) territory consists of the main island of Saint Vincent and the northern two-thirds of the Grenadines, a chain of 32 smaller islands. Some of the Grenadines are inhabited — Bequia, Mustique, Union Island, Canouan, Palm Island, Mayreau, Young Island — while others are not: Tobago Cays, Petit Saint Vincent, Baliceaux, Bettowia, Quatre, Petite Mustique, Savan and Petit Nevis. Most of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines lies within the Hurricane Alley.
+
+To the north of Saint Vincent lies Saint Lucia, to the east is Barbados, and Grenada lies to the south. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a densely populated country for its size (over 300 inhabitants/km2) with approximately 110,211 inhabitants.[1][2]
+
+Kingstown is the capital and main port. Saint Vincent has a British colonial history, and is now part of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, CARICOM, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
+
+Christopher Columbus, the first European to discover the island, named it after St. Vincent of Saragossa, whose feast day it was on the day Columbus first saw it (22 January 1498). The name of the Grenadines refers to the Spanish city of Granada, but to differentiate it from the island of the same name, the diminutive was used. Before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Carib natives who inhabited the island of St. Vincent called it Youloumain, in honour of Youlouca, the spirit of the rainbows, who they believed inhabited the island.[5][6]
+
+Before the arrival of Europeans and Africans in the 16th century, various Amerindian groups passed through or settled on St. Vincent and the Grenadines, including the Ciboney, Arawak, and Carib people.[7][8] The island now known as Saint Vincent was originally named Youloumain[9] by the native Island Caribs who called themselves Kalina/Carina ("l" and "r" being pronounced the same in their language).[citation needed]
+
+It is thought that Christopher Columbus sighted the island in 1498, giving it the name St Vincent.[5] The indigenous Garifuna people, who became known as the "Black Caribs", aggressively prevented European settlement on Saint Vincent.[10][6]
+
+Various attempts by the English and Dutch to claim the island proved unsuccessful, and it was the French who were first able to colonise the island, settling in the town of Barrouallie on the leeward side of St Vincent in 1719.[10] The French brought with them enslaved African prisoners of war to work the plantations of sugar, coffee, indigo, tobacco, cotton and cocoa.[11]
+
+The British captured the island and drove out the French from Barrouallie during the Seven Years' War, a claim confirmed with the Treaty of Paris (1763).[10] On taking control of the island in 1763, the British laid the foundations of Fort Charlotte and also brought with them enslaved African prisoners of war to work on the island plantations. The Black Caribs however, opposed to the British presence, went into open conflict against the British, starting the First Carib War which lasted from 1772 to 1773.[10]
+
+During the Anglo-French War (1778–1783) the French recaptured St Vincent in 1779.  However, the British regained control under the Treaty of Versailles (1783).[10][6]
+
+The uneasy peace between the British and the Black Caribs led to the Second Carib War, which lasted from 1795 to 1796.[10] The Black Caribs were led by Garifuna Paramount Chief Joseph Chatoyer and they were supported by the French, notably the radical Victor Hugues from the island of Martinique. Their revolt and uprising was eventually put to an end in 1797 by British General Sir Ralph Abercromby; a peace treaty agreement was made which resulted in almost 5,000 Black Caribs being exiled to Roatán, an island off the coast of Honduras, and to Belize and Baliceaux in the Grenadines.[6]
+
+In 1806 the building of Fort Charlotte was completed.[citation needed]
+
+The volcano La Soufrière erupted in 1812, resulting in considerable destruction[12][6]
+
+The British abolished slavery in Saint Vincent (as well as in the other British West Indies colonies) in 1834, and an apprenticeship period followed which ended in 1838.[6][10] After its end, labour shortages on the plantations resulted, and this was initially addressed by the immigration of indentured servants; in the late 1840s many Portuguese immigrants arrived from Madeira and between 1861 and 1888 shiploads of Indian labourers arrived.[10] Conditions remained harsh for both former slaves and immigrant agricultural workers, as depressed world sugar prices kept the economy stagnant until the turn of the century. The economy then went into a period of decline with many landowners abandoning their estates and leaving the land to be cultivated by liberated slaves.[citation needed]
+
+The Opobo king Jaja of Nigeria was exiled to St. Vincent after his 1887 arrest by the British for shipping cargoes of palm oil directly to Liverpool without the intermediation of the National African Company.[citation needed]
+
+In 1902, the volcano La Soufrière erupted, killing 1,500-2,000 people; much farmland was damaged, and the economy deteriorated.[6][10][12]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines passed through various stages of colonial status under the British. A representative assembly was authorised in 1776, Crown Colony government was installed in 1877, a legislative council was created in 1925 with a limited franchise,[10] and universal adult suffrage was granted in 1951.[10] During the period of its control of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Britain made several attempts to unify the island with other Windward Islands as a single entity, with the aim of simplifying British control in the Anglo-Caribbean region through a single unified administration.[10] In the 1960s, the British again tried to unify all of its regional islands including Saint Vincent into one united single entity under British control, unified politically. The unification was to be called the West Indies Federation and was driven by a desire to gain independence from British government.  However, the attempt collapsed in 1962.[10]
+
+Saint Vincent was granted "associate statehood" status by Britain on 27 October 1969.[10]  This gave Saint Vincent complete control over its own internal affairs but was short of full independence in law.[citation needed]
+
+In April 1979 La Soufrière erupted again. Although no one was killed, thousands were evacuated and again there was extensive agricultural damage.[12]
+
+On 27 October 1979 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines became the last of the Windward Islands to gain full independence,[10][6] and this date is now the country's Independence Day, a public holiday.[5] The country opted to remain within the British Commonwealth, retaining Queen Elizabeth as Monarch, represented locally by a Governor-General.[citation needed]
+
+Milton Cato of the centre-left Saint Vincent Labour Party (SVLP) was the country's first Prime Minister (he had been Premier since 1974), ruling until he was defeated in the 1984 Vincentian general election by James Fitz-Allen Mitchell of the centre-right New Democratic Party (NDP).[10] During Cato's time in office there was a brief rebellion on Union Island in December 1979 led by Lennox 'Bumba' Charles; apparently inspired by the recent revolution on Grenada, Charles alleged neglect of Union by the central government.  However, the revolt was swiftly put down and Charles arrested.[13][14] There were also a series of strikes in the early 1980s.[6] James Mitchell remained Prime Minister for 16 years until 2000, winning three consecutive elections.[10] Mitchell was at the forefront of attempts to improve regional integration.[6] In 1980 and 1987 hurricanes damaged many banana and coconut plantations. Hurricane seasons were also very active in 1998 and 1999, with Hurricane Lenny in 1999 causing extensive damage to the west coast of the island.
+
+In 2000 Arnhim Eustace became Prime Minister after taking over the leadership of the NDP following Mitchell's retirement; he was defeated a year later by Ralph Gonsalves of the Unity Labour Party (the successor party to the SVLP).[15][10] Gonsalves—a left-winger known in the country as "Comrade Ralph"[16][17]—has argued that European nations owe Caribbean nations reparations for their role in the Atlantic slave trade.[18] Gonsalves won a second term in 2005,[16] a third term in 2010,[16] and a fourth term in 2015.[19]
+
+In 2009, a referendum was held on a proposal to adopt a new constitution that would make the country a republic, replacing Queen Elizabeth II as head of state with a non-executive President, a proposal supported by Prime Minister Gonsalves. A two-thirds majority was required, and it was defeated by 29,019 votes (55.64 per cent) to 22,493 (43.13 per cent).[20][10]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines lies to the west of Barbados, south of Saint Lucia and north of Grenada in the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, an island arc of the Caribbean Sea. The islands of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines include the main island of Saint Vincent 344 km2 (133 sq mi) and the northern two-thirds of the Grenadines 45 km2 (17 sq mi), which are a chain of smaller islands stretching south from Saint Vincent to Grenada. There are 32 islands and cays that make up St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). Nine are inhabited, including the mainland St Vincent and the Grenadines islands: Young Island, Bequia, Mustique, Canouan, Union Island, Mayreau, Petit St Vincent and Palm Island. Prominent uninhabited islands of the Grenadines include Petit Nevis, used by whalers, and Petit Mustique, which was the centre of a prominent real-estate scam in the early 2000s.[21]
+
+The capital of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is Kingstown, Saint Vincent.[5] The main island of Saint Vincent measures 26 km (16 mi) long, 15 km (9.3 mi) in width and 344 km2 (133 sq mi) in area. From the most northern to the most southern points, the Grenadine islands belonging to Saint Vincent span 60.4 km (37.5 mi), with a combined area of 45 km2 (17 sq mi).[citation needed]
+
+The island of Saint Vincent is volcanic and heavily forested, and includes little level ground.[5] The windward side of the island is very rocky and steep, while the leeward side has more sandy beaches and bays.[citation needed] Saint Vincent's highest peak is La Soufrière volcano at 1,234 m (4,049 ft).[5] Other major mountains on St Vincent are (from north to south) Richmond Peak, Mount Brisbane, Colonarie Mountain, Grand Bonhomme, Petit Bonhomme and Mount St Andrew.[citation needed]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, with Elizabeth II as Queen of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.[5] She does not reside in the islands and is represented as head of state in the country by the Governor-General of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, currently Susan Dougan (since 1 August 2019).[22]
+
+The office of Governor-General has mostly ceremonial functions including the opening of the islands' House of Assembly and the appointment of various government officials. Control of the government rests with the elected Prime Minister and his or her cabinet. The current Prime Minister is Ralph Gonsalves, elected in 2001 as head of the Unity Labour Party.[23]
+
+The legislative branch of government is the unicameral House of Assembly of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, seating 15 elected members representing single-member constituencies and six appointed members known as Senators. The parliamentary term of office is five years, although the Prime Minister may call elections at any time.[5]
+
+The judicial branch of government is divided into district courts, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court and the Privy Council in London being the court of last resort.[5]
+
+The two political parties with parliamentary representation are the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Unity Labour Party (ULP). The parliamentary opposition is made up of the largest minority stakeholder in the general elections, headed by the leader of the opposition. The current opposition leader is Godwin Friday.[5]
+
+Saint Vincent has no formal armed forces, although the Royal Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force includes a Special Service Unit as well as a militia that has a supporting role on the island.
+
+In 2017, Saint Vincent signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[24]
+
+Administratively, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is divided into six parishes. Five parishes are on Saint Vincent, while the sixth is made up of the Grenadine islands. Kingstown is located in the Parish of Saint George and is the capital city and central administrative centre of the country.[5]
+
+Acts of gross indecency, which may be defined to include homosexual activity, are illegal in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.[25] Section 148 of the Criminal Code states that "Any person, who in public or private, commits an act of gross indecency with another person of the same sex, or procures or attempts to procure another person of the same sex to commit an act of gross indecency with him or her, is guilty of an offence and liable to imprisonment for five years".[26]
+
+Saint Vincent and the Grenadines maintains close ties to Canada, the United Kingdom and the US, and cooperates with regional political and economic organisations such as the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and CARICOM.[27] The island nation's sixth embassy overseas was opened on 8 August 2019 in Taipei, after Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves' official visit to the Republic of China; the other five are located in London, Washington D.C., Havana, Caracas and Brussels.
+
+On 6 July 1994 at Sherbourne Conference Centre, St Michael, Barbados, as a representative of the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, then (James Mitchell, who was subsequently knighted) signed the Double Taxation Relief (CARICOM) Treaties.[27] There were seven other signatories to the agreement on that day. The countries which were represented were Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
+
+An eighth country signed the agreement on 19 August 2016, Guyana.
+
+This treaty covered taxes, residence, tax jurisdictions, capital gains, business profits, interest, dividends, royalties and other areas.[27]
+
+On 30 June 2014, St. Vincent and the Grenadines signed a Model 1 agreement with the United States of America with respect to Foreign Account Tax Compliance (Act) or FATCA.[28]
+
+According to the updated site as of 16 January 2017, on 13 May 2016 the agreement went to "In Force" status.
+
+St Vincent and the Grenadines is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).
+
+In September 2017, at the 72nd Session of the UN General Assembly, the Prime Ministers of the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines called for UN action on alleged human rights abuses committed on Western New Guinea's indigenous Papuans.[29] Western New Guinea has been occupied by Indonesia since 1963.[30] More than 100,000 Papuans have died during a 50-year Papua conflict.[31]
+
+The Charter of the OAS was signed in Bogotá in 1948 and was amended by several Protocols which were named after the city and the year in which the Protocol was signed, such as "Managua" in "1993" forming part of the name of the Protocol.[32]
+
+St Vincent and the Grenadines entered the OAS system on 27 October 1981 according to the OAS website.[33]
+
+The last Summits of the Americas, the seventh, was held in Panama City, Panama in 2015 with the eighth summit being held in Lima, Peru in 2018 according to the website of the Summits of Americas.[34]
+
+With St Vincent and the Grenadines having at least two groups of indigenous persons[35] it is expected that there will be contributions from the SVG's on this topic at the next ILSAs.[36]
+
+The position of the OAS with respect to indigenous persons appears to be developing over the years. The following statements appear to capture the position of the OAS with respect to the ILSA: "The OAS has supported and participated in the organisation of Indigenous Leaders Summits of Americas (ILSA)" according to the OAS's website. The most recent "statement made by the Heads of State of the hemisphere was in the Declaration of Commitments of Port of Spain in 2009 – Paragraph 86 according to the OAS's website."[37]
+
+The Draft American Declaration of the Rights of the Indigenous Persons appear to be a working document. The last "Meeting for Negotiations in the Quest for Consensus on this area appeared to be Meeting Number (18) eighteen and is listed as being held in May 2015 according to the website."[38]
+
+In 2013, Saint Vincent called for European nations to pay reparations for the slave trade.[39]
+
+Saint Vincent protests against Venezuela's claim to give full effect to Aves (Bird) Island, which creates a Venezuelan EEZ/continental shelf extending over a large portion of the Caribbean Sea.[5]
+
+Agriculture, dominated by banana production, is the most important sector of this lower-middle-income economy. The services sector, based mostly on a growing tourist industry, is also important. The government has been relatively unsuccessful at introducing new industries, and the unemployment rate remains high at 19.8% in the 1991 census[40] to 15% in 2001.[41] The continuing dependence on a single crop represents the biggest obstacle to the islands' development as tropical storms wiped out substantial portions of bananas in many years.
+
+There is a small manufacturing sector and a small offshore financial sector serving international businesses, and its secrecy laws have caused some international concern.[citation needed] There are increasing demands for international financial services like stock exchange and financial intermediaries financial activities in the country.  In addition, the natives of Bequia are permitted to hunt up to four humpback whales per year under IWC subsistence quotas.
+
+The tourism sector has considerable potential for development. The recent filming of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies on the island has helped to expose the country to more potential visitors and investors. Recent growth has been stimulated by strong activity in the construction sector and an improvement in tourism.[42]
+
+Argyle International Airport is the country's new international airport.[43] The new facility opened on 14 February 2017,[44] replacing the existing E.T. Joshua Airport. The airport is on the island's east coast about 8.3 km (5.17 miles) from Kingstown.
+
+In 2010, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines had 21,700 telephone land lines. Its land telephone system is fully automatic and covers the entire island and all of the inhabited Grenadine islands.[41] In 2002, there were 10,000 mobile phones.[45] By 2010, this number had increased to 131,800.[41] Mobile phone service is available in most areas of Saint Vincent as well as the Grenadines.
+
+Saint Vincent has two ISPs (Digicel, Flow) that provide cellular telephone and internet service.[46]
+
+The population as estimated in 2018 was 110,211.[1][2] The ethnic composition was 66% African descent, 19% of mixed descent, 6% East Indian, 4% Europeans (mainly Portuguese), 2% Island Carib and 3% others.[5] Most Vincentians are the descendants of African people brought to the island to work on plantations. There are other ethnic groups such as Portuguese (from Madeira) and East Indians, both brought in to work on the plantations after the abolishing of slavery by the British living on the island. There is also a growing Chinese population.[citation needed]
+
+English is the official language. Most Vincentians speak Vincentian Creole.[47] English is used in education, government, religion, and other formal domains, while Creole (or 'dialect' as it is referred to locally) is used in informal situations such as in the home and among friends.[48]
+
+According to the 2001 census, 81.5% of the population of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines identified themselves as Christian, 6.7% has another religion and 8.8% has no religion or did not state a religion (1.5%).[49]
+
+Anglicanism constitutes the largest religious category, with 17.8% of the population. Pentecostals are the second largest group (17.6%). The next largest group are Methodists (10.9% of the population), followed by Seventh-day Adventists (10.2%) and Baptists (10.0%). Other Christians include Jehovah's Witnesses (0.6%), Roman Catholics (7.5%), Evangelicals (2.8%), Church of God (2.5%), Brethren Christian (1.3%), and the Salvation Army (0.3%).[citation needed]
+
+Between 1991 and 2001 the number of Anglicans, Brethren, Methodists and Roman Catholics decreased, while the number of Pentecostals, Evangelicals and Seventh-day Adventists increased.[citation needed]
+
+The number of non-Christians is small. These religious groups include the Rastafarians (1.5% of the population), Hindus and Muslims(1.5%).[50]
+
+Cricket, rugby and association football are most popular among men whereas netball is most popular among women. Basketball, volleyball and tennis are also very popular.[51]
+
+The country's prime football league is the NLA Premier League, which provides its national (association) football team with most players. A notable Vincentian footballer is Ezra Hendrickson, former national team captain who played at several Major League Soccer clubs in the United States and is now an assistant coach with the Seattle Sounders FC.[52]
+
+The country regularly participates at the Caribbean Basketball Championship where a men's team and a women's team compete. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines also has its own national rugby union team which is ranked 84th in the world. Other notable sports played at the regional level include track and field.[citation needed]
+
+Music popular in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines includes big drum, calypso, soca, steelpan and reggae. String band music, quadrille and traditional storytelling are also popular.  One of the most successful St Vincent natives is Kevin Lyttle.  He was named Cultural Ambassador for the Island 19 September 2013.[53]
+
+The national anthem of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is "Saint Vincent, Land so beautiful", adopted upon independence in 1979.[citation needed]
+
+Saint Vincent has twelve FM radio stations including 88.9 Adoration Fm,[54] 89.1 Jem Radio, 89.7 NBC Radio, 95.7 and 105.7 Praise FM, 96.7 Nice Radio, 97.1 Hot 97, 98.3 Star FM, 99.9 We FM, 103.7 Hitz, 102.7 EZee radio, 104.3 Xtreme FM and 106.9 Boom FM. Several Internet radio stations including Chronicles Christian Radio.[55] It has one television broadcast station ZBG-TV (SVGTV)[56] and one cable television provider.
+
+St Vincent and the Grenadines Broadcasting Co-operation is the parent company for SVGTV, Magic 103.7.[57]
+
+Related articles

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+A season is a division of the year[1] marked by changes in weather, ecology, and the amount of daylight. On Earth, seasons are the result of Earth's orbit around the Sun and Earth's axial tilt relative to the ecliptic plane.[2][3] In temperate and polar regions, the seasons are marked by changes in the intensity of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface, variations of which may cause animals to undergo hibernation or to migrate, and plants to be dormant. Various cultures define the number and nature of seasons based on regional variations.
+
+The Northern Hemisphere experiences more direct sunlight during May, June, and July, as the hemisphere faces the Sun. The same is true of the Southern Hemisphere in November, December, and January. It is Earth's axial tilt that causes the Sun to be higher in the sky during the summer months, which increases the solar flux. However, due to seasonal lag, June, July, and August are the warmest months in the Northern Hemisphere while December, January, and February are the warmest months in the Southern Hemisphere.
+
+In temperate and sub-polar regions, four seasons based on the Gregorian calendar are generally recognized: spring, summer, autumn or fall, and winter.  Ecologists often use a six-season model for temperate climate regions which are not tied to any fixed calendar dates: prevernal, vernal, estival, serotinal, autumnal, and hibernal. Many tropical regions have two seasons: the rainy, wet, or monsoon season and the dry season. Some have a third cool, mild, or harmattan season. "Seasons" can also be dictated by the timing of important ecological events such as hurricane season, tornado season, and wildfire season.[citation needed] The most historically important of these are the three seasons—flood, growth, and low water—which were previously defined by the former annual flooding of the Nile in Egypt.
+
+Seasons often hold special significance for agrarian societies, whose lives revolve around planting and harvest times, and the change of seasons is often attended by ritual. The definition of seasons is also cultural. In India, from ancient times to the present day, six seasons or Ritu based on south Asian religious or cultural calendars are recognised and identified for purposes such as agriculture and trade.
+
+The seasons result from the Earth's axis of rotation being tilted with respect to its orbital plane by an angle of approximately 23.4 degrees.[4] (This tilt is also known as "obliquity of the ecliptic".)
+
+Regardless of the time of year, the northern and southern hemispheres always experience opposite seasons. This is because during summer or winter, one part of the planet is more directly exposed to the rays of the Sun (see Fig. 1) than the other, and this exposure alternates as the Earth revolves in its orbit. For approximately half of the year (from around March 20 to around September 22), the Northern Hemisphere tips toward the Sun, with the maximum amount occurring on about June 21. For the other half of the year, the same happens, but in the Southern Hemisphere instead of the Northern, with the maximum around December 21. The two instants when the Sun is directly overhead at the Equator are the equinoxes. Also at that moment, both the North Pole and the South Pole of the Earth are just on the terminator, and hence day and night are equally divided between the two hemispheres. Around the March equinox, the Northern Hemisphere will be experiencing spring as the hours of daylight increase, and the Southern Hemisphere is experiencing autumn as daylight hours shorten.
+
+The effect of axial tilt is observable as the change in day length and altitude of the Sun at solar noon (the Sun's culmination) during the year. The low angle of Sun during the winter months means that incoming rays of solar radiation are spread over a larger area of the Earth's surface, so the light received is more indirect and of lower intensity. Between this effect and the shorter daylight hours, the axial tilt of the Earth accounts for most of the seasonal variation in climate in both hemispheres.
+
+Illumination of Earth by Sun at the northern solstice.
+
+Illumination of Earth by Sun at the southern solstice.
+
+Diagram of the Earth's seasons as seen from the north. Far right: southern solstice
+
+Animation of Earth as seen daily from the Sun looking at UTC+02:00, showing the solstice and changing seasons.
+
+Two images showing the amount of reflected sunlight at southern and northern summer solstices respectively (watts / m²).
+
+Compared to axial tilt, other factors contribute little to seasonal temperature changes. The seasons are not the result of the variation in Earth's distance to the Sun because of its elliptical orbit.[5] In fact, Earth reaches perihelion (the point in its orbit closest to the Sun) in January, and it reaches aphelion (the point farthest from the Sun) in July, so the slight contribution of orbital eccentricity opposes the temperature trends of the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere.[6] In general, the effect of orbital eccentricity on Earth's seasons is a 7% variation in sunlight received.
+
+Orbital eccentricity can influence temperatures, but on Earth, this effect is small and is more than counteracted by other factors; research shows that the Earth as a whole is actually slightly warmer when farther from the sun. This is because the Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern, and land warms more readily than sea.[6]
+Any noticeable intensification of southern winters and summers due to Earth's elliptical orbit is mitigated by the abundance of water in the Southern Hemisphere.[7]
+
+Seasonal weather fluctuations (changes) also depend on factors such as proximity to oceans or other large bodies of water, currents in those oceans, El Niño/ENSO and other oceanic cycles, and prevailing winds.
+
+In the temperate and polar regions, seasons are marked by changes in the amount of sunlight, which in turn often causes cycles of dormancy in plants and hibernation in animals. These effects vary with latitude and with proximity to bodies of water. For example, the South Pole is in the middle of the continent of Antarctica and therefore a considerable distance from the moderating influence of the southern oceans. The North Pole is in the Arctic Ocean, and thus its temperature extremes are buffered by the water. The result is that the South Pole is consistently colder during the southern winter than the North Pole during the northern winter.
+
+The seasonal cycle in the polar and temperate zones of one hemisphere is opposite to that of the other. When it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it is winter in the Southern, and vice versa.
+
+The tropical and subtropical regions see little annual fluctuation of sunlight.  However, seasonal shifts occur along a rainy, low-pressure belt called the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ICZ). As a result, the amount of precipitation tends to vary more dramatically than the average temperature. When the Zone is north of the Equator, the northern tropics experience their wet season while the southern tropics have their dry season. This pattern reverses when the Zone migrates to a position south of the Equator.
+
+In meteorological terms, the solstices (the maximum and minimum insolation) do not fall in the middles of summer and winter. The heights of these seasons occur up to 7 weeks later because of seasonal lag. Seasons, though, are not always defined in meteorological terms.
+
+In astronomical reckoning by hours of daylight alone, the solstices and equinoxes are in the middle of the respective seasons. Because of seasonal lag due to thermal absorption and release by the oceans, regions with a continental climate, which predominate in the Northern Hemisphere, often consider these four dates to be the start of the seasons as in the diagram, with the cross-quarter days considered seasonal midpoints. The length of these seasons is not uniform because of Earth's elliptical orbit and its different speeds along that orbit.[8]
+
+Most calendar-based methods use a four-season model to identify the warmest and coldest seasons, which are separated by two intermediate seasons. Calendar-based reckoning defines the seasons in relative rather than absolute terms.  Accordingly, if floral activity is regularly observed during the coolest quarter of the year in a particular area, it is still considered winter despite the traditional association of flowers with spring and summer.  Additionally, the seasons are considered to change on the same dates everywhere that uses a particular calendar method regardless of variations in climate from one area to another.
+
+As noted, a variety of dates and even exact times are used in different countries or regions to mark changes of the calendar seasons. These observances are often declared "official" within their respective areas by the local or national media, even when the weather or climate is contradictory.[9]  However they are mainly a matter of custom only, and have not generally been proclaimed by governments north or south of the equator for civil purposes.[10][11] As an result of European colonization, the four-season European model is used officially almost throughout the world, although the seasons are reversed between the northern and southern hemispheres.
+
+Meteorological seasons are reckoned by temperature, with summer being the hottest quarter of the year and winter the coldest quarter of the year. In 1780 the Societas Meteorologica Palatina (which became defunct in 1795), an early international organization for meteorology, defined seasons as groupings of three whole months as identified by the Gregorian calendar. Ever since, professional meteorologists all over the world have used this definition.[12]
+Therefore, for temperate areas in the northern hemisphere, spring begins on 1 March, summer on 1 June, autumn on 1 September, and winter on 1 December. For the southern hemisphere temperate zone, spring begins on 1 September, summer on 1 December, autumn on 1 March, and winter on 1 June.[13][14]  In Australasia the meteorological terms for seasons apply to the temperate zone that occupies all of New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, the south-eastern corner of South Australia and the south-west of Western Australia, and the south east Queensland areas south of Brisbane.
+
+In Sweden and Finland, meteorologists use a non-calendar based definition for the seasons based on the temperature. Spring begins when the daily averaged temperature permanently rises above 0 °C, summer begins when the temperature permanently rises above +10 °C, summer ends when the temperature permanently falls below +10 °C and winter begins when the temperature permanently falls below 0 °C. "Permanently" here means that the daily averaged temperature has remained above or below the limit for seven consecutive days. This implies two things: first, the seasons do not begin at fixed dates but must be determined by observation and are known only after the fact; and second, a new season begins at different dates in different parts of the country.
+
+The India Meteorological Department (IMD) designates four climatological seasons:[16]
+
+Astronomical timing as the basis for designating the temperate seasons dates back at least to the Julian calendar used by the ancient Romans.  It continues to be used on many modern Gregorian calendars worldwide, although some countries like Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Russia prefer to use meteorological reckoning. The precise timing of the seasons is determined by the exact times of transit of the sun over the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn for the solstices and the times of the sun's transit over the equator for the equinoxes, or a traditional date close to these times.[19]
+
+The following diagram shows the relation between the line of solstice and the line of apsides of Earth's elliptical orbit.  The orbital ellipse (with eccentricity exaggerated for effect) goes through each of the six Earth images, which are sequentially the perihelion (periapsis—nearest point to the sun) on anywhere from 2 January to 5 January, the point of March equinox on 19, 20 or 21 March, the point of June solstice on 20 or 21 June, the aphelion (apoapsis—farthest point from the sun) on anywhere from 4 July to 7 July, the September equinox on 22 or 23 September, and the December solstice on 21 or 22 December.
+
+These "astronomical" seasons are not of equal length, because of the elliptical nature of the orbit of the Earth, as discovered by Johannes Kepler.  From the March equinox it currently takes 92.75 days until the June solstice, then 93.65 days until the September equinox, 89.85 days until the December solstice and finally 88.99 days until the March equinox.
+
+The times of the equinoxes and solstices are not fixed with respect to the modern Gregorian calendar, but fall about six hours later every year, amounting to one full day in four years. They are reset by the occurrence of a leap year. The Gregorian calendar is designed to keep the March equinox no later than 21 March as accurately as is practical. Also see: Gregorian calendar seasonal error.
+
+The calendar equinox (used in the calculation of Easter) is 21 March, the same date as in the Easter tables current at the time of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.   The calendar is therefore framed to prevent the astronomical equinox wandering onto 22 March.   From Nicaea to the date of the reform, the years 500, 600, 700, 900, 1000, 1100, 1300, 1400 and 1500, which would not have been leap years in the Gregorian calendar, amount to nine days, but astronomers directed that ten days be removed.
+
+Currently, the most common equinox and solstice dates are March 20, June 21, September 22 or 23 and December 21; the four-year average slowly shifts to earlier times as the century progresses.   This shift is a full day in about 128 years (compensated mainly by the century "leap year" rules of the Gregorian calendar) and as 2000 was a leap year the current shift has been progressing since the beginning of the last century, when equinoxes and solstices were relatively late.   This also means that in many years of the twentieth century, the dates of March 21, June 22, September 23 and December 22 were much more common, so older books teach (and older people may still remember) these dates.
+
+Note that all the times are given in UTC (roughly speaking, the time at Greenwich, ignoring British Summer Time). People living farther to the east (Asia and Australia), whose local times are in advance, will see the astronomical seasons apparently start later; for example, in Tonga (UTC+13), an equinox occurred on September 24, 1999, a date which will not crop up again until 2103. On the other hand, people living far to the west (America) whose clocks run behind UTC may experience an equinox as early as March 19.
+
+Over thousands of years, the Earth's axial tilt and orbital eccentricity vary (see Milankovitch cycles).   The equinoxes and solstices move westward relative to the stars while the perihelion and aphelion move eastward.   Thus, ten thousand years from now Earth's northern winter will occur at aphelion and northern summer at perihelion. The severity of seasonal change — the average temperature difference between summer and winter in location — will also change over time because the Earth's axial tilt fluctuates between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees.
+
+Smaller irregularities in the times are caused by perturbations of the Moon and the other planets.
+
+Solar timing is based on insolation in which the solstices and equinoxes are seen as the midpoints of the seasons.  It was the method for reckoning seasons in medieval Europe, especially by the Celts, and is still ceremonially observed in Ireland and some East Asian countries. Summer is defined as the quarter of the year with the greatest insolation and winter as the quarter with the least.
+
+The solar seasons change at the cross-quarter days, which are about 3–4 weeks earlier than the meteorological seasons and 6–7 weeks earlier than seasons starting at equinoxes and solstices.  Thus, the day of greatest insolation is designated "midsummer" as noted in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is set on the summer solstice.  On the Celtic calendar, the start of the seasons corresponds to four Pagan agricultural festivals - the traditional first day of winter is 1 November (Samhain, the Celtic origin of Halloween); spring starts 1 February (Imbolc, the Celtic origin of Groundhog Day); summer begins 1 May (Beltane, the Celtic origin of May Day); the first day of autumn is 1 August (Celtic Lughnasadh).
+
+Some calendars in south Asia use a six-season method where the number of seasons between summer and winter can number from one to three. The dates are fixed at even intervals of months.
+
+In the Hindu calendar of tropical and subtropical India, there are six seasons or Ritu that are calendar-based in the sense of having fixed dates: Vasanta (spring), Greeshma (summer), Varsha (monsoon), Sharad (autumn), Hemanta (early winter), and Shishira (prevernal or late winter). The six seasons are ascribed to two months each of the twelve months in the Hindu calendar. The rough correspondences are:
+
+The Bengali Calendar is similar but differs in start and end times. It has the following seasons or ritu:
+
+The Tamil calendar follows a similar pattern of six seasons
+
+The North American Cree and possibly other Algonquian speaking peoples used or still use a 6-season system. The extra two seasons denoting the freezing and breaking up of the ice on rivers and lakes.[20]
+
+The most historically important of these are the three seasons—flood, growth, and low water—which were previously defined by the former annual flooding of the Nile in Egypt. In some tropical areas a three-way division into hot, rainy, and cool season is used. In Thailand three seasons are recognised [21]
+
+
+
+
+
+The traditional calendar in China has seasons traditionally based on 24 periods known as solar terms.[22] The four seasons chūn (春), xià (夏), qiū (秋), and dōng (冬) are universally translated as "spring", "summer", "autumn", and "winter" but actually begin much earlier, with the solstices and equinoxes forming the midpoint of each season rather than their start. Astronomically, the seasons are said to begin on Lichun (立春, lit. "standing spring") on about 4 February, Lixia (立夏) on about 6 May, Liqiu (立秋) on about 8 August, and Lidong (立冬) on about 7 November. These dates were not part of the traditional lunar calendar, however, and moveable holidays such as Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival are more closely associated with the seasons. It forms the basis of other such systems in East Asian lunisolar calendars.
+
+In the tropical parts of Australia in the northern parts of Queensland, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory,  wet and dry seasons are observed in addition to or in place of temperate season names.[23]
+
+
+
+Ecologically speaking, a season is a period of the year in which only certain types of floral and animal events happen (e.g.: flowers bloom—spring; hedgehogs hibernate—winter). So, if we can observe a change in daily floral/animal events, the season is changing.  In this sense, ecological seasons are defined in absolute terms, unlike calendar-based methods in which the seasons are relative.  If specific conditions associated with a particular ecological season don't normally occur in a particular region, then that area cannot be said to experience that season on a regular basis. In Great Britain, the onset of spring used to be defined as when the maximum daily temperature reached 50 °F (10 °C) in a defined sequence of days.   This almost always occurred in March.   However, with global warming this temperature is now not uncommon in the winter.
+
+Six ecological seasons can be distinguished which do not have fixed calendar-based dates like the meteorological and astronomical seasons.[24] Oceanic regions tend to experience the beginning of the hibernal season up to a month later than continental climates. Conversely, prevernal and vernal seasons begin up to a month earlier near oceanic and coastal areas. For example, prevernal crocus blooms typically appear as early as February in coastal areas of British Columbia, the British Isles, but generally don't appear until March or April in locations like the Midwest USA or parts of eastern Europe. The actual dates for each season vary by climate region and can shift from one year to the next.  Average dates listed here are for mild and cool temperate climate zones in the Northern Hemisphere:
+
+Indigenous people in polar, temperate and tropical climates of northern Eurasia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and Australia have traditionally defined the seasons ecologically by observing the activity of the plants, animals and weather around them. Each separate tribal group traditionally observes different seasons determined according to local criteria that can vary from the hibernation of polar bears on the arctic tundras to the growing seasons of plants in the tropical rainforests.  In Australia, some tribes have up to eight seasons in a year,[13] as do the Sami people in Scandinavia. Many indigenous people who no longer live directly off the land in traditional often nomadic styles, now observe modern methods of seasonal reckoning according to what is customary in their particular country or region.
+
+The Noongar people of South-West Western Australia recognise maar-keyen bonar,[25] or six seasons. Each season's arrival is heralded not by a calendar date, but by environmental factors[26] such as changing winds, flowering plants, temperature and migration patterns and lasts approximately two standard calendar months. The seasons also correlate to aspects of the human condition, intrinsically linking the lives of the people to the world that surrounds them and also dictating their movements, as with each season, various parts of country would be visited which were particularly abundant or safe from the elements.[27]
+
+In the tropics, where seasonal dates also vary, it is more common to speak of the rainy (or wet, or monsoon) season versus the dry season. For example, in Nicaragua the dry season (November to April) is called "summer" and the rainy season (May to October) is called "winter", even though it is located in the northern hemisphere. There is no noticeable change in the amount of sunlight at different times of the year. However, many regions (such as the northern Indian ocean) are subject to monsoon rain and wind cycles.
+
+Floral and animal activity variation near the equator depends more on wet/dry cycles than seasonal temperature variations, with different species flowering (or emerging from cocoons) at specific times before, during, or after the monsoon season. Thus, the tropics are characterized by numerous "mini-seasons" within the larger seasonal blocks of time.
+
+
+
+Any point north of the Arctic Circle or south of the Antarctic Circle will have one period in the summer called "polar day" when the sun does not set, and one period in the winter called 'polar night' when the sun does not rise. At progressively higher latitudes, the maximum periods of "midnight sun" and "polar night" are progressively longer.
+
+For example, at the military and weather station Alert located at 82°30′05″N and 62°20′20″W, on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island, Canada (about 450 nautical miles or 830 km from the North Pole), the sun begins to peek above the horizon for minutes per day at the end of February and each day it climbs higher and stays up longer; by 21 March, the sun is up for over 12 hours. On 6 April the sun rises at 0522 UTC and remains above the horizon until it sets below the horizon again on 6 September at 0335 UTC.  By October 13 the sun is above the horizon for only 1 hour 30 minutes, and on October 14 it does not rise above the horizon at all and remains below the horizon until it rises again on 27 February.[28]
+
+First light comes in late January because the sky has twilight, being a glow on the horizon, for increasing hours each day, for more than a month before the sun first appears with its disc above the horizon. From mid-November to mid-January, there is no twilight.
+
+In the weeks surrounding 21 June, in the northern polar region, the sun is at its highest elevation, appearing to circle the sky there without going below the horizon. Eventually, it does go below the horizon, for progressively longer periods each day until around the middle of October, when it disappears for the last time until the following February. For a few more weeks, "day" is marked by decreasing periods of twilight. Eventually, from mid-November to mid-January, there is no twilight and it is continuously dark. In mid January the first faint wash of twilight briefly touches the horizon (for just minutes per day), and then twilight increases in duration with increasing brightness each day until sunrise at end of February, then on 6 April the sun remains above the horizon until mid October.
+
+Seasonal weather and climate conditions can become important in the context of military operations.
+
+For navies, the presence of accessible ports and bases can allow naval operations during certain (variable) seasons of the year. The availability of  ice-free or warm-water ports can make navies much more effective. Thus Russia, historically navally constrained when confined to using Arkhangelsk (before the 18th century) and even Kronstadt, has particular interests in maintaining and in preserving access to Baltiysk, Vladivostok, and Sevastopol.[29]
+Storm seasons or polar winter-weather conditions can inhibit surface warships at sea.
+
+Pre-modern armies, especially in Europe, tended to campaign in the summer months - peasant  conscripts tended to melt away at harvest time, nor did it make economic sense in an agricultural society to neglect the sowing season.[30]
+Any modern  war of manouevre profits from firm ground - summer can provide dry conditions suitable for marching and transport, frozen snow in winter can also offer a reliable surface for a period, but  spring thaws or autumn rains can inhibit campaigning. Rainy-season floods may make rivers temporarily impassable, and winter snow tends to block mountain passes.

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+A season is a division of the year[1] marked by changes in weather, ecology, and the amount of daylight. On Earth, seasons are the result of Earth's orbit around the Sun and Earth's axial tilt relative to the ecliptic plane.[2][3] In temperate and polar regions, the seasons are marked by changes in the intensity of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface, variations of which may cause animals to undergo hibernation or to migrate, and plants to be dormant. Various cultures define the number and nature of seasons based on regional variations.
+
+The Northern Hemisphere experiences more direct sunlight during May, June, and July, as the hemisphere faces the Sun. The same is true of the Southern Hemisphere in November, December, and January. It is Earth's axial tilt that causes the Sun to be higher in the sky during the summer months, which increases the solar flux. However, due to seasonal lag, June, July, and August are the warmest months in the Northern Hemisphere while December, January, and February are the warmest months in the Southern Hemisphere.
+
+In temperate and sub-polar regions, four seasons based on the Gregorian calendar are generally recognized: spring, summer, autumn or fall, and winter.  Ecologists often use a six-season model for temperate climate regions which are not tied to any fixed calendar dates: prevernal, vernal, estival, serotinal, autumnal, and hibernal. Many tropical regions have two seasons: the rainy, wet, or monsoon season and the dry season. Some have a third cool, mild, or harmattan season. "Seasons" can also be dictated by the timing of important ecological events such as hurricane season, tornado season, and wildfire season.[citation needed] The most historically important of these are the three seasons—flood, growth, and low water—which were previously defined by the former annual flooding of the Nile in Egypt.
+
+Seasons often hold special significance for agrarian societies, whose lives revolve around planting and harvest times, and the change of seasons is often attended by ritual. The definition of seasons is also cultural. In India, from ancient times to the present day, six seasons or Ritu based on south Asian religious or cultural calendars are recognised and identified for purposes such as agriculture and trade.
+
+The seasons result from the Earth's axis of rotation being tilted with respect to its orbital plane by an angle of approximately 23.4 degrees.[4] (This tilt is also known as "obliquity of the ecliptic".)
+
+Regardless of the time of year, the northern and southern hemispheres always experience opposite seasons. This is because during summer or winter, one part of the planet is more directly exposed to the rays of the Sun (see Fig. 1) than the other, and this exposure alternates as the Earth revolves in its orbit. For approximately half of the year (from around March 20 to around September 22), the Northern Hemisphere tips toward the Sun, with the maximum amount occurring on about June 21. For the other half of the year, the same happens, but in the Southern Hemisphere instead of the Northern, with the maximum around December 21. The two instants when the Sun is directly overhead at the Equator are the equinoxes. Also at that moment, both the North Pole and the South Pole of the Earth are just on the terminator, and hence day and night are equally divided between the two hemispheres. Around the March equinox, the Northern Hemisphere will be experiencing spring as the hours of daylight increase, and the Southern Hemisphere is experiencing autumn as daylight hours shorten.
+
+The effect of axial tilt is observable as the change in day length and altitude of the Sun at solar noon (the Sun's culmination) during the year. The low angle of Sun during the winter months means that incoming rays of solar radiation are spread over a larger area of the Earth's surface, so the light received is more indirect and of lower intensity. Between this effect and the shorter daylight hours, the axial tilt of the Earth accounts for most of the seasonal variation in climate in both hemispheres.
+
+Illumination of Earth by Sun at the northern solstice.
+
+Illumination of Earth by Sun at the southern solstice.
+
+Diagram of the Earth's seasons as seen from the north. Far right: southern solstice
+
+Animation of Earth as seen daily from the Sun looking at UTC+02:00, showing the solstice and changing seasons.
+
+Two images showing the amount of reflected sunlight at southern and northern summer solstices respectively (watts / m²).
+
+Compared to axial tilt, other factors contribute little to seasonal temperature changes. The seasons are not the result of the variation in Earth's distance to the Sun because of its elliptical orbit.[5] In fact, Earth reaches perihelion (the point in its orbit closest to the Sun) in January, and it reaches aphelion (the point farthest from the Sun) in July, so the slight contribution of orbital eccentricity opposes the temperature trends of the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere.[6] In general, the effect of orbital eccentricity on Earth's seasons is a 7% variation in sunlight received.
+
+Orbital eccentricity can influence temperatures, but on Earth, this effect is small and is more than counteracted by other factors; research shows that the Earth as a whole is actually slightly warmer when farther from the sun. This is because the Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern, and land warms more readily than sea.[6]
+Any noticeable intensification of southern winters and summers due to Earth's elliptical orbit is mitigated by the abundance of water in the Southern Hemisphere.[7]
+
+Seasonal weather fluctuations (changes) also depend on factors such as proximity to oceans or other large bodies of water, currents in those oceans, El Niño/ENSO and other oceanic cycles, and prevailing winds.
+
+In the temperate and polar regions, seasons are marked by changes in the amount of sunlight, which in turn often causes cycles of dormancy in plants and hibernation in animals. These effects vary with latitude and with proximity to bodies of water. For example, the South Pole is in the middle of the continent of Antarctica and therefore a considerable distance from the moderating influence of the southern oceans. The North Pole is in the Arctic Ocean, and thus its temperature extremes are buffered by the water. The result is that the South Pole is consistently colder during the southern winter than the North Pole during the northern winter.
+
+The seasonal cycle in the polar and temperate zones of one hemisphere is opposite to that of the other. When it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it is winter in the Southern, and vice versa.
+
+The tropical and subtropical regions see little annual fluctuation of sunlight.  However, seasonal shifts occur along a rainy, low-pressure belt called the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ICZ). As a result, the amount of precipitation tends to vary more dramatically than the average temperature. When the Zone is north of the Equator, the northern tropics experience their wet season while the southern tropics have their dry season. This pattern reverses when the Zone migrates to a position south of the Equator.
+
+In meteorological terms, the solstices (the maximum and minimum insolation) do not fall in the middles of summer and winter. The heights of these seasons occur up to 7 weeks later because of seasonal lag. Seasons, though, are not always defined in meteorological terms.
+
+In astronomical reckoning by hours of daylight alone, the solstices and equinoxes are in the middle of the respective seasons. Because of seasonal lag due to thermal absorption and release by the oceans, regions with a continental climate, which predominate in the Northern Hemisphere, often consider these four dates to be the start of the seasons as in the diagram, with the cross-quarter days considered seasonal midpoints. The length of these seasons is not uniform because of Earth's elliptical orbit and its different speeds along that orbit.[8]
+
+Most calendar-based methods use a four-season model to identify the warmest and coldest seasons, which are separated by two intermediate seasons. Calendar-based reckoning defines the seasons in relative rather than absolute terms.  Accordingly, if floral activity is regularly observed during the coolest quarter of the year in a particular area, it is still considered winter despite the traditional association of flowers with spring and summer.  Additionally, the seasons are considered to change on the same dates everywhere that uses a particular calendar method regardless of variations in climate from one area to another.
+
+As noted, a variety of dates and even exact times are used in different countries or regions to mark changes of the calendar seasons. These observances are often declared "official" within their respective areas by the local or national media, even when the weather or climate is contradictory.[9]  However they are mainly a matter of custom only, and have not generally been proclaimed by governments north or south of the equator for civil purposes.[10][11] As an result of European colonization, the four-season European model is used officially almost throughout the world, although the seasons are reversed between the northern and southern hemispheres.
+
+Meteorological seasons are reckoned by temperature, with summer being the hottest quarter of the year and winter the coldest quarter of the year. In 1780 the Societas Meteorologica Palatina (which became defunct in 1795), an early international organization for meteorology, defined seasons as groupings of three whole months as identified by the Gregorian calendar. Ever since, professional meteorologists all over the world have used this definition.[12]
+Therefore, for temperate areas in the northern hemisphere, spring begins on 1 March, summer on 1 June, autumn on 1 September, and winter on 1 December. For the southern hemisphere temperate zone, spring begins on 1 September, summer on 1 December, autumn on 1 March, and winter on 1 June.[13][14]  In Australasia the meteorological terms for seasons apply to the temperate zone that occupies all of New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, the south-eastern corner of South Australia and the south-west of Western Australia, and the south east Queensland areas south of Brisbane.
+
+In Sweden and Finland, meteorologists use a non-calendar based definition for the seasons based on the temperature. Spring begins when the daily averaged temperature permanently rises above 0 °C, summer begins when the temperature permanently rises above +10 °C, summer ends when the temperature permanently falls below +10 °C and winter begins when the temperature permanently falls below 0 °C. "Permanently" here means that the daily averaged temperature has remained above or below the limit for seven consecutive days. This implies two things: first, the seasons do not begin at fixed dates but must be determined by observation and are known only after the fact; and second, a new season begins at different dates in different parts of the country.
+
+The India Meteorological Department (IMD) designates four climatological seasons:[16]
+
+Astronomical timing as the basis for designating the temperate seasons dates back at least to the Julian calendar used by the ancient Romans.  It continues to be used on many modern Gregorian calendars worldwide, although some countries like Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Russia prefer to use meteorological reckoning. The precise timing of the seasons is determined by the exact times of transit of the sun over the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn for the solstices and the times of the sun's transit over the equator for the equinoxes, or a traditional date close to these times.[19]
+
+The following diagram shows the relation between the line of solstice and the line of apsides of Earth's elliptical orbit.  The orbital ellipse (with eccentricity exaggerated for effect) goes through each of the six Earth images, which are sequentially the perihelion (periapsis—nearest point to the sun) on anywhere from 2 January to 5 January, the point of March equinox on 19, 20 or 21 March, the point of June solstice on 20 or 21 June, the aphelion (apoapsis—farthest point from the sun) on anywhere from 4 July to 7 July, the September equinox on 22 or 23 September, and the December solstice on 21 or 22 December.
+
+These "astronomical" seasons are not of equal length, because of the elliptical nature of the orbit of the Earth, as discovered by Johannes Kepler.  From the March equinox it currently takes 92.75 days until the June solstice, then 93.65 days until the September equinox, 89.85 days until the December solstice and finally 88.99 days until the March equinox.
+
+The times of the equinoxes and solstices are not fixed with respect to the modern Gregorian calendar, but fall about six hours later every year, amounting to one full day in four years. They are reset by the occurrence of a leap year. The Gregorian calendar is designed to keep the March equinox no later than 21 March as accurately as is practical. Also see: Gregorian calendar seasonal error.
+
+The calendar equinox (used in the calculation of Easter) is 21 March, the same date as in the Easter tables current at the time of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.   The calendar is therefore framed to prevent the astronomical equinox wandering onto 22 March.   From Nicaea to the date of the reform, the years 500, 600, 700, 900, 1000, 1100, 1300, 1400 and 1500, which would not have been leap years in the Gregorian calendar, amount to nine days, but astronomers directed that ten days be removed.
+
+Currently, the most common equinox and solstice dates are March 20, June 21, September 22 or 23 and December 21; the four-year average slowly shifts to earlier times as the century progresses.   This shift is a full day in about 128 years (compensated mainly by the century "leap year" rules of the Gregorian calendar) and as 2000 was a leap year the current shift has been progressing since the beginning of the last century, when equinoxes and solstices were relatively late.   This also means that in many years of the twentieth century, the dates of March 21, June 22, September 23 and December 22 were much more common, so older books teach (and older people may still remember) these dates.
+
+Note that all the times are given in UTC (roughly speaking, the time at Greenwich, ignoring British Summer Time). People living farther to the east (Asia and Australia), whose local times are in advance, will see the astronomical seasons apparently start later; for example, in Tonga (UTC+13), an equinox occurred on September 24, 1999, a date which will not crop up again until 2103. On the other hand, people living far to the west (America) whose clocks run behind UTC may experience an equinox as early as March 19.
+
+Over thousands of years, the Earth's axial tilt and orbital eccentricity vary (see Milankovitch cycles).   The equinoxes and solstices move westward relative to the stars while the perihelion and aphelion move eastward.   Thus, ten thousand years from now Earth's northern winter will occur at aphelion and northern summer at perihelion. The severity of seasonal change — the average temperature difference between summer and winter in location — will also change over time because the Earth's axial tilt fluctuates between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees.
+
+Smaller irregularities in the times are caused by perturbations of the Moon and the other planets.
+
+Solar timing is based on insolation in which the solstices and equinoxes are seen as the midpoints of the seasons.  It was the method for reckoning seasons in medieval Europe, especially by the Celts, and is still ceremonially observed in Ireland and some East Asian countries. Summer is defined as the quarter of the year with the greatest insolation and winter as the quarter with the least.
+
+The solar seasons change at the cross-quarter days, which are about 3–4 weeks earlier than the meteorological seasons and 6–7 weeks earlier than seasons starting at equinoxes and solstices.  Thus, the day of greatest insolation is designated "midsummer" as noted in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is set on the summer solstice.  On the Celtic calendar, the start of the seasons corresponds to four Pagan agricultural festivals - the traditional first day of winter is 1 November (Samhain, the Celtic origin of Halloween); spring starts 1 February (Imbolc, the Celtic origin of Groundhog Day); summer begins 1 May (Beltane, the Celtic origin of May Day); the first day of autumn is 1 August (Celtic Lughnasadh).
+
+Some calendars in south Asia use a six-season method where the number of seasons between summer and winter can number from one to three. The dates are fixed at even intervals of months.
+
+In the Hindu calendar of tropical and subtropical India, there are six seasons or Ritu that are calendar-based in the sense of having fixed dates: Vasanta (spring), Greeshma (summer), Varsha (monsoon), Sharad (autumn), Hemanta (early winter), and Shishira (prevernal or late winter). The six seasons are ascribed to two months each of the twelve months in the Hindu calendar. The rough correspondences are:
+
+The Bengali Calendar is similar but differs in start and end times. It has the following seasons or ritu:
+
+The Tamil calendar follows a similar pattern of six seasons
+
+The North American Cree and possibly other Algonquian speaking peoples used or still use a 6-season system. The extra two seasons denoting the freezing and breaking up of the ice on rivers and lakes.[20]
+
+The most historically important of these are the three seasons—flood, growth, and low water—which were previously defined by the former annual flooding of the Nile in Egypt. In some tropical areas a three-way division into hot, rainy, and cool season is used. In Thailand three seasons are recognised [21]
+
+
+
+
+
+The traditional calendar in China has seasons traditionally based on 24 periods known as solar terms.[22] The four seasons chūn (春), xià (夏), qiū (秋), and dōng (冬) are universally translated as "spring", "summer", "autumn", and "winter" but actually begin much earlier, with the solstices and equinoxes forming the midpoint of each season rather than their start. Astronomically, the seasons are said to begin on Lichun (立春, lit. "standing spring") on about 4 February, Lixia (立夏) on about 6 May, Liqiu (立秋) on about 8 August, and Lidong (立冬) on about 7 November. These dates were not part of the traditional lunar calendar, however, and moveable holidays such as Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival are more closely associated with the seasons. It forms the basis of other such systems in East Asian lunisolar calendars.
+
+In the tropical parts of Australia in the northern parts of Queensland, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory,  wet and dry seasons are observed in addition to or in place of temperate season names.[23]
+
+
+
+Ecologically speaking, a season is a period of the year in which only certain types of floral and animal events happen (e.g.: flowers bloom—spring; hedgehogs hibernate—winter). So, if we can observe a change in daily floral/animal events, the season is changing.  In this sense, ecological seasons are defined in absolute terms, unlike calendar-based methods in which the seasons are relative.  If specific conditions associated with a particular ecological season don't normally occur in a particular region, then that area cannot be said to experience that season on a regular basis. In Great Britain, the onset of spring used to be defined as when the maximum daily temperature reached 50 °F (10 °C) in a defined sequence of days.   This almost always occurred in March.   However, with global warming this temperature is now not uncommon in the winter.
+
+Six ecological seasons can be distinguished which do not have fixed calendar-based dates like the meteorological and astronomical seasons.[24] Oceanic regions tend to experience the beginning of the hibernal season up to a month later than continental climates. Conversely, prevernal and vernal seasons begin up to a month earlier near oceanic and coastal areas. For example, prevernal crocus blooms typically appear as early as February in coastal areas of British Columbia, the British Isles, but generally don't appear until March or April in locations like the Midwest USA or parts of eastern Europe. The actual dates for each season vary by climate region and can shift from one year to the next.  Average dates listed here are for mild and cool temperate climate zones in the Northern Hemisphere:
+
+Indigenous people in polar, temperate and tropical climates of northern Eurasia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and Australia have traditionally defined the seasons ecologically by observing the activity of the plants, animals and weather around them. Each separate tribal group traditionally observes different seasons determined according to local criteria that can vary from the hibernation of polar bears on the arctic tundras to the growing seasons of plants in the tropical rainforests.  In Australia, some tribes have up to eight seasons in a year,[13] as do the Sami people in Scandinavia. Many indigenous people who no longer live directly off the land in traditional often nomadic styles, now observe modern methods of seasonal reckoning according to what is customary in their particular country or region.
+
+The Noongar people of South-West Western Australia recognise maar-keyen bonar,[25] or six seasons. Each season's arrival is heralded not by a calendar date, but by environmental factors[26] such as changing winds, flowering plants, temperature and migration patterns and lasts approximately two standard calendar months. The seasons also correlate to aspects of the human condition, intrinsically linking the lives of the people to the world that surrounds them and also dictating their movements, as with each season, various parts of country would be visited which were particularly abundant or safe from the elements.[27]
+
+In the tropics, where seasonal dates also vary, it is more common to speak of the rainy (or wet, or monsoon) season versus the dry season. For example, in Nicaragua the dry season (November to April) is called "summer" and the rainy season (May to October) is called "winter", even though it is located in the northern hemisphere. There is no noticeable change in the amount of sunlight at different times of the year. However, many regions (such as the northern Indian ocean) are subject to monsoon rain and wind cycles.
+
+Floral and animal activity variation near the equator depends more on wet/dry cycles than seasonal temperature variations, with different species flowering (or emerging from cocoons) at specific times before, during, or after the monsoon season. Thus, the tropics are characterized by numerous "mini-seasons" within the larger seasonal blocks of time.
+
+
+
+Any point north of the Arctic Circle or south of the Antarctic Circle will have one period in the summer called "polar day" when the sun does not set, and one period in the winter called 'polar night' when the sun does not rise. At progressively higher latitudes, the maximum periods of "midnight sun" and "polar night" are progressively longer.
+
+For example, at the military and weather station Alert located at 82°30′05″N and 62°20′20″W, on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island, Canada (about 450 nautical miles or 830 km from the North Pole), the sun begins to peek above the horizon for minutes per day at the end of February and each day it climbs higher and stays up longer; by 21 March, the sun is up for over 12 hours. On 6 April the sun rises at 0522 UTC and remains above the horizon until it sets below the horizon again on 6 September at 0335 UTC.  By October 13 the sun is above the horizon for only 1 hour 30 minutes, and on October 14 it does not rise above the horizon at all and remains below the horizon until it rises again on 27 February.[28]
+
+First light comes in late January because the sky has twilight, being a glow on the horizon, for increasing hours each day, for more than a month before the sun first appears with its disc above the horizon. From mid-November to mid-January, there is no twilight.
+
+In the weeks surrounding 21 June, in the northern polar region, the sun is at its highest elevation, appearing to circle the sky there without going below the horizon. Eventually, it does go below the horizon, for progressively longer periods each day until around the middle of October, when it disappears for the last time until the following February. For a few more weeks, "day" is marked by decreasing periods of twilight. Eventually, from mid-November to mid-January, there is no twilight and it is continuously dark. In mid January the first faint wash of twilight briefly touches the horizon (for just minutes per day), and then twilight increases in duration with increasing brightness each day until sunrise at end of February, then on 6 April the sun remains above the horizon until mid October.
+
+Seasonal weather and climate conditions can become important in the context of military operations.
+
+For navies, the presence of accessible ports and bases can allow naval operations during certain (variable) seasons of the year. The availability of  ice-free or warm-water ports can make navies much more effective. Thus Russia, historically navally constrained when confined to using Arkhangelsk (before the 18th century) and even Kronstadt, has particular interests in maintaining and in preserving access to Baltiysk, Vladivostok, and Sevastopol.[29]
+Storm seasons or polar winter-weather conditions can inhibit surface warships at sea.
+
+Pre-modern armies, especially in Europe, tended to campaign in the summer months - peasant  conscripts tended to melt away at harvest time, nor did it make economic sense in an agricultural society to neglect the sowing season.[30]
+Any modern  war of manouevre profits from firm ground - summer can provide dry conditions suitable for marching and transport, frozen snow in winter can also offer a reliable surface for a period, but  spring thaws or autumn rains can inhibit campaigning. Rainy-season floods may make rivers temporarily impassable, and winter snow tends to block mountain passes.

en/5243.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,125 @@
+A season is a division of the year[1] marked by changes in weather, ecology, and the amount of daylight. On Earth, seasons are the result of Earth's orbit around the Sun and Earth's axial tilt relative to the ecliptic plane.[2][3] In temperate and polar regions, the seasons are marked by changes in the intensity of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface, variations of which may cause animals to undergo hibernation or to migrate, and plants to be dormant. Various cultures define the number and nature of seasons based on regional variations.
+
+The Northern Hemisphere experiences more direct sunlight during May, June, and July, as the hemisphere faces the Sun. The same is true of the Southern Hemisphere in November, December, and January. It is Earth's axial tilt that causes the Sun to be higher in the sky during the summer months, which increases the solar flux. However, due to seasonal lag, June, July, and August are the warmest months in the Northern Hemisphere while December, January, and February are the warmest months in the Southern Hemisphere.
+
+In temperate and sub-polar regions, four seasons based on the Gregorian calendar are generally recognized: spring, summer, autumn or fall, and winter.  Ecologists often use a six-season model for temperate climate regions which are not tied to any fixed calendar dates: prevernal, vernal, estival, serotinal, autumnal, and hibernal. Many tropical regions have two seasons: the rainy, wet, or monsoon season and the dry season. Some have a third cool, mild, or harmattan season. "Seasons" can also be dictated by the timing of important ecological events such as hurricane season, tornado season, and wildfire season.[citation needed] The most historically important of these are the three seasons—flood, growth, and low water—which were previously defined by the former annual flooding of the Nile in Egypt.
+
+Seasons often hold special significance for agrarian societies, whose lives revolve around planting and harvest times, and the change of seasons is often attended by ritual. The definition of seasons is also cultural. In India, from ancient times to the present day, six seasons or Ritu based on south Asian religious or cultural calendars are recognised and identified for purposes such as agriculture and trade.
+
+The seasons result from the Earth's axis of rotation being tilted with respect to its orbital plane by an angle of approximately 23.4 degrees.[4] (This tilt is also known as "obliquity of the ecliptic".)
+
+Regardless of the time of year, the northern and southern hemispheres always experience opposite seasons. This is because during summer or winter, one part of the planet is more directly exposed to the rays of the Sun (see Fig. 1) than the other, and this exposure alternates as the Earth revolves in its orbit. For approximately half of the year (from around March 20 to around September 22), the Northern Hemisphere tips toward the Sun, with the maximum amount occurring on about June 21. For the other half of the year, the same happens, but in the Southern Hemisphere instead of the Northern, with the maximum around December 21. The two instants when the Sun is directly overhead at the Equator are the equinoxes. Also at that moment, both the North Pole and the South Pole of the Earth are just on the terminator, and hence day and night are equally divided between the two hemispheres. Around the March equinox, the Northern Hemisphere will be experiencing spring as the hours of daylight increase, and the Southern Hemisphere is experiencing autumn as daylight hours shorten.
+
+The effect of axial tilt is observable as the change in day length and altitude of the Sun at solar noon (the Sun's culmination) during the year. The low angle of Sun during the winter months means that incoming rays of solar radiation are spread over a larger area of the Earth's surface, so the light received is more indirect and of lower intensity. Between this effect and the shorter daylight hours, the axial tilt of the Earth accounts for most of the seasonal variation in climate in both hemispheres.
+
+Illumination of Earth by Sun at the northern solstice.
+
+Illumination of Earth by Sun at the southern solstice.
+
+Diagram of the Earth's seasons as seen from the north. Far right: southern solstice
+
+Animation of Earth as seen daily from the Sun looking at UTC+02:00, showing the solstice and changing seasons.
+
+Two images showing the amount of reflected sunlight at southern and northern summer solstices respectively (watts / m²).
+
+Compared to axial tilt, other factors contribute little to seasonal temperature changes. The seasons are not the result of the variation in Earth's distance to the Sun because of its elliptical orbit.[5] In fact, Earth reaches perihelion (the point in its orbit closest to the Sun) in January, and it reaches aphelion (the point farthest from the Sun) in July, so the slight contribution of orbital eccentricity opposes the temperature trends of the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere.[6] In general, the effect of orbital eccentricity on Earth's seasons is a 7% variation in sunlight received.
+
+Orbital eccentricity can influence temperatures, but on Earth, this effect is small and is more than counteracted by other factors; research shows that the Earth as a whole is actually slightly warmer when farther from the sun. This is because the Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern, and land warms more readily than sea.[6]
+Any noticeable intensification of southern winters and summers due to Earth's elliptical orbit is mitigated by the abundance of water in the Southern Hemisphere.[7]
+
+Seasonal weather fluctuations (changes) also depend on factors such as proximity to oceans or other large bodies of water, currents in those oceans, El Niño/ENSO and other oceanic cycles, and prevailing winds.
+
+In the temperate and polar regions, seasons are marked by changes in the amount of sunlight, which in turn often causes cycles of dormancy in plants and hibernation in animals. These effects vary with latitude and with proximity to bodies of water. For example, the South Pole is in the middle of the continent of Antarctica and therefore a considerable distance from the moderating influence of the southern oceans. The North Pole is in the Arctic Ocean, and thus its temperature extremes are buffered by the water. The result is that the South Pole is consistently colder during the southern winter than the North Pole during the northern winter.
+
+The seasonal cycle in the polar and temperate zones of one hemisphere is opposite to that of the other. When it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it is winter in the Southern, and vice versa.
+
+The tropical and subtropical regions see little annual fluctuation of sunlight.  However, seasonal shifts occur along a rainy, low-pressure belt called the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ICZ). As a result, the amount of precipitation tends to vary more dramatically than the average temperature. When the Zone is north of the Equator, the northern tropics experience their wet season while the southern tropics have their dry season. This pattern reverses when the Zone migrates to a position south of the Equator.
+
+In meteorological terms, the solstices (the maximum and minimum insolation) do not fall in the middles of summer and winter. The heights of these seasons occur up to 7 weeks later because of seasonal lag. Seasons, though, are not always defined in meteorological terms.
+
+In astronomical reckoning by hours of daylight alone, the solstices and equinoxes are in the middle of the respective seasons. Because of seasonal lag due to thermal absorption and release by the oceans, regions with a continental climate, which predominate in the Northern Hemisphere, often consider these four dates to be the start of the seasons as in the diagram, with the cross-quarter days considered seasonal midpoints. The length of these seasons is not uniform because of Earth's elliptical orbit and its different speeds along that orbit.[8]
+
+Most calendar-based methods use a four-season model to identify the warmest and coldest seasons, which are separated by two intermediate seasons. Calendar-based reckoning defines the seasons in relative rather than absolute terms.  Accordingly, if floral activity is regularly observed during the coolest quarter of the year in a particular area, it is still considered winter despite the traditional association of flowers with spring and summer.  Additionally, the seasons are considered to change on the same dates everywhere that uses a particular calendar method regardless of variations in climate from one area to another.
+
+As noted, a variety of dates and even exact times are used in different countries or regions to mark changes of the calendar seasons. These observances are often declared "official" within their respective areas by the local or national media, even when the weather or climate is contradictory.[9]  However they are mainly a matter of custom only, and have not generally been proclaimed by governments north or south of the equator for civil purposes.[10][11] As an result of European colonization, the four-season European model is used officially almost throughout the world, although the seasons are reversed between the northern and southern hemispheres.
+
+Meteorological seasons are reckoned by temperature, with summer being the hottest quarter of the year and winter the coldest quarter of the year. In 1780 the Societas Meteorologica Palatina (which became defunct in 1795), an early international organization for meteorology, defined seasons as groupings of three whole months as identified by the Gregorian calendar. Ever since, professional meteorologists all over the world have used this definition.[12]
+Therefore, for temperate areas in the northern hemisphere, spring begins on 1 March, summer on 1 June, autumn on 1 September, and winter on 1 December. For the southern hemisphere temperate zone, spring begins on 1 September, summer on 1 December, autumn on 1 March, and winter on 1 June.[13][14]  In Australasia the meteorological terms for seasons apply to the temperate zone that occupies all of New Zealand, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, the south-eastern corner of South Australia and the south-west of Western Australia, and the south east Queensland areas south of Brisbane.
+
+In Sweden and Finland, meteorologists use a non-calendar based definition for the seasons based on the temperature. Spring begins when the daily averaged temperature permanently rises above 0 °C, summer begins when the temperature permanently rises above +10 °C, summer ends when the temperature permanently falls below +10 °C and winter begins when the temperature permanently falls below 0 °C. "Permanently" here means that the daily averaged temperature has remained above or below the limit for seven consecutive days. This implies two things: first, the seasons do not begin at fixed dates but must be determined by observation and are known only after the fact; and second, a new season begins at different dates in different parts of the country.
+
+The India Meteorological Department (IMD) designates four climatological seasons:[16]
+
+Astronomical timing as the basis for designating the temperate seasons dates back at least to the Julian calendar used by the ancient Romans.  It continues to be used on many modern Gregorian calendars worldwide, although some countries like Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Russia prefer to use meteorological reckoning. The precise timing of the seasons is determined by the exact times of transit of the sun over the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn for the solstices and the times of the sun's transit over the equator for the equinoxes, or a traditional date close to these times.[19]
+
+The following diagram shows the relation between the line of solstice and the line of apsides of Earth's elliptical orbit.  The orbital ellipse (with eccentricity exaggerated for effect) goes through each of the six Earth images, which are sequentially the perihelion (periapsis—nearest point to the sun) on anywhere from 2 January to 5 January, the point of March equinox on 19, 20 or 21 March, the point of June solstice on 20 or 21 June, the aphelion (apoapsis—farthest point from the sun) on anywhere from 4 July to 7 July, the September equinox on 22 or 23 September, and the December solstice on 21 or 22 December.
+
+These "astronomical" seasons are not of equal length, because of the elliptical nature of the orbit of the Earth, as discovered by Johannes Kepler.  From the March equinox it currently takes 92.75 days until the June solstice, then 93.65 days until the September equinox, 89.85 days until the December solstice and finally 88.99 days until the March equinox.
+
+The times of the equinoxes and solstices are not fixed with respect to the modern Gregorian calendar, but fall about six hours later every year, amounting to one full day in four years. They are reset by the occurrence of a leap year. The Gregorian calendar is designed to keep the March equinox no later than 21 March as accurately as is practical. Also see: Gregorian calendar seasonal error.
+
+The calendar equinox (used in the calculation of Easter) is 21 March, the same date as in the Easter tables current at the time of the Council of Nicaea in AD 325.   The calendar is therefore framed to prevent the astronomical equinox wandering onto 22 March.   From Nicaea to the date of the reform, the years 500, 600, 700, 900, 1000, 1100, 1300, 1400 and 1500, which would not have been leap years in the Gregorian calendar, amount to nine days, but astronomers directed that ten days be removed.
+
+Currently, the most common equinox and solstice dates are March 20, June 21, September 22 or 23 and December 21; the four-year average slowly shifts to earlier times as the century progresses.   This shift is a full day in about 128 years (compensated mainly by the century "leap year" rules of the Gregorian calendar) and as 2000 was a leap year the current shift has been progressing since the beginning of the last century, when equinoxes and solstices were relatively late.   This also means that in many years of the twentieth century, the dates of March 21, June 22, September 23 and December 22 were much more common, so older books teach (and older people may still remember) these dates.
+
+Note that all the times are given in UTC (roughly speaking, the time at Greenwich, ignoring British Summer Time). People living farther to the east (Asia and Australia), whose local times are in advance, will see the astronomical seasons apparently start later; for example, in Tonga (UTC+13), an equinox occurred on September 24, 1999, a date which will not crop up again until 2103. On the other hand, people living far to the west (America) whose clocks run behind UTC may experience an equinox as early as March 19.
+
+Over thousands of years, the Earth's axial tilt and orbital eccentricity vary (see Milankovitch cycles).   The equinoxes and solstices move westward relative to the stars while the perihelion and aphelion move eastward.   Thus, ten thousand years from now Earth's northern winter will occur at aphelion and northern summer at perihelion. The severity of seasonal change — the average temperature difference between summer and winter in location — will also change over time because the Earth's axial tilt fluctuates between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees.
+
+Smaller irregularities in the times are caused by perturbations of the Moon and the other planets.
+
+Solar timing is based on insolation in which the solstices and equinoxes are seen as the midpoints of the seasons.  It was the method for reckoning seasons in medieval Europe, especially by the Celts, and is still ceremonially observed in Ireland and some East Asian countries. Summer is defined as the quarter of the year with the greatest insolation and winter as the quarter with the least.
+
+The solar seasons change at the cross-quarter days, which are about 3–4 weeks earlier than the meteorological seasons and 6–7 weeks earlier than seasons starting at equinoxes and solstices.  Thus, the day of greatest insolation is designated "midsummer" as noted in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is set on the summer solstice.  On the Celtic calendar, the start of the seasons corresponds to four Pagan agricultural festivals - the traditional first day of winter is 1 November (Samhain, the Celtic origin of Halloween); spring starts 1 February (Imbolc, the Celtic origin of Groundhog Day); summer begins 1 May (Beltane, the Celtic origin of May Day); the first day of autumn is 1 August (Celtic Lughnasadh).
+
+Some calendars in south Asia use a six-season method where the number of seasons between summer and winter can number from one to three. The dates are fixed at even intervals of months.
+
+In the Hindu calendar of tropical and subtropical India, there are six seasons or Ritu that are calendar-based in the sense of having fixed dates: Vasanta (spring), Greeshma (summer), Varsha (monsoon), Sharad (autumn), Hemanta (early winter), and Shishira (prevernal or late winter). The six seasons are ascribed to two months each of the twelve months in the Hindu calendar. The rough correspondences are:
+
+The Bengali Calendar is similar but differs in start and end times. It has the following seasons or ritu:
+
+The Tamil calendar follows a similar pattern of six seasons
+
+The North American Cree and possibly other Algonquian speaking peoples used or still use a 6-season system. The extra two seasons denoting the freezing and breaking up of the ice on rivers and lakes.[20]
+
+The most historically important of these are the three seasons—flood, growth, and low water—which were previously defined by the former annual flooding of the Nile in Egypt. In some tropical areas a three-way division into hot, rainy, and cool season is used. In Thailand three seasons are recognised [21]
+
+
+
+
+
+The traditional calendar in China has seasons traditionally based on 24 periods known as solar terms.[22] The four seasons chūn (春), xià (夏), qiū (秋), and dōng (冬) are universally translated as "spring", "summer", "autumn", and "winter" but actually begin much earlier, with the solstices and equinoxes forming the midpoint of each season rather than their start. Astronomically, the seasons are said to begin on Lichun (立春, lit. "standing spring") on about 4 February, Lixia (立夏) on about 6 May, Liqiu (立秋) on about 8 August, and Lidong (立冬) on about 7 November. These dates were not part of the traditional lunar calendar, however, and moveable holidays such as Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival are more closely associated with the seasons. It forms the basis of other such systems in East Asian lunisolar calendars.
+
+In the tropical parts of Australia in the northern parts of Queensland, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory,  wet and dry seasons are observed in addition to or in place of temperate season names.[23]
+
+
+
+Ecologically speaking, a season is a period of the year in which only certain types of floral and animal events happen (e.g.: flowers bloom—spring; hedgehogs hibernate—winter). So, if we can observe a change in daily floral/animal events, the season is changing.  In this sense, ecological seasons are defined in absolute terms, unlike calendar-based methods in which the seasons are relative.  If specific conditions associated with a particular ecological season don't normally occur in a particular region, then that area cannot be said to experience that season on a regular basis. In Great Britain, the onset of spring used to be defined as when the maximum daily temperature reached 50 °F (10 °C) in a defined sequence of days.   This almost always occurred in March.   However, with global warming this temperature is now not uncommon in the winter.
+
+Six ecological seasons can be distinguished which do not have fixed calendar-based dates like the meteorological and astronomical seasons.[24] Oceanic regions tend to experience the beginning of the hibernal season up to a month later than continental climates. Conversely, prevernal and vernal seasons begin up to a month earlier near oceanic and coastal areas. For example, prevernal crocus blooms typically appear as early as February in coastal areas of British Columbia, the British Isles, but generally don't appear until March or April in locations like the Midwest USA or parts of eastern Europe. The actual dates for each season vary by climate region and can shift from one year to the next.  Average dates listed here are for mild and cool temperate climate zones in the Northern Hemisphere:
+
+Indigenous people in polar, temperate and tropical climates of northern Eurasia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and Australia have traditionally defined the seasons ecologically by observing the activity of the plants, animals and weather around them. Each separate tribal group traditionally observes different seasons determined according to local criteria that can vary from the hibernation of polar bears on the arctic tundras to the growing seasons of plants in the tropical rainforests.  In Australia, some tribes have up to eight seasons in a year,[13] as do the Sami people in Scandinavia. Many indigenous people who no longer live directly off the land in traditional often nomadic styles, now observe modern methods of seasonal reckoning according to what is customary in their particular country or region.
+
+The Noongar people of South-West Western Australia recognise maar-keyen bonar,[25] or six seasons. Each season's arrival is heralded not by a calendar date, but by environmental factors[26] such as changing winds, flowering plants, temperature and migration patterns and lasts approximately two standard calendar months. The seasons also correlate to aspects of the human condition, intrinsically linking the lives of the people to the world that surrounds them and also dictating their movements, as with each season, various parts of country would be visited which were particularly abundant or safe from the elements.[27]
+
+In the tropics, where seasonal dates also vary, it is more common to speak of the rainy (or wet, or monsoon) season versus the dry season. For example, in Nicaragua the dry season (November to April) is called "summer" and the rainy season (May to October) is called "winter", even though it is located in the northern hemisphere. There is no noticeable change in the amount of sunlight at different times of the year. However, many regions (such as the northern Indian ocean) are subject to monsoon rain and wind cycles.
+
+Floral and animal activity variation near the equator depends more on wet/dry cycles than seasonal temperature variations, with different species flowering (or emerging from cocoons) at specific times before, during, or after the monsoon season. Thus, the tropics are characterized by numerous "mini-seasons" within the larger seasonal blocks of time.
+
+
+
+Any point north of the Arctic Circle or south of the Antarctic Circle will have one period in the summer called "polar day" when the sun does not set, and one period in the winter called 'polar night' when the sun does not rise. At progressively higher latitudes, the maximum periods of "midnight sun" and "polar night" are progressively longer.
+
+For example, at the military and weather station Alert located at 82°30′05″N and 62°20′20″W, on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island, Canada (about 450 nautical miles or 830 km from the North Pole), the sun begins to peek above the horizon for minutes per day at the end of February and each day it climbs higher and stays up longer; by 21 March, the sun is up for over 12 hours. On 6 April the sun rises at 0522 UTC and remains above the horizon until it sets below the horizon again on 6 September at 0335 UTC.  By October 13 the sun is above the horizon for only 1 hour 30 minutes, and on October 14 it does not rise above the horizon at all and remains below the horizon until it rises again on 27 February.[28]
+
+First light comes in late January because the sky has twilight, being a glow on the horizon, for increasing hours each day, for more than a month before the sun first appears with its disc above the horizon. From mid-November to mid-January, there is no twilight.
+
+In the weeks surrounding 21 June, in the northern polar region, the sun is at its highest elevation, appearing to circle the sky there without going below the horizon. Eventually, it does go below the horizon, for progressively longer periods each day until around the middle of October, when it disappears for the last time until the following February. For a few more weeks, "day" is marked by decreasing periods of twilight. Eventually, from mid-November to mid-January, there is no twilight and it is continuously dark. In mid January the first faint wash of twilight briefly touches the horizon (for just minutes per day), and then twilight increases in duration with increasing brightness each day until sunrise at end of February, then on 6 April the sun remains above the horizon until mid October.
+
+Seasonal weather and climate conditions can become important in the context of military operations.
+
+For navies, the presence of accessible ports and bases can allow naval operations during certain (variable) seasons of the year. The availability of  ice-free or warm-water ports can make navies much more effective. Thus Russia, historically navally constrained when confined to using Arkhangelsk (before the 18th century) and even Kronstadt, has particular interests in maintaining and in preserving access to Baltiysk, Vladivostok, and Sevastopol.[29]
+Storm seasons or polar winter-weather conditions can inhibit surface warships at sea.
+
+Pre-modern armies, especially in Europe, tended to campaign in the summer months - peasant  conscripts tended to melt away at harvest time, nor did it make economic sense in an agricultural society to neglect the sowing season.[30]
+Any modern  war of manouevre profits from firm ground - summer can provide dry conditions suitable for marching and transport, frozen snow in winter can also offer a reliable surface for a period, but  spring thaws or autumn rains can inhibit campaigning. Rainy-season floods may make rivers temporarily impassable, and winter snow tends to block mountain passes.

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+
+
+A salad is  a dish consisting of a mixture of small pieces of food, usually vegetables or fruit.[1][2] 
+However, different varieties of salad may contain virtually any type of ready-to-eat food. Salads are typically served at room temperature or chilled, with notable exceptions such as south German potato salad which can be served warm.
+
+Garden salads use a base of leafy greens such as lettuce, arugula/rocket, kale or spinach; they are common enough that the word salad alone often refers specifically to garden salads. Other types include bean salad, tuna salad, fattoush, Greek salad (vegetable-based, but without leafy greens), and sōmen salad (a noodle-based salad). The sauce used to flavor a salad is commonly called a salad dressing; most salad dressings are based on either a mixture of oil and vinegar or a fermented milk product like kefir.
+
+Salads may be served at any point during a meal:
+
+The word "salad" comes to English from the French salade of the same meaning, itself an abbreviated form of the earlier Vulgar Latin herba salata (salted greens), from the Latin salata (salted), from sal (salt). In English, the word first appears as "salad" or "sallet" in the 14th century. Salt is associated with salad because vegetables were seasoned with brine (a solution of salt in water) or salty oil-and-vinegar dressings during Roman times.[3]
+The phrase "salad days", meaning a "time of youthful inexperience" (based on the notion of "green"), is first recorded by Shakespeare in 1606,[3] while the use of salad bar, referring to a buffet-style serving of salad ingredients, first appeared in American English in the 1960s.
+
+The Romans, ancient Greeks and Persians ate mixed greens with dressing, a type of mixed salad.[4][5] Salads, including layered and dressed salads, have been popular in Europe since the Greek and Roman imperial expansions. In his 1699 book, Acetaria: A Discourse on Sallets,[6] John Evelyn attempted with little success to encourage his fellow Britons to eat fresh salad greens.[7] Mary, Queen of Scots, ate boiled celery root over greens covered with creamy mustard dressing, truffles, chervil, and slices of hard-boiled eggs.
+
+Oil used on salads can be found in the 17th-century colony of New Netherland (later called New York, New Jersey and Delaware). A list of common items arriving on ships and their designated prices when appraising cargo included "a can of salad oil at 1.10 florins" and "an anker of wine vinegar at 16 florins".[8]  In a 1665 letter to the Director of New Netherland from the Island of Curaçao there is a request to send greens: "I request most amicably that your honors be pleased to send me seed of every sort, such as cabbage, carrots, lettuce, parsley, etc. for none can be acquired here and I know that your honor has plenty,...".[9]
+
+Salads may be sold in supermarkets, at restaurants and at fast food chains. In the United States, restaurants will often have a salad bar with salad-making ingredients, which the customers will use to put together their salad.[10] Salad restaurants were earning more than $300 million in 2014.[11]  At-home salad consumption in the 2010s was rising but moving away from fresh-chopped lettuce and toward bagged greens and salad kits, with bag sales expected to reach $7 billion per year.[12]
+
+A salad can be a composed salad (with the ingredients specifically arranged on the serving dish) or a tossed salad (with the ingredients placed in a bowl and mixed). An antipasto plate, the first dish of a formal Italian meal, is similar to a composed salad, and has vegetables, cheese, and meat.
+
+A green salad or garden salad is most often composed of leafy vegetables such as lettuce varieties, spinach, or rocket (arugula). If non-greens make up a large portion of the salad it may instead be called a vegetable salad. Common raw vegetables (in the culinary sense) used in a salad include cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, onions, carrots, celery, radishes, mushrooms, avocado, olives, artichoke hearts, heart of palm, watercress, parsley, garden beets, and green beans. Nuts, berries, seeds, and flowers are less common components. Hard-boiled eggs, bacon, shrimp, and cheeses may be used as garnishes, but large amounts of animal-based foods would be more likely in a dinner salad.
+
+A wedge salad is a specific type of green salad made from a head of lettuce (often iceberg), halved or quartered, with other ingredients on top.[13]
+
+Fruit salads are made of fruit (in the culinary sense), which may be fresh or canned. Examples include fruit cocktail.[14]
+
+Rice and pasta may be used as the key ingredient to making a salad. Pasta salads are more common. Some examples of rice salads come from Thai cuisine, like Nasi ulam.
+
+Bound salads are assembled with thick sauces such as mayonnaise. One portion of a bound salad will hold its shape when placed on a plate with a scoop. Examples of bound salad include tuna salad, chicken salad, egg salad, coleslaw, and potato salad. Some bound salads are used as sandwich fillings. Some pasta salads, e.g. macaroni salad, are bound salads. They are popular at picnics and barbecues.
+
+Main course salads (known as dinner salads[14] or as entrée salads in the United States) may contain small pieces of poultry, seafood, or steak.  Caesar salad, Chef salad, Cobb salad, Chinese chicken salad and Michigan salad are dinner salads.
+
+A wide variety of cheeses are used in dinner salads, including Roquefort blue cheese (traditional for a Cobb salad), and Swiss, Cheddar, Jack, and Provolone (for Chef and Cobb salads).
+
+Dessert salads rarely include leafy greens and are often sweet. Common variants are made with gelatin or whipped cream; e.g. jello salad, pistachio salad, and ambrosia. Other forms of dessert salads include Snickers salad, glorified rice, and cookie salad.[14]
+
+Sauces for salads are called dressings.
+
+In Western culture, there are two basic types of salad dressing:
+
+In the United States, buttermilk-based ranch dressing is most popular, with vinaigrettes and Caesar-style dressing following close behind.[16] Traditional dressings in France are vinaigrettes, typically mustard-based, while sour cream (smetana) and mayonnaise are predominant in Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia. In Denmark, dressings are often based on crème fraîche. In southern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, salad is generally dressed by the diner with olive oil and vinegar. In Asia, it is common to add sesame oil, fish sauce, citrus juice, or soy sauce to salad dressings.[citation needed] Other condiments sometimes used as salad dressing include lemon juice, lime juice, and pumpkin seed oil.
+
+Other salad dressings include:
+
+On 4 September 2016, the largest recorded salad, weighing 20,100 kilograms (44,300 lb), was created in Red Square, Moscow, Russia, by Mouzenidis Travel. It was a Greek salad consisting of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, olives, feta cheese, olive oil, oregano and salt.[17]

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+
+
+
+
+Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism[1][2] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, as well as strong regimentation of society and of the economy[3] which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.[4] The first fascist movements emerged in Italy during World War I, before spreading to other European countries.[4] Opposed to liberalism, Marxism, and anarchism, fascism is placed on the far right within the traditional left–right spectrum.[4][5][6]
+
+Fascists saw World War I as a revolution that brought massive changes to the nature of war, society, the state, and technology. The advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A "military citizenship" arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war.[7][8] The war had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines and providing economic production and logistics to support them, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.[7][8]
+
+Fascists believe that liberal democracy is obsolete and regard the complete mobilization of society under a totalitarian one-party state as necessary to prepare a nation for armed conflict and to respond effectively to economic difficulties.[9] Such a state is led by a strong leader—such as a dictator and a martial government composed of the members of the governing fascist party—to forge national unity and maintain a stable and orderly society.[9] Fascism rejects assertions that violence is automatically negative in nature and views political violence, war, and imperialism as means that can achieve national rejuvenation.[10][11] Fascists advocate a mixed economy, with the principal goal of achieving autarky (national economic self-sufficiency) through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.[12]
+
+Since the end of World War II in 1945, few parties have openly described themselves as fascist, and the term is instead now usually used pejoratively by political opponents. The descriptions neo-fascist or post-fascist are sometimes applied more formally to describe parties of the far right with ideologies similar to, or rooted in, 20th-century fascist movements.[4][13]
+
+The Italian term fascismo is derived from fascio meaning "a bundle of sticks", ultimately from the Latin word fasces.[14] This was the name given to political organizations in Italy known as fasci, groups similar to guilds or syndicates. According to Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's own account, the Fasces of Revolutionary Action were founded in Italy in 1915.[15] In 1919, Mussolini founded the Italian Fasces of Combat in Milan, which became the National Fascist Party two years later. The Fascists came to associate the term with the ancient Roman fasces or fascio littorio[16]—a bundle of rods tied around an axe,[17] an ancient Roman symbol of the authority of the civic magistrate[18] carried by his lictors, which could be used for corporal and capital punishment at his command.[19][20]
+
+The symbolism of the fasces suggested strength through unity: a single rod is easily broken, while the bundle is difficult to break.[21] Similar symbols were developed by different fascist movements: for example, the Falange symbol is five arrows joined together by a yoke.[22]
+
+Historians, political scientists, and other scholars have long debated the exact nature of fascism.[23] Each group described as fascist has at least some unique elements, and many definitions of fascism have been criticized as either too wide or narrow.[24][25]
+
+According to many scholars, fascism – especially once in power – has historically attacked communism, conservatism, and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support primarily from the far-right.[26]
+
+One common definition of the term, frequently cited by reliable sources as a standard definition, is that of historian Stanley G. Payne. He focuses on three concepts:
+
+Historian John Lukacs argues that there is no such thing as generic fascism. He claims that National Socialism and communism are essentially manifestations of populism and that states such as National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy are more different than similar.[31]
+
+Roger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism".[32] Griffin describes the ideology as having three core components: "(i) the rebirth myth, (ii) populist ultra-nationalism, and (iii) the myth of decadence".[33] In Griffin's view, fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence.[34] In Against the Fascist Creep, Alexander Reid Ross writes regarding Griffin's view:
+
+Following the Cold War and shifts in fascist organizing techniques, a number of scholars have moved toward the minimalist "new consensus" refined by Roger Griffin: "the mythic core" of fascism is "a populist form of palingenetic ultranationalism." That means that fascism is an ideology that draws on old, ancient, and even arcane myths of racial, cultural, ethnic, and national origins to develop a plan for the "new man."[35]
+
+Indeed, Griffin himself explored this 'mythic' or 'eliminable' core of fascism with his concept of post-fascism to explore the continuation of Nazism in the modern era.[36] Additionally, other historians have applied this minimalist core to explore proto-fascist movements.[37]
+
+Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser argue that although fascism "flirted with populism ... in an attempt to generate mass support", it is better seen as an elitist ideology. They cite in particular its exaltation of the Leader, the race, and the state, rather than the people. They see populism as a "thin-centered ideology" with a "restricted morphology" which necessarily becomes attached to "thick-centered" ideologies such as fascism, liberalism, or socialism. Thus populism can be found as an aspect of many specific ideologies, without necessarily being a defining characteristic of those ideologies. They refer to the combination of populism, authoritarianism and ultranationalism as "a marriage of convenience."[38]
+
+Robert Paxton says that fascism is "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion".[39]
+
+Roger Eatwell defines fascism as "an ideology that strives to forge social rebirth based on a holistic-national radical Third Way",[40] while Walter Laqueur sees the core tenets of fascism as "self-evident: nationalism; Social Darwinism; racialism, the need for leadership, a new aristocracy, and obedience; and the negation of the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution."[41]
+
+Racism was a key feature of German fascism, for which the Holocaust was a high priority. According to the historiography of genocide, "In dealing with the Holocaust, it is the consensus of historians that Nazi Germany targeted Jews as a race, not as a religious group."[42] Umberto Eco,[43] Kevin Passmore,[44] John Weiss,[45] Ian Adams,[46] and Moyra Grant[47] stress racism as a characteristic component of German fascism. Historian Robert Soucy stated that "Hitler envisioned the ideal German society as a Volksgemeinschaft, a racially unified and hierarchically organized body in which the interests of individuals would be strictly subordinate to those of the nation, or Volk."[48] Fascist philosophies vary by application, but remain distinct by one theoretical commonality: all traditionally fall into the far-right sector of any political spectrum, catalyzed by afflicted class identities over conventional social inequities.[4]
+
+Most scholars place fascism on the far right of the political spectrum.[4][5] Such scholarship focuses on its social conservatism and its authoritarian means of opposing egalitarianism.[49][50] Roderick Stackelberg places fascism—including Nazism, which he says is "a radical variant of fascism"—on the political right by explaining: "The more a person deems absolute equality among all people to be a desirable condition, the further left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum. The more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even desirable, the further to the right he or she will be".[51]
+
+Fascism's origins, however, are complex and include many seemingly contradictory viewpoints, ultimately centered around a mythos of national rebirth from decadence.[52] Fascism was founded during World War I by Italian national syndicalists who drew upon both left-wing organizational tactics and right-wing political views.[53]
+
+Italian Fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s.[54][55] A major element of fascist ideology that has been deemed to be far-right is its stated goal to promote the right of a supposedly superior people to dominate, while purging society of supposedly inferior elements.[56]
+
+In the 1920s, the Italian Fascists described their ideology as right-wing in the political program The Doctrine of Fascism, stating: "We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right,' a fascist century".[57][58] Mussolini stated that fascism's position on the political spectrum was not a serious issue for fascists: "Fascism, sitting on the right, could also have sat on the mountain of the center ... These words in any case do not have a fixed and unchanged meaning: they do have a variable subject to location, time and spirit. We don't give a damn about these empty terminologies and we despise those who are terrorized by these words".[59]
+
+Major Italian groups politically on the right, especially rich landowners and big business, feared an uprising by groups on the left such as sharecroppers and labour unions.[60] They welcomed Fascism and supported its violent suppression of opponents on the left.[61] The accommodation of the political right into the Italian Fascist movement in the early 1920s created internal factions within the movement. The "Fascist left" included Michele Bianchi, Giuseppe Bottai, Angelo Oliviero Olivetti, Sergio Panunzio, and Edmondo Rossoni, who were committed to advancing national syndicalism as a replacement for parliamentary liberalism in order to modernize the economy and advance the interests of workers and common people.[62] The "Fascist right" included members of the paramilitary Squadristi and former members of the Italian Nationalist Association (ANI).[62] The Squadristi wanted to establish Fascism as a complete dictatorship, while the former ANI members, including Alfredo Rocco, sought to institute an authoritarian corporatist state to replace the liberal state in Italy while retaining the existing elites.[62] Upon accommodating the political right, there arose a group of monarchist fascists who sought to use fascism to create an absolute monarchy under King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.[62]
+
+After the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, when King Victor Emmanuel III forced Mussolini to resign as head of government and placed him under arrest in 1943, Mussolini was rescued by German forces. While continuing to rely on Germany for support, Mussolini and the remaining loyal Fascists founded the Italian Social Republic with Mussolini as head of state. Mussolini sought to re-radicalize Italian Fascism, declaring that the Fascist state had been overthrown because Italian Fascism had been subverted by Italian conservatives and the bourgeoisie.[63] Then the new Fascist government proposed the creation of workers' councils and profit-sharing in industry, although the German authorities, who effectively controlled northern Italy at this point, ignored these measures and did not seek to enforce them.[63]
+
+A number of post-World War II fascist movements described themselves as a "third position" outside the traditional political spectrum.[64] Spanish Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera said: "[B]asically the Right stands for the maintenance of an economic structure, albeit an unjust one, while the Left stands for the attempt to subvert that economic structure, even though the subversion thereof would entail the destruction of much that was worthwhile".[65]
+
+The term "fascist" has been used as a pejorative,[66] regarding varying movements across the far right of the political spectrum.[67] George Orwell wrote in 1944 that "the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless ... almost any English person would accept 'bully' as a synonym for 'Fascist'".[67]
+
+Communist states have sometimes been referred to as "fascist", typically as an insult. For example, it has been applied to Marxist-Leninist regimes in Cuba under Fidel Castro and Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh.[68] Chinese Marxists used the term to denounce the Soviet Union during the Sino-Soviet Split, and likewise the Soviets used the term to denounce Chinese Marxists[69] and social democracy (coining a new term in "social fascism").
+
+In the United States, Herbert Matthews of The New York Times asked in 1946: "Should we now place Stalinist Russia in the same category as Hitlerite Germany? Should we say that she is Fascist?".[70] J. Edgar Hoover, longtime FBI director and ardent anti-communist, wrote extensively of "Red Fascism".[71] The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was sometimes called "fascist". Historian Peter Amann states that, "Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism—chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism—yet their differences were fundamental....[the KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system."[72]
+
+Professor Richard Griffiths of the University of Wales[73] wrote in 2005 that "fascism" is the "most misused, and over-used word, of our times".[25] "Fascist" is sometimes applied to post-World War II organizations and ways of thinking that academics more commonly term "neo-fascist".[74]
+
+Georges Valois, founder of the first non-Italian fascist party Faisceau,[75] claimed the roots of fascism stemmed from the late 18th century Jacobin movement, seeing in its totalitarian nature a foreshadowing of the fascist state. Historian George Mosse similarly analyzed fascism as an inheritor of the mass ideology and civil religion of the French Revolution, as well as a result of the brutalization of societies in 1914–1918.[76]
+
+Historians such as Irene Collins and Howard C Payne see Napoleon III, who ran a 'police state' and suppressed the media, as a forerunner of fascism.[77] According to David Thomson,[78] the Italian Risorgimento of 1871 led to the 'nemesis of fascism'. William L Shirer[79] sees a continuity from the views of Fichte and Hegel, through Bismarck, to Hitler; Robert Gerwarth speaks of a 'direct line' from Bismarck to Hitler.[80] Julian Dierkes sees fascism as a 'particularly violent form of imperialism'.[81]
+
+The historian Zeev Sternhell has traced the ideological roots of fascism back to the 1880s and in particular to the fin de siècle theme of that time.[82][83] The theme was based on a revolt against materialism, rationalism, positivism, bourgeois society and democracy.[84] The fin-de-siècle generation supported emotionalism, irrationalism, subjectivism and vitalism.[85] The fin-de-siècle mindset saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution.[84] The fin-de-siècle intellectual school considered the individual only one part of the larger collectivity, which should not be viewed as an atomized numerical sum of individuals.[84] They condemned the rationalistic individualism of liberal society and the dissolution of social links in bourgeois society.[84]
+
+The fin-de-siècle outlook was influenced by various intellectual developments, including Darwinian biology; Wagnerian aesthetics; Arthur de Gobineau's racialism; Gustave Le Bon's psychology; and the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Henri Bergson.[86] Social Darwinism, which gained widespread acceptance, made no distinction between physical and social life, and viewed the human condition as being an unceasing struggle to achieve the survival of the fittest.[86] Social Darwinism challenged positivism's claim of deliberate and rational choice as the determining behaviour of humans, with social Darwinism focusing on heredity, race, and environment.[86] Social Darwinism's emphasis on biogroup identity and the role of organic relations within societies fostered legitimacy and appeal for nationalism.[87] New theories of social and political psychology also rejected the notion of human behaviour being governed by rational choice and instead claimed that emotion was more influential in political issues than reason.[86] Nietzsche's argument that "God is dead" coincided with his attack on the "herd mentality" of Christianity, democracy and modern collectivism; his concept of the übermensch; and his advocacy of the will to power as a primordial instinct, were major influences upon many of the fin-de-siècle generation.[88] Bergson's claim of the existence of an "élan vital" or vital instinct centred upon free choice and rejected the processes of materialism and determinism; this challenged Marxism.[89]
+
+Gaetano Mosca in his work The Ruling Class (1896) developed the theory that claims that in all societies an "organized minority" will dominate and rule over the "disorganized majority".[90][91] Mosca claims that there are only two classes in society, "the governing" (the organized minority) and "the governed" (the disorganized majority).[92] He claims that the organized nature of the organized minority makes it irresistible to any individual of the disorganized majority.[92]
+
+French nationalist and reactionary monarchist Charles Maurras influenced fascism.[93] Maurras promoted what he called integral nationalism, which called for the organic unity of a nation and Maurras insisted that a powerful monarch was an ideal leader of a nation. Maurras distrusted what he considered the democratic mystification of the popular will that created an impersonal collective subject.[93] He claimed that a powerful monarch was a personified sovereign who could exercise authority to unite a nation's people.[93] Maurras' integral nationalism was idealized by fascists, but modified into a modernized revolutionary form that was devoid of Maurras' monarchism.[93]
+
+French revolutionary syndicalist Georges Sorel promoted the legitimacy of political violence in his work Reflections on Violence (1908) and other works in which he advocated radical syndicalist action to achieve a revolution to overthrow capitalism and the bourgeoisie through a general strike.[94] In Reflections on Violence, Sorel emphasized need for a revolutionary political religion.[95] Also in his work The Illusions of Progress, Sorel denounced democracy as reactionary, saying "nothing is more aristocratic than democracy".[96] By 1909 after the failure of a syndicalist general strike in France, Sorel and his supporters left the radical left and went to the radical right, where they sought to merge militant Catholicism and French patriotism with their views—advocating anti-republican Christian French patriots as ideal revolutionaries.[97] Initially Sorel had officially been a revisionist of Marxism, but by 1910 announced his abandonment of socialist literature and claimed in 1914, using an aphorism of Benedetto Croce that "socialism is dead" because of the "decomposition of Marxism".[98] Sorel became a supporter of reactionary Maurrassian nationalism beginning in 1909 that influenced his works.[98] Maurras held interest in merging his nationalist ideals with Sorelian syndicalism as a means to confront democracy.[99] Maurras stated "a socialism liberated from the democratic and cosmopolitan element fits nationalism well as a well made glove fits a beautiful hand".[100]
+
+The fusion of Maurrassian nationalism and Sorelian syndicalism influenced radical Italian nationalist Enrico Corradini.[101] Corradini spoke of the need for a nationalist-syndicalist movement, led by elitist aristocrats and anti-democrats who shared a revolutionary syndicalist commitment to direct action and a willingness to fight.[101] Corradini spoke of Italy as being a "proletarian nation" that needed to pursue imperialism in order to challenge the "plutocratic" French and British.[102] Corradini's views were part of a wider set of perceptions within the right-wing Italian Nationalist Association (ANI), which claimed that Italy's economic backwardness was caused by corruption in its political class, liberalism, and division caused by "ignoble socialism".[102] The ANI held ties and influence among conservatives, Catholics and the business community.[102] Italian national syndicalists held a common set of principles: the rejection of bourgeois values, democracy, liberalism, Marxism, internationalism and pacifism; and the promotion of heroism, vitalism and violence.[103] The ANI claimed that liberal democracy was no longer compatible with the modern world, and advocated a strong state and imperialism, claiming that humans are naturally predatory and that nations were in a constant struggle, in which only the strongest could survive.[104]
+
+Futurism was both an artistic-cultural movement and initially a political movement in Italy led by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti who founded the Futurist Manifesto (1908), that championed the causes of modernism, action, and political violence as necessary elements of politics while denouncing liberalism and parliamentary politics. Marinetti rejected conventional democracy based on majority rule and egalitarianism, for a new form of democracy, promoting what he described in his work "The Futurist Conception of Democracy" as the following: "We are therefore able to give the directions to create and to dismantle to numbers, to quantity, to the mass, for with us number, quantity and mass will never be—as they are in Germany and Russia—the number, quantity and mass of mediocre men, incapable and indecisive".[105]
+
+Futurism influenced fascism in its emphasis on recognizing the virile nature of violent action and war as being necessities of modern civilization.[106] Marinetti promoted the need of physical training of young men, saying that in male education, gymnastics should take precedence over books, and he advocated segregation of the genders on this matter, in that womanly sensibility must not enter men's education whom Marinetti claimed must be "lively, bellicose, muscular and violently dynamic".[107]
+
+At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Italian political left became severely split over its position on the war. The Italian Socialist Party (PSI) opposed the war but a number of Italian revolutionary syndicalists supported war against Germany and Austria-Hungary on the grounds that their reactionary regimes had to be defeated to ensure the success of socialism.[108] Angelo Oliviero Olivetti formed a pro-interventionist fascio called the Revolutionary Fasces of International Action in October 1914.[108] Benito Mussolini upon being expelled from his position as chief editor of the PSI's newspaper Avanti! for his anti-German stance, joined the interventionist cause in a separate fascio.[109] The term "Fascism" was first used in 1915 by members of Mussolini's movement, the Fasces of Revolutionary Action.[110]
+
+The first meeting of the Fasces of Revolutionary Action was held on 24 January 1915[111] when Mussolini declared that it was necessary for Europe to resolve its national problems—including national borders—of Italy and elsewhere "for the ideals of justice and liberty for which oppressed peoples must acquire the right to belong to those national communities from which they descended".[111] Attempts to hold mass meetings were ineffective and the organization was regularly harassed by government authorities and socialists.[112]
+
+Similar political ideas arose in Germany after the outbreak of the war. German sociologist Johann Plenge spoke of the rise of a "National Socialism" in Germany within what he termed the "ideas of 1914" that were a declaration of war against the "ideas of 1789" (the French Revolution).[113] According to Plenge, the "ideas of 1789" that included rights of man, democracy, individualism and liberalism were being rejected in favor of "the ideas of 1914" that included "German values" of duty, discipline, law and order.[113] Plenge believed that racial solidarity (Volksgemeinschaft) would replace class division and that "racial comrades" would unite to create a socialist society in the struggle of "proletarian" Germany against "capitalist" Britain.[113] He believed that the "Spirit of 1914" manifested itself in the concept of the "People's League of National Socialism".[114] This National Socialism was a form of state socialism that rejected the "idea of boundless freedom" and promoted an economy that would serve the whole of Germany under the leadership of the state.[114] This National Socialism was opposed to capitalism because of the components that were against "the national interest" of Germany, but insisted that National Socialism would strive for greater efficiency in the economy.[114][115] Plenge advocated an authoritarian rational ruling elite to develop National Socialism through a hierarchical technocratic state.[116]
+
+Fascists viewed World War I as bringing revolutionary changes in the nature of war, society, the state and technology, as the advent of total war and mass mobilization had broken down the distinction between civilian and combatant, as civilians had become a critical part in economic production for the war effort and thus arose a "military citizenship" in which all citizens were involved to the military in some manner during the war.[7][8] World War I had resulted in the rise of a powerful state capable of mobilizing millions of people to serve on the front lines or provide economic production and logistics to support those on the front lines, as well as having unprecedented authority to intervene in the lives of citizens.[7][8] Fascists viewed technological developments of weaponry and the state's total mobilization of its population in the war as symbolizing the beginning of a new era fusing state power with mass politics, technology and particularly the mobilizing myth that they contended had triumphed over the myth of progress and the era of liberalism.[7]
+
+The October Revolution of 1917—in which Bolshevik communists led by Vladimir Lenin seized power in Russia—greatly influenced the development of fascism.[117] In 1917, Mussolini, as leader of the Fasces of Revolutionary Action, praised the October Revolution, but later he became unimpressed with Lenin, regarding him as merely a new version of Tsar Nicholas.[118] After World War I, fascists have commonly campaigned on anti-Marxist agendas.[117]
+
+Liberal opponents of both fascism and the Bolsheviks argue that there are various similarities between the two, including that they believed in the necessity of a vanguard leadership, had disdain for bourgeois values and it is argued had totalitarian ambitions.[117] In practice, both have commonly emphasized revolutionary action, proletarian nation theories, one-party states and party-armies.[117] However, both draw clear distinctions from each other both in aims and tactics, with the Bolsheviks emphasizing the need for an organized participatory democracy and an egalitarian, internationalist vision for society while the fascists emphasize hyper-nationalism and open hostility towards democracy, envisioning a hierarchical social structure as essential to their aims.
+
+With the antagonism between anti-interventionist Marxists and pro-interventionist Fascists complete by the end of the war, the two sides became irreconcilable. The Fascists presented themselves as anti-Marxists and as opposed to the Marxists.[119] Mussolini consolidated control over the Fascist movement, known as Sansepolcrismo, in 1919 with the founding of the Italian Fasces of Combat.
+
+In 1919, Alceste De Ambris and Futurist movement leader Filippo Tommaso Marinetti created The Manifesto of the Italian Fasces of Combat (the Fascist Manifesto).[120] The Manifesto was presented on 6 June 1919 in the Fascist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia. The Manifesto supported the creation of universal suffrage for both men and women (the latter being realized only partly in late 1925, with all opposition parties banned or disbanded);[121] proportional representation on a regional basis; government representation through a corporatist system of "National Councils" of experts, selected from professionals and tradespeople, elected to represent and hold legislative power over their respective areas, including labour, industry, transportation, public health, communications, etc.; and the abolition of the Italian Senate.[122] The Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage, worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics, and revision of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of profits.[123] It also called for the fulfillment of expansionist aims in the Balkans and other parts of the Mediterranean,[124] the creation of a short-service national militia to serve defensive duties, nationalization of the armaments industry and a foreign policy designed to be peaceful but also competitive.[125]
+
+The next events that influenced the Fascists in Italy was the raid of Fiume by Italian nationalist Gabriele d'Annunzio and the founding of the Charter of Carnaro in 1920.[126] D'Annunzio and De Ambris designed the Charter, which advocated national-syndicalist corporatist productionism alongside D'Annunzio's political views.[127] Many Fascists saw the Charter of Carnaro as an ideal constitution for a Fascist Italy.[128] This behaviour of aggression towards Yugoslavia and South Slavs was pursued by Italian Fascists with their persecution of South Slavs—especially Slovenes and Croats.
+
+In 1920, militant strike activity by industrial workers reached its peak in Italy and 1919 and 1920 were known as the "Red Years".[129] Mussolini and the Fascists took advantage of the situation by allying with industrial businesses and attacking workers and peasants in the name of preserving order and internal peace in Italy.[130]
+
+Fascists identified their primary opponents as the majority of socialists on the left who had opposed intervention in World War I.[128] The Fascists and the Italian political right held common ground: both held Marxism in contempt, discounted class consciousness and believed in the rule of elites.[131] The Fascists assisted the anti-socialist campaign by allying with the other parties and the conservative right in a mutual effort to destroy the Italian Socialist Party and labour organizations committed to class identity above national identity.[131]
+
+Fascism sought to accommodate Italian conservatives by making major alterations to its political agenda—abandoning its previous populism, republicanism and anticlericalism, adopting policies in support of free enterprise and accepting the Catholic Church and the monarchy as institutions in Italy.[132] To appeal to Italian conservatives, Fascism adopted policies such as promoting family values, including promotion policies designed to reduce the number of women in the workforce limiting the woman's role to that of a mother. The fascists banned literature on birth control and increased penalties for abortion in 1926, declaring both crimes against the state.[133]
+
+Though Fascism adopted a number of anti-modern positions designed to appeal to people upset with the new trends in sexuality and women's rights—especially those with a reactionary point of view—the Fascists sought to maintain Fascism's revolutionary character, with Angelo Oliviero Olivetti saying: "Fascism would like to be conservative, but it will [be] by being revolutionary".[134] The Fascists supported revolutionary action and committed to secure law and order to appeal to both conservatives and syndicalists.[135]
+
+Prior to Fascism's accommodations to the political right, Fascism was a small, urban, northern Italian movement that had about a thousand members.[136] After Fascism's accommodation of the political right, the Fascist movement's membership soared to approximately 250,000 by 1921.[137]
+
+Beginning in 1922, Fascist paramilitaries escalated their strategy from one of attacking socialist offices and homes of socialist leadership figures to one of violent occupation of cities. The Fascists met little serious resistance from authorities and proceeded to take over several northern Italian cities.[138] The Fascists attacked the headquarters of socialist and Catholic labour unions in Cremona and imposed forced Italianization upon the German-speaking population of Trent and Bolzano.[138] After seizing these cities, the Fascists made plans to take Rome.[138]
+
+On 24 October 1922, the Fascist party held its annual congress in Naples, where Mussolini ordered Blackshirts to take control of public buildings and trains and to converge on three points around Rome.[138] The Fascists managed to seize control of several post offices and trains in northern Italy while the Italian government, led by a left-wing coalition, was internally divided and unable to respond to the Fascist advances.[139] King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy perceived the risk of bloodshed in Rome in response to attempting to disperse the Fascists to be too high.[140] Victor Emmanuel III decided to appoint Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy and Mussolini arrived in Rome on 30 October to accept the appointment.[140] Fascist propaganda aggrandized this event, known as "March on Rome", as a "seizure" of power because of Fascists' heroic exploits.[138]
+
+Historian Stanley G. Payne says Fascism in Italy was:
+
+A primarily political dictatorship....The Fascist Party itself had become almost completely bureaucratized and subservient to, not dominant over, the state itself. Big business, industry, and finance retained extensive autonomy, particularly in the early years. The armed forces also enjoyed considerable autonomy....The Fascist militia was placed under military control....The judicial system was left largely intact and relatively autonomous as well. The police continued to be directed by state officials and were not taken over by party leaders...nor was a major new police elite created....There was never any question of bringing the Church under overall subservience.... Sizable sectors of Italian cultural life retained extensive autonomy, and no major state propaganda-and-culture ministry existed....The Mussolini regime was neither especially sanguinary nor particularly repressive.[141]
+
+Upon being appointed Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini had to form a coalition government because the Fascists did not have control over the Italian parliament.[142] Mussolini's coalition government initially pursued economically liberal policies under the direction of liberal finance minister Alberto De Stefani, a member of the Center Party, including balancing the budget through deep cuts to the civil service.[142] Initially, little drastic change in government policy had occurred and repressive police actions were limited.[142]
+
+The Fascists began their attempt to entrench Fascism in Italy with the Acerbo Law, which guaranteed a plurality of the seats in parliament to any party or coalition list in an election that received 25% or more of the vote.[143] Through considerable Fascist violence and intimidation, the list won a majority of the vote, allowing many seats to go to the Fascists.[143] In the aftermath of the election, a crisis and political scandal erupted after Socialist Party deputy Giacomo Matteotti was kidnapped and murdered by a Fascist.[143] The liberals and the leftist minority in parliament walked out in protest in what became known as the Aventine Secession.[144] On 3 January 1925, Mussolini addressed the Fascist-dominated Italian parliament and declared that he was personally responsible for what happened, but insisted that he had done nothing wrong. Mussolini proclaimed himself dictator of Italy, assuming full responsibility over the government and announcing the dismissal of parliament.[144] From 1925 to 1929, Fascism steadily became entrenched in power: opposition deputies were denied access to parliament, censorship was introduced and a December 1925 decree made Mussolini solely responsible to the King.[145]
+
+In 1929, the Fascist regime briefly gained what was in effect a blessing of the Catholic Church after the regime signed a concordat with the Church, known as the Lateran Treaty, which gave the papacy state sovereignty and financial compensation for the seizure of Church lands by the liberal state in the nineteenth century, but within two years the Church had renounced Fascism in the Encyclical Non Abbiamo Bisogno as a "pagan idolotry of the state" which teaches "hatred, violence and irreverence".[146] Not long after signing the agreement, by Mussolini's own confession the Church had threatened to have him "excommunicated", in part because of his intractable nature and that he had "confiscated more issues of Catholic newspapers in the next three months than in the previous seven years”.[147] By the late 1930s, Mussolini became more vocal in his anti-clerical rhetoric, repeatedly denouncing the Catholic Church and discussing ways to depose the pope. He took the position that the “papacy was a malignant tumor in the body of Italy and must 'be rooted out once and for all,’ because there was no room in Rome for both the Pope and himself".[148] In her 1974 book, Mussolini's widow Rachele stated that her husband had always been an atheist until near the end of his life, writing that her husband was "basically irreligious until the later years of his life".[149]
+
+The National Socialists of Germany employed similar anti-clerical policies. The Gestapo confiscated hundreds of monasteries in Austria and Germany, evicted clergymen and laymen alike and often replaced crosses with swastikas.[150] Referring to the swastika as the "Devil’s Cross", church leaders found their youth organizations banned, their meetings limited and various Catholic periodicals censored or banned. Government officials eventually found it necessary to place "Nazis into editorial positions in the Catholic press".[151] Up to 2,720 clerics, mostly Catholics, were arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned inside of Germany's Dachau concentration camp, resulting in over 1,000 deaths.[152]
+
+The Fascist regime created a corporatist economic system in 1925 with creation of the Palazzo Vidioni Pact, in which the Italian employers' association Confindustria and Fascist trade unions agreed to recognize each other as the sole representatives of Italy's employers and employees, excluding non-Fascist trade unions.[153] The Fascist regime first created a Ministry of Corporations that organized the Italian economy into 22 sectoral corporations, banned workers' strikes and lock-outs and in 1927 created the Charter of Labour, which established workers' rights and duties and created labour tribunals to arbitrate employer-employee disputes.[153] In practice, the sectoral corporations exercised little independence and were largely controlled by the regime and employee organizations were rarely led by employees themselves, but instead by appointed Fascist party members.[153]
+
+In the 1920s, Fascist Italy pursued an aggressive foreign policy that included an attack on the Greek island of Corfu, aims to expand Italian territory in the Balkans, plans to wage war against Turkey and Yugoslavia, attempts to bring Yugoslavia into civil war by supporting Croat and Macedonian separatists to legitimize Italian intervention and making Albania a de facto protectorate of Italy, which was achieved through diplomatic means by 1927.[154] In response to revolt in the Italian colony of Libya, Fascist Italy abandoned previous liberal-era colonial policy of cooperation with local leaders. Instead, claiming that Italians were a superior race to African races and thereby had the right to colonize the "inferior" Africans, it sought to settle 10 to 15 million Italians in Libya.[155] This resulted in an aggressive military campaign known as the Pacification of Libya against natives in Libya, including mass killings, the use of concentration camps and the forced starvation of thousands of people.[155] Italian authorities committed ethnic cleansing by forcibly expelling 100,000 Bedouin Cyrenaicans, half the population of Cyrenaica in Libya, from their settlements that was slated to be given to Italian settlers.[156][157]
+
+The March on Rome brought Fascism international attention. One early admirer of the Italian Fascists was Adolf Hitler, who less than a month after the March had begun to model himself and the Nazi Party upon Mussolini and the Fascists.[158] The Nazis, led by Hitler and the German war hero Erich Ludendorff, attempted a "March on Berlin" modeled upon the March on Rome, which resulted in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in November 1923.[159]
+
+The conditions of economic hardship caused by the Great Depression brought about an international surge of social unrest. According to historian Philip Morgan, "the onset of the Great Depression...was the greatest stimulus yet to the diffusion and expansion of fascism outside Italy".[160] Fascist propaganda blamed the problems of the long depression of the 1930s on minorities and scapegoats: "Judeo-Masonic-bolshevik" conspiracies, left-wing internationalism and the presence of immigrants.
+
+In Germany, it contributed to the rise of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, which resulted in the demise of the Weimar Republic and the establishment of the fascist regime, Nazi Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. With the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933, liberal democracy was dissolved in Germany and the Nazis mobilized the country for war, with expansionist territorial aims against several countries. In the 1930s, the Nazis implemented racial laws that deliberately discriminated against, disenfranchised and persecuted Jews and other racial and minority groups.
+
+Fascist movements grew in strength elsewhere in Europe. Hungarian fascist Gyula Gömbös rose to power as Prime Minister of Hungary in 1932 and attempted to entrench his Party of National Unity throughout the country. He created an eight-hour work day, a forty-eight-hour work week in industry and sought to entrench a corporatist economy; and pursued irredentist claims on Hungary's neighbors.[161] The fascist Iron Guard movement in Romania soared in political support after 1933, gaining representation in the Romanian government and an Iron Guard member assassinated Romanian prime minister Ion Duca.[162] During the 6 February 1934 crisis, France faced the greatest domestic political turmoil since the Dreyfus Affair when the fascist Francist Movement and multiple far-right movements rioted en masse in Paris against the French government resulting in major political violence.[163] A variety of para-fascist governments that borrowed elements from fascism were formed during the Great Depression, including those of Greece, Lithuania, Poland and Yugoslavia.[164]
+
+In the Americas, the Brazilian Integralists led by Plínio Salgado claimed as many as 200,000 members although following coup attempts it faced a crackdown from the Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas in 1937.[165] In the 1930s, the National Socialist Movement of Chile gained seats in Chile's parliament and attempted a coup d'état that resulted in the Seguro Obrero massacre of 1938.[166]
+
+During the Great Depression, Mussolini promoted active state intervention in the economy. He denounced the contemporary "supercapitalism" that he claimed began in 1914 as a failure because of its alleged decadence, its support for unlimited consumerism and its intention to create the "standardization of humankind".[167] Fascist Italy created the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), a giant state-owned firm and holding company that provided state funding to failing private enterprises.[168] The IRI was made a permanent institution in Fascist Italy in 1937, pursued Fascist policies to create national autarky and had the power to take over private firms to maximize war production.[168] While Hitler's regime only nationalized 500 companies in key industries by the early 1940s,[169] Mussolini declared in 1934 that "[t]hree-fourths of Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state".[170] Due to the worldwide depression, Mussolini's government was able to take over most of Italy's largest failing banks, who held controlling interest in many Italian businesses. The Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, a state-operated holding company in charge of bankrupt banks and companies, reported in early 1934 that they held assets of "48.5 percent of the share capital of Italy", which later included the capital of the banks themselves.[171] Political historian Martin Blinkhorn estimated Italy's scope of state intervention and ownership "greatly surpassed that in Nazi Germany, giving Italy a public sector second only to that of Stalin’s Russia".[172] In the late 1930s, Italy enacted manufacturing cartels, tariff barriers, currency restrictions and massive regulation of the economy to attempt to balance payments.[173] Italy's policy of autarky failed to achieve effective economic autonomy.[173] Nazi Germany similarly pursued an economic agenda with the aims of autarky and rearmament and imposed protectionist policies, including forcing the German steel industry to use lower-quality German iron ore rather than superior-quality imported iron.[174]
+
+In Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, both Mussolini and Hitler pursued territorial expansionist and interventionist foreign policy agendas from the 1930s through the 1940s culminating in World War II. Mussolini called for irredentist Italian claims to be reclaimed, establishing Italian domination of the Mediterranean Sea and securing Italian access to the Atlantic Ocean and the creation of Italian spazio vitale ("vital space") in the Mediterranean and Red Sea regions.[175] Hitler called for irredentist German claims to be reclaimed along with the creation of German Lebensraum ("living space") in Eastern Europe, including territories held by the Soviet Union, that would be colonized by Germans.[176]
+
+From 1935 to 1939, Germany and Italy escalated their demands for territorial claims and greater influence in world affairs. Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 resulting in its condemnation by the League of Nations and its widespread diplomatic isolation. In 1936, Germany remilitarized the industrial Rhineland, a region that had been ordered demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles. In 1938, Germany annexed Austria and Italy assisted Germany in resolving the diplomatic crisis between Germany versus Britain and France over claims on Czechoslovakia by arranging the Munich Agreement that gave Germany the Sudetenland and was perceived at the time to have averted a European war. These hopes faded when Hitler violated the Munich Agreement by ordering the invasion and partition of Czechoslovakia between Germany and a client state of Slovakia in 1939. At the same time from 1938 to 1939, Italy was demanding territorial and colonial concessions from France and Britain.[177] In 1939, Germany prepared for war with Poland, but attempted to gain territorial concessions from Poland through diplomatic means.[178] The Polish government did not trust Hitler's promises and refused to accept Germany's demands.[178]
+
+The invasion of Poland by Germany was deemed unacceptable by Britain, France and their allies, resulting in their mutual declaration of war against Germany that was deemed the aggressor in the war in Poland, resulting in the outbreak of World War II. In 1940, Mussolini led Italy into World War II on the side of the Axis. Mussolini was aware that Italy did not have the military capacity to carry out a long war with France or the United Kingdom and waited until France was on the verge of imminent collapse and surrender from the German invasion before declaring war on France and the United Kingdom on 10 June 1940 on the assumption that the war would be short-lived following France's collapse.[179] Mussolini believed that following a brief entry of Italy into war with France, followed by the imminent French surrender, Italy could gain some territorial concessions from France and then concentrate its forces on a major offensive in Egypt where British and Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces.[180] Plans by Germany to invade the United Kingdom in 1940 failed after Germany lost the aerial warfare campaign in the Battle of Britain. In 1941, the Axis campaign spread to the Soviet Union after Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa. Axis forces at the height of their power controlled almost all of continental Europe. The war became prolonged—contrary to Mussolini's plans—resulting in Italy losing battles on multiple fronts and requiring German assistance.
+
+During World War II, the Axis Powers in Europe led by Nazi Germany participated in the extermination of millions of Poles, Jews, Gypsies and others in the genocide known as the Holocaust.
+
+After 1942, Axis forces began to falter. In 1943, after Italy faced multiple military failures, the complete reliance and subordination of Italy to Germany, the Allied invasion of Italy and the corresponding international humiliation, Mussolini was removed as head of government and arrested on the order of King Victor Emmanuel III, who proceeded to dismantle the Fascist state and declared Italy's switching of allegiance to the Allied side. Mussolini was rescued from arrest by German forces and led the German client state, the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany faced multiple losses and steady Soviet and Western Allied offensives from 1943 to 1945.
+
+On 28 April 1945, Mussolini was captured and executed by Italian communist partisans. On 30 April 1945, Hitler committed suicide. Shortly afterwards, Germany surrendered and the Nazi regime was systematically dismantled by the occupying Allied powers. An International Military Tribunal was subsequently convened in Nuremberg. Beginning in November 1945 and lasting through 1949, numerous Nazi political, military and economic leaders were tried and convicted of war crimes, with many of the worst offenders receiving the death penalty.
+
+The victory of the Allies over the Axis powers in World War II led to the collapse of many fascist regimes in Europe. The Nuremberg Trials convicted several Nazi leaders of crimes against humanity involving the Holocaust. However, there remained several movements and governments that were ideologically related to fascism.
+
+Francisco Franco's Falangist one-party state in Spain was officially neutral during World War II and it survived the collapse of the Axis Powers. Franco's rise to power had been directly assisted by the militaries of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during the Spanish Civil War and Franco had sent volunteers to fight on the side of Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. The first years were characterized by a repression against the anti-fascist ideologies, a deep censorship and the suppression of democratic institutions (elected Parliament, Constitution of 1931, Regional Statutes of Autonomy). After World War II and a period of international isolation, Franco's regime normalized relations with the Western powers during the Cold War, until Franco's death in 1975 and the transformation of Spain into a liberal democracy.
+
+Historian Robert Paxton observes that one of the main problems in defining fascism is that it was widely mimicked. Paxton says: "In fascism's heyday, in the 1930s, many regimes that were not functionally fascist borrowed elements of fascist decor in order to lend themselves an aura of force, vitality, and mass mobilization". He goes on to observe that Salazar "crushed Portuguese fascism after he had copied some of its techniques of popular mobilization".[181] Paxton says that: "Where Franco subjected Spain’s fascist party to his personal control, Salazar abolished outright in July 1934 the nearest thing Portugal had to an authentic fascist movement, Rolão Preto’s blue-shirted National Syndicalists […] Salazar preferred to control his population through such “organic” institutions traditionally powerful in Portugal as the Church. Salazar's regime was not only non-fascist, but “voluntarily non-totalitarian,” preferring to let those of its citizens who kept out of politics “live by habit".[182] Historians tend to view the Estado Novo as para-fascist in nature,[183] possessing minimal fascist tendencies.
+[184] Other historians, including Fernando Rosas and Manuel Villaverde Cabral, think that the Estado Novo should be considered fascist.[185] In Argentina, Peronism, associated with the regime of Juan Perón from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974, was influenced by fascism.[186] Between 1939 and 1941, prior to his rise to power, Perón had developed a deep admiration of Italian Fascism and modelled his economic policies on Italian Fascist policies.[186]
+
+The term neo-fascism refers to fascist movements after World War II. In Italy, the Italian Social Movement led by Giorgio Almirante was a major neo-fascist movement that transformed itself into a self-described "post-fascist" movement called the National Alliance (AN), which has been an ally of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia for a decade. In 2008, AN joined Forza Italia in Berlusconi's new party The People of Freedom, but in 2012 a group of politicians split from The People of Freedom, refounding the party with the name Brothers of Italy. In Germany, various neo-Nazi movements have been formed and banned in accordance with Germany's constitutional law which forbids Nazism. The National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) is widely considered a neo-Nazi party, although the party does not publicly identify itself as such.
+
+After the onset of the Great Recession and economic crisis in Greece, a movement known as the Golden Dawn, widely considered a neo-Nazi party, soared in support out of obscurity and won seats in Greece's parliament, espousing a staunch hostility towards minorities, illegal immigrants and refugees. In 2013, after the murder of an anti-fascist musician by a person with links to Golden Dawn, the Greek government ordered the arrest of Golden Dawn's leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos and other Golden Dawn members on charges related to being associated with a criminal organization.[187][188]
+
+Robert O. Paxton finds that the transformations undertaken by fascists in power were "profound enough to be called 'revolutionary'". They "often set fascists into conflict with conservatives rooted in families, churches, social rank, and property." Paxton argues:
+
+[F]ascism redrew the frontiers between private and public, sharply diminishing what had once been untouchably private. It changed the practice of citizenship from the enjoyment of constitutional rights and duties to participation in mass ceremonies of affirmation and conformity. It reconfigured relations between the individual and the collectivity, so that an individual had no rights outside community interest. It expanded the powers of the executive—party and state—in a bid for total control. Finally, it unleashed aggressive emotions hitherto known in Europe only during war or social revolution.[189]
+
+Ultranationalism, combined with the myth of national rebirth, is a key foundation of fascism.[190]
+
+The fascist view of a nation is of a single organic entity that binds people together by their ancestry and is a natural unifying force of people.[191] Fascism seeks to solve economic, political and social problems by achieving a millenarian national rebirth, exalting the nation or race above all else and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity.[39][192][193][194][195] European fascist movements typically espouse a racist conception of non-Europeans being inferior to Europeans.[196] Beyond this, fascists in Europe have not held a unified set of racial views.[196] Historically, most fascists promoted imperialism, although there have been several fascist movements that were uninterested in the pursuit of new imperial ambitions.[196] For example, Nazism and Italian Fascism were expansionist and irredentist. Falangism in Spain envisioned worldwide unification of Spanish-speaking peoples (Hispanidad). British Fascism was non-interventionist, though it did embrace the British Empire.
+
+Fascism promotes the establishment of a totalitarian state.[197] It opposes liberal democracy, rejects multi-party systems and may support a one-party state so that it may synthesize with the nation.[198] Mussolini's The Doctrine of Fascism (1932) – partly ghostwritten by philosopher Giovanni Gentile,[199] who Mussolini described as "the philosopher of Fascism" – states: "The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people".[200] In The Legal Basis of the Total State, Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt described the Nazi intention to form a "strong state which guarantees a totality of political unity transcending all diversity" in order to avoid a "disastrous pluralism tearing the German people apart".[201]
+
+Fascist states pursued policies of social indoctrination through propaganda in education and the media and regulation of the production of educational and media materials.[202][203] Education was designed to glorify the fascist movement and inform students of its historical and political importance to the nation. It attempted to purge ideas that were not consistent with the beliefs of the fascist movement and to teach students to be obedient to the state.[204]
+
+Fascism presented itself as an alternative to both international socialism and free market capitalism.[205] While fascism opposed mainstream socialism, it sometimes regarded itself as a type of nationalist "socialism" to highlight their commitment to national solidarity and unity.[206][207] Fascists opposed international free market capitalism, but supported a type of productive capitalism.[115][208] Economic self-sufficiency, known as autarky, was a major goal of most fascist governments.[209]
+
+Fascist governments advocated resolution of domestic class conflict within a nation in order to secure national solidarity.[210] This would be done through the state mediating relations between the classes (contrary to the views of classical liberal-inspired capitalists).[211] While fascism was opposed to domestic class conflict, it was held that bourgeois-proletarian conflict existed primarily in national conflict between proletarian nations versus bourgeois nations.[212] Fascism condemned what it viewed as widespread character traits that it associated as the typical bourgeois mentality that it opposed, such as materialism, crassness, cowardice, inability to comprehend the heroic ideal of the fascist "warrior"; and associations with liberalism, individualism and parliamentarianism.[213] In 1918, Mussolini defined what he viewed as the proletarian character, defining proletarian as being one and the same with producers, a productivist perspective that associated all people deemed productive, including entrepreneurs, technicians, workers and soldiers as being proletarian.[214] He acknowledged the historical existence of both bourgeois and proletarian producers, but declared the need for bourgeois producers to merge with proletarian producers.[214]
+
+While fascism denounced the mainstream internationalist and Marxist socialisms, it claimed to economically represent a type of nationalist productivist socialism that while condemning parasitical capitalism, it was willing to accommodate productivist capitalism within it.[208] This was derived from Henri de Saint Simon, whose ideas inspired the creation of utopian socialism and influenced other ideologies, that stressed solidarity rather than class war and whose conception of productive people in the economy included both productive workers and productive bosses to challenge the influence of the aristocracy and unproductive financial speculators.[215] Saint Simon's vision combined the traditionalist right-wing criticisms of the French Revolution combined with a left-wing belief in the need for association or collaboration of productive people in society.[215] Whereas Marxism condemned capitalism as a system of exploitative property relations, fascism saw the nature of the control of credit and money in the contemporary capitalist system as abusive.[208] Unlike Marxism, fascism did not see class conflict between the Marxist-defined proletariat and the bourgeoisie as a given or as an engine of historical materialism.[208] Instead, it viewed workers and productive capitalists in common as productive people who were in conflict with parasitic elements in society including: corrupt political parties, corrupt financial capital and feeble people.[208] Fascist leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler spoke of the need to create a new managerial elite led by engineers and captains of industry—but free from the parasitic leadership of industries.[208] Hitler stated that the Nazi Party supported bodenständigen Kapitalismus ("productive capitalism") that was based upon profit earned from one's own labour, but condemned unproductive capitalism or loan capitalism, which derived profit from speculation.[216]
+
+Fascist economics supported a state-controlled economy that accepted a mix of private and public ownership over the means of production.[217] Economic planning was applied to both the public and private sector and the prosperity of private enterprise depended on its acceptance of synchronizing itself with the economic goals of the state.[218] Fascist economic ideology supported the profit motive, but emphasized that industries must uphold the national interest as superior to private profit.[218]
+
+While fascism accepted the importance of material wealth and power, it condemned materialism which identified as being present in both communism and capitalism and criticized materialism for lacking acknowledgement of the role of the spirit.[219] In particular, fascists criticized capitalism not because of its competitive nature nor support of private property, which fascists supported—but due to its materialism, individualism, alleged bourgeois decadence and alleged indifference to the nation.[220] Fascism denounced Marxism for its advocacy of materialist internationalist class identity, which fascists regarded as an attack upon the emotional and spiritual bonds of the nation and a threat to the achievement of genuine national solidarity.[221]
+
+In discussing the spread of fascism beyond Italy, historian Philip Morgan states:
+
+Since the Depression was a crisis of laissez-faire capitalism and its political counterpart, parliamentary democracy, fascism could pose as the 'third-way' alternative between capitalism and Bolshevism, the model of a new European 'civilization'. As Mussolini typically put it in early 1934, "from 1929...fascism has become a universal phenomenon... The dominant forces of the 19th century, democracy, socialism, liberalism have been exhausted...the new political and economic forms of the twentieth-century are fascist'(Mussolini 1935: 32).[160]
+
+Fascists criticized egalitarianism as preserving the weak, and they instead promoted social Darwinist views and policies.[222][223] They were in principle opposed to the idea of social welfare, arguing that it "encouraged the preservation of the degenerate and the feeble."[224] The Nazi Party condemned the welfare system of the Weimar Republic, as well as private charity and philanthropy, for supporting people whom they regarded as racially inferior and weak, and who should have been weeded out in the process of natural selection.[225] Nevertheless, faced with the mass unemployment and poverty of the Great Depression, the Nazis found it necessary to set up charitable institutions to help racially-pure Germans in order to maintain popular support, while arguing that this represented "racial self-help" and not indiscriminate charity or universal social welfare.[226] Thus, Nazi programs such as the Winter Relief of the German People and the broader National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) were organized as quasi-private institutions, officially relying on private donations from Germans to help others of their race—although in practice those who refused to donate could face severe consequences.[227] Unlike the social welfare institutions of the Weimar Republic and the Christian charities, the NSV distributed assistance on explicitly racial grounds. It provided support only to those who were "racially sound, capable of and willing to work, politically reliable, and willing and able to reproduce." Non-Aryans were excluded, as well as the "work-shy", "asocials" and the "hereditarily ill."[228] Under these conditions, by 1939, over 17 million Germans had obtained assistance from the NSV, and the agency "projected a powerful image of caring and support" for "those who were judged to have got into difficulties through no fault of their own."[228] Yet the organization was "feared and disliked among society's poorest" because it resorted to intrusive questioning and monitoring to judge who was worthy of support.[229]
+
+Fascism emphasizes direct action, including supporting the legitimacy of political violence, as a core part of its politics.[11][230] Fascism views violent action as a necessity in politics that fascism identifies as being an "endless struggle".[231] This emphasis on the use of political violence means that most fascist parties have also created their own private militias (e.g. the Nazi Party's Brown shirts and Fascist Italy's Blackshirts).
+
+The basis of fascism's support of violent action in politics is connected to social Darwinism.[231] Fascist movements have commonly held social Darwinist views of nations, races and societies.[232] They say that nations and races must purge themselves of socially and biologically weak or degenerate people, while simultaneously promoting the creation of strong people, in order to survive in a world defined by perpetual national and racial conflict.[233]
+
+Fascism emphasizes youth both in a physical sense of age and in a spiritual sense as related to virility and commitment to action.[234] The Italian Fascists' political anthem was called Giovinezza ("The Youth").[234] Fascism identifies the physical age period of youth as a critical time for the moral development of people who will affect society.[235]
+
+Walter Laqueur argues that:
+
+Italian Fascism pursued what it called "moral hygiene" of youth, particularly regarding sexuality.[237] Fascist Italy promoted what it considered normal sexual behaviour in youth while denouncing what it considered deviant sexual behaviour.[237] It condemned pornography, most forms of birth control and contraceptive devices (with the exception of the condom), homosexuality and prostitution as deviant sexual behaviour, although enforcement of laws opposed to such practices was erratic and authorities often turned a blind eye.[237] Fascist Italy regarded the promotion of male sexual excitation before puberty as the cause of criminality amongst male youth, declared homosexuality a social disease and pursued an aggressive campaign to reduce prostitution of young women.[237]
+
+Mussolini perceived women's primary role as primarily child bearers and men, warriors—once saying: "War is to man what maternity is to the woman".[238] In an effort to increase birthrates, the Italian Fascist government gave financial incentives to women who raised large families and initiated policies intended to reduce the number of women employed.[239] Italian Fascism called for women to be honoured as "reproducers of the nation" and the Italian Fascist government held ritual ceremonies to honour women's role within the Italian nation.[240] In 1934, Mussolini declared that employment of women was a "major aspect of the thorny problem of unemployment" and that for women, working was "incompatible with childbearing". Mussolini went on to say that the solution to unemployment for men was the "exodus of women from the work force".[241]
+
+The German Nazi government strongly encouraged women to stay at home to bear children and keep house.[242] This policy was reinforced by bestowing the Cross of Honor of the German Mother on women bearing four or more children. The unemployment rate was cut substantially, mostly through arms production and sending women home so that men could take their jobs. Nazi propaganda sometimes promoted premarital and extramarital sexual relations, unwed motherhood and divorce, but at other times the Nazis opposed such behaviour.[243]
+
+The Nazis decriminalized abortion in cases where fetuses had hereditary defects or were of a race the government disapproved of, while the abortion of healthy pure German, Aryan fetuses remained strictly forbidden.[244] For non-Aryans, abortion was often compulsory. Their eugenics program also stemmed from the "progressive biomedical model" of Weimar Germany.[245] In 1935, Nazi Germany expanded the legality of abortion by amending its eugenics law, to promote abortion for women with hereditary disorders.[244] The law allowed abortion if a woman gave her permission and the fetus was not yet viable[246][247] and for purposes of so-called racial hygiene.[248][249]
+
+The Nazis said that homosexuality was degenerate, effeminate, perverted and undermined masculinity because it did not produce children.[250] They considered homosexuality curable through therapy, citing modern scientism and the study of sexology, which said that homosexuality could be felt by "normal" people and not just an abnormal minority.[251] Open homosexuals were interned in Nazi concentration camps.[252]
+
+Fascism emphasizes both palingenesis (national rebirth or re-creation) and modernism.[253] In particular, fascism's nationalism has been identified as having a palingenetic character.[190] Fascism promotes the regeneration of the nation and purging it of decadence.[253] Fascism accepts forms of modernism that it deems promotes national regeneration while rejecting forms of modernism that are regarded as antithetical to national regeneration.[254] Fascism aestheticized modern technology and its association with speed, power and violence.[255] Fascism admired advances in the economy in the early 20th century, particularly Fordism and scientific management.[256] Fascist modernism has been recognized as inspired or developed by various figures—such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Ernst Jünger, Gottfried Benn, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Knut Hamsun, Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis.[257]
+
+In Italy, such modernist influence was exemplified by Marinetti who advocated a palingenetic modernist society that condemned liberal-bourgeois values of tradition and psychology, while promoting a technological-martial religion of national renewal that emphasized militant nationalism.[258] In Germany, it was exemplified by Jünger who was influenced by his observation of the technological warfare during World War I and claimed that a new social class had been created that he described as the "warrior-worker".[259] Jünger like Marinetti emphasized the revolutionary capacities of technology and emphasized an "organic construction" between human and machine as a liberating and regenerative force in that challenged liberal democracy, conceptions of individual autonomy, bourgeois nihilism and decadence.[259] He conceived of a society based on a totalitarian concept of "total mobilization" of such disciplined warrior-workers.[259]
+
+According to cultural critic Susan Sontag:
+
+Fascist aesthetics ... flow from (and justify) a preoccupation with situations of control, submissive behavior, extravagant effort, and the endurance of pain; they endorse two seemingly opposite states, egomania and servitude. The relations of domination and enslavement take the form of a characteristic pageantry: the massing of groups of people; the turning of people into things; the multiplication or replication of things; and the grouping of people/things around an all-powerful, hypnotic leader-figure or force. The fascist dramaturgy centers on the orgiastic transactions between mighty forces and their puppets, uniformly garbed and shown in ever swelling numbers. Its choreography alternates between ceaseless motion and a congealed, static, "virile" posing. Fascist art glorifies surrender, it exalts mindlessness, it glamorizes death.[260]
+
+Sontag also enumerates some commonalities between fascist art of the official art of communist countries, such as the obeisance of the masses to the hero, and a preference for the monumental and the "grandiose and rigid" choreography of mass bodies.  But whereas official communist art "aims to expound and reinforce a utopian morality", the art of fascist countries such as Nazi Germany "displays a utopian aesthetics – that of physical perfection", in a way that is "both prurient and idealizing".[260]
+
+"Fascist aesthetics", according to Sontag, "is based on the containment of vital forces; movements are confined, held tight, held in."  And its appeal is not necessarily limited to those who share the fascist political ideology, because "fascism ... stands for an ideal or rather ideals that are persistent today under the other banners: the ideal of life as art, the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community; the repudiation of the intellect; the family of man (under the parenthood of leaders)."[260]
+
+Fascism has been widely criticized and condemned in modern times since the defeat of the Axis Powers in World War II.
+
+One of the most common and strongest criticisms of fascism is that it is a tyranny.[261] Fascism is deliberately and entirely non-democratic and anti-democratic.[262][263][264]
+
+Some critics of Italian fascism have said that much of the ideology was merely a by-product of unprincipled opportunism by Mussolini and that he changed his political stances merely to bolster his personal ambitions while he disguised them as being purposeful to the public.[265] Richard Washburn Child, the American ambassador to Italy who worked with Mussolini and became his friend and admirer, defended Mussolini's opportunistic behaviour by writing: "Opportunist is a term of reproach used to brand men who fit themselves to conditions for the reasons of self-interest. Mussolini, as I have learned to know him, is an opportunist in the sense that he believed that mankind itself must be fitted to changing conditions rather than to fixed theories, no matter how many hopes and prayers have been expended on theories and programmes".[266] Child quoted Mussolini as saying: "The sanctity of an ism is not in the ism; it has no sanctity beyond its power to do, to work, to succeed in practice. It may have succeeded yesterday and fail to-morrow. Failed yesterday and succeed to-morrow. The machine first of all must run!".[266]
+
+Some have criticized Mussolini's actions during the outbreak of World War I as opportunist for seeming to suddenly abandon Marxist egalitarian internationalism for non-egalitarian nationalism and note to that effect that upon Mussolini endorsing Italy's intervention in the war against Germany and Austria-Hungary, he and the new fascist movement received financial support from foreign sources, such as Ansaldo (an armaments firm) and other companies[267] as well as the British Security Service MI5.[268] Some, including Mussolini's socialist opponents at the time, have noted that regardless of the financial support he accepted for his pro-interventionist stance, Mussolini was free to write whatever he wished in his newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia without prior sanctioning from his financial backers.[269] Furthermore, the major source of financial support that Mussolini and the fascist movement received in World War I was from France and is widely believed to have been French socialists who supported the French government's war against Germany and who sent support to Italian socialists who wanted Italian intervention on France's side.[270]
+
+Mussolini's transformation away from Marxism into what eventually became fascism began prior to World War I, as Mussolini had grown increasingly pessimistic about Marxism and egalitarianism while becoming increasingly supportive of figures who opposed egalitarianism, such as Friedrich Nietzsche.[271] By 1902, Mussolini was studying Georges Sorel, Nietzsche and Vilfredo Pareto.[272] Sorel's emphasis on the need for overthrowing decadent liberal democracy and capitalism by the use of violence, direct action, general strikes and neo-Machiavellian appeals to emotion impressed Mussolini deeply.[273] Mussolini's use of Nietzsche made him a highly unorthodox socialist, due to Nietzsche's promotion of elitism and anti-egalitarian views.[271] Prior to World War I, Mussolini's writings over time indicated that he had abandoned the Marxism and egalitarianism that he had previously supported in favour of Nietzsche's übermensch concept and anti-egalitarianism.[271] In 1908, Mussolini wrote a short essay called "Philosophy of Strength" based on his Nietzschean influence, in which Mussolini openly spoke fondly of the ramifications of an impending war in Europe in challenging both religion and nihilism: "[A] new kind of free spirit will come, strengthened by the war, ... a spirit equipped with a kind of sublime perversity, ... a new free spirit will triumph over God and over Nothing".[106]
+
+Fascism has been criticized for being ideologically dishonest. Major examples of ideological dishonesty have been identified in Italian fascism's changing relationship with German Nazism.[274][275] Fascist Italy's official foreign policy positions were known to commonly utilize rhetorical ideological hyperbole to justify its actions, although during Dino Grandi's tenure as Italy's foreign minister the country engaged in realpolitik free of such fascist hyperbole.[276] Italian fascism's stance towards German Nazism fluctuated from support from the late 1920s to 1934, when it celebrated Hitler's rise to power and meeting with Hitler in 1934; to opposition from 1934 to 1936 after the assassination of Italy's allied leader in Austria, Engelbert Dollfuss, by Austrian Nazis; and again back to support after 1936, when Germany was the only significant power that did not denounce Italy's invasion and occupation of Ethiopia.
+
+After antagonism exploded between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy over the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in 1934, Mussolini and Italian fascists denounced and ridiculed Nazism's racial theories, particularly by denouncing its Nordicism, while promoting Mediterraneanism.[275] Mussolini himself responded to Nordicists' claims of Italy being divided into Nordic and Mediterranean racial areas due to Germanic invasions of Northern Italy by claiming that while Germanic tribes such as the Lombards took control of Italy after the fall of Ancient Rome, they arrived in small numbers (about 8,000) and quickly assimilated into Roman culture and spoke the Latin language within fifty years.[277] Italian fascism was influenced by the tradition of Italian nationalists scornfully looking down upon Nordicists' claims and taking pride in comparing the age and sophistication of ancient Roman civilization as well as the classical revival in the Renaissance to that of Nordic societies that Italian nationalists described as "newcomers" to civilization in comparison.[274] At the height of antagonism between the Nazis and Italian fascists over race, Mussolini claimed that the Germans themselves were not a pure race and noted with irony that the Nazi theory of German racial superiority was based on the theories of non-German foreigners, such as Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau.[278] After the tension in German-Italian relations diminished during the late 1930s, Italian fascism sought to harmonize its ideology with German Nazism and combined Nordicist and Mediterranean racial theories, noting that Italians were members of the Aryan Race, composed of a mixed Nordic-Mediterranean subtype.[275]
+
+In 1938, Mussolini declared upon Italy's adoption of antisemitic laws that Italian fascism had always been antisemitic,[275] In fact, Italian fascism did not endorse antisemitism until the late 1930s when Mussolini feared alienating antisemitic Nazi Germany, whose power and influence were growing in Europe. Prior to that period there had been notable Jewish Italians who had been senior Italian fascist officials, including Margherita Sarfatti, who had also been Mussolini's mistress.[275] Also contrary to Mussolini's claim in 1938, only a small number of Italian fascists were staunchly antisemitic (such as Roberto Farinacci and Giuseppe Preziosi), while others such as Italo Balbo, who came from Ferrara which had one of Italy's largest Jewish communities, were disgusted by the antisemitic laws and opposed them.[275] Fascism scholar Mark Neocleous notes that while Italian fascism did not have a clear commitment to antisemitism, there were occasional antisemitic statements issued prior to 1938, such as Mussolini in 1919 declaring that the Jewish bankers in London and New York were connected by race to the Russian Bolsheviks and that eight percent of the Russian Bolsheviks were Jews.[279]
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+Saliva (commonly referred to as spit) is an extracellular fluid produced and secreted by salivary glands in the mouth. In humans, saliva is 99.5⁠% water plus electrolytes, mucus, white blood cells, epithelial cells (from which DNA can be extracted), enzymes (such as amylase and lipase), antimicrobial agents such as secretory IgA, and lysozymes.[1]
+
+The enzymes found in saliva are essential in beginning the process of digestion of dietary starches and fats. These enzymes also play a role in breaking down food particles entrapped within dental crevices, thus protecting teeth from bacterial decay.[2] Saliva also performs a lubricating function, wetting food and permitting the initiation of swallowing, and protecting the oral mucosa from drying out.[3]
+
+Various animal species have special uses for saliva that go beyond predigestion. Some swifts use their gummy saliva to build nests. Aerodramus nests form the basis of bird's nest soup.[4]
+Cobras, vipers, and certain other members of the venom clade hunt with venomous saliva injected by fangs. Some caterpillars produce silk fiber from silk proteins stored in modified salivary glands.[5]
+
+Produced in salivary glands, human saliva comprises 99.5% water, but also contains many important substances, including electrolytes, mucus, antibacterial compounds and various enzymes.[1]
+
+There is much debate about the amount of saliva that is produced in a healthy person. Production is estimated at 1500ml per day and is generally accepted that during sleep the amount drops significantly.[3][7]
+In humans, the submandibular gland contributes around 70–75% of secretion, while the parotid gland secretes about 20–25% and small amounts are secreted from the other salivary glands.[8]
+
+Saliva contributes to the digestion of food and to the maintenance of oral hygiene. Without normal salivary function the frequency of dental caries, gum disease (gingivitis and periodontitis), and other oral problems increases significantly.[citation needed]
+
+Saliva coats the oral mucosa mechanically protecting it from trauma during eating, swallowing, and speaking. Mouth soreness is very common in people with reduced saliva (xerostomia) and food (especially dry food) sticks to the inside of the mouth.
+
+The digestive functions of saliva include moistening food and helping to create a food bolus. The lubricative function of saliva allows the food bolus to be passed easily from the mouth into the esophagus. Saliva contains the enzyme amylase, also called ptyalin, which is capable of breaking down starch into simpler sugars such as maltose and dextrin that can be further broken down in the small intestine. About 30% of starch digestion takes place in the mouth cavity. Salivary glands also secrete salivary lipase (a more potent form of lipase) to begin fat digestion. Salivary lipase plays a large role in fat digestion in newborn infants as their pancreatic lipase still needs some time to develop.[9]
+
+Saliva is very important in the sense of taste. It is the liquid medium in which chemicals are carried to taste receptor cells (mostly associated with lingual papillae). Persons with little saliva often complain of dysgeusia (i.e. disordered taste, e.g. reduced ability to taste, or having a bad, metallic taste at all times). A rare condition identified to affect taste is that of 'Saliva Hypernatrium', or excessive amounts of sodium in saliva that is not caused by any other condition (e.g., Sjögren syndrome), causing everything to taste 'salty'.
+
+The production of saliva is stimulated both by the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic.[13]
+
+The saliva stimulated by sympathetic innervation is thicker, and saliva stimulated parasympathetically is more fluid-like.
+
+Sympathetic stimulation of saliva is to facilitate respiration, whereas parasympathetic stimulation is to facilitate digestion.
+
+Parasympathetic stimulation leads to acetylcholine (ACh) release onto the salivary acinar cells. ACh binds to muscarinic receptors, specifically M3, and causes an increased intracellular calcium ion concentration (through the IP3/DAG second messenger system). Increased calcium causes vesicles within the cells to fuse with the apical cell membrane leading to secretion. ACh also causes the salivary gland to release kallikrein, an enzyme that converts kininogen to lysyl-bradykinin. Lysyl-bradykinin acts upon blood vessels and capillaries of the salivary gland to generate vasodilation and increased capillary permeability, respectively. The resulting increased blood flow to the acini allows the production of more saliva. In addition, Substance P can bind to Tachykinin NK-1 receptors leading to increased intracellular calcium concentrations and subsequently increased saliva secretion. Lastly, both parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous stimulation can lead to myoepithelium contraction which causes the expulsion of secretions from the secretory acinus into the ducts and eventually to the oral cavity.
+
+Sympathetic stimulation results in the release of norepinephrine. Norepinephrine binding to α-adrenergic receptors will cause an increase in intracellular calcium levels leading to more fluid vs. protein secretion. If norepinephrine binds β-adrenergic receptors, it will result in more protein or enzyme secretion vs. fluid secretion. Stimulation by norepinephrine initially decreases blood flow to the salivary glands due to constriction of blood vessels but this effect is overtaken by vasodilation caused by various local vasodilators.
+
+Saliva production may also be pharmacologically stimulated by the so-called sialagogues. It can also be suppressed by the so-called antisialagogues.
+
+Spitting is the act of forcibly ejecting saliva or other substances from the mouth. In many parts of the world, it is considered rude and a social taboo, and has even been outlawed in many countries. In Western countries, for example, it has often been outlawed for reasons of public decency and attempting to reduce the spread of disease; however, these laws are often not strictly enforced.[citation needed] In Singapore, the fine for spitting may be as high as SGD$2,000 for multiple offenses, and one can even be arrested. In some other parts of the world, such as in China, expectoration is more socially acceptable (even if officially disapproved of or illegal), and spittoons are still a common appearance in some cultures. Some animals, even humans in some cases, use spitting as an automatic defensive maneuver. Camels are well known for doing this, though most domestic camels are trained not to.
+
+Because saliva can contain large amounts of virus copies in infected individuals (for example, in people infected with SARS-CoV-2),[14] spitting in public places can pose a health hazard to the public.
+
+Many birds in the swift family, Apodidae, produce a viscous saliva during nesting season to glue together materials to construct a nest.[15] Two species of swifts in the genus Aerodramus build their nests using only their saliva, the base for bird's nest soup.[16]
+
+A common belief is that saliva contained in the mouth has natural disinfectants, which leads people to believe it is beneficial to "lick their wounds". Researchers at the University of Florida at Gainesville have discovered a protein called nerve growth factor (NGF) in the saliva of mice. Wounds doused with NGF healed twice as fast as untreated and unlicked wounds; therefore, saliva can help to heal wounds in some species. NGF has not been found in human saliva; however, researchers find human saliva contains such antibacterial agents as secretory mucin, IgA, lactoferrin, lysozyme and peroxidase.[17][18] It has not been shown that human licking of wounds disinfects them, but licking is likely to help clean the wound by removing  larger contaminants such as dirt and may help to directly remove infective bodies by brushing them away. Therefore, licking would be a way of wiping off pathogens, useful if clean water is not available to the animal or person.
+
+In Pavlov's experiment, dogs were conditioned to salivate in response to a ringing bell, this stimulus is associated with a meal or hunger. Salivary secretion is also associated with nausea. Saliva is usually formed in the mouth through an act called gleeking, which can be voluntary or involuntary.
+
+Some old cultures chewed grains to produce alcoholic beverages, such as chicha,[19] kasiri or sake.
+
+A number of commercially available saliva substitutes exist.[20]

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+
+
+
+
+Film, also called movie, motion picture or moving picture, is a visual art-form used to simulate experiences that communicate ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound, and more rarely, other sensory stimulations.[1] The word "cinema", short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form that is the result of it.
+
+The moving images of a film are created by photographing actual scenes with a motion-picture camera, by photographing drawings or miniature models using traditional animation techniques, by means of CGI and computer animation, or by a combination of some or all of these techniques, and other visual effects.
+
+Traditionally, films were recorded onto celluloid film stock through a photochemical process and then shown through a movie projector onto a large screen. Contemporary films are often fully digital  through the entire process of production, distribution, and exhibition, while films recorded in a photochemical form traditionally included an analogous optical soundtrack (a graphic recording of the spoken words, music and other sounds that accompany the images which runs along a portion of the film exclusively reserved for it, and is not projected).
+
+Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures. They reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating—or indoctrinating—citizens. The visual basis of film gives it a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions through the use of dubbing or subtitles to translate the dialog into other languages.
+
+The individual images that make up a film are called frames. In the projection of traditional celluloid films, a rotating shutter causes intervals of darkness as each frame, in turn, is moved into position to be projected, but the viewer does not notice the interruptions because of an effect known as persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after its source disappears. The perception of motion is partly due to a psychological effect called the phi phenomenon.
+
+The name "film" originates from the fact that photographic film (also called film stock) has historically been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion-picture, including picture, picture show, moving picture, photoplay, and flick. The most common term in the United States is movie, while in Europe film is preferred. Common terms for the field in general include the big screen, the silver screen, the movies, and cinema; the last of these is commonly used, as an overarching term, in scholarly texts and critical essays. In early years, the word sheet was sometimes used instead of screen.
+
+The art of film has drawn on several earlier traditions in fields such as oral storytelling, literature, theatre and visual arts. Forms of art and entertainment that had already featured moving and/or projected images include:
+
+The stroboscopic animation principle was introduced in 1833 with the phénakisticope and also applied in the zoetrope since 1866, the flip book since 1868, and the praxinoscope since 1877, before it became the basic principle for cinematography.
+
+Experiments with early phenakisticope-based animation projectors were made at least as early as 1843. Jules Duboscq marketed phénakisticope projection systems in France between 1853 and the 1890s.
+
+Photography was introduced in 1839, but at first photographic emulsions needed such long exposures that the recording of moving subjects seemed impossible. At least as early as 1844, photographic series of subjects posed in different positions have been created to either suggest a motion sequence or to document a range of different viewing angles. The advent of stereoscopic photography, with early experiments in the 1840s and commercial success since the early 1850s, raised interest in completing the photographic medium with the addition of means to capture colour and motion. In 1849, Joseph Plateau published about the idea to combine his invention of the phénakisticope with the stereoscope, as suggested to him by stereoscope inventor Charles Wheatstone, and use photographs of plaster sculptures in different positions to be animated in the combined device. In 1852, Jules Duboscq patented such an instrument as the "Stéréoscope-fantascope, ou Bïoscope". He marginally advertised it for a short period. It was a commercial failure and no complete instrument has yet been located, but one bioscope disc has been preserved in the Plateau collection of the Ghent University. It has stereoscopic photographs of a machine.
+
+By the late 1850s the first examples of instantaneous photography came about and provided hope that motion photography would soon be possible, but it took a few decades before it was successfully combined with a method to record series of sequential images in real-time. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge eventually managed to take a series of photographs of a running horse with a battery of cameras in a line along the track and published the results as The Horse in Motion on cabinet cards. Muybridge, as well as Étienne-Jules Marey, Ottomar Anschütz and many others would create many more chronophotography studies. Muybridge had the contours of dozens of his chronophotographic series traced onto glass discs and projected them with his zoopraxiscope in his lectures from 1880 to 1895. Anschütz developed his own Electrotachyscope in 1887 to project 24 diapositive photographic images on glass disks as moving images, looped as long as deemed interesting for the audience.
+
+Émile Reynaud already mentioned the possibility of projecting the images in his 1877 patent application for the praxinoscope. He presented a praxinoscope projection device at the Société française de photographie on 4 June 1880, but did not market his praxinoscope a projection before 1882. He then further developed the device into the Théâtre Optique which could project longer sequences with separate backgrounds, patented in 1888. He created several movies for the machine by painting images on hundreds of gelatin plates that were mounted into cardboard frames and attached to a cloth band. From 28 October 1892 to March 1900 Reynaud gave over 12,800 shows to a total of over 500,000 visitors at the Musée Grévin in Paris.
+
+By the end of the 1880s, the introduction of lengths of celluloid photographic film and the invention of motion picture cameras, which could photograph an indefinitely long rapid sequence of images using only one lens, allowed several minutes of action to be captured and stored on a single compact reel of film. Some early films were made to be viewed by one person at a time through a "peep show" device such as the Kinetoscope and the mutoscope. Others were intended for a projector, mechanically similar to the camera and sometimes actually the same machine, which was used to shine an intense light through the processed and printed film and into a projection lens so that these "moving pictures" could be shown tremendously enlarged on a screen for viewing by an entire audience. The first kinetoscope film shown in public exhibition was Blacksmith Scene, produced by Edison Manufacturing Company in 1893. The following year the company would begin Edison Studios, which became an early leader in the film industry with notable early shorts including The Kiss, and would go on to produce close to 1,200 films.
+
+The first public screenings of films at which admission was charged were made in 1895 by the American Woodville Latham and his sons, using films produced by their Eidoloscope company,[2] and by the – arguably better known – French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière with ten of their own productions.[citation needed] Private screenings had preceded these by several months, with Latham's slightly predating the Lumière brothers'.[citation needed]
+
+The earliest films were simply one static shot that showed an event or action with no editing or other cinematic techniques. Around the turn of the 20th century, films started stringing several scenes together to tell a story. The scenes were later broken up into multiple shots photographed from different distances and angles. Other techniques such as camera movement were developed as effective ways to tell a story with film. Until sound film became commercially practical in the late 1920s, motion pictures were a purely visual art, but these innovative silent films had gained a hold on the public imagination. Rather than leave audiences with only the noise of the projector as an accompaniment, theater owners hired a pianist or organist or, in large urban theaters, a full orchestra to play music that fit the mood of the film at any given moment. By the early 1920s, most films came with a prepared list of sheet music to be used for this purpose, and complete film scores were composed for major productions.
+
+The rise of European cinema was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I, while the film industry in the United States flourished with the rise of Hollywood, typified most prominently by the innovative work of D. W. Griffith in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). However, in the 1920s, European filmmakers such as Eisenstein, F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, in many ways inspired by the meteoric wartime progress of film through Griffith, along with the contributions of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and others, quickly caught up with American film-making and continued to further advance the medium.
+
+In the 1920s, the development of electronic sound recording technologies made it practical to incorporate a soundtrack of speech, music and sound effects synchronized with the action on the screen.[citation needed] The resulting sound films were initially distinguished from the usual silent "moving pictures" or "movies" by calling them "talking pictures" or "talkies."[citation needed] The revolution they wrought was swift. By 1930, silent film was practically extinct in the US and already being referred to as "the old medium."[citation needed]
+
+Another major technological development was the introduction of "natural color," which meant color that was photographically recorded from nature rather than added to black-and-white prints by hand-coloring, stencil-coloring or other arbitrary procedures, although the earliest processes typically yielded colors which were far from "natural" in appearance.[citation needed] While the advent of sound films quickly made silent films and theater musicians obsolete, color replaced black-and-white much more gradually.[citation needed] The pivotal innovation was the introduction of the three-strip version of the Technicolor process, first used for animated cartoons in 1932, then also for live-action short films and isolated sequences in a few feature films, then for an entire feature film, Becky Sharp, in 1935. The expense of the process was daunting, but favorable public response in the form of increased box office receipts usually justified the added cost. The number of films made in color slowly increased year after year.
+
+In the early 1950s, the proliferation of black-and-white television started seriously depressing North American theater attendance.[citation needed] In an attempt to lure audiences back into theaters, bigger screens were installed, widescreen processes, polarized 3D projection, and stereophonic sound were introduced, and more films were made in color, which soon became the rule rather than the exception. Some important mainstream Hollywood films were still being made in black-and-white as late as the mid-1960s, but they marked the end of an era. Color television receivers had been available in the US since the mid-1950s, but at first, they were very expensive and few broadcasts were in color. During the 1960s, prices gradually came down, color broadcasts became common, and sales boomed. The overwhelming public verdict in favor of color was clear. After the final flurry of black-and-white films had been released in mid-decade, all Hollywood studio productions were filmed in color, with the usual exceptions made only at the insistence of "star" filmmakers such as Peter Bogdanovich and Martin Scorsese.[citation needed]
+
+The decades following the decline of the studio system in the 1960s saw changes in the production and style of film. Various New Wave movements (including the French New Wave, Indian New Wave, Japanese New Wave, and New Hollywood) and the rise of film-school-educated independent filmmakers contributed to the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of the 20th century. Digital technology has been the driving force for change throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s. Digital 3D projection largely replaced earlier problem-prone 3D film systems and has become popular in the early 2010s.[citation needed]
+
+"Film theory" seeks to develop concise and systematic concepts that apply to the study of film as art. The concept of film as an art-form began in 1911 with Ricciotto Canudo's The Birth of the Sixth Art. Formalist film theory, led by Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs, and Siegfried Kracauer, emphasized how film differed from reality and thus could be considered a valid fine art. André Bazin reacted against this theory by arguing that film's artistic essence lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality, not in its differences from reality, and this gave rise to realist theory. More recent analysis spurred by Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis and Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotics among other things has given rise to psychoanalytic film theory, structuralist film theory, feminist film theory, and others. On the other hand, critics from the analytical philosophy tradition, influenced by Wittgenstein, try to clarify misconceptions used in theoretical studies and produce analysis of a film's vocabulary and its link to a form of life.
+
+Film is considered to have its own language. James Monaco wrote a classic text on film theory, titled "How to Read a Film," that addresses this. Director Ingmar Bergman famously said, "Andrei Tarkovsky for me is the greatest director, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream." An example of the language is a sequence of back and forth images of one speaking actor's left profile, followed by another speaking actor's right profile, then a repetition of this, which is a language understood by the audience to indicate a conversation. This describes another theory of film, the 180-degree rule, as a visual story-telling device with an ability to place a viewer in a context of being psychologically present through the use of visual composition and editing. The "Hollywood style" includes this narrative theory, due to the overwhelming practice of the rule by movie studios based in Hollywood, California, during film's classical era. Another example of cinematic language is having a shot that zooms in on the forehead of an actor with an expression of silent reflection that cuts to a shot of a younger actor who vaguely resembles the first actor, indicating that the first person is remembering a past self, an edit of compositions that causes a time transition.
+
+Montage is the technique by which separate pieces of film are selected, edited, and then pieced together to make a new section of film. A scene could show a man going into battle, with flashbacks to his youth and to his home-life and with added special effects, placed into the film after filming is complete. As these were all filmed separately, and perhaps with different actors, the final version is called a montage. Directors developed a theory of montage, beginning with Eisenstein and the complex juxtaposition of images in his film Battleship Potemkin.[3] Incorporation of musical and visual counterpoint, and scene development through mise en scene, editing, and effects has led to more complex techniques comparable to those used in opera and ballet.
+
+— Roger Ebert (1986)[4]
+
+Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films. In general, these works can be divided into two categories: academic criticism by film scholars and journalistic film criticism that appears regularly in newspapers and other media. Film critics working for newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media mainly review new releases. Normally they only see any given film once and have only a day or two to formulate their opinions. Despite this, critics have an important impact on the audience response and attendance at films, especially those of certain genres. Mass marketed action, horror, and comedy films tend not to be greatly affected by a critic's overall judgment of a film. The plot summary and description of a film and the assessment of the director's and screenwriters' work that makes up the majority of most film reviews can still have an important impact on whether people decide to see a film. For prestige films such as most dramas and art films, the influence of reviews is important. Poor reviews from leading critics at major papers and magazines will often reduce audience interest and attendance.
+
+The impact of a reviewer on a given film's box office performance is a matter of debate. Some observers claim that movie marketing in the 2000s is so intense, well-coordinated and well financed that reviewers cannot prevent a poorly written or filmed blockbuster from attaining market success. However, the cataclysmic failure of some heavily promoted films which were harshly reviewed, as well as the unexpected success of critically praised independent films indicates that extreme critical reactions can have considerable influence. Other observers note that positive film reviews have been shown to spark interest in little-known films. Conversely, there have been several films in which film companies have so little confidence that they refuse to give reviewers an advanced viewing to avoid widespread panning of the film. However, this usually backfires, as reviewers are wise to the tactic and warn the public that the film may not be worth seeing and the films often do poorly as a result. Journalist film critics are sometimes called film reviewers. Critics who take a more academic approach to films, through publishing in film journals and writing books about films using film theory or film studies approaches, study how film and filming techniques work, and what effect they have on people. Rather than having their reviews published in newspapers or appearing on television, their articles are published in scholarly journals or up-market magazines. They also tend to be affiliated with colleges or universities as professors or instructors.
+
+The making and showing of motion pictures became a source of profit almost as soon as the process was invented. Upon seeing how successful their new invention, and its product, was in their native France, the Lumières quickly set about touring the Continent to exhibit the first films privately to royalty and publicly to the masses. In each country, they would normally add new, local scenes to their catalogue and, quickly enough, found local entrepreneurs in the various countries of Europe to buy their equipment and photograph, export, import, and screen additional product commercially. The Oberammergau Passion Play of 1898[citation needed] was the first commercial motion picture ever produced. Other pictures soon followed, and motion pictures became a separate industry that overshadowed the vaudeville world. Dedicated theaters and companies formed specifically to produce and distribute films, while motion picture actors became major celebrities and commanded huge fees for their performances. By 1917 Charlie Chaplin had a contract that called for an annual salary of one million dollars. From 1931 to 1956, film was also the only image storage and playback system for television programming until the introduction of videotape recorders.
+
+In the United States, much of the film industry is centered around Hollywood, California. Other regional centers exist in many parts of the world, such as Mumbai-centered Bollywood, the Indian film industry's Hindi cinema which produces the largest number of films in the world.[5] Though the expense involved in making films has led cinema production to concentrate under the auspices of movie studios, recent advances in affordable film making equipment have allowed independent film productions to flourish.
+
+Profit is a key force in the industry, due to the costly and risky nature of filmmaking; many films have large cost overruns, an example being Kevin Costner's Waterworld. Yet many filmmakers strive to create works of lasting social significance. The Academy Awards (also known as "the Oscars") are the most prominent film awards in the United States, providing recognition each year to films, based on their artistic merits. There is also a large industry for educational and instructional films made in lieu of or in addition to lectures and texts. Revenue in the industry is sometimes volatile due to the reliance on blockbuster films released in movie theaters. The rise of alternative home entertainment has raised questions about the future of the cinema industry, and Hollywood employment has become less reliable, particularly for medium and low-budget films.[6]
+
+Derivative academic fields of study may both interact with and develop independently of filmmaking, as in film theory and analysis. Fields of academic study have been created that are derivative or dependent on the existence of film, such as film criticism, film history, divisions of film propaganda in authoritarian governments, or psychological on subliminal effects (e.g., of a flashing soda can during a screening). These fields may further create derivative fields, such as a movie review section in a newspaper or a television guide. Sub-industries can spin off from film, such as popcorn makers, and film-related toys (e.g., Star Wars figures). Sub-industries of pre-existing industries may deal specifically with film, such as product placement and other advertising within films.
+
+The terminology used for describing motion pictures varies considerably between British and American English. In British usage, the name of the medium is "film". The word "movie" is understood but seldom used.[7][8] Additionally, "the pictures" (plural) is used semi-frequently to refer to the place where movies are exhibited, while in American English this may be called "the movies", but it is becoming outdated. In other countries, the place where movies are exhibited may be called a cinema or movie theatre. By contrast, in the United States, "movie" is the predominant form. Although the words "film" and "movie" are sometimes used interchangeably, "film" is more often used when considering artistic, theoretical, or technical aspects. The term "movies" more often refers to entertainment or commercial aspects, as where to go for fun evening on a date. For example, a book titled "How to Understand a Film" would probably be about the aesthetics or theory of film, while a book entitled "Let's Go to the Movies" would probably be about the history of entertaining movies and blockbusters.
+
+Further terminology is used to distinguish various forms and media used in the film industry. "Motion pictures" and "moving pictures" are frequently used terms for film and movie productions specifically intended for theatrical exhibition, such as, for instance, Batman. "DVD" and "videotape" are video formats that can reproduce a photochemical film. A reproduction based on such is called a "transfer." After the advent of theatrical film as an industry, the television industry began using videotape as a recording medium. For many decades, tape was solely an analog medium onto which moving images could be either recorded or transferred. "Film" and "filming" refer to the photochemical medium that chemically records a visual image and the act of recording respectively. However, the act of shooting images with other visual media, such as with a digital camera, is still called "filming" and the resulting works often called "films" as interchangeable to "movies," despite not being shot on film. "Silent films" need not be utterly silent, but are films and movies without an audible dialogue, including those that have a musical accompaniment. The word, "Talkies," refers to the earliest sound films created to have audible dialogue recorded for playback along with the film, regardless of a musical accompaniment. "Cinema" either broadly encompasses both films and movies, or it is roughly synonymous with film and theatrical exhibition, and both are capitalized when referring to a category of art. The "silver screen" refers to the projection screen used to exhibit films and, by extension, is also used as a metonym for the entire film industry.
+
+"Widescreen" refers to a larger width to height in the frame, compared to earlier historic aspect ratios.[9] A "feature-length film", or "feature film", is of a conventional full length, usually 60 minutes or more, and can commercially stand by itself without other films in a ticketed screening.[10] A "short" is a film that is not as long as a feature-length film, often screened with other shorts, or preceding a feature-length film. An "independent" is a film made outside the conventional film industry.
+
+In US usage, one talks of a "screening" or "projection" of a movie or video on a screen at a public or private "theater." In British English, a "film showing" happens at a cinema (never a "theatre", which is a different medium and place altogether).[8] A cinema usually refers to an arena designed specifically to exhibit films, where the screen is affixed to a wall, while a theater usually refers to a place where live, non-recorded action or combination thereof occurs from a podium or other type of stage, including the amphitheater. Theaters can still screen movies in them, though the theater would be retrofitted to do so. One might propose "going to the cinema" when referring to the activity, or sometimes "to the pictures" in British English, whereas the US expression is usually "going to the movies." A cinema usually shows a mass-marketed movie using a front-projection screen process with either a film projector or, more recently, with a digital projector. But, cinemas may also show theatrical movies from their home video transfers that include Blu-ray Disc, DVD, and videocassette when they possess sufficient projection quality or based upon need, such as movies that exist only in their transferred state, which may be due to the loss or deterioration of the film master and prints from which the movie originally existed. Due to the advent of digital film production and distribution, physical film might be absent entirely. A "double feature" is a screening of two independently marketed, stand-alone feature films. A "viewing" is a watching of a film. "Sales" and "at the box office" refer to tickets sold at a theater, or more currently, rights sold for individual showings. A "release" is the distribution and often simultaneous screening of a film. A "preview" is a screening in advance of the main release.
+
+Any film may also have a "sequel", which portrays events following those in the film. Bride of Frankenstein is an early example. When there are more films than one with the same characters, story arcs, or subject themes, these movies become a "series," such as the James Bond series. And, existing outside a specific story timeline usually, does not exclude a film from being part of a series. A film that portrays events occurring earlier in a timeline with those in another film, but is released after that film, is sometimes called a "prequel," an example being Butch and Sundance: The Early Days.
+
+The "credits," or "end credits," is a list that gives credit to the people involved in the production of a film. Films from before the 1970s usually start a film with credits, often ending with only a title card, saying "The End" or some equivalent, often an equivalent that depends on the language of the production[citation needed]. From then onward, a film's credits usually appear at the end of most films. However, films with credits that end a film often repeat some credits at or near the start of a film and therefore appear twice, such as that film's acting leads, while less frequently some appearing near or at the beginning only appear there, not at the end, which often happens to the director's credit. The credits appearing at or near the beginning of a film are usually called "titles" or "beginning titles." A post-credits scene is a scene shown after the end of the credits. Ferris Bueller's Day Off has a post-credit scene in which Ferris tells the audience that the film is over and they should go home.
+
+A film's "cast" refers to a collection of the actors and actresses who appear, or "star," in a film. A star is an actor or actress, often a popular one, and in many cases, a celebrity who plays a central character in a film. Occasionally the word can also be used to refer to the fame of other members of the crew, such as a director or other personality, such as Martin Scorsese. A "crew" is usually interpreted as the people involved in a film's physical construction outside cast participation, and it could include directors, film editors, photographers, grips, gaffers, set decorators, prop masters, and costume designers. A person can both be part of a film's cast and crew, such as Woody Allen, who directed and starred in Take the Money and Run.
+
+A "film goer," "movie goer," or "film buff" is a person who likes or often attends films and movies, and any of these, though more often the latter, could also see oneself as a student to films and movies or the filmic process. Intense interest in films, film theory, and film criticism, is known as cinephilia. A film enthusiast is known as a cinephile or cineaste.
+
+A preview performance refers to a showing of a film to a select audience, usually for the purposes of corporate promotions, before the public film premiere itself. Previews are sometimes used to judge audience reaction, which if unexpectedly negative, may result in recutting or even refilming certain sections based on the audience response. One example of a film that was changed after a negative response from the test screening is 1982's First Blood. After the test audience responded very negatively to the death of protagonist John Rambo, a Vietnam veteran, at the end of the film, the company wrote and re-shot a new ending in which the character survives.[11]
+
+Trailers or previews are advertisements for films that will be shown in 1 to 3 months at a cinema. Back in the early days of cinema, with theaters that had only one or two screens, only certain trailers were shown for the films that were going to be shown there. Later, when theaters added more screens or new theaters were built with a lot of screens, all different trailers were shown even if they weren't going to play that film in that theater. Film studios realized that the more trailers that were shown (even if it wasn't going to be shown in that particular theater) the more patrons would go to a different theater to see the film when it came out. The term "trailer" comes from their having originally been shown at the end of a film program. That practice did not last long because patrons tended to leave the theater after the films ended, but the name has stuck. Trailers are now shown before the film (or the "A film" in a double feature program) begins. Film trailers are also common on DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, as well as on the Internet and mobile devices. Trailers are created to be engaging and interesting for viewers. As a result, in the Internet era, viewers often seek out trailers to watch them. Of the ten billion videos watched online annually in 2008, film trailers ranked third, after news and user-created videos.[12] Teasers are a much shorter preview or advertisement that lasts only 10 to 30 seconds. Teasers are used to get patrons excited about a film coming out in the next six to twelve months. Teasers may be produced even before the film production is completed.
+
+Film is used for a range of goals, including education and propaganda. When the purpose is primarily educational, a film is called an "educational film". Examples are recordings of academic lectures and experiments, or a film based on a classic novel. Film may be propaganda, in whole or in part, such as the films made by Leni Riefenstahl in Nazi Germany, US war film trailers during World War II, or artistic films made under Stalin by  Sergei Eisenstein. They may also be works of political protest, as in the films of Andrzej Wajda, or more subtly, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky. The same film may be considered educational by some, and propaganda by others as the categorization of a film can be subjective.
+
+At its core, the means to produce a film depend on the content the filmmaker wishes to show, and the apparatus for displaying it: the zoetrope merely requires a series of images on a strip of paper. Film production can, therefore, take as little as one person with a camera (or even without a camera, as in Stan Brakhage's 1963 film Mothlight), or thousands of actors, extras, and crew members for a live-action, feature-length epic.
+
+The necessary steps for almost any film can be boiled down to conception, planning, execution, revision, and distribution. The more involved the production, the more significant each of the steps becomes. In a typical production cycle of a Hollywood-style film, these main stages are defined as development, pre-production, production, post-production and distribution.
+
+This production cycle usually takes three years. The first year is taken up with development. The second year comprises preproduction and production. The third year, post-production and distribution. The bigger the production, the more resources it takes, and the more important financing becomes; most feature films are artistic works from the creators' perspective (e.g., film director, cinematographer, screenwriter) and for-profit business entities for the production companies.
+
+A film crew is a group of people hired by a film company, employed during the "production" or "photography" phase, for the purpose of producing a film or motion picture. Crew is distinguished from cast, who are the actors who appear in front of the camera or provide voices for characters in the film. The crew interacts with but is also distinct from the production staff, consisting of producers, managers, company representatives, their assistants, and those whose primary responsibility falls in pre-production or post-production phases, such as screenwriters and film editors. Communication between production and crew generally passes through the director and his/her staff of assistants. Medium-to-large crews are generally divided into departments with well-defined hierarchies and standards for interaction and cooperation between the departments. Other than acting, the crew handles everything in the photography phase: props and costumes, shooting, sound, electrics (i.e., lights), sets, and production special effects. Caterers (known in the film industry as "craft services") are usually not considered part of the crew.
+
+Film stock consists of transparent celluloid, acetate, or polyester base coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive chemicals. Cellulose nitrate was the first type of film base used to record motion pictures, but due to its flammability was eventually replaced by safer materials. Stock widths and the film format for images on the reel have had a rich history, though most large commercial films are still shot on (and distributed to theaters) as 35 mm prints.
+Originally moving picture film was shot and projected at various speeds using hand-cranked cameras and projectors; though 1000 frames per minute (162/3 frame/s) is generally cited as a standard silent speed, research indicates most films were shot between 16 frame/s and 23 frame/s and projected from 18 frame/s on up (often reels included instructions on how fast each scene should be shown).[13] When sound film was introduced in the late 1920s, a constant speed was required for the sound head. 24 frames per second were chosen because it was the slowest (and thus cheapest) speed which allowed for sufficient sound quality.[citation needed] Improvements since the late 19th century include the mechanization of cameras – allowing them to record at a consistent speed, quiet camera design – allowing sound recorded on-set to be usable without requiring large "blimps" to encase the camera, the invention of more sophisticated filmstocks and lenses, allowing directors to film in increasingly dim conditions, and the development of synchronized sound, allowing sound to be recorded at exactly the same speed as its corresponding action. The soundtrack can be recorded separately from shooting the film, but for live-action pictures, many parts of the soundtrack are usually recorded simultaneously.
+
+As a medium, film is not limited to motion pictures, since the technology developed as the basis for photography. It can be used to present a progressive sequence of still images in the form of a slideshow. Film has also been incorporated into multimedia presentations and often has importance as primary historical documentation. However, historic films have problems in terms of preservation and storage, and the motion picture industry is exploring many alternatives. Most films on cellulose nitrate base have been copied onto modern safety films. Some studios save color films through the use of separation masters: three B&W negatives each exposed through red, green, or blue filters (essentially a reverse of the Technicolor process). Digital methods have also been used to restore films, although their continued obsolescence cycle makes them (as of 2006) a poor choice for long-term preservation. Film preservation of decaying film stock is a matter of concern to both film historians and archivists and to companies interested in preserving their existing products in order to make them available to future generations (and thereby increase revenue). Preservation is generally a higher concern for nitrate and single-strip color films, due to their high decay rates; black-and-white films on safety bases and color films preserved on Technicolor imbibition prints tend to keep up much better, assuming proper handling and storage.
+
+Some films in recent decades have been recorded using analog video technology similar to that used in television production. Modern digital video cameras and digital projectors are gaining ground as well. These approaches are preferred by some film-makers, especially because footage shot with digital cinema can be evaluated and edited with non-linear editing systems (NLE) without waiting for the film stock to be processed. The migration was gradual, and as of 2005, most major motion pictures were still shot on film.[needs update]
+
+Independent filmmaking often takes place outside Hollywood, or other major studio systems. An independent film (or indie film) is a film initially produced without financing or distribution from a major film studio. Creative, business and technological reasons have all contributed to the growth of the indie film scene in the late 20th and early 21st century. On the business side, the costs of big-budget studio films also lead to conservative choices in cast and crew. There is a trend in Hollywood towards co-financing (over two-thirds of the films put out by Warner Bros. in 2000 were joint ventures, up from 10% in 1987).[14] A hopeful director is almost never given the opportunity to get a job on a big-budget studio film unless he or she has significant industry experience in film or television. Also, the studios rarely produce films with unknown actors, particularly in lead roles.
+
+Before the advent of digital alternatives, the cost of professional film equipment and stock was also a hurdle to being able to produce, direct, or star in a traditional studio film. But the advent of consumer camcorders in 1985, and more importantly, the arrival of high-resolution digital video in the early 1990s, have lowered the technology barrier to film production significantly. Both production and post-production costs have been significantly lowered; in the 2000s, the hardware and software for post-production can be installed in a commodity-based personal computer. Technologies such as DVDs, FireWire connections and a wide variety of professional and consumer-grade video editing software make film-making relatively affordable.
+
+Since the introduction of digital video DV technology, the means of production have become more democratized. Filmmakers can conceivably shoot a film with a digital video camera and edit the film, create and edit the sound and music, and mix the final cut on a high-end home computer. However, while the means of production may be democratized, financing, distribution, and marketing remain difficult to accomplish outside the traditional system. Most independent filmmakers rely on film festivals to get their films noticed and sold for distribution. The arrival of internet-based video websites such as YouTube and Veoh has further changed the filmmaking landscape, enabling indie filmmakers to make their films available to the public.
+
+An open content film is much like an independent film, but it is produced through open collaborations; its source material is available under a license which is permissive enough to allow other parties to create fan fiction or derivative works, than a traditional copyright. Like independent filmmaking, open source filmmaking takes place outside Hollywood, or other major studio systems.
+
+A fan film is a film or video inspired by a film, television program, comic book or a similar source, created by fans rather than by the source's copyright holders or creators. Fan filmmakers have traditionally been amateurs, but some of the most notable films have actually been produced by professional filmmakers as film school class projects or as demonstration reels. Fan films vary tremendously in length, from short faux-teaser trailers for non-existent motion pictures to rarer full-length motion pictures.
+
+Film distribution is the process through which a film is made available for viewing by an audience. This is normally the task of a professional film distributor, who would determine the marketing strategy of the film, the media by which a film is to be exhibited or made available for viewing, and may set the release date and other matters. The film may be exhibited directly to the public either through a movie theater (historically the main way films were distributed) or television for personal home viewing (including on DVD-Video or Blu-ray Disc, video-on-demand, online downloading, television programs through broadcast syndication etc.). Other ways of distributing a film include rental or personal purchase of the film in a variety of media and formats, such as VHS tape or DVD, or Internet downloading or streaming using a computer.
+
+Animation is a technique in which each frame of a film is produced individually, whether generated as a computer graphic, or by photographing a drawn image, or by repeatedly making small changes to a model unit (see claymation and stop motion), and then photographing the result with a special animation camera. When the frames are strung together and the resulting film is viewed at a speed of 16 or more frames per second, there is an illusion of continuous movement (due to the phi phenomenon). Generating such a film is very labor-intensive and tedious, though the development of computer animation has greatly sped up the process. Because animation is very time-consuming and often very expensive to produce, the majority of animation for TV and films comes from professional animation studios. However, the field of independent animation has existed at least since the 1950s, with animation being produced by independent studios (and sometimes by a single person). Several independent animation producers have gone on to enter the professional animation industry.
+
+Limited animation is a way of increasing production and decreasing costs of animation by using "short cuts" in the animation process. This method was pioneered by UPA and popularized by Hanna-Barbera in the United States, and by Osamu Tezuka in Japan, and adapted by other studios as cartoons moved from movie theaters to television.[15] Although most animation studios are now using digital technologies in their productions, there is a specific style of animation that depends on film. Camera-less animation, made famous by film-makers like Norman McLaren, Len Lye, and Stan Brakhage, is painted and drawn directly onto pieces of film, and then run through a projector.

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+
+Salvador (English: Savior), also known as São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos (English: Holy Savior of the Bay of All Saints), is the capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia. With 2.9 million people (2017), it is the largest city proper in the Northeast Region and the 4th largest city proper in the country, after São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília.
+
+Founded by the Portuguese in 1549 as the first capital of Brazil, Salvador is one of the oldest colonial cities in the Americas. A sharp escarpment divides its Lower Town (Cidade Baixa) from its Upper Town (Cidade Alta) by some 85 meters (279 ft). The Elevador Lacerda, Brazil's first urban elevator, has connected the two since 1873. The Pelourinho district of the upper town, still home to many examples of Portuguese colonial architecture and historical monuments, was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985. The city's cathedral is the see of the primate of Brazil and its Carnival celebration has been reckoned as the largest party in the world. Salvador was one of the first slave ports in the Americas and the African influence of the slaves' descendants makes it a center of Afro-Brazilian (negro) culture. The city is noted for its cuisine, music, dance and architecture. Porto da Barra Beach in Barra has been named one of the best beaches in the world. Itaipava Arena Fonte Nova was the site of the city's games during the 2014 Brazilian World Cup and 2013 Confederations Cup.
+
+Salvador forms the heart of the Recôncavo, Bahia's rich agricultural and industrial maritime district, and continues to be a major Brazilian port. Its metropolitan area, housing 3 899 533 people (2018) forms the wealthiest one in Brazil's Northeast Region (2015).
+
+Salvador lies on a small, roughly triangular peninsula that separates the Bay of All Saints, the largest bay in Brazil, from the Atlantic Ocean.[4] It was first reached by Gaspar de Lemos in 1501, just one year after Cabral's purported discovery of Brazil.[5] During his second voyage for Portugal, the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci sighted the bay on All Saints' Day (1 November) 1502 and, in honor of the date and his parish church in Florence, he named it the Bay of the Holy Savior of All the Saints.[6] The first European to settle nearby was Diogo Álvares Correia ("Caramuru"),[7] who was shipwrecked off the end of the peninsula in 1509. He lived among the Tupinambá, marrying Guaibimpara and others. In 1531, Martim Afonso de Sousa led an expedition from Mount St Paul (Morro de São Paulo)[8] and, in 1534, Francisco Pereira Coutinho, the first captain of Bahia, established the settlement of Pereira in modern Salvador's Ladeira da Barra neighborhood. Mistreatment of the Tupinambá by the settlers caused them to turn hostile and the Portuguese were forced to flee to Porto Seguro c. 1546.[9] An attempted restoration of the colony the next year ended in shipwreck and cannibalism.[10]
+
+The present city was established as the fortress of São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos ("Holy Savior of the Bay of All Saints")[11][n 1] in 1549 by Portuguese settlers under Tomé de Sousa, Brazil's first governor-general.[14] It is one of the oldest cities founded by Europeans in the Americas.[15] From a cliff overlooking the Bay of All Saints,[n 2] it served as Brazil's first capital and quickly became a major port for its slave trade and sugarcane industry.[17] Salvador was long divided into an upper and a lower city, divided by a sharp escarpment some 85 meters (279 ft) high.[18] The upper city formed the administrative, religious, and primary residential districts while the lower city was the commercial center, with a port and market.
+
+In the Roman Catholic Church, Brazil and the rest of the Portuguese Empire were initially administered as part of the Diocese of Funchal in Portugal but, in 1551, Salvador became the seat of the first Roman Catholic diocese erected in Brazil.[19] The first parish church[20] was the mud-and-thatch Church of Our Lady of Help (Igreja da Nossa Senhora da Ajuda) erected by the Jesuits (Society of Jesus),[n 3] which served as the first cathedral of the diocese until the Jesuits finished construction of the original basilica on the Terreiro de Jesus in 1553.[20][n 4] Its bishop was made independent of the Archdiocese of Lisbon at the request of King Pedro II in 1676;[23] he served as the primate of the Congo and Angola in central Africa until the elevation of the Diocese of Luanda on 13 January 1844 and its bishop still serves as the national primate and premier see (diocese) of Brazil.
+
+In 1572, the Governorate of Brazil was divided into the separate governorates of Bahia in the north and Rio de Janeiro in the south. These were reunited as Brazil six years later, then redivided from 1607 to 1613. By that time, Portugal had become temporarily united with Spain and was ruled from Madrid by its kings. In 1621, King Philip III replaced the Governorate of Brazil with the states of Brazil, still based in Salvador and now controlling the south, and the Maranhão, which was centered on São Luís and controlled what is now northern Brazil. As Spain was then prosecuting a war against the independence of the Dutch, the Dutch East and West India companies tried to conquer Brazil from them. Salvador played a strategically vital role against Dutch Brazil, but was captured and sacked by a West India Company fleet under Jacob Willekens and Piet Hein on 10 May 1624. Johan van Dorth administered the colony before his assassination, freeing its slaves. The city was recaptured by a Luso-Spanish fleet under Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo y Mendoza on 1 May 1625. John Maurice's two subsequent attempts to retake the town in April and May of 1638 were unsuccessful.
+
+In 1763, the colonial administration was removed to Rio de Janeiro and elevated to a viceroyalty. Salvador remained the heart of the Recôncavo, Bahia's rich agricultural maritime district,[24] but was largely outside Brazil's early modernization. The area formed a center of royal Portuguese support against heir apparent Pedro I's declaration of independence from European Portugal on 7 September 1822. Its elites initially remained loyal to the Portuguese crown[13] while rebels from Cachoeira besieged them for a year until finally receiving Portugal's surrender of the town on 2 July 1823, which is now celebrated as Bahia Independence Day.[25] The local elite was similarly hesitant during Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca's later coup that established the republic in 1889.[13]
+
+Owing to whales' use of the Bay of All Saints as a mating ground, Salvador became a large whaling port in the Southern Hemisphere during the 19th century but the trade had already begun to fall off by the 1870s.[12]
+
+Under the empire and republic periods, however, the town slowly began to industrialize. In 1873, Brazil's first elevator, the powerful hydraulic Elevador Lacerda, was constructed to connect the city's upper and lower towns.[12] Having undergone several upgrades, it continues in use.[26][27] By the First World War, it was joined by a second elevator[n 5] and Salvador was connected to four railroads: the Bahia & Alagoinhas to Joazeiro, the Bahia Central, the Nazareth Tramway, and a short line to Santo Amaro.[13] Its central districts and the major suburbs of Bomsim and Victoria were served by four streetcar lines,[12][13] which had begun to electrify.[13] It also served as a port of call for most steamship lines trading between Europe and South America.[13]
+
+In 1985, UNESCO listed the city's Pelourinho neighborhood as a World Heritage Site.[28][29] In the 1990s, a major municipal project cleaned and restored the neighborhood in order to develop it as the cultural center and heart of the city's tourist trade. The development of the Historical Center, however, involved the forced removal of thousands of working-class residents and now necessitates local and municipal events in order to attract people to the area.[30] The relocated workers, meanwhile, have encountered significant economic hardship in their new homes on the city's periphery, separated from access to work and civic amenities.[31]
+
+In 2007, Porto da Barra Beach in Barra was named by the British Guardian newspaper as the 3rd-best beach in the world.[32] In 2010, the city hosted the 12th UN Congress on Crime Prevention.[33] The city hosted the 2013 Confederations Cup and was one of the host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil at its Arena Fonte Nova.[34] As part of its preparations for the World Cup, the city reëstablished its public transportation lines as the Salvador Metro.
+
+Salvador has a trade-wind tropical rainforest climate (Köppen: Af) Temperatures are relatively consistent, showing little variance throughout the course of the year.[35][36] Salvador's driest months of the year are December and January, when the city receives on average less than 10 cm (4 in) of precipitation. Salvador's wettest months are April, May and June, when at least 20 cm (8 in) of rain falls during each of these three months.[37]
+
+In 2010, the city of Salvador was the third-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.[44] The city had 474,827 opposite-sex couples and 1,595 same-sex couples. The population of Salvador was 53.3% female and 46.7% male.[45]
+
+According to the 2010 IBGE Census, there were 2,675,000 people residing in the city of Salvador.[46] The census revealed the following self-identification: 1,382,543 persons identify as Pardo (Multiracial) (51.7%); 743,718 as Black (27.8%); 505,645 as White (18.9%); 35,785 as Asian (1.3%); and 7,563 as Amerindian(0.3%).[45]
+
+Salvador's population is the result of 500 years of interracial marriage. The majority of the population has African, European and Native American roots. The African ancestry of the city is from Angola, Benin, Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Senegal and Mozambique.[47]
+
+According to an autosomal DNA study from 2008, the ancestral heritage of the population of Salvador was estimated to be 49.2% African, 36.3% European and 14.5% Native American.[49] The study also analyzed the genetic backgrounds of people by type of surname. Those with surnames with a religious connotation were 53.1% African in genetic ancestry and tended to be in lower economic classes. During the colonial era, it was typical practice for Portuguese priests and missionaries to baptize converted African slaves and Native Americans with surnames of religious connotations. These have been passed down to their descendants.
+
+A 2015 autosomal DNA study found out the following ancestral composition in Salvador: 50.5% of African ancestry, 42.4% of European ancestry and 5.8% of Native American ancestry.[50][51] The researchers explained they oversampled
+individuals living in poor environments (page 4).[50]
+
+Another 2015 autosomal DNA found out Salvador to be 50.8% African, 42.9% European and 6.4% Native American.[52]
+
+And another autosomal DNA study, also in 2015, found out Salvador to be: 50.8% European, 40.5% African and 8.7% Native American.[53]
+
+Source: Planet Barsa Ltda.[54]
+
+In Salvador, religion is a major contact point between Portuguese and African influences and, in the last 20 years, Brazil's version of a North American-influenced Pentecostalism.[55] Salvador was the seat of the first bishopric in colonial Brazil (established 1551), and the first bishop, Pero Fernandes Sardinha, arrived already in 1552.[56] The Jesuits, led by the Manuel da Nóbrega, also arrived in the 16th century and worked in converting the Indigenous peoples of the region to Roman Catholicism.
+
+Many religious orders came to the city, following its foundation: Franciscans, Benedictines and Carmelites. Subsequently, to them are created the Third Orders, the Brotherhoods, and Fraternities, which were composed mainly of professional and social groups. The most prominent of these orders were the Terceira do Carmo Order and the de São Francisco Order, founded by white men, and the Nossa Senhora do Rosário and São Beneditino Brotherhoods, composed of black men.[57] In many churches maintained by religious men, were housed the Santíssimo Sacramento brotherhoods.
+
+Besides these organizations, the expansion of Catholicism in the city was consolidated through social care work. Santa Casa the Misericórdia was one of the institution that did this kind of work, maintaining hospitals, shelters for the poor and the elderly, as well providing assistance to convicts and to those who would face death penalties.[57] The convents, on their part, were cultural and religious formation centers, offering seminar coursed that often were attended by the lay.
+
+Even with the present evolution, and the growth of Protestantism and other religions in the city, the Catholic faith remains as one of its most distinctive features, drawing a lot of people to its hundreds of churches. Some aspects, like the use of Portuguese in the Masses, the simplification of the liturgy, and the adoption of "pop" religious songs are key factors to the triumph of Catholicism. In the Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos Church, Masses are held in the Yorubá language, making use of African chants and typical clothes, which attract many people from the African Brazilian communities.[57]
+
+Most enslaved Africans in Bahia were brought from Sub-Saharan Africa, especially the Yoruba-speaking nation (Iorubá or Nagô in Portuguese) from present-day Benin. The enslaved were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism, but their original religion Yorùbá was combined with Roman Catholicism to make the syncretic religion known as, Candomblé, which has survived in spite of prohibitions and persecutions. The enslaved Africans managed to preserve their religion by attributing the names and characteristics of their Yorùbá deities to Catholic saints with similar qualities. Still today all Candomble sessions are conducted in Yoruba, not Portuguese.
+
+These religious entities have been syncretised with some Catholic entities. For instance, Salvador's Feast of Bonfim, celebrated in January, is dedicated to both Our Lord of Bonfim (Jesus Christ) and Oxalá. Another important feast is the Feast de Yemanja every 2 February, on the shores of the borough of Rio Vermelho in
+
+Salvador, on the day the church celebrates Our Lady of the Navigators. 8 December, Immaculate Conception Day for Catholics, is also commonly dedicated to Yemanja' with votive offerings made in the sea throughout the Brazilian coast.[citation needed]
+
+Source: IBGE 2010.[58]
+
+Throughout Brazilian history Salvador has played an important role. Because of its location on Brazil's northeastern coast, the city served as an important link in the Portuguese empire throughout the colonial era, maintaining close commercial ties with Portugal and Portuguese colonies in Africa and Asia.[59]
+
+Salvador remained the preeminent city in Brazil until 1763 when it was replaced as the national capital by Rio de Janeiro. In the last ten years many high-rise office and apartment buildings were constructed, sharing the same blocks with colonial-era housing or commercial buildings.[60]
+
+With its beaches, humid tropical climate, numerous up-to-date shopping malls (The Shopping Iguatemi was the first shopping mall in Northeastern Brazil) and pleasant high-class residential areas, the city has much to offer its residents.
+
+Economically Salvador is one of Brazil's more important cities. Since its founding the city has been one of Brazil's most prominent ports and international trading centers. Boasting a large oil refinery, a petrochemical plant and other important industries, the city has made great strides in reducing its historical dependence on agriculture for its prosperity.[61]
+
+Salvador is the second most popular tourism destination in Brazil, after Rio de Janeiro.[62] Tourism and cultural activity are important generators of employment and income, boosting the arts and the preservation of artistic and cultural heritage.
+
+Chief among the points of interest are its famous Pelourinho (named after the colonial pillories that once stood there) district, its historic churches,[63] and its beaches. Salvador's tourism infrastructure is considered one of the most modern in World, especially in terms of lodging. The city offers accommodation to suit all tastes and standards, from youth hostels to international hotels. Construction is one of the most important activities in the city, and many international (mainly from Spain, Portugal and England)[64] and national developers are investing in the city and in the Bahian littoral zone.
+
+Ford Motor Company has a plant in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador, in the city of Camaçari, assembling the Ford EcoSport, Ford Fiesta, Ford Fiesta Sedan.[65] It was the first Automotive industry in Northeastern Brazil. The industry employs 800 engineers.[66]
+
+JAC Motors will have a plant in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador, in the city of Camaçari, the new industry will result 3,500 direct jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs, the production of 100,000 vehicles by year.[67]
+
+In December 2001, Monsanto Company inaugurated, at the Petrochemical Pole of Camaçari, in Metropolitan Region of Salvador, the first plant of the company designed to produce raw materials for the herbicide Roundup in South America. The investment is equivalent to US$500 million; US$350 million were spent in this initial phase. The Camaçari Plant, the largest unit of Monsanto outside of the United States, is also the only Monsanto plant manufacturing raw materials for the Roundup production line. The company started the civil works for the new plant in January 2000.[68]
+
+The Salvador coastline is one of the longest for cities in Brazil. There are 80 km (50 mi) of beaches distributed between the High City and the Low City, from Inema, in the railroad suburb to the Praia do Flamengo, on the other side of town. While the Low City beaches are bordered by the waters of the All Saints Bay (the country's most extensive bay), the High City beaches, from Farol da Barra to Flamengo, are bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. The exception is Porto da Barra Beach, the only High City beach located in the All Saints Bay.
+
+The capital's beaches range from calm inlets, ideal for swimming, sailing, diving and underwater fishing, as well as open sea inlets with strong waves, sought by surfers. There are also beaches surrounded by reefs, forming natural pools of stone, ideal for children.
+
+Interesting places to visit near Salvador include:
+
+The city is served by many shopping malls, including Shopping Iguatemi,[72] Salvador Shopping,[73] Shopping Barra,[74] and Shopping Paralela.[75]
+
+Salvador has four parks, green areas protected, as Jardim dos Namorados Park, Costa Azul Park, Park of the City, Park of Pituaçu.
+
+Jardim dos Namorados is located right next to Costa Azul Park and occupies an area of 15 hectares in Pituba, where many families used to spend their vacations in the 1950s. It was inaugurated in 1969, initially as a leisure area. It underwent a complete renovation in the 1990s, with the construction of an amphitheater with room for 500 people, sports courts, playgrounds and parking for cars and tourist buses.
+
+Park of the City is an important preservation area of the Atlantic forest. It was completely renovated in 2001, becoming a modern social, cultural and leisure place. The new park has 720 square meter of green area right in the middle of the city. Among the attractions are Praça das Flores (Flowers square), with more than five thousand ornamental plants and flowers.
+
+Besides its environment, the park has an infrastructure for children, with a special schedule of events taking place every October.[76]
+
+Created by state decree in 1973, Pituaçu Park occupies an area of 450 hectares and is one of the few Brazilian ecological parks located in an urban area. It is surrounded by Atlantic forest, with a good variety of plants and animals. There is also an artificial pond in the park, built in 1906 along with the Pituaçu Dam, whose purpose was to supply water to the city.[77]
+
+There are a number of possible leisure activities, ranging from cycloboats rides on the pond, to a 38 km (24 mi) long cycloway circling the entire reserve. A museum is also located in the park. Espaço Cravo is an outdoor museum with 800 pieces created by Mario Cravo, comprising Totems, winged and three-dimensional figures, as well as drawings and paintings.
+
+The city has several universities:
+
+Top high schools of the city according to Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio are:[78]
+
+Salvador is one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country. The number of homicides increased 418% from 2000 to 2010. From 1998 to 2008, the number of homicides of youths between the ages of 15 and 24 increased 435.1%. Gun violence in the state of Bahia more than doubled in the period from 2004 to 2014, and the city is in the top ten for gun violence of the 26 state capitals of Brazil. In 2014 the state of Bahia had the most murderers in the country. At the same time, Salvador has one of the lowest rates of suicide in the nation.[79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86]
+
+Salvador's historical and cultural aspects were inherited by the intermarriage of such ethnic groups as Native-Indian, African and European. This mixture can be seen in the religion, cuisine, cultural manifestations, and custom of Bahia's people. African cultural practices are particularly celebrated.[87]
+
+Gregório de Mattos, born in Salvador in 1636, was also educated by the Jesuits. He became the most important Baroque poet in colonial Brazil for his religious and satirical works. Father António Vieira was born in Lisbon in 1608, but was raised and educated in the Jesuit school of Salvador and died in the city in 1697. His erudite sermons have earned him the title of best writer of the Portuguese language in the Baroque era.[88]
+
+After the Independence of Brazil (1822), Salvador continued to play an important role in Brazilian literature. Significant 19th century writers associated with the city include Romantic poet Castro Alves (1847–1871) and diplomat Ruy Barbosa (1849–1923). In the 20th century, Bahia-born Jorge Amado (1912–2001), although not born in Salvador, helped popularize the culture of the city around the world in novels such as Jubiabá, Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos, and Tenda dos Milagres, the settings of which are in Salvador.[citation needed]
+
+The local cuisine, spicy and based on seafood (shrimp, fish), strongly relies on typically African ingredients and techniques, and is much appreciated throughout Brazil and internationally. The most typical ingredient is azeite-de-dendê, an oil extracted from a palm tree (Elaeis guineensis) brought from West Africa to Brazil during colonial times.[89]
+
+Using the milky coconut juice, they prepared a variety of seafood based dishes, such as Ensopados, Moquecas and Escabeche. The sugar cane bagasse was mixed with molasses and Rapadura, in the creation of coconut desserts like Cocada Branca and Preta. The remaining of the Portuguese Stew sauce was mixed with manioc flour to make a mush, which is a traditional Indian dish.[90] In the markets of Salvador, it is possible to find stands selling typical dishes of the colonial era. In the Sete Portas Market, customers eat Mocotó on Friday nights since the 1940s, when the market was inaugurated. In the restaurants of Mercado Modelo, Sarapatel, stews and several fried dishes are served regularly. In the São Joaquim, Santa Bárbara and São Miguel markets, there are stands selling typical food. They are also sold at stands located on the beaches, specially crab stews and oysters. The restaurants that sell typical dishes are located mostly along the coast and in Pelourinho. They prepare a wide variety of recipes that take palm tree oil.
+
+Traditional dishes include caruru, vatapá, acarajé, bobó-de-camarão, moqueca baiana, and abará. Some of these dishes, like the acarajé and abará, are also used as offerings in Candomblé rituals. But Salvador is not only typical food. Other recipes created by the slaves were the Haussá Rice (rice and jerked beef cooked together), the Munguzá, used as offering to the Candomblé deity Oxalá (who is the father of all deities, according to the religion) pleased the matrons very much. So did the Bolinhos the Fubá, the Cuscuz (cornmeal) and the Mingau (porridge). According to Arany Santana, the African Ipetê (used in the rituals to the deity Oxum) became the Shrimp bobó, and the Akará (honoring the deities Xangô and Iansã) became the world-famous Acarajé. The city has restaurants specialized on international cuisine also. There are also places that serve dishes from other states of Brazil, especially from Minas Gerais and the Northeast region.
+
+Capoeira is a unique mix of dance and martial art of Afro-Brazilian origin, combining agile dance moves with unarmed combat techniques. Capoeira in Portuguese literally means "chicken coop". The capoeira appeared in Quilombo dos Palmares, located in the Captaincy of Pernambuco, and Salvador is considered the home of modern capoeira branches.[91][92] In the first half of the 20th century, Salvador-born masters Mestre Bimba and Mestre Pastinha founded capoeira schools and helped standardize and popularize the art in Brazil and the world. The practice of Capoeira was banned in 1892, though in 1937 it was made legal.[93] In recent years, Capoeira has become more international and accessible even in Salvador.
+
+The artistic, cultural and social heritage of Salvador is preserved in museums. From Museu de Arte da Bahia (MAB), which is the oldest in the State, to Museu Náutico, the newest, the first capital of Brazil displays unique elements of history. Museu de Arte da Bahia has paintings, Chinese porcelain, furniture and sacred images from the 17th and 18th centuries. Museu Costa Pinto has privately owned items such as, pieces of art, crystal objects, and furniture from the 18th and 19th centuries. Museu da Cidade, where many items that help to preserve the heritage of old Salvador are kept. The Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, established in 1960, is located at a historic site on the Bay of All Saints, Solar da União.
+
+Some churches and monasteries also have museums located in their premises. Examples of this are the Carmo da Misericórdia and São Bento museums. After the forts were renovated, Museu Náutico was established in the Forte de Santo Antonio da Barra (Farol da Barra) and the Museum of Communication in Forte São Diogo. Other important museums located in Salvador are: Museu do Cacau, State Museum of Geology, Museu tempostal, Solar do Ferrão, Museu de Arte Antiga e Popular Henriqueta M Catharino, Museu Eugênio Teixeira Leal, Museu Rodin Bahia, and Museu das Portas do Carmo.
+
+The streets of Salvador are decorated with numerous murals and sculptures, many of which have been produced by the resident artist Bel Borba, a native of the city.[94]
+
+
+
+The Bahian Carnival (Portuguese: Carnaval) is the largest party on the planet.[95][96] Its dimensions are gigantic. For an entire week, almost 4 million people celebrate throughout 25 kilometers (16 mi) of streets, avenues, and squares. The direct organization of the party involves the participation of over 100,000 people[97] and Salvador receives an average of over 800,000 visitors. The affair is heavily policed and covered. Streets are patrolled by lines of police in single file and guarded by seated teams of five or six officers.[98] In 2010, coverage was provided by 4,446 journalists from the local, national, and international press and broadcast to 135 countries through 65 radio stations, 75 magazines, 139 video productions, 97 newspapers (including 21 international papers), 14 tv stations, and 168 websites.[99]
+
+The party official begins when Rei Momo ("King Momo", the King of Carnival) is handed the key to the city in the morning of the Thursday before Mardi Gras. In the Campo Grande, streets are lined with grandstands (camarotes). 60-foot-long trucks known as Trios Eléctricos carry a kick line of scantily-clad dancers along with the city's best-loved performers, such as Ivete Sangalo, Daniela Mercury, Cláudia Leitte, Chiclete com Banana, and Carlinhos Brown.[100] Much of the music played is axé or samba-reggae. Groups known as blocos participate, with the most famous being the blocos afros such as Malé Debalé, Olodum, and Filhos de Gandhi.
+
+The parades are organized into separate circuits. The Osmar Circuit, the oldest, goes from Campo Grande to Castro Alves Square. The Downtown Circuit runs through downtown and Pelourinho. The Dodô Circuit goes from Farol da Barra to Ondina along the coast. Since the Osmar Circuit is the oldest, it is where the event's most traditional groups parade. In Dodô, where the artist box seats are located, the party becomes lively toward the end of the afternoon and continues until morning.
+
+Black Bahia Funk Balls play more American music—including English music—than their counterparts in Rio, while Rio's music is considered inferior and less played.[citation needed] The local dancehalls which host the balls are also distinct.[101]
+
+The first books that arrived in Salvador, were brought by the Jesuits, who came with Tomé de Souza.[102] The first libraries or bookstores that appeared were under the control of the religious missionaries and were mostly composed of books on religion.
+
+The handcraft legacy of Bahia using only raw materials (straw, leather, clay, wood, seashells and beads), the most rudimentary crafts are reasonably inexpensive. Other pieces are created with the use of metals like gold, silver, copper and brass. The most sophisticated ones are ornamented with precious and semi-precious gems. The craftsmen and women generally choose religion as the main theme of their work.
+
+They portray the images of Catholic saints and Candomble deities on their pieces. The good luck charms such as the clenched fist, the four-leaf clover, the garlic and the famous Bonfim ribbons express the city's religious syncretism. Nature is also portrayed on these pieces, reflecting the local wildlife. Music appears in the atabaque drums, the rain sticks, the water drums and the famous berimbau, along with other typical instruments.[103]
+
+Salvador holds an international reputation as a city where musical instruments that produce unique sounds are made. These instruments are frequently used by world-famous artists in their recording sessions. The main handcrafts production in Salvador is located in Mercado Modelo, which is the biggest handcraft center in Latin America.[104]
+
+Pieces can also be purchased at Instituto de Artesanato de Mauá and at Instituto do Patrimônio Artístico e Cultural (IPAC). These are organizations that promote typical art in Bahia.
+
+Deputado Luís Eduardo Magalhães International Airport has an area of 6,900 square metres (74,271 sq ft) between sand dunes and native vegetation. It is 28 km (17 mi) north of Central Salvador, and the road to the airport has already become one of the city's main scenic attractions.[105]
+
+With cargo volume that grows every year with the economic growth of the state, the Port of Salvador, located in the Bahia de Todos os Santos, is the port with the most movement of containers of the North/Northeast and the second-leading fruit exporter in Brazil.
+
+Salvador Metro System is in operation since 2014, and its first stage was ready since March 2008, between Lapa and Aceso Norte Stations, and in 2009, it was ready the metro stations between Estação Accesso Norte and Pirajá. In December 2014, it opened as far as Retiro. In 2018, the system had 32 km (20 mi) and 20 stations and linked with the bus system.
+
+The main shareholders in Metro Salvador are the Spanish companies Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, Dimetronic, and ICF. It is expected that Metro Salvador will invest US$150 million in rolling stock and signalling and telecommunications equipment. The contract covers the first 11.9 km (7.4 mi) line from Pirajá to Lapa, which is due to open in 2003. The project is also financed by a US$150 million World Bank loan and contributions from the federal, Bahia state, and Salvador city governments.[106]
+
+The system was one of the actions for urban mobility in preparation for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The connection of Line 2 with Line 1 of Salvador Metro helps to connect the International Airport to Downtown Salvador and the Fonte Nova Stadium. The new Line 2 of Salvador Metro integrates the metro stations of the Rótula do Abacaxi and the beach city of Lauro de Freitas in the metropolitan area, passing through the airport at the Airport metro station.[107]
+
+The two line SkyRail Bahia monorail network is due to open in 2022.[108]
+
+The BR-101 and BR-116 federal highways cross Bahia from north to south, connecting Salvador to the rest of the country. At the Feira de Santana junction, take the BR-324 state highway. The capital of Bahia is served by several coach companies from almost every Brazilian state. BR-242, starting at São Roque do Paraguaçu (transversal direction), is linked to BR-116, bound to the middle–west region. Among the state highways stands BA-099, which makes connection to the north coast and BA-001, which makes connection to the south of Bahia. Buses provide direct service to most major Brazilian cities, including Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasília, as well as regional destinations. In 2007, the city had 586,951 vehicles, the largest number of the Northern and Northeastern Brazil.[109] Salvador has 2,500 public buses, and 2 million people are transported every day.[110]
+
+The bus station (rodoviária) is in Iguatemi, with direct buses to larger cities in the country and to many other destinations in the state. On the second floor are the counters for the different bus companies, and on the first floor is a small supermarket and a 24 h left luggage. Across the street is a large shopping center, Iguatemi, with a food court, connected by a pedestrian crossing.[111]
+
+Four paved highways connect the city to the national highway system. Running north from the Farol (lighthouse) de Itapoã are hundreds of kilometres of beaches. The beaches are accessible by the BA-099 highway or (Line of Coconut and Green Line), a (toll) road, which is kept in excellent condition, running parallel to the coast, with access roads leading off to the coast itself. The road runs along dunes of snow-white sand, and the coast itself is an almost unbroken line of coconut palms. The communities along the coast range from fishing villages to Praia do Forte.
+
+The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Salvador, such as to and from work, on a weekday is 94 min, and 33% of public transit riders ride for more than 2 h every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 33 min, and 70% of riders wait for over 20 mib on average every day. The average distance that people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 8 km, and 18% travel for over 12 km in a single trip.[113]
+
+Although the creation of Salvador was masterminded by the Kingdom of Portugal and its project conducted by the Portuguese engineer Luís Dias (who was responsible for the city's original design), the continuous growth of the capital through the decades was completely spontaneous.[citation needed] The walls of the city-fortress could not hold the expansion of the city, towards the Carmo and the area where now stands Castro Alves Square. At the time of its foundation, Salvador had only two squares and the first neighborhood ever built here was the Historic City Center. Pelourinho and Carmo came subsequently, created as a consequence of the growing need of space that the religious orders had. With the rapid expansion, the neighborhoods grew and many of them were clustered in the same area, so today there are not accurate records as to their exact number. For urban management purposes, the city is currently divided on 17 political-administrative zones. However, due to their very cultural relevance and to postal conveniences, the importance of the neighborhoods of Salvador remains intact.
+
+Salvador is divided into a number of distinct neighborhoods, with the most well known districts being Pelourinho, Comércio, and Old Downtown, all located in West Zone. Barra, with its Farol da Barra, beaches and which is where one of the Carnival circuits begins, Barra is home of the Portuguese Hospital and Spanish Hospital, the neighborhood is located in South Zone. Vitória, a neighborhood with many high rise buildings, is located in South Zone.
+Campo Grande, with its Dois de Julho Square and the monument to Bahia's independence, is also located in South Zone, as is Graça, an important residential area.
+Ondina, with Salvador's Zoobotanical Garden and the site where the Barra-Ondina Carnival circuit ends, the neighborhood is home of the Spanish Club, is also a neighborhood in the South Zone.
+
+Itaigara, Pituba, Horto Florestal, Caminho das Árvores, Loteamento Aquárius, Brotas, Stiep, Costa Azul, Armação, Jaguaribe and Stella Maris are the wealthiest and the New Downtown neighborhoods in the East Zone and the city. Rio Vermelho, a neighborhood with a rich architectural history and numerous restaurants and bars, is located in the South Zone. Itapoã, known throughout Brazil as the home of Vinicius de Moraes and for being the setting of the song "Tarde em Itapoã", is located in East Zone.
+
+The Northwest area of the city in along the Bay of All Saints, also known as Cidade Baixa ("Lower city"), contains the impoverished suburban neighborhoods of Periperi, Paripe, Lobato, Liberdade, Nova Esperança, and Calçada. The neighborhood of Liberdade (Liberty) has the largest proportion of Afro-Brazilians of Salvador and Brazil.[114]
+
+The Historic Center of Salvador was designated in 1985 a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.[28] The city represents a fine example the Portuguese urbanism from the middle of the 16th century with its higher administrative town and its lower commercial town, and a large portion of the city has retained the old character of its streets and colourful houses.
+
+As the first capital of Portuguese America, Salvador cultivated slave labor and had its pillories ("pelourinhos") installed in open places like the Terreiro de Jesus and the squares know today as Tomé de Sousa and Castro Alves. The pillories were a symbol of authority and justice for some and of lashings and injustice for the majority.[115] The one erected for a short time in what is now the Historical Center, and later moved to what is now the Praça da Piedade (Square of Piety), ended up lending its name to the historical and architectural complex of Pelourinho, part of the city's upper town.
+
+Since 1992, the Pelourinho neighborhood has been subject to a nearly US$100 million "restoration" that has led to the rebuilding of hundreds of buildings' façades and the expulsion of the vast majority of the neighborhood's Afro-descendent population. This process has given rise to substantial political debate in the State of Bahia, since the Pelourinho's former residents have been for the most part excluded from the renovation's economic benefits (reaped by a few).[116] A major restoration effort resulted in making the area a tourist attraction.[117]
+
+Salvador's considerable wealth and status during colonial times (as capital of the colony during 250 years and which gave rise to the Pelourinho) is reflected in the magnificence of its colonial palaces, churches and convents, most of them dating from the 17th and 18th centuries. These include:
+
+Salvador provides visitors and residents with various sport activities. The Fonte Nova Arena, also known as Estádio Octávio Mangabeira is a football stadium inaugurated on 28 January 1951 in Salvador, Bahia, with a maximum capacity of 66,080 people. The stadium has now been replaced with a new stadium named Itaipava Arena Fonte Nova with a capacity of 56,000 people. This stadium hosted matches of 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and the subsequent 2014 FIFA World Cup, as well as the football competition in the 2016 Summer Olympics.  The stadium is owned by the Bahia government, and is the home ground of Esporte Clube Bahia. Its formal name honors Octávio Cavalcanti Mangabeira, a civil engineer, journalist, and former Bahia state governor from 1947 to 1954. The stadium is nicknamed Fonte Nova, because it is located at Ladeira das Fontes das Pedras. The stadium was in 2007 closed due to an accident, and the E.C. Bahia home matches now happen in another stadium, in Pituaçu.
+
+Esporte Clube Bahia and Esporte Clube Vitória are Salvador's main football teams. Bahia has won 2 national titles, Brazil Trophy in 1959 and the Brazilian League in 1988, while Vitória was a runner up in the Brazilian league in 1993 and Brazil Cup in 2010.
+
+Salvador has two large green areas for the practice of golf. Cajazeiras Golf and Country Club has an 18-hole course, instructors, caddies and equipment for rent. Itapuã Golf club, located in the area of the Sofitel Hotel, has a 9-hole course, equipment store, caddies and clubs for rent. Tennis is very popular among Salvador's elites, with a great number of players and tournaments in the city's private clubs. Brasil Open, the country's most important tournament happens every year in Bahia.[citation needed]
+
+During the last decades, volleyball has grown steadily in Salvador, especially after the gold medal won by Brazil in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.[citation needed] The most important tournaments in Bahia are the State Championship, the State League tournament and the Primavera Games, and the main teams are Associação Atlética da Bahia, Bahiano de Tênis, and Clube the Regatas Itapagipe. There are also beach volleyball events. Salvador has housed many international tournaments. Federação Bahina de Voleibol (the state league) can inform the schedule of tournaments. Bowling is practiced both by teenagers and adults in Salvador. Boliche do Aeroclube and Space Bowling are equipped with automatic lanes as well as a complete bar infrastructure.
+
+Bahia's basketball league exists since 1993 and has 57 teams. The sport is very popular in the city of Salvador, especially among students.[118] There are several courts scattered across the city, where is possible to play for free, like the one located at Bahia Sol square, where people play.[119] There are also several gymnasiums, in clubs like Bahiano de Tênis and Associação Atlética and the Antonio Balbino Gymnasiums (popularly known as "Balbininho"), which is an arena that can hold up to 7,000 people.
+
+Todos os Santos Bay and Salvador's climatic conditions are ideal for competition and recreational sailing. The city is equipped with good infrastructure for practice of sailing, such as rental and sale of dock space, boat maintenance, restaurants, snack bar, convenience stores, nautical products stores, boat rental agencies, VHF and SSB communication systems, events, and total assistance to crews.[120] The large number of sailing events organized by clubs and syndicates, like oceanic races and typical boats (wooden fishing boats and canoes) races, demonstrates the sport's growing force. Currently, Salvador has a national racing schedule with dozens of events, also receiving the Mini Transat 6.50 and Les Illes du Soleil races.[120]
+
+Rowing boat races started in the city more than a hundred years ago.[121] It was originally practiced by young men from traditional families, who spent their summer vacations there. The sport is a leisure option in Cidade Baixa (the lower part of the city). Esporte Clube Vitória and Clube São Salvador were the pioneers in the sport. Nowadays, these two entities and also Clube de Regatas Itapagipe lead the competitions that take place in the city. With the recent renovation of the Dique do Tororó area, Salvador received new lanes for the practice of the sport.
+
+Salvador's Twin towns and sister cities are:[122]

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+Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquess of Dalí de Púbol (/ˈdɑːli, dɑːˈliː/,[1][2] Catalan: [səlβəˈðo ðəˈli], Spanish: [salβaˈðoɾ ðaˈli]; 11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship and the striking and bizarre images in his work.
+
+Born in Figueres, Catalonia, Dalí received his formal education in fine arts at Madrid. Influenced by Impressionism and the Renaissance masters from a young age, he became increasingly attracted to Cubism and avant-garde movements.[3] He moved closer to Surrealism in the late 1920s and joined the Surrealist group in 1929, soon becoming one of its leading exponents. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931, and is one of the most famous Surrealist paintings. Dalí lived in France throughout the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) before leaving for the United States in 1940 where he achieved commercial success. He returned to Spain in 1948 where he announced his return to the Catholic faith and developed his "nuclear mysticism" style, based on his interest in classicism, mysticism and recent scientific developments.[4]
+
+Dalí's artistic repertoire included painting, graphic arts, film, sculpture, design and photography, at times in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays and criticism. Major themes in his work include dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science and his closest personal relationships. To the dismay of those who held his work in high regard, and to the irritation of his critics, his eccentric and ostentatious public behavior often drew more attention than his artwork.[5][6] His public support for the Francoist regime, his commercial activities and the quality and authenticity of some of his late works have also been controversial.[7] His life and work were an important influence on other Surrealists, pop art and contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.[8][9] There are two major museums devoted to his work: The Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain and the Salvador Dalí Museum in Florida.
+
+Salvador Dalí was born on 11 May 1904, at 8:45 am,[10] on the first floor of Carrer Monturiol, 20 in the town of Figueres, in the Empordà region, close to the French border in Catalonia, Spain.[11] Dalí's older brother, who had also been named Salvador (born 12 October 1901), had died of gastroenteritis nine months earlier, on 1 August 1903. His father, Salvador Rafael Aniceto Dalí Cusí (1872–1950)[12] was a middle-class lawyer and notary,[13] an anti-clerical atheist and Catalan federalist, whose strict disciplinary approach was tempered by his wife, Felipa Domènech Ferrés (1874–1921),[14] who encouraged her son's artistic endeavors.[15] In the summer of 1912, the family moved to the top floor of Carrer Monturiol 24 (presently 10).[16][17] Dalí later attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes"[18] to an "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descendants of the Moors.[6][19]
+
+Dalí was haunted by the idea of his dead brother throughout his life, mythologizing him in his writings and art. Dalí said of him, "[we] resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections."[20] He "was probably a first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute".[20] Images of his brother would reappear in his later works, including Portrait of My Dead Brother (1963).
+
+Dalí also had a sister, Anna Maria, who was three years younger.[13] In 1949, she published a book about her brother, Dalí as Seen by His Sister.[21][22]
+
+His childhood friends included future FC Barcelona footballers Sagibarba and Josep Samitier. During holidays at the Catalan resort of Cadaqués, the trio played football together.[23]
+
+Dalí attended the Municipal Drawing School at Figueres from 1916 and also discovered modern painting on a summer vacation trip to Cadaqués with the family of Ramon Pichot, a local artist who made regular trips to Paris.[13] The next year, Dalí's father organized an exhibition of his charcoal drawings in their family home. He had his first public exhibition at the Municipal Theatre in Figueres in 1918,[24] a site he would return to decades later. In early 1921 the Pichot family introduced Dalí to Futurism and Dalí's uncle Anselm Domenech, who owned a bookshop in Barcelona, supplied him with books and magazines on Cubism and contemporary art.[25]
+
+On 6 February 1921, Dalí's mother died of uterine cancer.[26] Dalí was 16 years old and later said his mother's death "was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul."[6][27] After his wife's death, Dalí's father married her sister. Dalí did not resent this marriage, because he had great love and respect for his aunt.[13]
+
+In 1922, Dalí moved into the Residencia de Estudiantes (Students' Residence) in Madrid[13] and studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts). A lean 1.72 metres (5 ft 7 3⁄4 in) tall,[28] Dalí already drew attention as an eccentric and dandy. He had long hair and sideburns, coat, stockings, and knee-breeches in the style of English aesthetes of the late 19th century.[29]
+
+At the Residencia, he became close friends with Pepín Bello, Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca, and others associated with the Madrid avant-garde group Ultra.[30] The friendship with Lorca had a strong element of mutual passion,[31] but Dalí said he rejected the poet's sexual advances.[32] Dalí's friendship with Lorca was to remain one of his most emotionally intense relationships until the poet's death at the hands of Nationalist forces in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.[7]
+
+Also in 1922, he began what would become a lifelong relationship with the Prado Museum, which he felt was, 'incontestably the best museum of old paintings in the world.'[33]  Each Sunday morning, Dalí went to
+the Prado Museum to study the works of the great masters. 'This was the start of a monk-like period for me, devoted entirely to solitary work: visits to the Prado, where, pencil in hand, I analyzed all of the great masterpieces, studio work, models, research.'[34]
+
+Dalí's paintings in which he experimented with Cubism earned him the most attention from his fellow students since there were no Cubist artists in Madrid at the time.[35] Cabaret Scene (1922) is a typical example of such work. Through his association with members of the Ultra group, Dalí became more acquainted with avant-garde movements, including Dada and Futurism.  One of his earliest works to show a strong Futurist and Cubist influence was the watercolor Night-Walking Dreams (1922).[36] At this time, Dalí also read Freud and Lautréamont who were to have a profound influence on his work.[37]
+
+In May 1925 Dalí exhibited eleven works in a group exhibition held by the newly-formed Sociedad Ibérica de Artistas in Madrid. Seven of the works were in his Cubist mode and four in a more realist style. A number of leading critics praised Dalí's work.[38] Dalí held his first solo exhibition at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, from 14 to 27 November 1925.[39][40]  This exhibition, before his exposure to Surrealism, included twenty-two works and was a critical and commercial success.[41]
+
+In April 1926 Dalí made his first trip to Paris where he met Pablo Picasso, whom he revered.[6] Picasso had already heard favorable reports about Dalí from Joan Miró, a fellow Catalan who later introduced him to many Surrealist friends.[6] As he developed his own style over the next few years, Dalí made a number of works strongly influenced by Picasso and Miró.[42] Dalí was also influenced by the work of Yves Tanguy, and he later allegedly told Tanguy's niece, "I pinched everything from your uncle Yves."[43]
+
+Dalí left the Royal Academy in 1926, shortly before his final exams.[6] His mastery of painting skills at that time was evidenced by his realistic The Basket of Bread, painted in 1926.[44]
+
+Later that year he exhibited again at Galeries Dalmau, from 31 December 1926 to 14 January 1927, with the support of the art critic Sebastià Gasch [es].[45][46] The show included twenty-three paintings and seven drawings, with the "Cubist" works displayed in a separate section from the "objective" works. The critical response was generally positive with Composition with Three Figures (Neo-Cubist Academy) singled out for particular attention.[47]
+
+From 1927 Dalí's work became increasingly influenced by Surrealism. Two of these works Honey is Sweeter than Blood (1927) and Gadget and Hand (1927) were shown at the annual Autumn Salon (Saló de tardor) in Barcelona in October 1927. Dalí described the earlier of these works, Honey is Sweeter than Blood, as "equidistant between Cubism and Surrealism."[48] The works featured a number of elements that were to become characteristic of his Surrealist period including dreamlike images, precise draftsmanship, idiosyncratic inconography (such as rotting donkeys and dismembered bodies), and lighting and landscapes strongly evocative of his native Catalonia. The works provoked bemusement among the public and debate among critics about whether Dalí had become a Surrealist.[49]
+
+Influenced by his reading of Freud, Dalí increasingly introduced suggestive sexual imagery and symbolism into his work. He submitted Dialogue on the Beach (Unsatisfied Desires) (1928) to the Barcelona Autumn Salon for 1928 but the work was rejected because "it was not fit to be exhibited in any gallery habitually visited by the numerous public little prepared for certain surprises."[50] The resulting scandal was widely covered in the Barcelona press and prompted a popular Madrid illustrated weekly to publish an interview with the now controversial artist.[51]
+
+Some trends in Dalí's work that would continue throughout his life were already evident in the 1920s. Dalí was influenced by many styles of art, ranging from the most academically classic, to the most cutting-edge avant-garde.[52] His classical influences included Raphael, Bronzino, Francisco de Zurbarán, Vermeer and Velázquez.[53] Exhibitions of his works attracted much attention and a mixture of praise and puzzled debate from critics who noted an apparent inconsistency in his work by the use of both traditional and modern techniques and motifs between works and within individual works.[54]
+
+In the mid-1920s Dalí grew a neatly trimmed moustache. In later decades he cultivated a more flamboyant one in the manner of 17th-century Spanish master painter Diego Velázquez, and this moustache became a well known Dalí icon.[55]
+
+In 1929, Dalí collaborated with Surrealist film director Luis Buñuel on the short film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog). His main contribution was to help Buñuel write the script for the film. Dalí later claimed to have also played a significant role in the filming of the project, but this is not substantiated by contemporary accounts.[56] In August 1929, Dalí met his lifelong muse and future wife Gala,[57] born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. She was a Russian immigrant ten years his senior, who at that time was married to Surrealist poet Paul Éluard.[58]
+
+In works such as The First Days of Spring, The Great Masturbator and The Lugubrious Game Dalí continued his exploration of the themes of sexual anxiety and unconscious desires.[59] Dalí's first Paris exhibition was at the recently opened Goemans Gallery in November 1929 and featured eleven works. In his preface to the catalog, André Breton described Dalí's new work as "the most hallucinatory that has been produced up to now."[60] The exhibition was a commercial success but the critical response was divided.[60] In the same year, Dalí officially joined the Surrealist group in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris. The Surrealists hailed what Dalí was later to call his paranoiac-critical method of accessing the subconscious for greater artistic creativity.[13][15]
+
+Meanwhile, Dalí's relationship with his father was close to rupture. Don Salvador Dalí y Cusi strongly disapproved of his son's romance with Gala, and saw his connection to the Surrealists as a bad influence on his morals. The final straw was when Don Salvador read in a Barcelona newspaper that his son had recently exhibited in Paris a drawing of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, with a provocative inscription: "Sometimes, I spit for fun on my mother's portrait".[6][19] Outraged, Don Salvador demanded that his son recant publicly. Dalí refused, perhaps out of fear of expulsion from the Surrealist group, and was violently thrown out of his paternal home on 28 December 1929. His father told him that he would be disinherited, and that he should never set foot in Cadaqués again. The following summer, Dalí and Gala rented a small fisherman's cabin in a nearby bay at Port Lligat. He soon bought the cabin, and over the years enlarged it by buying neighboring ones, gradually building his beloved villa by the sea. Dalí's father would eventually relent and come to accept his son's companion.[61]
+
+In 1931, Dalí painted one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory,[62] which developed a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket watches. The general interpretation of the work is that the soft watches are a rejection of the assumption that time is rigid or deterministic. This idea is supported by other images in the work, such as the wide expanding landscape, and other limp watches shown being devoured by ants.[63]
+
+Dalí had two important exhibitions at the Pierre Colle Gallery in Paris in June 1931 and May–June 1932. The earlier exhibition included sixteen paintings of which The Persistence of Memory attracted the most attention. Some of the notable features of the exhibitions were the proliferation of images and references to Dalí's muse Gala and the inclusion of Surrealist Objects such as Hypnagogic Clock and Clock Based on the Decomposition of Bodies.[64] Dalí's last, and largest, exhibition at the Pierre Colle Gallery was held in June 1933 and included twenty-two paintings, ten drawings and two objects. One critic noted Dalí's precise draftsmanship and attention to detail, describing him as a "paranoiac of geometrical temperament".[65] Dalí's first New York exhibition was held at Julien Levy's gallery in November–December 1933. The exhibition featured twenty-six works and was a commercial and critical success. The New Yorker critic praised the precision and lack of sentimentality in the works, calling them "frozen nightmares."[66]
+
+Dalí and Gala, having lived together since 1929, were civilly married on 30 January 1934 in Paris.[67] They later remarried in a Church ceremony on 8 August 1958 at Sant Martí Vell.[68] In addition to inspiring many artworks throughout her life, Gala would act as Dalí's business manager, supporting their extravagant lifestyle while adeptly steering clear of insolvency. Gala, who herself engaged in extra-marital affairs,[69] seemed to tolerate Dalí's dalliances with younger muses, secure in her own position as his primary relationship. Dalí continued to paint her as they both aged, producing sympathetic and adoring images of her. The "tense, complex and ambiguous relationship" lasting over 50 years would later become the subject of an opera, Jo, Dalí (I, Dalí) by Catalan composer Xavier Benguerel.[70]
+
+Dalí's first visit to the United States in November 1934 attracted widespread press coverage. His second New York exhibition was held at the Julien Levy Gallery in November–December 1934 and was again a commercial and critical success. Dalí delivered three lectures on Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and other venues during which he told his audience for the first time that "[t]he only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad."[71] The heiress Caresse Crosby, the inventor of the brassiere, organized a farewell fancy dress ball for Dalí on 18 January 1935. Dalí wore a glass case on his chest containing a brassiere and Gala dressed as a woman giving birth through her head. A Paris newspaper later claimed that the Dalís had dressed as the Lindbergh baby and his kidnapper, a claim which Dalí denied.[72]
+
+While the majority of the Surrealist group had become increasingly associated with leftist politics, Dalí maintained an ambiguous position on the subject of the proper relationship between politics and art. Leading Surrealist André Breton accused Dalí of defending the "new" and "irrational" in "the Hitler phenomenon", but Dalí quickly rejected this claim, saying, "I am Hitlerian neither in fact nor intention".[73] Dalí insisted that Surrealism could exist in an apolitical context and refused to explicitly denounce fascism.[74]  Later in 1934, Dalí was subjected to a "trial", in which he narrowly avoided being expelled from the Surrealist group.[75] To this, Dalí retorted, "The difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist."[76][77]
+
+In 1936, Dalí took part in the London International Surrealist Exhibition. His lecture, titled Fantômes paranoiaques authentiques, was delivered while wearing a deep-sea diving suit and helmet.[78] He had arrived carrying a billiard cue and leading a pair of Russian wolfhounds, and had to have the helmet unscrewed as he gasped for breath. He commented that "I just wanted to show that I was 'plunging deeply' into the human mind."[79]
+
+Dalí's first solo London exhibition was held at the Alex, Reid and Lefevre Gallery the same year. The show included twenty-nine paintings and eighteen drawings. The critical response was generally favorable, although the Daily Telegraph critic wrote: "These pictures from the subconscious reveal so skilled a craftsman that the artist's return to full consciousness may be awaited with interest."[80]
+
+In December 1936 Dalí participated in the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at MoMA and a solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. Both exhibitions attracted large attendances and widespread press coverage. The painting Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936) attracted particular attention.[81] On 14 December, Dalí, aged 32, was featured on the cover of Time magazine.[6]
+
+From 1933 Dalí was supported by Zodiac, a group of affluent admirers who each contributed to a monthly stipend for the painter in exchange for a painting of their choice.[82] From 1936 Dalí's main patron in London was the wealthy Edward James who would support him financially for two years. One of the Dalí's most important paintings from the period of James' patronage was The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937). They also collaborated on two of the most enduring icons of the Surrealist movement: the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa.[83]
+
+Dalí was in London when the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936.  When he later learned that his friend Lorca had been executed by Nationalist forces, Dalí's claimed response was to shout: "Olé!" Dalí was to include frequent references to the poet in his art and writings for the remainder of his life.[84] Nevertheless, Dalí avoided taking a public stand for or against the Republic for the duration of the conflict.[85]
+
+In January 1938, Dalí unveiled Rainy Taxi, a three-dimensional artwork consisting of an automobile and two mannequin occupants being soaked with rain from within the taxi. The piece was first displayed at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, organized by André Breton and Paul Éluard. The Exposition was designed by artist Marcel Duchamp, who also served as host.[86][87][88]
+
+In March that year, Dalí met Sigmund Freud thanks to Stefan Zweig. Dalí started to sketch Freud's portrait, while the 82-year-old celebrity confided to others: "This boy looks like a fanatic." Dalí was delighted upon hearing later about this comment from his hero.[6]
+
+In September 1938, Salvador Dalí was invited by Gabrielle Coco Chanel to her house "La Pausa" in Roquebrune on the French Riviera. There he painted numerous paintings he later exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery in New York.[89][90] This exhibition in March–April 1939 included twenty-one paintings and eleven drawings. Life reported that no exhibition in New York had been so popular since Whistler's Mother was shown in 1934.[91]
+
+At the 1939 New York World's Fair, Dalí debuted his Dream of Venus Surrealist pavilion, located in the Amusements Area of the exposition. It featured bizarre sculptures, statues, mermaids, and live nude models in "costumes" made of fresh seafood, an event photographed by Horst P. Horst, George Platt Lynes and Murray Korman.[92] Dalí was angered by changes to his designs, railing against mediocrities who thought that "a woman with the tail of a fish is possible; a woman with the head of a fish impossible."[93]
+
+Soon after Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War in April 1939, Dalí wrote to Luis Buñuel denouncing socialism and Marxism and praising Catholicism and the Falange. As a result, Buñuel broke off relations with Dalí.[94]
+
+In the May issue of the Surrealist magazine Minotaure, André Breton announced Dalí's expulsion from the Surrealist group, claiming that Dalí had espoused race war and that the over-refinement of his paranoiac-critical method was a repudiation of Surrealist automatism. This led many Surrealists to break off relations with Dalí.[95] In 1949 Breton coined the derogatory nickname "Avida Dollars" (avid for dollars), an anagram for "Salvador Dalí".[96] This was a derisive reference to the increasing commercialization of Dalí's work, and the perception that Dalí sought self-aggrandizement through fame and fortune.
+
+The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 saw the Dalís in France. Following the German invasion they were able to escape because on 20 June 1940 they were issued visas by Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France. They crossed into Portugal and subsequently sailed on the Excambion from Lisbon to New York in August 1940.[97]  Dalí and Gala were to live in the United States for eight years, splitting their time between New York and the Monterey Peninsula, California.[98][99]
+
+Dalí spent the winter of 1940–41 at Hampton Manor, the residence of Caresse Crosby, in Caroline County, Virginia, where he worked on various projects including his autobiography and paintings for his upcoming exhibition.[100][101]
+
+Dalí announced the death of the Surrealist movement and the return of classicism in his exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in April–May 1941. The exhibition included nineteen paintings (among them Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire and The Face of War) and other works. In his catalog essay and media comments Dalí proclaimed a return to form, control, structure and the Golden Section. Sales however were disappointing and the majority of critics did not believe there had been a major change in Dalí's work.[102]
+
+Dalí was the subject of a major joint retrospective exhibition with Joan Miró at MoMA from November 1941 to February 1942, Dalí being represented by forty-two paintings and sixteen drawings. Dalí's work attracted most of the attention of critics and the exhibition later toured eight American cities, enhancing his reputation in America.[103]
+
+In October 1942, Dalí's autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí was published simultaneously in New York and London and was reviewed widely by the press. Time magazine's reviewer called it "one of the most irresistible books of the year".  George Orwell later wrote a scathing review in the Saturday Book.[104][105] A passage in the autobiography in which Dalí claimed that Buñuel was solely responsible for the anti-clericalism in the film L'Age d'Or may have indirectly led to Buñuel losing his position at MoMA in 1943.[106][107] Dalí also published a novel Hidden Faces in 1944 with less critical and commercial success.[108]
+
+In the catalog essay for his exhibition at the Knoedler Gallery in New York in 1943 Dalí continued his attack on the Surrealist movement, writing: "Surrealism will at least have served to give experimental proof that total sterility and attempts at automatizations have gone too far and have led to a totalitarian system. ... Today's laziness and the total lack of technique have reached their paroxysm in the psychological signification of the current use of the college [collage]".[109] The critical response to the society portraits in the exhibition, however, was generally negative.[110]
+
+In November–December 1945 Dalí exhibited new work at the Bignou Gallery in New York. The exhibition included eleven oil paintings, watercolors, drawings and illustrations. Works included Basket of Bread, Atomic and Uranian Melancholic Ideal, and My Wife Nude Contemplating her own Body Transformed into Steps, the Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture. The exhibition was notable for works in Dalí's new classicism style and those heralding his "atomic period".[111]
+
+During the war years Dalí was also engaged in projects in various other fields. He executed designs for a number of ballets including Labyrinth (1942), Sentimental Colloquy, Mad Tristan, and The Cafe of Chinitas (all 1944).[112] In 1945 he created the dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's film Spellbound.[113] He also produced art work and designs for products such as perfumes, cosmetics, hosiery and ties.[114]
+
+In 1946 Dalí worked with Walt Disney and animator John Hench on an unfinished animated film Destino.[115]
+
+Dalí exhibited new work at the Bignou Gallery from November 1947 to January 1948. The 14 oil paintings and other works in the exhibition reflected Dalí's increasing interest in atomic physics. Notable works included Dematerialization Near the Nose of Nero (The Separation of the Atom), Intra-Atomic Equilibrium of a Swan's Feather, and a study for Leda Atomica. The proportions of the latter work were worked out in collaboration with a mathematician.[116]
+
+In early 1948 Dalí's 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship was published. The book was a mixture of practical advice on painting, and anecdotes and Dalínian polemics.[117]
+
+In 1948 Dalí and Gala moved back into their house in Port Lligat, on the coast near Cadaqués. For the next three decades they would spend most of their time there, spending winters in Paris and New York.[6][61] Dalí 's decision to live in Spain under Franco and his public support for the regime prompted outrage from many anti-Francoist artists and intellectuals. Pablo Picasso refused to mention Dalí's name or acknowledge his existence for the rest of his life.[118] In 1960, André Breton unsuccessfully fought against the inclusion of Dalí's Sistine Madonna in the Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanter's Domain exhibition organized by Marcel Duchamp in New York.[119]  Breton and other Surrealists issued a tract to coincide with the exhibition denouncing Dalí as "the ex-apologist of Hitler... and friend of Franco."[120]
+
+In December 1949 Dalí's sister Anna Maria published her book Salvador Dalí Seen by his Sister. Dalí was angered by passages which he considered derogatory towards his wife Gala and broke off relations with his family. When Dalí's father died in September 1950 Dalí learned that he had been virtually disinherited in his will. A two-year legal dispute followed over paintings and drawings Dalí had left in his family home, during which Dalí was accused of assaulting a public notary.[121]
+
+As Dalí moved further towards embracing Catholicism he introduced more religious iconography and themes in his painting. In 1949 he painted a study for The Madonna of Port Lligat (first version, 1949) and showed it to Pope Pius XII during an audience arranged to discuss Dalí 's marriage to Gala.[122] This work was a precursor to the phase Dalí dubbed "Nuclear Mysticism," a fusion of Einsteinian physics, classicism and Catholic mysticism.  In paintings such as The Madonna of Port Lligat, The Christ of Saint John on the Cross and The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, Dalí sought to synthesize Christian iconography with images of material disintegration inspired by nuclear physics.[123][124] His later Nuclear Mysticism works included La Gare de Perpignan (1965) and The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968–70).
+
+Dalí's keen interest in natural science and mathematics was further manifested by the proliferation of images of DNA and rhinoceros horn shapes in works from the mid-1950s. According to Dalí, the rhinoceros horn signifies divine geometry because it grows in a logarithmic spiral.[125] Dalí was also fascinated by the tesseract (a four-dimensional cube), using it, for example, in Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus).
+
+Dalí had been extensively using optical illusions such as double images, anamorphosis, negative space, visual puns and trompe l'œil since his Surrealist period and this continued in his later work. At some point, Dalí had a glass floor installed in a room near his studio in Port Lligat. He made extensive use of it to study foreshortening, both from above and from below, incorporating dramatic perspectives of figures and objects into his paintings.[126]:17–18, 172  He also experimented with the bulletist technique[127] pointillism, enlarged half-tone dot grids and stereoscopic images.[126] He was among the first artists to employ holography in an artistic manner.[128] In Dalí's later years, young artists such as Andy Warhol proclaimed him an important influence on pop art.[129]
+
+In 1960, Dalí began work on his Theatre-Museum in his home town of Figueres. It was his largest single project and a main focus of his energy through to 1974, when it opened. He continued to make additions through the mid-1980s.[130][131]
+
+In 1955 Dalí met Nanita Kalaschnikoff, who was to become a close friend, muse and model.[132] At a French nightclub in 1965 Dalí met Amanda Lear, a fashion model then known as Peki D'Oslo. Lear became his protégée and one of his muses.  According to Lear, she and Dalí were united in a "spiritual marriage" on a deserted mountaintop.[133][134]
+
+In 1968, Dalí bought a castle in Púbol for Gala, and from 1971 she would retreat there for weeks at a time, Dalí having agreed not to visit without her written permission.[61] His fears of abandonment and estrangement from his longtime artistic muse contributed to depression and failing health.[6]
+
+In 1980, at age 76, Dalí's health deteriorated sharply and he was treated for depression, drug addiction and Parkinson-like symptoms, including a severe tremor in his right arm. There were also allegations that Gala had been supplying Dalí with pharmaceuticals from her own prescriptions.[135]
+
+Gala died on 10 June 1982, at the age of 87. After her death, Dalí moved from Figueres to the castle in Púbol, where she was entombed.[6][61][136]
+
+In 1982, King Juan Carlos bestowed on Dalí the title of Marqués de Dalí de Púbol[137][138] (Marquess of Dalí of Púbol) in the nobility of Spain, Púbol being where Dalí then lived. The title was initially hereditary, but at Dalí's request was changed to life-only in 1983.[137]
+
+In May 1983, what was said to be Dalí's last painting, The Swallow's Tail, was revealed. The work was heavily influenced by the mathematical catastrophe theory of René Thom. However, some critics have questioned how Dalí could have executed a painting with such precision given the severe tremor in his painting arm.[139]
+
+From early 1984 Dalí's depression worsened and he refused food, leading to severe undernourishment.[140] Dalí had previously stated his intention to put himself into a state of suspended animation as he had read that some microorganisms could do.[141] In August 1984 a fire broke out in Dalí's bedroom and he was hospitalized with severe burns. Two judicial inquiries found that the fire was caused by an electrical fault and no findings of negligence were made.[142] After his release from hospital Dalí moved to the Torre Galatea, an annex to the Dalí Theatre-Museum.[143]
+
+There have been allegations that Dalí was forced by his guardians to sign blank canvases that could later be used in forgeries.[144] It is also alleged that he knowingly sold otherwise-blank lithograph paper which he had signed, possibly producing over 50,000 such sheets from 1965 until his death.[6] As a result, art dealers tend to be wary of late graphic works attributed to Dalí.[145]
+
+In July 1986, Dalí had a pacemaker implanted. On his return to his Theatre-Museum he made a brief public appearance, saying:
+
+When you are a genius, you do not have the right to die, because we are necessary for the progress of humanity.[146][147]
+
+In November 1988, Dalí entered hospital with heart failure. On 5 December 1988, he was visited by King Juan Carlos, who confessed that he had always been a serious devotee of Dalí.[148] Dalí gave the king a drawing, Head of Europa, which would turn out to be Dalí's final drawing.
+
+On the morning of 23 January 1989, while his favorite record of Tristan and Isolde played, Dalí died of heart failure at the age of 84. He is buried in the crypt below the stage of his Theatre-Museum in Figueres. The location is across the street from the church of Sant Pere, where he had his baptism, first communion, and funeral, and is only 450 metres (1,480 ft) from the house where he was born.[149]
+
+The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation currently serves as his official estate.[150] The US copyright representative for the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation is the Artists Rights Society.[151]
+
+On 26 June 2017 it was announced that a judge in Madrid had ordered the exhumation of Dalí's body in order to obtain samples for a paternity suit.[152] Joan Manuel Sevillano, manager of the Fundación Gala Salvador Dalí  (The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation), denounced the exhumation as inappropriate.[153] The exhumation took place on the evening of 20 July, and DNA was extracted.[154]  On 6 September 2017 the Foundation stated that the tests carried out proved conclusively that Dalí and the claimant were not related.[155][156] On 18 May 2020 a Spanish court dismissed an appeal from the claimant and ordered her to pay the costs of the exhumation.[157]
+
+From the late 1920s Dalí progressively introduced many bizarre or incongruous images into his work which invite symbolic interpretation. While some of these images suggest a straightforward sexual or Freudian interpretation (Dalí read Freud in the 1920s) others (such as locusts, rotting donkeys and sea urchins) are idiosyncratic and have been variously interpreted.[158] Some commentators have cautioned that Dalí's own comments on these images are not always reliable.[159]
+
+Food and eating have a central place in Dalí's thought and work. He associated food with beauty and sex and was obsessed with the image of the female praying mantis eating its mate after copulation.[160] Bread was a recurring image in Dalí's art, from his early work The Basket of Bread to later public performances such as in 1958 when he gave a lecture in Paris armed with a 12-meter-long baguette.[161] He saw bread as "the elementary basis of continuity" and "sacred subsistence".[162]
+
+The egg is another common Dalínian image. He connects the egg to the prenatal and intrauterine, thus using it to symbolize hope and love.[163] It appears in The Great Masturbator, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus and many other works.  There are also giant sculptures of eggs in various locations at Dalí's house in Port Lligat[164] as well as at the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres.
+
+Both Dalí and his father enjoyed eating sea urchins, freshly caught in the sea near Cadaqués. The radial symmetry of the sea urchin fascinated Dalí, and he adapted its form to many art works. Other foods also appear throughout his work.[165]
+
+The famous "melting watches" that appear in The Persistence of Memory suggest Einstein's theory that time is relative and not fixed.[63] Dalí later claimed that the idea for clocks functioning symbolically in this way came to him when he was contemplating Camembert cheese.[166]
+
+The rhinoceros and rhinoceros horn shapes began to proliferate in Dalí's work from the mid-1950s. According to Dalí, the rhinoceros horn signifies divine geometry because it grows in a logarithmic spiral. He linked the rhinoceros to themes of chastity and to the Virgin Mary.[125] However, he also used it as an obvious phallic symbol as in Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity.[167]
+
+Various other animals appear throughout Dalí's work: rotting donkeys and ants have been interpreted as pointing to death, decay, and sexual desire; the snail as connected to the human head (he saw a snail on a bicycle outside Freud's house when he first met Sigmund Freud); and locusts as a symbol of waste and fear.[163] The elephant is also a recurring image in his work; for example, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. The elephants are inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture base in Rome of an elephant carrying an ancient obelisk.[168]
+
+Dalí's lifelong interest in science and mathematics was often reflected in his work. His soft watches have been interpreted as references to Einstein's theory of the relativity of time and space.[63] Images of atomic particles appeared in his work soon after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki[169] and strands of DNA appeared from the mid-1950s.[167] In 1958 he wrote in his Anti-Matter Manifesto: "In the Surrealist period, I wanted to create the iconography of the interior world and the world of the marvelous, of my father Freud. Today, the exterior world and that of physics has transcended the one of psychology. My father today is Dr. Heisenberg."[170][171]
+
+The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954) harks back to The Persistence of Memory (1931) and in portraying that painting in fragmentation and disintegration has been interpreted as a reference to Heisenberg's quantum mechanics.[170]
+
+Dalí was a versatile artist. Some of his more popular works are sculptures and other objects, and he is also noted for his contributions to theater, fashion, and photography, among other areas.
+
+From the early 1930s Dalí was an enthusiastic proponent of the proliferation of three-dimensional Surrealist Objects in order to subvert perceptions of conventional reality, writing: "museums will fast fill with objects whose uselessness, size and crowding will necessitate the construction, in deserts, of special towers to contain them."[172] His more notable early objects include Board of Demented Associations (1930–31), Retrospective Bust of a Woman (1933), Venus de Milo with Chest of Drawers (1936) and Aphrodisiac Dinner Jacket (1936). Two of the most popular objects of the Surrealist movement were Lobster Telephone (1936) and Mae West Lips Sofa (1937) which were commissioned by art patron Edward James.[173] Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual connotations for Dalí who drew a close analogy between food and sex.[174] The telephone was functional, and James purchased four of them from Dalí to replace the phones in his home. The Mae West Lips Sofa was shaped after the lips of actress Mae West, who was previously the subject of Dalí's watercolor, The Face of Mae West which may be used as a Surrealist Apartment (1934-35).[173]  In December 1936 Dalí sent Harpo Marx a Christmas present of a harp with barbed-wire strings.[175]
+
+After World War II Dalí  authorized many sculptures derived from his most famous works and images. In his later years other sculptures also appeared, often in large editions, whose authenticity has sometimes been questioned.[176]
+
+Between 1941 and 1970, Dalí created an ensemble of 39 pieces of jewelry, many of which are intricate, some containing moving parts. The most famous assemblage, The Royal Heart, is made of gold and is encrusted with 46 rubies, 42 diamonds, and four emeralds, created in such a way that the center "beats" like a heart.[177]
+
+Dalí ventured into industrial design in the 1970s with a 500-piece run of Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva that Dalí decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain maker's "Studio Linie".[178]  In 1969 he designed the Chupa Chups logo.[179] He facilitated the design of the advertising campaign for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest and created a large on-stage metal sculpture that stood at the Teatro Real in Madrid.[180][181]
+
+In the 1980s, the artist friend Wolf Vostell, whom Dalí met in 1978[182], proposed a joint project. This was realized as one of Dalí's last projects in 1988, shortly before his death. Vostell carried out a work of Dalí, which Dalí had already conceived in the 1920s. El fin de Parzival (the end of the Parzival) consists of 20 motorcycles of the Guardia Civil from the time of the Franco regime, five of which are fastened on top of each other and backed by the music of Richard Wagner's opera Parzival. Initially, Dalí intended to use bicycles. This addition was made by Vostell. In return, Wolf Vostell installed 1988 the sculpture TV-Obelisk (1979)[183] in the Teatre-Museu in Figueres with 14 TV sets and Dalí completed the sculpture with a woman's head on the top, which he created. Inside the woman's head is a video camera that records images of the sky, which are transmitted to the TV sets[184].
+
+In theater, Dalí designed the scenery for Federico García Lorca's 1927 romantic play Mariana Pineda.[185] For Bacchanale (1939), a ballet based on and set to the music of Richard Wagner's 1845 opera Tannhäuser, Dalí provided both the set design and the libretto.[186] He executed designs for a number of other ballets including Labyrinth (1942), Sentimental Colloquy, Mad Tristan, The Cafe of Chinitas (all 1944) and The Three-Cornered Hat  (1949).[187][112]
+
+Dalí became interested in film when he was young, going to the theater most Sundays.[188] By the late 1920s he was fascinated by the potential of film to reveal "the unlimited fantasy born of things themselves"[189] and went on to collaborate with director Luis Buñuel on two Surrealist films: the 17-minute short Un Chien Andalou (1929) and the feature film L'Age d'Or (1930). Dalí and Buñuel agree that they jointly developed the script and imagery of Un Chien Andalou, but there is controversy over the extent of Dalí's contribution to L'Age d'Or.[190] Un Chien Andalou features a graphic opening scene of a human eyeball being slashed with a razor and develops surreal imagery and irrational discontinuities in time and space to produce a dreamlike quality.[191] L'Age d'Or is more overtly anti-clerical and anti-establishment, and was banned after right-wing groups staged a riot in the Parisian theater where it was being shown.[192] Summarizing the impact of these two films on the Surrealist film movement, one commentator has stated: "If Un Chien Andalou stands as the supreme record of Surrealism's adventures into the realm of the unconscious, then L'Âge d'Or is perhaps the most trenchant and implacable expression of its revolutionary intent."[193]
+
+After his collaborations with Buñuel, Dalí worked on a number of unrealized film projects including a published script for a film, Babaouo (1932); a scenario for Harpo Marx called Giraffes on Horseback Salad (1937); and an abandoned dream sequence for the film Moontide (1942).[194] In 1945 Dalí created the dream sequence in Hitchcock's Spellbound, but neither Dalí nor the director were satisfied with the result.[195] Dalí also worked with Walt Disney and animator John Hench on the short film Destino in 1946.[115] After initially being abandoned, the animated film was completed in 2003 by Baker Bloodworth and Walt Disney's nephew Roy E. Disney. Between 1954 and 1961 Dalí worked with photographer Robert Descharnes on The Prodigious History of the Lacemaker and the Rhinoceros, but the film was never completed.[196]
+
+In the 1960s Dalí worked with a number of directors on documentary and performance films including with Philippe Halsman on Chaos and Creation (1960), Jack Bond on Dalí  in New York (1966) and Jean-Christophe Averty on Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dalí (1966).[197]
+
+Dalí collaborated with director José-Montes Baquer on the pseudo-documentary film Impressions of Upper Mongolia (1975), in which Dalí narrates a story about an expedition in search of giant hallucinogenic mushrooms.[198] In the mid-1970s film director Alejandro Jodorowsky initially cast Dalí in the role of the Padishah Emperor in a production of Dune, based on the novel by Frank Herbert. However, Jodorowsky changed his mind after Dalí publicly supported the execution of alleged ETA terrorists in December 1975. The film was ultimately never made.[199][200]
+
+In 1972 Dalí began to write the scenario for an opera-poem called Être Dieu (To Be God). The Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán wrote the libretto and Igor Wakhévitch the music. The opera-poem was recorded in Paris in 1974 with Dalí in the role of the protagonist.[201]
+
+Fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli worked with Dalí from the 1930s and commissioned him to produce a white dress with a lobster print. Other designs Dalí made for her include a shoe-shaped hat, and a pink belt with lips for a buckle. He was also involved in creating textile designs and perfume bottles. In 1950, Dalí created a special "costume for the year 2045" with Christian Dior.[202]
+
+Photographers with whom he collaborated include Man Ray, Brassaï, Cecil Beaton, and Philippe Halsman. Halsman produced the Dalí Atomica series (1948) –  inspired by Dalí's painting Leda Atomica  –  which in one photograph depicts "a painter's easel, three cats, a bucket of water, and Dalí himself floating in the air".[202]
+
+Dalí's architectural achievements include his Port Lligat house near Cadaqués, as well as his Theatre-Museum in Figueres. A major work outside of Spain was the temporary Dream of Venus Surrealist pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, which contained a number of unusual sculptures and statues, including live performers posing as statues.[92]
+
+In his only novel Hidden Faces (1944), Dalí describes the intrigues of a group of eccentric aristocrats whose extravagant lifestyle symbolizes the decadence of the 1930s. The Comte de Grandsailles and Solange de Cléda pursue a love affair, but interwar political turmoil and other vicissitudes drive them apart. It is variously set in Paris, rural France, Casablanca in North Africa and Palm Springs in the United States. Secondary characters include aging widow Barbara Rogers, her bisexual daughter Veronica, Veronica's sometime female lover Betka, and Baba, a disfigured US fighter pilot.[203] The novel was written in New York, and translated by Haakon Chevalier.[108]
+
+His other literary works include The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942), Diary of a Genius (1966), and Oui: The Paranoid-Critical Revolution (1971). Dalí also published poetry, essays, art criticism and a technical manual on art.[204]
+
+Dalí worked extensively in the graphic arts, producing many drawings, etchings and lithographs. Among the most notable of these works are forty etchings for an edition of Lautréamont's The Songs of Maldoror (1933) and eighty drypoint reworkings of Goya's Caprichos (1973–77).[205] From the 1960s, however, Dalí would often sell the rights to images but not be involved in the print production itself. In addition, a large number of fakes were produced in the 1980s and 1990s, thus further confusing the Dalí print market.[145]
+
+Book illustrations were an important part of Dalí's work throughout his career. His first book illustration was for the 1924 publication of the Catalan poem Les bruixes de Llers [ca] ("The Witches of Llers") by his friend and schoolmate, poet Carles Fages de Climent.[206][207][208] His other notable book illustrations, apart from The Songs of Maldoror, include 101 watercolors and engravings for The Divine Comedy (1960) and 100 drawings and watercolors for The Arabian Nights (1964).[209]
+
+As a youth Dalí identified as Communist, anti-monarchist and anti-clerical[210] and in 1924 he was briefly imprisoned by the Primo de Rivera dictatorship as a person "intensely liable to cause public disorder."[211] When Dalí officially joined the Surrealist group in 1929 his political activism initially intensified. In 1931 he became involved in the Workers' and Peasants' Front, delivering lectures at meetings and contributing to their party journal.[212] However, as political divisions within the Surrealist group grew, Dalí soon developed a more apolitical stance, refusing to publicly denounce fascism. In 1934 Andre Breton accused him of being sympathetic to Hitler, and Dalí narrowly avoided being expelled from the group.[213] After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 Dalí avoided taking a public stand for or against the Republic.[85] However, immediately after Franco's victory in 1939 Dalí praised Catholicism and the Falange and was expelled from the Surrealist group.[94]
+
+After Dalí's return to his native Catalonia in 1948 he publicly supported Franco's regime and announced his return to the Catholic faith.[214] Dalí was granted an audience with Pope Pius XII in 1949 and with Pope John XXIII in 1959. He had official meetings with General Franco in June 1956, October 1968 and May 1974.[215] In 1968 Dalí stated that on Franco's death there should be no return to democracy and Spain should become an absolute monarchy.[216] In September 1975 Dalí publicly supported Franco's decision to execute three alleged Basque terrorists and repeated his support for an absolute monarchy, adding: "Personally, I'm against freedom; I'm for the Holy Inquisition."  In the following days he fled to New York after his home in Port Lligat was stoned and he had received numerous death threats.[217] When King Juan Carlos visited the ailing Dalí in August 1981, the painter told him: "I have always been an anarchist and a monarchist."[218]
+
+Dalí espoused a mystical view of Catholicism and in his later years he claimed to be a Catholic and an agnostic.[219]  He was interested in the writings of the Jesuit priest and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin[220] and his Omega Point theory. Dalí's painting Tuna Fishing (Homage to Meissonier) (1967) was inspired by his reading of Chardin.[221]
+
+Dalí's sexuality had a profound influence on his work. He stated that as a child he saw a book with graphic illustrations of venereal diseases and this provoked a lifelong disgust of female genitalia and a fear of impotence and sexual intimacy. Dalí frequently stated that his main sexual activity involved voyeurism and masturbation and his preferred sexual orifice was the anus.[222] Dalí said that his wife Gala was the only person with whom he had achieved complete coitus.[223] From 1927 Dalí's work featured graphic and symbolic sexual images usually associated with other images evoking shame and disgust. Images of anality and excrement also abound in his work from this time. Some of the most notable works reflecting these themes include The First Days of Spring (1929), The Great Masturbator (1929) and The Lugubrious Game (1929). Several of Dalí's intimates in the 1960s and 1970s have stated that he would arrange for selected guests to perform choreographed sexual activities to aid his voyeurism and masturbation.[224][225][226]
+
+Dalí was renowned for his eccentric and ostentatious behavior throughout his career. In 1941 the Director of Exhibitions and Publications at MoMA wrote: "The fame of Salvador Dalí has been an issue of particular controversy for more than a decade...Dalí's conduct may have been undignified, but the greater part of his art is a matter of dead earnest."[227] When Dalí was elected to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1979 one of his fellow academicians stated that he hoped Dalí would now abandon his "clowneries".[228]
+
+In 1936, at the premiere screening of Joseph Cornell's film Rose Hobart at Julien Levy's gallery in New York City, Dalí knocked over the projector in a rage. "My idea for a film is exactly that," he said shortly afterward, "I never wrote it down or told anyone, but it is as if he had stolen it!"[229] In 1939, while working on a window display for Bonwit Teller, he became so enraged by unauthorized changes to his work that he pushed a display bathtub through a plate glass window.[6] In 1955 he delivered a lecture at the Sorbonne, arriving in a Rolls Royce full of cauliflowers.[230] To promote Robert Descharnes' 1962 book The World of Salvador Dalí, he appeared in a Manhattan bookstore on a bed, wired up to a machine that traced his brain waves and blood pressure. He would autograph books while thus monitored, and the book buyer would also be given the paper chart recording.[6]
+
+After World War II Dalí became one of the most recognized artists in the world and his long cape, walking stick, haughty expression, and upturned waxed moustache became icons of his brand. His boastfulness and public declarations of his genius became essential elements of the public Dalí persona: "every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí".[231]
+
+Dalí frequently traveled with his pet ocelot Babou, even bringing it aboard the luxury ocean liner SS France.[232] He was also known to avoid paying at restaurants by executing drawings on the checks he wrote. His theory was the restaurant would never want to cash such a valuable piece of art, and he was usually correct.[233]
+
+Dalí's celebrity meant he was a frequent guest on television in Spain, France and the United States, including appearances on The Mike Wallace Interview[234] and the panel show What's My Line?.[235][236] Dalí appeared on The Dick Cavett Show on 6 March 1970 carrying an anteater.[237]
+
+He also appeared in numerous advertising campaigns such for Lanvin [fr] chocolates[238][239] and Braniff International Airlines in 1968.[240]
+
+Two major museums are devoted to Dalí's work: the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, and the Salvador Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, Florida, US.
+
+Dalí's life and work have been an important influence on pop art, other Surrealists and contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.[8][9] He has been portrayed on film by Robert Pattinson in Little Ashes (2008), and by Adrien Brody in Midnight in Paris (2011). The Salvador Dalí Desert in Bolivia and the Dalí crater on the planet Mercury are named for him.
+
+Dalí produced over 1,600 paintings and numerous graphic works, sculptures, three-dimensional objects and designs.[245] Below is a sample of important and representative works.
+
+Gala in the Window (1933), Marbella
+
+The Rainbow (1972), M.T. Abraham Foundation
+
+Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas (1956), Puerto José Banús
+
+Plaza de Dalí (Dalí Square), Madrid
+
+Perseo (Perseus), Marbella
+
+Children at Dalí exhibition in Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul
+
+Important books by or about Salvador Dalí readily available in English include:

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@@ -0,0 +1,330 @@
+
+
+Basel (/ˈbɑːzəl/ BAH-zəl, German: [ˈbaːzl̩] (listen)) or Basle (/bɑːl/ BAHL; French: Bâle [bɑl]; Italian: Basilea [baziˈlɛːa]; Romansh: Basilea [baziˈleːa] (listen)) is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine. Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zürich and Geneva) with about 180,000 inhabitants.[3] The official language of Basel is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German, but the main spoken language is the local Basel German dialect.
+
+The city is known for its many museums, ranging from the Kunstmuseum, the first collection of art accessible to the public in Europe (1661) and the largest museum of art in Switzerland, to the Fondation Beyeler (located in Riehen). The University of Basel, Switzerland's oldest university (founded in 1460), and the city's centuries-long commitment to humanism, have made Basel a safe haven at times of political unrest in other parts of Europe for such notable people as Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Holbein family, Friedrich Nietzsche, and in the 20th century also Hermann Hesse and Karl Jaspers.
+
+The city of Basel is Switzerland's second-largest economic centre after the city of Zürich[4] and has the highest GDP per capita in the country, ahead of the cantons of Zug and Geneva.[5] In terms of value, over 94% of Basel City's goods exports are in the chemical and pharmaceutical sectors. With production facilities located in the neighbouring Schweizerhalle, Basel accounts for 20% of Swiss exports and generates one-third of the national product.[6]
+
+Basel has been the seat of a Prince-Bishopric since the 11th century, and joined the Swiss Confederacy in 1501. The city has been a commercial hub and an important cultural centre since the Renaissance, and has emerged as a centre for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries in the 20th century. In 1897, Basel was chosen by Theodor Herzl as the location for the first World Zionist Congress, and altogether the congress has been held there ten times over a time span of 50 years, more than in any other location. The city is also home to the world headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements. The name of the city is internationally known through institutions like the Basel Accords, Art Basel and FC Basel.
+
+In 2019 Basel, was ranked among the ten most liveable cities in the world by Mercer together with Zürich and Geneva.[7]
+
+There are traces of a settlement at the nearby Rhine knee from the early La Tène period (5th century BC). In the 2nd century BC, there was a village of the Raurici at the site of Basel-Gasfabrik(to the northwest of the Old City, and likely identical with the town of Arialbinnum that was mentioned on the Tabula Peutingeriana).[8] 
+The unfortified settlement was abandoned in the 1st century BC in favour of an oppidum on the site of Basel Minster, probably in reaction to the Roman invasion of Gaul.
+
+In Roman Gaul, Augusta Raurica was established some 20 km (12 mi) from Basel as the regional administrative centre, while a castrum (fortified camp) was built on the site of the Celtic oppidum. 
+In AD 83, the area  was incorporated into the Roman province of Germania Superior. Roman control over the area deteriorated in the 3rd century, and Basel became an outpost of the Provincia Maxima Sequanorum formed by Diocletian. Basilia is first named as part of the Roman military fortifications along the Rhine in the late 4th century.
+
+The Germanic confederation of the Alemanni attempted to cross the Rhine several times in the 4th century, but were repelled; one such event was the Battle of Solicinium (368). However, in the great invasion of AD 406, the Alemanni appear to have crossed the Rhine river a final time, conquering and then settling what is today Alsace and a large part of the Swiss Plateau.
+
+The Duchy of Alemannia fell under Frankish rule in the 6th century. 
+The Alemannic and Frankish settlement of Basel gradually grew around the old Roman castle in the 6th and 7th century. It appears that Basel surpassed the ancient regional capital of Augusta Raurica by the 7th century, 
+Based on the evidence of a gold tremissis (a small gold coin with the value of a third of a solidus)  with the inscription Basilia fit, Basel seems to have minted its own coins in the 7th century.[9]
+
+Basel at this time was part of the Archdiocese of Besançon.
+A separate bishopric of Basel, replacing the ancient bishopric of Augusta Raurica, was established in the 8th century. Under bishop Haito (r. 806–823), the first cathedral was built on the site of the Roman castle[citation needed] (replaced by a Romanesque structure consecrated in 1019).
+
+At the partition of the Carolingian Empire, Basel was first given to West Francia, but it passed to East Francia with the treaty of Meerssen of 870.
+Basel was  destroyed by the Magyars in 917.  The rebuilt town became part of Upper Burgundy, and as such was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire in 1032.
+
+From the donation by Rudolph III of Burgundy[10] of the Moutier-Grandval Abbey and all its possessions to Bishop Adalbero II of Metz in 999 until the Reformation, Basel was ruled by Prince-Bishops.[11]
+
+In 1019, the construction of the cathedral of Basel (known locally as the Münster) began under Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor.[12]
+
+In the 11th to 12th century, Basel gradually acquired the characteristics of a medieval city.
+The main market place is first mentioned in 1091. The first city walls were constructed around 1100 (with improvements made in the mid-13th and in the late 14th century). 
+A city council of nobles and burghers is recorded for 1185, and the first mayor, Heinrich Steinlin of Murbach,  for 1253.
+The first bridge across the Rhine was built in 1225 under bishop Heinrich von Thun (at the location of the modern Middle Bridge), and from this time the settlement of Kleinbasel gradually formed around the bridgehead on the far river bank. The bridge was largely funded by Basel's Jewish community who had settled there a century earlier.[13] For many centuries[dubious  – discuss] to come Basel possessed the only permanent bridge over the river "between Lake Constance and the sea".
+The first city guild were the   furriers, established in 1226. A total of about fifteen guilds were established in the course of the 13th century, reflecting the increasing economic prosperity of the city.[13] The Crusade of 1267 set out from Basel.
+
+Political conflicts between the bishops and the burghers begin in the mid-13th century and continue throughout the 14th century. By the late 14th century, the city was for all practical purposes independent although it continued to nominally pledge fealty to the bishops.
+The House of Habsburg attempted to gain control over the city. This was not successful, but it caused a political split among the burghers of Basel into a pro-Habsburg faction, known as Sterner, and an anti-Habsburg faction, the Psitticher.
+
+The Black Death reached Basel in 1348. The Jews were blamed, and an estimated 50 to 70 Jews were executed by burning on 16 January 1349 in what has become known as the Basel massacre.[13] 
+The Basel earthquake of 1356  destroyed much of the city along with a number of castles in the vicinity.
+
+A riot on 26 February 1376, known as Böse Fasnacht, led to the killing of a number of men of Leopold III, Duke of Austria. This was seen as a serious breach of the peace, and the city council blamed "foreign ruffians" for this and executed twelve alleged perpetrators. Leopold nevertheless had the city placed under imperial ban, and in a treaty of 9 July, Basel was given a heavy fine and was placed under Habsburg control.
+To free itself from Habsburg hegenomy, Basel joined the Swabian League of Cities in 1385, and many knights of the pro-Habsburg faction, along with duke Leopold himself, were killed  in the Battle of Sempach the following year.
+A formal treaty with Habsburg was made in 1393.
+
+Basel had gained its de-facto independence from both the bishop and from the Habsburgs and was free to pursue its own policy of territorial expansion, beginning around 1400.
+
+The unique representation of a bishops' crozier as the heraldic charge in the coat of arms of Basel
+first appears in the form of a gilded wooden staff in the 12th century.
+It is of unknown origin or significance (beyond its obvious status of bishop's crozier), but it is assumed to have represented a relic, possibly attributed to Saint Germanus.[14]
+This staff (known as Baselstab) became a symbol representing the Basel diocese, depicted in bishops' seals of the late medieval period.
+It is represented in a heraldic context in the early 14th century, not yet as a heraldic charge but as a kind of heraldic achievement flanked by the heraldic shields of the bishop. The staff is also represented in the bishops's seals of the period.
+The use of the Baselstab in black as the coat of arms of the city was introduced in 1385.
+From this time, the Baselstab in red represented the bishop, and the same charge in black represented the city.
+The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is In Silber ein schwarzer Baselstab (Argent, a staff of Basel sable).[15]
+
+In 1412 (or earlier), the well-known Gasthof zum Goldenen Sternen was established. Basel became the focal point of western Christendom during the 15th century Council of Basel (1431–1449), including the 1439 election of antipope Felix V. In 1459, Pope Pius II endowed the University of Basel, where such notables as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Paracelsus later taught. At the same time the new craft of printing was introduced to Basel by apprentices of Johann Gutenberg.
+
+The Schwabe publishing house was founded in 1488 by Johannes Petri and is the oldest publishing house still in business. Johann Froben also operated his printing house in Basel and was notable for publishing works by Erasmus.[16] In 1495, Basel was incorporated into the Upper Rhenish Imperial Circle; the Bishop of Basel was added to the Bench of the Ecclesiastical Princes of the Imperial Diet. In 1500 the construction of the Basel Münster was finished. In 1521 so was the bishop.[clarification needed] The Council, under the supremacy of the guilds, explained that henceforth they would only give allegiance to the Swiss Confederation, to whom the bishop appealed but in vain.[13]
+
+The city had remained neutral through the Swabian War of 1499 despite being plundered by soldiers on both sides. The Treaty of Basel ended the war and granted the Swiss confederates exemptions from the emperor Maximillian's taxes and jurisdictions, separating Switzerland de facto from the Holy Roman Empire.[17]
+
+On 9 June 1501, Basel joined the Swiss Confederation as its eleventh canton.[18] It was the only canton that was asked to join, not the other way round. Basel had a strategic location, good relations with Strasbourg and Mulhouse, and control of the corn imports from Alsace, whereas the Swiss lands were becoming overpopulated and had few resources. A provision of the Charter accepting Basel required that in conflicts among the other cantons it was to stay neutral and offer its services for mediation.[19][20]
+
+In 1503, the new bishop Christoph von Utenheim refused to give Basel a new constitution; whereupon, to show its power, the city began to build a new city hall.[13]
+
+In 1529, the city became Protestant under Oecolampadius and the bishop's seat was moved to Porrentruy. The bishop's crook was however retained as the city's coat of arms. For centuries to come, a handful of wealthy families collectively referred to as the "Daig" played a pivotal role in city affairs as they gradually established themselves as a de facto city aristocracy.
+
+The first edition of Christianae religionis institutio (Institutes of the Christian Religion – John Calvin's great exposition of Calvinist doctrine) was published at Basel in March 1536.[21]
+
+In 1544, Johann von Brugge, a rich Dutch Protestant refugee, was given citizenship and lived respectably until his death in 1556, then buried with honors. His body was exhumed and burnt at the stake in 1559 after it was discovered that he was the Anabaptist David Joris.[13]
+
+In 1543, De humani corporis fabrica, the first book on human anatomy, was published and printed in Basel by Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564).[22]
+
+There are indications Joachim Meyer, author of the influential 16th-century martial arts text Kunst des Fechten ("The Art of Fencing"), came from Basel. In 1662 the Amerbaschsches Kabinett was established in Basel as the first public museum of art. Its collection became the core of the later Basel Museum of Art.
+
+The Bernoulli family, which included important 17th- and 18th-century mathematicians such as Jakob Bernoulli, Johann Bernoulli and Daniel Bernoulli, were from Basel. The 18th-century mathematician Leonhard Euler was born in Basel and studied under Johann Bernoulli.
+
+In 1792, the Republic of Rauracia, a revolutionary French client republic, was created. It lasted until 1793.[23] After three years of political agitation and a short civil war in 1833 the disadvantaged countryside seceded from the Canton of Basel, forming the half canton of Basel-Landschaft.[24]
+
+On 3 July 1874, Switzerland's first zoo, the Zoo Basel, opened its doors in the south of the city towards Binningen.
+
+In 1897 the first World Zionist Congress was held in Basel. Altogether the World Zionist Congress was held in Basel ten times, more than in any other city in the world.[25]
+
+On 16 November 1938, the psychedelic drug LSD was first synthesized by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel.
+
+In 1967, the population of Basel voted in favor of buying three works of art by painter Pablo Picasso which were at risk of being be sold and taken out of the local museum of art, due to a financial crisis on the part of the owner's family. Therefore, Basel became the first city in the world where the population of a political community democratically decided to acquire works of art for a public institution. Pablo Picasso was so moved by the gesture that he subsequently gifted the city with an additional three paintings.[26]
+
+Basel has often been the site of peace negotiations and other international meetings. The Treaty of Basel (1499) ended the Swabian War. Two years later Basel joined the Swiss Confederation. The Peace of Basel in 1795 between the French Republic and Prussia and Spain ended the First Coalition against France during the French Revolutionary Wars. In more recent times, the World Zionist Organization held its first congress in Basel from 29 August through 31 August 1897. Because of the Balkan Wars, the (Socialist) Second International held an extraordinary congress at Basel in 1912. In 1989, the Basel Convention was opened for signature with the aim of preventing the export of hazardous waste from wealthy to developing nations for disposal.
+
+The name of Basel is first recorded as Basilia in the 3rd century (237/8), at the time referring to the Roman castle.
+This name is mostly interpreted as deriving from the personal name Basilius, from a toponym villa Basilia ("estate of Basilius") or similar.
+
+Another suggestion derives it from a name Basilia attested in northern France as a development of  basilica, the term for a public or church building (as in Bazeilles), but all of these names reference early church buildings of the 4th or 5th century and cannot be adduced for the 3rd-century attestation of Basilia.[27][28]
+
+By popular etymology, or simple assonance, the basilisk becomes closely associated with the city, used as heraldic supporter from 1448, represented on coins minted by the city, and frequently found in ornaments.
+
+The Middle French form Basle was adopted into English.
+French Basle was still in use in the 18th century, but was gradually replaced by the modern French spelling Bâle.
+In English usage, the French spelling Basle continues to be used alongside the German spelling Basel.
+In Icelandic, the city is recorded as  Buslaraborg in the 12th-century itinerary Leiðarvísir og borgarskipan.
+
+Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany. As of 2016[update], the Swiss Basel agglomeration was the third-largest in Switzerland, with a population of 541,000[29] in 74 municipalities in Switzerland (municipal count as of 2018).[30] The initiative Trinational Eurodistrict Basel (TEB) of 62 suburban communes including municipalities in neighboring countries, counted 829,000 inhabitants in 2007.[31] Basel is the most densely populated city in Switzerland.
+
+Basel has an area, as of 2009[update], of 23.91 square kilometers (9.23 sq mi). Of this area, 0.95 km2 (0.37 sq mi) or 4.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while 0.88 km2 (0.34 sq mi) or 3.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 20.67 km2 (7.98 sq mi) or 86.4% is settled (buildings or roads), 1.45 km2 (0.56 sq mi) or 6.1% is either rivers or lakes.[32]
+
+Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 10.2% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 40.7% and transportation infrastructure made up 24.0%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 2.7% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 8.9%. Out of the forested land, all of the forested land area is covered with heavy forests. Of the agricultural land, 2.5% is used for growing crops and 1.3% is pastures. All the water in the municipality is flowing water.[32]
+
+Under the Köppen system, Basel features a continental-influenced oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb),[33] due to its relatively far inland position. The city averages 120.4 days of rain or snow annually and on average receives 842 mm (33.1 in) of precipitation. The wettest month is May during which time Basel receives an average of 99 mm (3.9 in) of rain. The month with the most days of precipitation is also May, with an average of 12.4 days. The driest month of the year is February with an average of 45 mm (1.8 in) of precipitation over 8.4 days.[34]
+
+
+
+The city of Basel functions as the capital of the Swiss half-canton of Basel-Stadt, though several of its suburbs are located in the half-canton of Basel-Landschaft or the canton of Aargau. Others are even located in France and Germany.
+
+The canton Basel-Stadt consists of three municipalities: Riehen, Bettingen, and the city Basel itself. The political structure and agencies of the city and the canton are identical.
+
+The city itself has 19 quarters:
+
+The canton's executive, the Executive Council (Regierungsrat), consists of seven members for a mandate period of 4 years. They are elected by any inhabitant valid to vote on the same day as the parliament[clarification needed], but by means of a system of Majorz[clarification needed], and operates as a collegiate authority. The president (German: Regierungspräsident(in)) is elected as such by a public election, while the heads of the other departments are appointed by the collegiate. The current president is Dr Guy Morin. The executive body holds its meetings in the red Town Hall (German: Rathaus) on the central Marktplatz. The building was built in 1504–14.
+
+As of 2016[update], Basel's Executive Council is made up of three representatives of the SP (Social Democratic Party), and one member each of Green Alliance of Basel (GB) (who is the president), FDP (Free Democratic Party), LDP (Liberal-Demokratische Partei of Basel), and CVP (Christian Democratic Party), giving the left parties a combined four out of seven seats.[37] The last election was held on 23 October and 27 November 2016.[38]
+
+elected since
+
+Barbara Schüpbach-Guggenbühlis is State Chronicler (Staatsschreiberin) since 2009, and Marco Greiner is Head of Communication (Regierungssprecher) and Vice State Chronicler (Vizestaatsschreiber) since 2007 for the Executive Council.
+
+Grosser Rat of Basel for the mandate period of 2017–2021
+
+The parliament, the Grand Council of Basel-Stadt (Grosser Rat), consists of 100 seats, with members (called in German: Grossrat/Grossrätin) elected every 4 years. The sessions of the Grand Council are public. Unlike the members of the Executive Council, the members of the Grand Council are not politicians by profession, but they are paid a fee based on their attendance. Any resident of Basel allowed to vote can be elected as a member of the parliament. The delegates are elected by means of a system of Proporz, and political parties must have surpassed an election quorum of 4% per election district to enter the council, but this will end with the next election in 2020.[39] The legislative body holds its meetings in the red Town Hall (Rathaus).
+
+The last election was held on 23 October 2016 for the mandate period (Legislatur) of 2017–2021.[38] As of 1 February 2017[update], the Grand Council consist of 35 members of the Social Democratic Party (SP), 15 members of the Swiss People's Party (SVP), 13 Grünes Bündnis (GB) (a collaboration of the Green Party (GPS), its junior party, and Basels starke Alternative (BastA!)), 15 Liberal-Demokratische Partei (LDP) and its junior party, 10 The Liberals (FDP) and its junior party, the representative of the Aktive Bettingen (AB) is associated to the parliamentary group (Fraktion) of the FDP, 8 (7/1) Christian Democratic People's Party (CVP)/Evangelical People's Party (EVP), and 3 Green Liberal Party (GLP).[40]
+
+The left parties missed an absolute majority by two seats.
+
+In the 2019 federal election the most popular party was the Social Democratic Party (SP) which received two seats with 34% (−1) of the votes. The next five most popular parties were the Green Party (GPS) (19.4%, +7.3), the LPS (14.5%, +3.6) and the FDP (5.8, −3.5), which are chained together at 20.3%, (+0.1), the SVP (11.3%, ), and the Green Liberal Party (GLP) (5%, +0.6), CVP (4.1%, -1.9).[41] In the federal election, a total of 44,628 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 49.4%.[42]
+
+On 18 October 2015, in the federal election the most popular party was the Social Democratic Party (SP) which received two seats with 35% of the votes. The next three most popular parties were the FDP (20.2%), the SVP (16.8%), and the Green Party (GPS) (12.2%), each with one seat. In the federal election, a total of 57,304 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 50.4%.[43]
+
+On 20 October 2019, in the federal election Eva Herzog, member of the Social Democratic Party      (SP), was elected for the first time as a State Councillor (Ständerätin) in the first round as single representative of the canton of Basel-Town and successor of Anita Fetz in the national Council of States (Ständerat) with an absolute majority of 37'210 votes.[45]
+
+On 18 October 2015, in the federal election State Councillor (German: Ständerätin) Anita Fetz, member of the Social Democratic Party       (SP), was re-elected in the first round as single representative of the canton of Basel-Town in the national Council of States (Ständerat) with an absolute majority of 35'842 votes. She has been a member of it since 2003.[46]
+
+Basel has two sister cities and a twinning among two states:[47]
+
+Basel has a population (as of August 2019[update]) of 177,654.[49]  As of 2015[update], 35.5% of the population are resident foreign nationals.[50] Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of −0.3%. It has changed at a rate of 3.2% due to migration and at a rate of −3% due to births and deaths.[51]
+
+Of the population in the municipality 58,560 or about 35.2% were born in Basel and lived there in 2000. There were 1,396 or 0.8% who were born in the same canton, while 44,874 or 26.9% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 53,774 or 32.3% were born outside of Switzerland.[52]
+
+In 2008[update] there were 898 live births to Swiss citizens and 621 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 1,732 deaths of Swiss citizens and 175 non-Swiss citizen deaths.  Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens decreased by 834 while the foreign population increased by 446.  There were 207 Swiss men and 271 Swiss women who emigrated from Switzerland.  At the same time, there were 1756 non-Swiss men and 1655 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland.  The total Swiss population change in 2008 (from all sources, including moves across municipal borders) was an increase of 278 and the non-Swiss population increased by 1138 people.  This represents a population growth rate of 0.9%.[53]
+
+As of 2000[update], there were 70,502 people who were single and never married in the municipality.  There were 70,517 married individuals, 12,435 widows or widowers and 13,104 individuals who are divorced.[52]
+
+As of 2000[update] the average number of residents per living room was 0.59 which is about equal to the cantonal average of 0.58 per room.[51] In this case, a room is defined as space of a housing unit of at least 4 m2 (43 sq ft) as normal bedrooms, dining rooms, living rooms, kitchens and habitable cellars and attics.[54]:18v About 10.5% of the total households were owner occupied, or in other words did not pay rent (though they may have a mortgage or a rent-to-own agreement).[54]:17
+As of 2000[update], there were 86,371 private households in the municipality, and an average of 1.8 persons per household.[51] There were 44,469 households that consist of only one person and 2,842 households with five or more people.  Out of a total of 88,646 households that answered this question, 50.2% were households made up of just one person and there were 451 adults who lived with their parents.  Of the rest of the households, there are 20,472 married couples without children, 14,554 married couples with children There were 4,318 single parents with a child or children.  There were 2,107 households that were made up of unrelated people and 2,275 households that were made up of some sort of institution or another collective housing.[52]
+
+In 2000[update] there were 5,747 single family homes (or 30.8% of the total) out of a total of 18,631 inhabited buildings.  There were 7,642 multi-family buildings (41.0%), along with 4,093 multi-purpose buildings that were mostly used for housing (22.0%) and 1,149 other use buildings (commercial or industrial) that also had some housing (6.2%).  Of the single family homes 1090 were built before 1919, while 65 were built between 1990 and 2000.  The greatest number of single family homes (3,474) were built between 1919 and 1945.[55]
+
+In 2000[update] there were 96,640 apartments in the municipality.  The most common apartment size was 3 rooms of which there were 35,958.  There were 11,957 single room apartments and 9,702 apartments with five or more rooms.  Of these apartments, a total of 84,675 apartments (87.6% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 7,916 apartments (8.2%) were seasonally occupied and 4,049 apartments (4.2%) were empty.[55]  As of 2009[update], the construction rate of new housing units was 2.6 new units per 1000 residents.[51]
+
+As of 2003[update] the average price to rent an average apartment in Basel was 1118.60 Swiss francs (CHF) per month (US$890, £500, €720 approx. exchange rate from 2003).  The average rate for a one-room apartment was 602.27 CHF (US$480, £270, €390), a two-room apartment was about 846.52 CHF (US$680, £380, €540), a three-room apartment was about 1054.14 CHF (US$840, £470, €670) and a six or more room apartment cost an average of 2185.24 CHF (US$1750, £980, €1400).  The average apartment price in Basel was 100.2% of the national average of 1116 CHF.[56] The vacancy rate for the municipality, in 2010[update], was 0.74%.[51]
+
+Most of the population (as of 2000[update]) speaks German (129,592 or 77.8%), with Italian being second most common (9,049 or 5.4%) and French being third (4,280 or 2.6%). There are 202 persons who speak Romansh.[52]
+
+From the 2000 census[update], 41,916 or 25.2% were Roman Catholic, while 39,180 or 23.5% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 4,567 members of an Orthodox church (or about 2.74% of the population), there were 459 individuals (or about 0.28% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 3,464 individuals (or about 2.08% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 12,368 individuals (or about 7.43% of the population) who were Muslim. There were 1,325 individuals (or about 0.80% of the population) who were Jewish, however only members of religious institutions are counted as such by the municipality, which makes the actual number of people of Jewish descent living in Basel considerably higher. There were 746 individuals who were Buddhist, 947 individuals who were Hindu and 485 individuals who belonged to another church. 52,321 (or about 31.41% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 8,780 individuals (or about 5.27% of the population) did not answer the question.[52]
+
+Basel is subdivided into 19 quarters (Quartiere). The municipalities of Riehen and Bettingen, outside the city limits of Basel, are included in the canton of Basel-Stadt as rural quarters (Landquartiere).
+
+Basel's airport is set up for airfreight; heavy goods reach the city and the heart of continental Europe from the North Sea by ship along the Rhine. The main European routes for the highway and railway transport of freight cross in Basel. The outstanding location benefits logistics corporations, which operate globally from Basel. Trading firms are traditionally well represented in the Basel Region.[citation needed]
+
+Basel has Switzerland's only cargo port, through which goods pass along the navigable stretches of the Rhine and connect to ocean-going ships at the port of Rotterdam.
+
+EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg is operated jointly by two countries, France and Switzerland, although the airport is located completely on French soil. The airport itself is split into two architecturally independent sectors, one half serving the French side and the other half serving the Swiss side; prior to Schengen there was an immigration inspection point at the middle of the airport so that people could "emigrate" to the other side of the airport.
+
+Basel has long held an important place as a rail hub. Three railway stations—those of the German, French and Swiss networks—lie within the city (although the Swiss (Basel SBB) and French (Bâle SNCF) stations are actually in the same complex, separated by Customs and Immigration facilities). Basel Badischer Bahnhof is on the opposite side of the city. Basel's local rail services are supplied by the Basel Regional S-Bahn. The largest goods railway complex of the country[citation needed] is located just outside the city, spanning the municipalities of Muttenz and Pratteln. The new highspeed ICE railway line from Karlsruhe to Basel was completed in 2008 while phase I of the TGV Rhin-Rhône line, opened in December 2011, has reduced travel time from Basel to Paris to about 3 hours.[59]
+
+Basel is located on the A3 motorway.
+
+Within the city limits, five bridges connect Greater and Lesser Basel (downstream):
+
+A somewhat anachronistic yet still widely used system of reaction ferry boats links the two shores. There are four ferries, each situated approximately midway between two bridges. Each is attached by a cable to a block that rides along another cable spanning the river at a height of 20 to 30 metres (66 to 98 feet). To cross the river, the ferryman orients the boat around 45° from the current so that the current pushes the boat across the river. This form of transportation is therefore completely hydraulically driven, requiring no outside energy source.
+[1]
+
+Basel has an extensive public transportation network serving the city and connecting to surrounding suburbs, including a large tram network. The green-colored local trams and buses are operated by the Basler Verkehrs-Betriebe (BVB). The yellow-colored buses and trams are operated by the Baselland Transport (BLT), and connect areas in the nearby half-canton of Baselland to central Basel. The BVB also shares commuter bus lines in cooperation with transit authorities in the neighboring Alsace region in France and Baden region in Germany. The Basel Regional S-Bahn, the commuter rail network connecting to suburbs surrounding the city, is jointly operated by SBB, SNCF and DB.
+
+Basel is located at the meeting point of France, Germany and Switzerland; because it is so near other countries and is beyond the Jura Mountains, many within the Swiss military reportedly believe that the city is indefensible during wartime.[60] It has numerous road and rail crossings between Switzerland and the other two countries. With Switzerland joining the Schengen Area on 12 December 2008, immigration checks were no longer carried out at the crossings. However, Switzerland did not join the European Union Customs Union (though it did join the EU Single Market) and customs checks are still conducted at or near the crossings.
+
+France-Switzerland (from east to west)
+
+Germany-Switzerland (clockwise, from north to south)
+
+Additionally there are many footpaths and cycle tracks crossing the border between Basel and Germany.
+
+As the biggest town in the Northwest of Switzerland numerous public and private health centres are located in Basel. Among others the Universitätsspital Basel and the Universitätskinderspital Basel. The anthroposophical health institute Klinik-Arlesheim (formerly known as Lukas-Klinik and Ita-Wegman-Klinik) are both located in the Basel area as well. Private health centres include the Bethesda Spital and the Merian Iselin Klinik. Additionally the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute is located in Basel too.
+
+Basel is at the forefront of a national vision to more than halve energy use in Switzerland by 2050. To research, develop and commercialise the technologies and techniques required for the country to become a 2000 Watt society, a number of projects have been set up since 2001 in the Basel metropolitan area. These include demonstration buildings constructed to Minergie or Passivhaus standards, electricity generation from renewable energy sources,[62] and vehicles using natural gas, hydrogen and biogas.[63]
+A building construction law was passed in 2002 also which stated that all new flat roofs must be greened leading to Basel becoming the world's leading green roof city. This was driven by an energy saving programme.[64]
+
+A hot dry rock geothermal energy project was cancelled in 2009 since it caused induced seismicity in Basel.
+
+The city of Basel, located in the heart of the tri-border region (called Dreiländereck) is one of the most dynamic economic regions of Switzerland.
+
+As of 2016[update], Basel had an unemployment rate of 3.7%.[3] As of 2008[update], there were 18 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 9 businesses involved in this sector. 34,645 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 1,176 businesses in this sector. 120,130 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 8,908 businesses in this sector.[51] There were 82,449 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 46.2% of the workforce.
+
+In 2008[update] the total number of full-time equivalent jobs was 130,988. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 13, of which 10 were in agriculture and 4 were in forestry or lumber production. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 33,171 of which 24,848 or (74.9%) were in manufacturing, 10 were in mining and 7,313 (22.0%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 97,804. In the tertiary sector; 12,880 or 13.2% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 11,959 or 12.2% were in the movement and storage of goods, 6,120 or 6.3% were in a hotel or restaurant, 4,186 or 4.3% were in the information industry, 10,752 or 11.0% were the insurance or financial industry, 13,695 or 14.0% were technical professionals or scientists, 6,983 or 7.1% were in education and 16,060 or 16.4% were in health care.[65]
+
+In 2000[update], there were 121,842 workers who commuted into the municipality and 19,263 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net importer of workers, with about 6.3 workers entering the municipality for every one leaving. About 23.9% of the workforce coming into Basel are coming from outside Switzerland, while 1.0% of the locals commute out of Switzerland for work.[66] Of the working population, 49.2% used public transportation to get to work, and 18.7% used a private car.[51]
+
+The Roche Tower, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is 41 floors and 178 metres (584 ft) high, upon its opening in 2015 it has become the tallest building in Switzerland. Basel has also Switzerland's third tallest building (Basler Messeturm, 105 m (344 ft)) and Switzerland's tallest tower (St. Chrischona TV tower, 250 m (820 ft)).
+
+The Swiss chemical industry operates largely from Basel, and Basel also has a large pharmaceutical industry. Novartis,[67] Syngenta, Ciba Specialty Chemicals,[68] Clariant,[69] Hoffmann-La Roche,[67] Basilea Pharmaceutica and Actelion are headquartered there. Pharmaceuticals and specialty chemicals have become the modern focus of the city's industrial production.
+
+Banking is important to Basel:
+
+Swiss International Air Lines, the national airline of Switzerland, is headquartered on the grounds of EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg in Saint-Louis, Haut-Rhin, France, near Basel.[73][74][75] Prior to the formation of Swiss International Air Lines, the regional airline Crossair was headquartered near Basel.[76]
+
+Basler Zeitung ("BaZ") and bz Basel are the local newspapers. The local TV station is called Telebasel. The German-speaking Swiss Radio and Television SRF company, part of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR, holds offices in Basel as well. The academic publishers Birkhäuser, Karger and MDPI are based in Basel.
+
+Important trade shows include Art Basel, the world's most important fair for modern and contemporary art, Baselworld (watches and jewelry), Swissbau (construction and real estate) and Igeho (hotels, catering, take-away, care). The Swiss Sample Fair ("Schweizer Mustermesse") was the largest and oldest consumer fair in Switzerland. It was held from 2007 to 2019 and took place in Kleinbasel on the right bank of the Rhine.
+
+Besides Humanism the city of Basel has also always been very famous for its achievement in the field of mathematics. Among others, the mathematician Leonhard Euler and the Bernoulli family have done research and been teaching at the local institutions for centuries. In 1910 the Swiss Mathematical Society was founded in the city and in the mid-twentieth century the Russian mathematician Alexander Ostrowski taught at the local university. 
+In 2000 about 57,864 or (34.7%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 27,603 or (16.6%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule). Of the 27,603 who completed tertiary schooling, 44.4% were Swiss men, 31.1% were Swiss women, 13.9% were non-Swiss men and 10.6% were non-Swiss women.[52]
+
+In 2010 11,912 students attended the University of Basel (55% female). 25% were foreign nationals, 16% were from canton of Basel-Stadt. In 2006, 6162 students studied at one of the nine academies of the FHNW (51% female).[77]
+
+As of 2000[update], there were 5,820 students in Basel who came from another municipality, while 1,116 residents attended schools outside the municipality.[66]
+
+Basel hosts Switzerland's oldest university, the University of Basel, dating from 1460. Erasmus, Paracelsus, Daniel Bernoulli, Leonhard Euler, Jacob Burckhardt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Tadeusz Reichstein, Karl Jaspers, Carl Gustav Jung and Karl Barth worked there. The University of Basel is currently counted among the 90 best educational institutions worldwide.[78]
+
+In 2007, the ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich) established the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) in Basel. The creation of the D-BSSE was driven by a Swiss-wide research initiative SystemsX, and was jointly supported by funding from the ETH Zürich, the Swiss Government, the Swiss University Conference (SUC) and private industry.[79]
+
+Basel also hosts several academies of the Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz|Fachhochschule NW (FHNW): the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, FHNW Academy of Music, and the FHNW School of Business.[80]
+
+Basel is renowned for various scientific societies, such as the Entomological Society of Basel (Entomologische Gesellschaft Basel, EGB), which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2005.[81]
+
+In 2005 16,939 pupils and students visited the Volksschule (the obligatory school time, including Kindergarten (127), primary schools (Primarschule, 25), and lower secondary schools (Sekundarschule, 10),[82][83] of which 94% visited public schools and 39.5% were foreign nationals. In 2010 already 51.1% of all pupils spoke another language than German as their first language. In 2009 3.1% of the pupils visited special classes for pupils with particular needs. The average amount of study in primary school in Basel is 816 teaching hours per year.[77]
+
+In 2010 65% of the youth finished their upper secondary education with a vocational training and education, 18% finished their upper secondary education with a Federal Matura at one of the five gymnasiums, 5% completed a Fachmaturität at the FMS, 5% completed a Berufsmaturität synchronously to their vocational training, and 7% other kind of upper secondary maturity. 14.1% of all students at public gymnasiums were foreign nationals. The Maturity quota in 2010 was on a record high at 28.8% (32.8 female, 24.9% male).[77]
+
+Basel has five public gymnasiums (Gymnasium Bäumlihof [de], Gymnasium Kirschgarten [de], Gymnasium am Münsterplatz [de], Gymnasium Leonhard [de], Wirtschaftsgymnasium und Wirtschaftsmittelschule Basel [de]), each with its own profiles (different focus on major subjects, such as visual design, biology and chemistry, Italian, Spanish, or Latin languages, music, physics and applied mathematics, philosophy/education/psychology, and economics and law) that entitles students with a successful Matura graduation to attend universities. And one Fachmaturitätsschule, the FMS, with six different major subjects (health/natural sciences, education, social work, design/art, music/theatre/dance, and communication/media) that entitles students with a successful Fachmatura graduation to attend Fachhochschulen. Four different höhere Fachschulen (higher vocational schools such as Bildungszentrum Gesundheit Basel-Stadt (health), Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel (trade), Berufsfachschule Basel, Schule für Gestaltung Basel (design)) allows vocational students to improve their knowledge and know-how.[84]
+
+As a city with a percentage of foreigners of more than thirty-five percent and as one of the most important centres in the chemical and pharmaceutical field in the world, Basel counts several international schools including: Academia International School, École Française de Bâle, Freies Gymnasium Basel (private), Gymnasium am Münsterplatz (public), Schweizerisch-italienische Primarschule Sandro Pertini, and SIS Swiss International School.[85]
+
+Basel is home to at least 65 libraries. Some of the largest include; the Universitätsbibliothek Basel (main university library), the special libraries of the University of Basel, the Allgemein Bibliotheken der Gesellschaft für Gutes und Gemeinnütziges (GGG) Basel, the Library of the Pädagogische Hochschule, the Library of the Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit and the Library of the Hochschule für Wirtschaft. There was a combined total (as of 2008[update]) of 8,443,643 books or other media in the libraries, and in the same year a total of 1,722,802 items were loaned out.[86]
+
+The red sandstone Münster, one of the foremost late-Romanesque/early Gothic buildings in the Upper Rhine, was badly damaged in the great earthquake of 1356, rebuilt in the 14th and 15th century, extensively reconstructed in the mid-19th century and further restored in the late 20th century.[87] A memorial to Erasmus lies inside the Münster. The City Hall from the 16th century is located on the Market Square and is decorated with fine murals on the outer walls and on the walls of the inner court.
+
+Basel is also host to an array of buildings by internationally renowned architects. These include the Beyeler Foundation by Renzo Piano, or the Vitra complex in nearby Weil am Rhein, composed of buildings by architects such as Zaha Hadid (fire station), Frank Gehry (Design Museum), Álvaro Siza Vieira (factory building) and Tadao Ando (conference centre). Basel also features buildings by Mario Botta (Jean Tinguely Museum and Bank of International settlements) and Herzog & de Meuron (whose architectural practice is in Basel, and who are best known as the architects of Tate Modern in London and the Bird's Nest in Beijing, the Olympia stadium, which was designed for use throughout the 2008 Summer Olympics and Paralympics). The city received the Wakker Prize in 1996.
+
+Basel features a great number of heritage sites of national significance.[88]
+
+These include the entire Old Town of Basel as well as the following buildings and collections:
+
+Badischer Bahnhof (German Baden's railway station) with fountain, Bank for International Settlements, Blaues Haus (Reichensteinerhof) at Rheinsprung 16, Bruderholzschule (school house) at Fritz-Hauser-Strasse 20, Brunschwiler Haus at Hebelstrasse 15, Bahnhof Basel SBB (Swiss railway station), Bürgerspital (hospital), Café Spitz (Merianflügel), Coop Schweiz company's central archive, Depot of the Archäologischen Bodenforschung des Kanton Basel-Stadt, former Gallizian Paper Mill and Swiss Museum of Paper, former Klingental-Kaserne (casern) with Klingentaler Kirche (church), Fasnachtsbrunnen (fountain), Feuerschützenhaus (guild house of the riflemen) at Schützenmattstrasse 56, Fischmarktbrunnen (fountain), Geltenzunft at Marktplatz 13, Gymnasium am Kohlenberg (St Leonhard) (school), Hauptpost (main post office), Haus zum Raben at Aeschenvorstadt 15, Hohenfirstenhof at Rittergasse 19, Holsteinerhof at Hebelstrasse 30, Markgräflerhof a former palace of the margraves of Baden-Durlach, Mittlere Rhein Brücke (Central Rhine Bridge), Stadtcasino (music hall) at Steinenberg 14, Ramsteinerhof at Rittergasse 7 and 9, Rathaus (town hall), Rundhof building of the Schweizerischen Mustermesse, Safranzunft at Gerbergasse 11, Sandgrube at Riehenstrasse 154, Schlösschen (Manor house) Gundeldingen, Schönes Haus and Schöner Hof at Nadelberg 6, Wasgenring school house, Seidenhof with painting of Rudolf von Habsburg, Spalenhof at Spalenberg 12, Spiesshof at Heuberg 7, city walls, Townhouse (former post office) at Stadthausgasse 13 / Totengässlein 6, Weisses Haus at Martinsgasse 3, Wildt'sches Haus at Petersplatz 13, Haus zum Neuen Singer at Speiserstrasse 98, Wolfgottesacker at Münchensteinerstrasse 99, Zerkindenhof at Nadelberg 10.
+
+Among others, there is the Anatomical Museum of the University Basel, Berri-Villen and Museum of Ancient Art Basel and Ludwig Collection, Former Franciscan Barefoot Order Church and Basel Historical Museum, Company Archive of Novartis, Haus zum Kirschgarten which is part of the Basel Historical Museum, 
+Historic Archive Roche and Industrial Complex Hoffmann-La Roche, 
+Jewish Museum of Switzerland, Caricature & Cartoon Museum Basel, Karl Barth-Archive, Kleines Klingental (Lower Klingen Valley) with Museum Klingental, 
+Art Museum of Basel, hosting the world's oldest art collection accessible to the public, 
+Natural History Museum of Basel and the Museum of Cultures Basel, Museum of Modern Art Basel with the E. Hoffmann collection, Museum Jean Tinguely Basel, Music Museum, Pharmacy Historical Museum of the University of Basel, Poster Collection of the School for Design (Schule für Gestaltung), Swiss Business Archives, Sculpture Hall, Sports Museum of Switzerland, Archives of the Canton of Basel-Stadt, UBS AG Corporate Archives, University Library with manuscripts and music collection, Zoological Garden (Zoologischer Garten).[90]
+
+Basel is the home of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, founded in 1933, a worldwide centre for research on and performance of music from the Medieval through the Baroque eras. Theater Basel, chosen in 1999 as the best stage for German-language performances and in 2009 and 2010 as "Opera house of the year" by German opera magazine Opernwelt,[91] presents a busy schedule of plays in addition to being home to the city's opera and ballet companies. Basel is home to the largest orchestra in Switzerland, the Sinfonieorchester Basel. It is also the home of the Basel Sinfonietta and the Kammerorchester Basel, which recorded the complete symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven for the Sony label, led by its music director Giovanni Antonini. The Schola Cantorum and the Basler Kammerorchester were both founded by the conductor Paul Sacher, who went on to commission works by many leading composers. The Paul Sacher Foundation, opened in 1986, houses a major collection of manuscripts, including the entire Igor Stravinsky archive.
+The baroque orchestras La Cetra and Capriccio Basel are also based in Basel.
+
+In May 2004, the fifth European Festival of Youth Choirs (Europäisches Jugendchorfestival, or EJCF) opened; this Basel tradition started in 1992. Host of the festival is the local Basel Boys Choir.
+
+In 1997, Basel contended to become the "European Capital of Culture", though the honor went to Thessaloniki.
+
+The Basel museums cover a broad and diverse spectrum of collections with a marked concentration in the fine arts. They house numerous holdings of international significance. The over three dozen institutions yield an extraordinarily high density of museums compared to other cities of similar size and draw over one million visitors annually.[90]
+
+Constituting an essential component of Basel culture and cultural policy, the museums are the result of closely interwoven private and public collecting activities and promotion of arts and culture going back to the 16th century. The public museum collection was first created back in 1661 and represents the oldest public collection in continuous existence in Europa. Since the late 1980s, various private collections have been made accessible to the public in new purpose-built structures that have been recognized as acclaimed examples of avant-garde museum architecture.
+
+The city of Basel is a centre for numerous fairs and events all year round. One of the most important fairs for contemporary art worldwide is the Art Basel which was founded in 1970 by Ernst Beyeler and takes place in June each year. Baselworld, the watch and jewellery show (Uhren- und Schmuckmesse) one of the biggest fairs of its kind in Europe is held every year as well, and attracts a great number of tourists and dealers to the city. Live marketing company and fair organizer MCH Group has its head office in Basel.
+
+The carnival of the city of Basel (Basler Fasnacht) is a major cultural event in the year. The carnival is the biggest in Switzerland and attracts large crowds every year, despite the fact that it starts at exactly four o'clock in the morning (Morgestraich) on a winter Monday. The Fasnacht asserts Basel's Protestant history by commencing the revelry five days after Ash Wednesday and continuing exactly 72 hours. Almost all study and work in the old city cease. Dozens of fife and drum clubs parade in medieval guild tradition with fantastical masks and illuminated lanterns.
+
+Basel Tattoo, founded in 2006 by the local Top Secret Drum Corps, has grown to be the world's second largest military tattoo in terms of performers and budget after the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.[110] The Basel Tattoo annual parade, with an estimated 125,000 visitors, is considered the largest event in Basel. The event is now sponsored by the Swiss Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS), making it the official military tattoo of Switzerland.
+
+There are a number of culinary specialties originating in Basel, including Basler Läckerli cookies and Mässmogge candies. Being located in the meeting place between Switzerland, France and Germany the culinary landscape as a whole is very varied and diverse, making it a city with a great number of restaurants of all sorts.
+
+Zoo Basel is, with over 1.7 million visitors per year,[111] the most visited tourist attraction in Basel and the second most visited tourist attraction in Switzerland.[112]
+
+Established in 1874, Zoo Basel is the oldest zoo in Switzerland and, by number of animals, the largest. Through its history, Zoo Basel has had several breeding successes, such as the first worldwide Indian rhinoceros birth[113] and Greater flamingo hatch[114] in a zoo. These and other achievements led Forbes Travel to rank Zoo Basel as one of the fifteen best zoos in the world in 2008.[115]
+
+Despite its international fame, Basel's population remains attached to Zoo Basel, which is entirely surrounded by the city of Basel. Evidence of this is the millions of donations money each year, as well as Zoo Basel's unofficial name: locals lovingly call "their" zoo "Zolli" by which is it known throughout Basel and most of Switzerland.
+
+Basel has a reputation in Switzerland as a successful sporting city. The football club FC Basel continues to be successful and in recognition of this the city was one of the Swiss venues for the 2008 European Championships, as well as Geneva, Zürich and Bern. The championships were jointly hosted by Switzerland and Austria. BSC Old Boys and Concordia Basel are the other football teams in Basel.
+
+Among the most popular sports in Switzerland is ice hockey.[116] Basel is home to the EHC Basel which plays in the MySports League, the third tier of the Swiss ice hockey league system. They play their home games in the 6,700-seat St. Jakob Arena. The team previously played in the National League and the Swiss League, but they had to fill a bankruptcy case after the 2013–14 Swiss League season.
+
+Basel features a large football stadium that has been awarded four stars by UEFA, a modern ice hockey hall, and an admitted sports hall.
+
+A large indoor tennis event takes place in Basel every October. Some of the best ATP-professionals play every year at the Swiss Indoors, including Switzerland's biggest sporting hero and frequent participant Roger Federer, a Basel native who describes the city as "one of the most beautiful cities in the world".
+
+The annual Basel Rhine Swim draws several thousand visitors to the city to swim in or float on the Rhine river.[117]
+
+While football and ice hockey are by far the most popular sports, basketball has a very small but faithful fan base. The top division, called SBL, is a semi-professional league and has one team from the Basel region, the "Birstal Starwings".
+Two players from Switzerland are currently active in the NBA, Thabo Sefolosha and Clint Capela. 
+As in most European countries, and contrary to the U.S., Switzerland has a club-based rather than a school-based competition system.[118] The Starwings Basel are the only first division basketball team in German-speaking Switzerland.[119]
+
+IHF (International Handball Federation) is here.
+
+Basel Dragons AFC have been playing Australian Football in the AFL Switzerland league since 2019.
+
+St. Alban Gate
+
+Rathaus, Basel's Town Hall
+
+Protestant Cathedral
+
+Gemsberg
+
+University of Basel (est. in 1460)
+
+Barfüsserplatz
+
+Münsterplatz
+
+Wettsteinbrücke
+
+Global seat of the Bank for International Settlements
+
+Haus zum Kirschgarten
+
+Spalentor
+

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+
+
+Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquess of Dalí de Púbol (/ˈdɑːli, dɑːˈliː/,[1][2] Catalan: [səlβəˈðo ðəˈli], Spanish: [salβaˈðoɾ ðaˈli]; 11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship and the striking and bizarre images in his work.
+
+Born in Figueres, Catalonia, Dalí received his formal education in fine arts at Madrid. Influenced by Impressionism and the Renaissance masters from a young age, he became increasingly attracted to Cubism and avant-garde movements.[3] He moved closer to Surrealism in the late 1920s and joined the Surrealist group in 1929, soon becoming one of its leading exponents. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931, and is one of the most famous Surrealist paintings. Dalí lived in France throughout the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) before leaving for the United States in 1940 where he achieved commercial success. He returned to Spain in 1948 where he announced his return to the Catholic faith and developed his "nuclear mysticism" style, based on his interest in classicism, mysticism and recent scientific developments.[4]
+
+Dalí's artistic repertoire included painting, graphic arts, film, sculpture, design and photography, at times in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays and criticism. Major themes in his work include dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science and his closest personal relationships. To the dismay of those who held his work in high regard, and to the irritation of his critics, his eccentric and ostentatious public behavior often drew more attention than his artwork.[5][6] His public support for the Francoist regime, his commercial activities and the quality and authenticity of some of his late works have also been controversial.[7] His life and work were an important influence on other Surrealists, pop art and contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.[8][9] There are two major museums devoted to his work: The Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain and the Salvador Dalí Museum in Florida.
+
+Salvador Dalí was born on 11 May 1904, at 8:45 am,[10] on the first floor of Carrer Monturiol, 20 in the town of Figueres, in the Empordà region, close to the French border in Catalonia, Spain.[11] Dalí's older brother, who had also been named Salvador (born 12 October 1901), had died of gastroenteritis nine months earlier, on 1 August 1903. His father, Salvador Rafael Aniceto Dalí Cusí (1872–1950)[12] was a middle-class lawyer and notary,[13] an anti-clerical atheist and Catalan federalist, whose strict disciplinary approach was tempered by his wife, Felipa Domènech Ferrés (1874–1921),[14] who encouraged her son's artistic endeavors.[15] In the summer of 1912, the family moved to the top floor of Carrer Monturiol 24 (presently 10).[16][17] Dalí later attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes"[18] to an "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descendants of the Moors.[6][19]
+
+Dalí was haunted by the idea of his dead brother throughout his life, mythologizing him in his writings and art. Dalí said of him, "[we] resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections."[20] He "was probably a first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute".[20] Images of his brother would reappear in his later works, including Portrait of My Dead Brother (1963).
+
+Dalí also had a sister, Anna Maria, who was three years younger.[13] In 1949, she published a book about her brother, Dalí as Seen by His Sister.[21][22]
+
+His childhood friends included future FC Barcelona footballers Sagibarba and Josep Samitier. During holidays at the Catalan resort of Cadaqués, the trio played football together.[23]
+
+Dalí attended the Municipal Drawing School at Figueres from 1916 and also discovered modern painting on a summer vacation trip to Cadaqués with the family of Ramon Pichot, a local artist who made regular trips to Paris.[13] The next year, Dalí's father organized an exhibition of his charcoal drawings in their family home. He had his first public exhibition at the Municipal Theatre in Figueres in 1918,[24] a site he would return to decades later. In early 1921 the Pichot family introduced Dalí to Futurism and Dalí's uncle Anselm Domenech, who owned a bookshop in Barcelona, supplied him with books and magazines on Cubism and contemporary art.[25]
+
+On 6 February 1921, Dalí's mother died of uterine cancer.[26] Dalí was 16 years old and later said his mother's death "was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul."[6][27] After his wife's death, Dalí's father married her sister. Dalí did not resent this marriage, because he had great love and respect for his aunt.[13]
+
+In 1922, Dalí moved into the Residencia de Estudiantes (Students' Residence) in Madrid[13] and studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts). A lean 1.72 metres (5 ft 7 3⁄4 in) tall,[28] Dalí already drew attention as an eccentric and dandy. He had long hair and sideburns, coat, stockings, and knee-breeches in the style of English aesthetes of the late 19th century.[29]
+
+At the Residencia, he became close friends with Pepín Bello, Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca, and others associated with the Madrid avant-garde group Ultra.[30] The friendship with Lorca had a strong element of mutual passion,[31] but Dalí said he rejected the poet's sexual advances.[32] Dalí's friendship with Lorca was to remain one of his most emotionally intense relationships until the poet's death at the hands of Nationalist forces in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.[7]
+
+Also in 1922, he began what would become a lifelong relationship with the Prado Museum, which he felt was, 'incontestably the best museum of old paintings in the world.'[33]  Each Sunday morning, Dalí went to
+the Prado Museum to study the works of the great masters. 'This was the start of a monk-like period for me, devoted entirely to solitary work: visits to the Prado, where, pencil in hand, I analyzed all of the great masterpieces, studio work, models, research.'[34]
+
+Dalí's paintings in which he experimented with Cubism earned him the most attention from his fellow students since there were no Cubist artists in Madrid at the time.[35] Cabaret Scene (1922) is a typical example of such work. Through his association with members of the Ultra group, Dalí became more acquainted with avant-garde movements, including Dada and Futurism.  One of his earliest works to show a strong Futurist and Cubist influence was the watercolor Night-Walking Dreams (1922).[36] At this time, Dalí also read Freud and Lautréamont who were to have a profound influence on his work.[37]
+
+In May 1925 Dalí exhibited eleven works in a group exhibition held by the newly-formed Sociedad Ibérica de Artistas in Madrid. Seven of the works were in his Cubist mode and four in a more realist style. A number of leading critics praised Dalí's work.[38] Dalí held his first solo exhibition at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, from 14 to 27 November 1925.[39][40]  This exhibition, before his exposure to Surrealism, included twenty-two works and was a critical and commercial success.[41]
+
+In April 1926 Dalí made his first trip to Paris where he met Pablo Picasso, whom he revered.[6] Picasso had already heard favorable reports about Dalí from Joan Miró, a fellow Catalan who later introduced him to many Surrealist friends.[6] As he developed his own style over the next few years, Dalí made a number of works strongly influenced by Picasso and Miró.[42] Dalí was also influenced by the work of Yves Tanguy, and he later allegedly told Tanguy's niece, "I pinched everything from your uncle Yves."[43]
+
+Dalí left the Royal Academy in 1926, shortly before his final exams.[6] His mastery of painting skills at that time was evidenced by his realistic The Basket of Bread, painted in 1926.[44]
+
+Later that year he exhibited again at Galeries Dalmau, from 31 December 1926 to 14 January 1927, with the support of the art critic Sebastià Gasch [es].[45][46] The show included twenty-three paintings and seven drawings, with the "Cubist" works displayed in a separate section from the "objective" works. The critical response was generally positive with Composition with Three Figures (Neo-Cubist Academy) singled out for particular attention.[47]
+
+From 1927 Dalí's work became increasingly influenced by Surrealism. Two of these works Honey is Sweeter than Blood (1927) and Gadget and Hand (1927) were shown at the annual Autumn Salon (Saló de tardor) in Barcelona in October 1927. Dalí described the earlier of these works, Honey is Sweeter than Blood, as "equidistant between Cubism and Surrealism."[48] The works featured a number of elements that were to become characteristic of his Surrealist period including dreamlike images, precise draftsmanship, idiosyncratic inconography (such as rotting donkeys and dismembered bodies), and lighting and landscapes strongly evocative of his native Catalonia. The works provoked bemusement among the public and debate among critics about whether Dalí had become a Surrealist.[49]
+
+Influenced by his reading of Freud, Dalí increasingly introduced suggestive sexual imagery and symbolism into his work. He submitted Dialogue on the Beach (Unsatisfied Desires) (1928) to the Barcelona Autumn Salon for 1928 but the work was rejected because "it was not fit to be exhibited in any gallery habitually visited by the numerous public little prepared for certain surprises."[50] The resulting scandal was widely covered in the Barcelona press and prompted a popular Madrid illustrated weekly to publish an interview with the now controversial artist.[51]
+
+Some trends in Dalí's work that would continue throughout his life were already evident in the 1920s. Dalí was influenced by many styles of art, ranging from the most academically classic, to the most cutting-edge avant-garde.[52] His classical influences included Raphael, Bronzino, Francisco de Zurbarán, Vermeer and Velázquez.[53] Exhibitions of his works attracted much attention and a mixture of praise and puzzled debate from critics who noted an apparent inconsistency in his work by the use of both traditional and modern techniques and motifs between works and within individual works.[54]
+
+In the mid-1920s Dalí grew a neatly trimmed moustache. In later decades he cultivated a more flamboyant one in the manner of 17th-century Spanish master painter Diego Velázquez, and this moustache became a well known Dalí icon.[55]
+
+In 1929, Dalí collaborated with Surrealist film director Luis Buñuel on the short film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog). His main contribution was to help Buñuel write the script for the film. Dalí later claimed to have also played a significant role in the filming of the project, but this is not substantiated by contemporary accounts.[56] In August 1929, Dalí met his lifelong muse and future wife Gala,[57] born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. She was a Russian immigrant ten years his senior, who at that time was married to Surrealist poet Paul Éluard.[58]
+
+In works such as The First Days of Spring, The Great Masturbator and The Lugubrious Game Dalí continued his exploration of the themes of sexual anxiety and unconscious desires.[59] Dalí's first Paris exhibition was at the recently opened Goemans Gallery in November 1929 and featured eleven works. In his preface to the catalog, André Breton described Dalí's new work as "the most hallucinatory that has been produced up to now."[60] The exhibition was a commercial success but the critical response was divided.[60] In the same year, Dalí officially joined the Surrealist group in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris. The Surrealists hailed what Dalí was later to call his paranoiac-critical method of accessing the subconscious for greater artistic creativity.[13][15]
+
+Meanwhile, Dalí's relationship with his father was close to rupture. Don Salvador Dalí y Cusi strongly disapproved of his son's romance with Gala, and saw his connection to the Surrealists as a bad influence on his morals. The final straw was when Don Salvador read in a Barcelona newspaper that his son had recently exhibited in Paris a drawing of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, with a provocative inscription: "Sometimes, I spit for fun on my mother's portrait".[6][19] Outraged, Don Salvador demanded that his son recant publicly. Dalí refused, perhaps out of fear of expulsion from the Surrealist group, and was violently thrown out of his paternal home on 28 December 1929. His father told him that he would be disinherited, and that he should never set foot in Cadaqués again. The following summer, Dalí and Gala rented a small fisherman's cabin in a nearby bay at Port Lligat. He soon bought the cabin, and over the years enlarged it by buying neighboring ones, gradually building his beloved villa by the sea. Dalí's father would eventually relent and come to accept his son's companion.[61]
+
+In 1931, Dalí painted one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory,[62] which developed a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket watches. The general interpretation of the work is that the soft watches are a rejection of the assumption that time is rigid or deterministic. This idea is supported by other images in the work, such as the wide expanding landscape, and other limp watches shown being devoured by ants.[63]
+
+Dalí had two important exhibitions at the Pierre Colle Gallery in Paris in June 1931 and May–June 1932. The earlier exhibition included sixteen paintings of which The Persistence of Memory attracted the most attention. Some of the notable features of the exhibitions were the proliferation of images and references to Dalí's muse Gala and the inclusion of Surrealist Objects such as Hypnagogic Clock and Clock Based on the Decomposition of Bodies.[64] Dalí's last, and largest, exhibition at the Pierre Colle Gallery was held in June 1933 and included twenty-two paintings, ten drawings and two objects. One critic noted Dalí's precise draftsmanship and attention to detail, describing him as a "paranoiac of geometrical temperament".[65] Dalí's first New York exhibition was held at Julien Levy's gallery in November–December 1933. The exhibition featured twenty-six works and was a commercial and critical success. The New Yorker critic praised the precision and lack of sentimentality in the works, calling them "frozen nightmares."[66]
+
+Dalí and Gala, having lived together since 1929, were civilly married on 30 January 1934 in Paris.[67] They later remarried in a Church ceremony on 8 August 1958 at Sant Martí Vell.[68] In addition to inspiring many artworks throughout her life, Gala would act as Dalí's business manager, supporting their extravagant lifestyle while adeptly steering clear of insolvency. Gala, who herself engaged in extra-marital affairs,[69] seemed to tolerate Dalí's dalliances with younger muses, secure in her own position as his primary relationship. Dalí continued to paint her as they both aged, producing sympathetic and adoring images of her. The "tense, complex and ambiguous relationship" lasting over 50 years would later become the subject of an opera, Jo, Dalí (I, Dalí) by Catalan composer Xavier Benguerel.[70]
+
+Dalí's first visit to the United States in November 1934 attracted widespread press coverage. His second New York exhibition was held at the Julien Levy Gallery in November–December 1934 and was again a commercial and critical success. Dalí delivered three lectures on Surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and other venues during which he told his audience for the first time that "[t]he only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad."[71] The heiress Caresse Crosby, the inventor of the brassiere, organized a farewell fancy dress ball for Dalí on 18 January 1935. Dalí wore a glass case on his chest containing a brassiere and Gala dressed as a woman giving birth through her head. A Paris newspaper later claimed that the Dalís had dressed as the Lindbergh baby and his kidnapper, a claim which Dalí denied.[72]
+
+While the majority of the Surrealist group had become increasingly associated with leftist politics, Dalí maintained an ambiguous position on the subject of the proper relationship between politics and art. Leading Surrealist André Breton accused Dalí of defending the "new" and "irrational" in "the Hitler phenomenon", but Dalí quickly rejected this claim, saying, "I am Hitlerian neither in fact nor intention".[73] Dalí insisted that Surrealism could exist in an apolitical context and refused to explicitly denounce fascism.[74]  Later in 1934, Dalí was subjected to a "trial", in which he narrowly avoided being expelled from the Surrealist group.[75] To this, Dalí retorted, "The difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist."[76][77]
+
+In 1936, Dalí took part in the London International Surrealist Exhibition. His lecture, titled Fantômes paranoiaques authentiques, was delivered while wearing a deep-sea diving suit and helmet.[78] He had arrived carrying a billiard cue and leading a pair of Russian wolfhounds, and had to have the helmet unscrewed as he gasped for breath. He commented that "I just wanted to show that I was 'plunging deeply' into the human mind."[79]
+
+Dalí's first solo London exhibition was held at the Alex, Reid and Lefevre Gallery the same year. The show included twenty-nine paintings and eighteen drawings. The critical response was generally favorable, although the Daily Telegraph critic wrote: "These pictures from the subconscious reveal so skilled a craftsman that the artist's return to full consciousness may be awaited with interest."[80]
+
+In December 1936 Dalí participated in the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at MoMA and a solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. Both exhibitions attracted large attendances and widespread press coverage. The painting Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936) attracted particular attention.[81] On 14 December, Dalí, aged 32, was featured on the cover of Time magazine.[6]
+
+From 1933 Dalí was supported by Zodiac, a group of affluent admirers who each contributed to a monthly stipend for the painter in exchange for a painting of their choice.[82] From 1936 Dalí's main patron in London was the wealthy Edward James who would support him financially for two years. One of the Dalí's most important paintings from the period of James' patronage was The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937). They also collaborated on two of the most enduring icons of the Surrealist movement: the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa.[83]
+
+Dalí was in London when the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936.  When he later learned that his friend Lorca had been executed by Nationalist forces, Dalí's claimed response was to shout: "Olé!" Dalí was to include frequent references to the poet in his art and writings for the remainder of his life.[84] Nevertheless, Dalí avoided taking a public stand for or against the Republic for the duration of the conflict.[85]
+
+In January 1938, Dalí unveiled Rainy Taxi, a three-dimensional artwork consisting of an automobile and two mannequin occupants being soaked with rain from within the taxi. The piece was first displayed at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, organized by André Breton and Paul Éluard. The Exposition was designed by artist Marcel Duchamp, who also served as host.[86][87][88]
+
+In March that year, Dalí met Sigmund Freud thanks to Stefan Zweig. Dalí started to sketch Freud's portrait, while the 82-year-old celebrity confided to others: "This boy looks like a fanatic." Dalí was delighted upon hearing later about this comment from his hero.[6]
+
+In September 1938, Salvador Dalí was invited by Gabrielle Coco Chanel to her house "La Pausa" in Roquebrune on the French Riviera. There he painted numerous paintings he later exhibited at Julien Levy Gallery in New York.[89][90] This exhibition in March–April 1939 included twenty-one paintings and eleven drawings. Life reported that no exhibition in New York had been so popular since Whistler's Mother was shown in 1934.[91]
+
+At the 1939 New York World's Fair, Dalí debuted his Dream of Venus Surrealist pavilion, located in the Amusements Area of the exposition. It featured bizarre sculptures, statues, mermaids, and live nude models in "costumes" made of fresh seafood, an event photographed by Horst P. Horst, George Platt Lynes and Murray Korman.[92] Dalí was angered by changes to his designs, railing against mediocrities who thought that "a woman with the tail of a fish is possible; a woman with the head of a fish impossible."[93]
+
+Soon after Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War in April 1939, Dalí wrote to Luis Buñuel denouncing socialism and Marxism and praising Catholicism and the Falange. As a result, Buñuel broke off relations with Dalí.[94]
+
+In the May issue of the Surrealist magazine Minotaure, André Breton announced Dalí's expulsion from the Surrealist group, claiming that Dalí had espoused race war and that the over-refinement of his paranoiac-critical method was a repudiation of Surrealist automatism. This led many Surrealists to break off relations with Dalí.[95] In 1949 Breton coined the derogatory nickname "Avida Dollars" (avid for dollars), an anagram for "Salvador Dalí".[96] This was a derisive reference to the increasing commercialization of Dalí's work, and the perception that Dalí sought self-aggrandizement through fame and fortune.
+
+The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 saw the Dalís in France. Following the German invasion they were able to escape because on 20 June 1940 they were issued visas by Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France. They crossed into Portugal and subsequently sailed on the Excambion from Lisbon to New York in August 1940.[97]  Dalí and Gala were to live in the United States for eight years, splitting their time between New York and the Monterey Peninsula, California.[98][99]
+
+Dalí spent the winter of 1940–41 at Hampton Manor, the residence of Caresse Crosby, in Caroline County, Virginia, where he worked on various projects including his autobiography and paintings for his upcoming exhibition.[100][101]
+
+Dalí announced the death of the Surrealist movement and the return of classicism in his exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in April–May 1941. The exhibition included nineteen paintings (among them Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire and The Face of War) and other works. In his catalog essay and media comments Dalí proclaimed a return to form, control, structure and the Golden Section. Sales however were disappointing and the majority of critics did not believe there had been a major change in Dalí's work.[102]
+
+Dalí was the subject of a major joint retrospective exhibition with Joan Miró at MoMA from November 1941 to February 1942, Dalí being represented by forty-two paintings and sixteen drawings. Dalí's work attracted most of the attention of critics and the exhibition later toured eight American cities, enhancing his reputation in America.[103]
+
+In October 1942, Dalí's autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí was published simultaneously in New York and London and was reviewed widely by the press. Time magazine's reviewer called it "one of the most irresistible books of the year".  George Orwell later wrote a scathing review in the Saturday Book.[104][105] A passage in the autobiography in which Dalí claimed that Buñuel was solely responsible for the anti-clericalism in the film L'Age d'Or may have indirectly led to Buñuel losing his position at MoMA in 1943.[106][107] Dalí also published a novel Hidden Faces in 1944 with less critical and commercial success.[108]
+
+In the catalog essay for his exhibition at the Knoedler Gallery in New York in 1943 Dalí continued his attack on the Surrealist movement, writing: "Surrealism will at least have served to give experimental proof that total sterility and attempts at automatizations have gone too far and have led to a totalitarian system. ... Today's laziness and the total lack of technique have reached their paroxysm in the psychological signification of the current use of the college [collage]".[109] The critical response to the society portraits in the exhibition, however, was generally negative.[110]
+
+In November–December 1945 Dalí exhibited new work at the Bignou Gallery in New York. The exhibition included eleven oil paintings, watercolors, drawings and illustrations. Works included Basket of Bread, Atomic and Uranian Melancholic Ideal, and My Wife Nude Contemplating her own Body Transformed into Steps, the Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture. The exhibition was notable for works in Dalí's new classicism style and those heralding his "atomic period".[111]
+
+During the war years Dalí was also engaged in projects in various other fields. He executed designs for a number of ballets including Labyrinth (1942), Sentimental Colloquy, Mad Tristan, and The Cafe of Chinitas (all 1944).[112] In 1945 he created the dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's film Spellbound.[113] He also produced art work and designs for products such as perfumes, cosmetics, hosiery and ties.[114]
+
+In 1946 Dalí worked with Walt Disney and animator John Hench on an unfinished animated film Destino.[115]
+
+Dalí exhibited new work at the Bignou Gallery from November 1947 to January 1948. The 14 oil paintings and other works in the exhibition reflected Dalí's increasing interest in atomic physics. Notable works included Dematerialization Near the Nose of Nero (The Separation of the Atom), Intra-Atomic Equilibrium of a Swan's Feather, and a study for Leda Atomica. The proportions of the latter work were worked out in collaboration with a mathematician.[116]
+
+In early 1948 Dalí's 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship was published. The book was a mixture of practical advice on painting, and anecdotes and Dalínian polemics.[117]
+
+In 1948 Dalí and Gala moved back into their house in Port Lligat, on the coast near Cadaqués. For the next three decades they would spend most of their time there, spending winters in Paris and New York.[6][61] Dalí 's decision to live in Spain under Franco and his public support for the regime prompted outrage from many anti-Francoist artists and intellectuals. Pablo Picasso refused to mention Dalí's name or acknowledge his existence for the rest of his life.[118] In 1960, André Breton unsuccessfully fought against the inclusion of Dalí's Sistine Madonna in the Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanter's Domain exhibition organized by Marcel Duchamp in New York.[119]  Breton and other Surrealists issued a tract to coincide with the exhibition denouncing Dalí as "the ex-apologist of Hitler... and friend of Franco."[120]
+
+In December 1949 Dalí's sister Anna Maria published her book Salvador Dalí Seen by his Sister. Dalí was angered by passages which he considered derogatory towards his wife Gala and broke off relations with his family. When Dalí's father died in September 1950 Dalí learned that he had been virtually disinherited in his will. A two-year legal dispute followed over paintings and drawings Dalí had left in his family home, during which Dalí was accused of assaulting a public notary.[121]
+
+As Dalí moved further towards embracing Catholicism he introduced more religious iconography and themes in his painting. In 1949 he painted a study for The Madonna of Port Lligat (first version, 1949) and showed it to Pope Pius XII during an audience arranged to discuss Dalí 's marriage to Gala.[122] This work was a precursor to the phase Dalí dubbed "Nuclear Mysticism," a fusion of Einsteinian physics, classicism and Catholic mysticism.  In paintings such as The Madonna of Port Lligat, The Christ of Saint John on the Cross and The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, Dalí sought to synthesize Christian iconography with images of material disintegration inspired by nuclear physics.[123][124] His later Nuclear Mysticism works included La Gare de Perpignan (1965) and The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968–70).
+
+Dalí's keen interest in natural science and mathematics was further manifested by the proliferation of images of DNA and rhinoceros horn shapes in works from the mid-1950s. According to Dalí, the rhinoceros horn signifies divine geometry because it grows in a logarithmic spiral.[125] Dalí was also fascinated by the tesseract (a four-dimensional cube), using it, for example, in Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus).
+
+Dalí had been extensively using optical illusions such as double images, anamorphosis, negative space, visual puns and trompe l'œil since his Surrealist period and this continued in his later work. At some point, Dalí had a glass floor installed in a room near his studio in Port Lligat. He made extensive use of it to study foreshortening, both from above and from below, incorporating dramatic perspectives of figures and objects into his paintings.[126]:17–18, 172  He also experimented with the bulletist technique[127] pointillism, enlarged half-tone dot grids and stereoscopic images.[126] He was among the first artists to employ holography in an artistic manner.[128] In Dalí's later years, young artists such as Andy Warhol proclaimed him an important influence on pop art.[129]
+
+In 1960, Dalí began work on his Theatre-Museum in his home town of Figueres. It was his largest single project and a main focus of his energy through to 1974, when it opened. He continued to make additions through the mid-1980s.[130][131]
+
+In 1955 Dalí met Nanita Kalaschnikoff, who was to become a close friend, muse and model.[132] At a French nightclub in 1965 Dalí met Amanda Lear, a fashion model then known as Peki D'Oslo. Lear became his protégée and one of his muses.  According to Lear, she and Dalí were united in a "spiritual marriage" on a deserted mountaintop.[133][134]
+
+In 1968, Dalí bought a castle in Púbol for Gala, and from 1971 she would retreat there for weeks at a time, Dalí having agreed not to visit without her written permission.[61] His fears of abandonment and estrangement from his longtime artistic muse contributed to depression and failing health.[6]
+
+In 1980, at age 76, Dalí's health deteriorated sharply and he was treated for depression, drug addiction and Parkinson-like symptoms, including a severe tremor in his right arm. There were also allegations that Gala had been supplying Dalí with pharmaceuticals from her own prescriptions.[135]
+
+Gala died on 10 June 1982, at the age of 87. After her death, Dalí moved from Figueres to the castle in Púbol, where she was entombed.[6][61][136]
+
+In 1982, King Juan Carlos bestowed on Dalí the title of Marqués de Dalí de Púbol[137][138] (Marquess of Dalí of Púbol) in the nobility of Spain, Púbol being where Dalí then lived. The title was initially hereditary, but at Dalí's request was changed to life-only in 1983.[137]
+
+In May 1983, what was said to be Dalí's last painting, The Swallow's Tail, was revealed. The work was heavily influenced by the mathematical catastrophe theory of René Thom. However, some critics have questioned how Dalí could have executed a painting with such precision given the severe tremor in his painting arm.[139]
+
+From early 1984 Dalí's depression worsened and he refused food, leading to severe undernourishment.[140] Dalí had previously stated his intention to put himself into a state of suspended animation as he had read that some microorganisms could do.[141] In August 1984 a fire broke out in Dalí's bedroom and he was hospitalized with severe burns. Two judicial inquiries found that the fire was caused by an electrical fault and no findings of negligence were made.[142] After his release from hospital Dalí moved to the Torre Galatea, an annex to the Dalí Theatre-Museum.[143]
+
+There have been allegations that Dalí was forced by his guardians to sign blank canvases that could later be used in forgeries.[144] It is also alleged that he knowingly sold otherwise-blank lithograph paper which he had signed, possibly producing over 50,000 such sheets from 1965 until his death.[6] As a result, art dealers tend to be wary of late graphic works attributed to Dalí.[145]
+
+In July 1986, Dalí had a pacemaker implanted. On his return to his Theatre-Museum he made a brief public appearance, saying:
+
+When you are a genius, you do not have the right to die, because we are necessary for the progress of humanity.[146][147]
+
+In November 1988, Dalí entered hospital with heart failure. On 5 December 1988, he was visited by King Juan Carlos, who confessed that he had always been a serious devotee of Dalí.[148] Dalí gave the king a drawing, Head of Europa, which would turn out to be Dalí's final drawing.
+
+On the morning of 23 January 1989, while his favorite record of Tristan and Isolde played, Dalí died of heart failure at the age of 84. He is buried in the crypt below the stage of his Theatre-Museum in Figueres. The location is across the street from the church of Sant Pere, where he had his baptism, first communion, and funeral, and is only 450 metres (1,480 ft) from the house where he was born.[149]
+
+The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation currently serves as his official estate.[150] The US copyright representative for the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation is the Artists Rights Society.[151]
+
+On 26 June 2017 it was announced that a judge in Madrid had ordered the exhumation of Dalí's body in order to obtain samples for a paternity suit.[152] Joan Manuel Sevillano, manager of the Fundación Gala Salvador Dalí  (The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation), denounced the exhumation as inappropriate.[153] The exhumation took place on the evening of 20 July, and DNA was extracted.[154]  On 6 September 2017 the Foundation stated that the tests carried out proved conclusively that Dalí and the claimant were not related.[155][156] On 18 May 2020 a Spanish court dismissed an appeal from the claimant and ordered her to pay the costs of the exhumation.[157]
+
+From the late 1920s Dalí progressively introduced many bizarre or incongruous images into his work which invite symbolic interpretation. While some of these images suggest a straightforward sexual or Freudian interpretation (Dalí read Freud in the 1920s) others (such as locusts, rotting donkeys and sea urchins) are idiosyncratic and have been variously interpreted.[158] Some commentators have cautioned that Dalí's own comments on these images are not always reliable.[159]
+
+Food and eating have a central place in Dalí's thought and work. He associated food with beauty and sex and was obsessed with the image of the female praying mantis eating its mate after copulation.[160] Bread was a recurring image in Dalí's art, from his early work The Basket of Bread to later public performances such as in 1958 when he gave a lecture in Paris armed with a 12-meter-long baguette.[161] He saw bread as "the elementary basis of continuity" and "sacred subsistence".[162]
+
+The egg is another common Dalínian image. He connects the egg to the prenatal and intrauterine, thus using it to symbolize hope and love.[163] It appears in The Great Masturbator, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus and many other works.  There are also giant sculptures of eggs in various locations at Dalí's house in Port Lligat[164] as well as at the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres.
+
+Both Dalí and his father enjoyed eating sea urchins, freshly caught in the sea near Cadaqués. The radial symmetry of the sea urchin fascinated Dalí, and he adapted its form to many art works. Other foods also appear throughout his work.[165]
+
+The famous "melting watches" that appear in The Persistence of Memory suggest Einstein's theory that time is relative and not fixed.[63] Dalí later claimed that the idea for clocks functioning symbolically in this way came to him when he was contemplating Camembert cheese.[166]
+
+The rhinoceros and rhinoceros horn shapes began to proliferate in Dalí's work from the mid-1950s. According to Dalí, the rhinoceros horn signifies divine geometry because it grows in a logarithmic spiral. He linked the rhinoceros to themes of chastity and to the Virgin Mary.[125] However, he also used it as an obvious phallic symbol as in Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity.[167]
+
+Various other animals appear throughout Dalí's work: rotting donkeys and ants have been interpreted as pointing to death, decay, and sexual desire; the snail as connected to the human head (he saw a snail on a bicycle outside Freud's house when he first met Sigmund Freud); and locusts as a symbol of waste and fear.[163] The elephant is also a recurring image in his work; for example, Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. The elephants are inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture base in Rome of an elephant carrying an ancient obelisk.[168]
+
+Dalí's lifelong interest in science and mathematics was often reflected in his work. His soft watches have been interpreted as references to Einstein's theory of the relativity of time and space.[63] Images of atomic particles appeared in his work soon after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki[169] and strands of DNA appeared from the mid-1950s.[167] In 1958 he wrote in his Anti-Matter Manifesto: "In the Surrealist period, I wanted to create the iconography of the interior world and the world of the marvelous, of my father Freud. Today, the exterior world and that of physics has transcended the one of psychology. My father today is Dr. Heisenberg."[170][171]
+
+The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954) harks back to The Persistence of Memory (1931) and in portraying that painting in fragmentation and disintegration has been interpreted as a reference to Heisenberg's quantum mechanics.[170]
+
+Dalí was a versatile artist. Some of his more popular works are sculptures and other objects, and he is also noted for his contributions to theater, fashion, and photography, among other areas.
+
+From the early 1930s Dalí was an enthusiastic proponent of the proliferation of three-dimensional Surrealist Objects in order to subvert perceptions of conventional reality, writing: "museums will fast fill with objects whose uselessness, size and crowding will necessitate the construction, in deserts, of special towers to contain them."[172] His more notable early objects include Board of Demented Associations (1930–31), Retrospective Bust of a Woman (1933), Venus de Milo with Chest of Drawers (1936) and Aphrodisiac Dinner Jacket (1936). Two of the most popular objects of the Surrealist movement were Lobster Telephone (1936) and Mae West Lips Sofa (1937) which were commissioned by art patron Edward James.[173] Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual connotations for Dalí who drew a close analogy between food and sex.[174] The telephone was functional, and James purchased four of them from Dalí to replace the phones in his home. The Mae West Lips Sofa was shaped after the lips of actress Mae West, who was previously the subject of Dalí's watercolor, The Face of Mae West which may be used as a Surrealist Apartment (1934-35).[173]  In December 1936 Dalí sent Harpo Marx a Christmas present of a harp with barbed-wire strings.[175]
+
+After World War II Dalí  authorized many sculptures derived from his most famous works and images. In his later years other sculptures also appeared, often in large editions, whose authenticity has sometimes been questioned.[176]
+
+Between 1941 and 1970, Dalí created an ensemble of 39 pieces of jewelry, many of which are intricate, some containing moving parts. The most famous assemblage, The Royal Heart, is made of gold and is encrusted with 46 rubies, 42 diamonds, and four emeralds, created in such a way that the center "beats" like a heart.[177]
+
+Dalí ventured into industrial design in the 1970s with a 500-piece run of Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva that Dalí decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain maker's "Studio Linie".[178]  In 1969 he designed the Chupa Chups logo.[179] He facilitated the design of the advertising campaign for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest and created a large on-stage metal sculpture that stood at the Teatro Real in Madrid.[180][181]
+
+In the 1980s, the artist friend Wolf Vostell, whom Dalí met in 1978[182], proposed a joint project. This was realized as one of Dalí's last projects in 1988, shortly before his death. Vostell carried out a work of Dalí, which Dalí had already conceived in the 1920s. El fin de Parzival (the end of the Parzival) consists of 20 motorcycles of the Guardia Civil from the time of the Franco regime, five of which are fastened on top of each other and backed by the music of Richard Wagner's opera Parzival. Initially, Dalí intended to use bicycles. This addition was made by Vostell. In return, Wolf Vostell installed 1988 the sculpture TV-Obelisk (1979)[183] in the Teatre-Museu in Figueres with 14 TV sets and Dalí completed the sculpture with a woman's head on the top, which he created. Inside the woman's head is a video camera that records images of the sky, which are transmitted to the TV sets[184].
+
+In theater, Dalí designed the scenery for Federico García Lorca's 1927 romantic play Mariana Pineda.[185] For Bacchanale (1939), a ballet based on and set to the music of Richard Wagner's 1845 opera Tannhäuser, Dalí provided both the set design and the libretto.[186] He executed designs for a number of other ballets including Labyrinth (1942), Sentimental Colloquy, Mad Tristan, The Cafe of Chinitas (all 1944) and The Three-Cornered Hat  (1949).[187][112]
+
+Dalí became interested in film when he was young, going to the theater most Sundays.[188] By the late 1920s he was fascinated by the potential of film to reveal "the unlimited fantasy born of things themselves"[189] and went on to collaborate with director Luis Buñuel on two Surrealist films: the 17-minute short Un Chien Andalou (1929) and the feature film L'Age d'Or (1930). Dalí and Buñuel agree that they jointly developed the script and imagery of Un Chien Andalou, but there is controversy over the extent of Dalí's contribution to L'Age d'Or.[190] Un Chien Andalou features a graphic opening scene of a human eyeball being slashed with a razor and develops surreal imagery and irrational discontinuities in time and space to produce a dreamlike quality.[191] L'Age d'Or is more overtly anti-clerical and anti-establishment, and was banned after right-wing groups staged a riot in the Parisian theater where it was being shown.[192] Summarizing the impact of these two films on the Surrealist film movement, one commentator has stated: "If Un Chien Andalou stands as the supreme record of Surrealism's adventures into the realm of the unconscious, then L'Âge d'Or is perhaps the most trenchant and implacable expression of its revolutionary intent."[193]
+
+After his collaborations with Buñuel, Dalí worked on a number of unrealized film projects including a published script for a film, Babaouo (1932); a scenario for Harpo Marx called Giraffes on Horseback Salad (1937); and an abandoned dream sequence for the film Moontide (1942).[194] In 1945 Dalí created the dream sequence in Hitchcock's Spellbound, but neither Dalí nor the director were satisfied with the result.[195] Dalí also worked with Walt Disney and animator John Hench on the short film Destino in 1946.[115] After initially being abandoned, the animated film was completed in 2003 by Baker Bloodworth and Walt Disney's nephew Roy E. Disney. Between 1954 and 1961 Dalí worked with photographer Robert Descharnes on The Prodigious History of the Lacemaker and the Rhinoceros, but the film was never completed.[196]
+
+In the 1960s Dalí worked with a number of directors on documentary and performance films including with Philippe Halsman on Chaos and Creation (1960), Jack Bond on Dalí  in New York (1966) and Jean-Christophe Averty on Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dalí (1966).[197]
+
+Dalí collaborated with director José-Montes Baquer on the pseudo-documentary film Impressions of Upper Mongolia (1975), in which Dalí narrates a story about an expedition in search of giant hallucinogenic mushrooms.[198] In the mid-1970s film director Alejandro Jodorowsky initially cast Dalí in the role of the Padishah Emperor in a production of Dune, based on the novel by Frank Herbert. However, Jodorowsky changed his mind after Dalí publicly supported the execution of alleged ETA terrorists in December 1975. The film was ultimately never made.[199][200]
+
+In 1972 Dalí began to write the scenario for an opera-poem called Être Dieu (To Be God). The Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán wrote the libretto and Igor Wakhévitch the music. The opera-poem was recorded in Paris in 1974 with Dalí in the role of the protagonist.[201]
+
+Fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli worked with Dalí from the 1930s and commissioned him to produce a white dress with a lobster print. Other designs Dalí made for her include a shoe-shaped hat, and a pink belt with lips for a buckle. He was also involved in creating textile designs and perfume bottles. In 1950, Dalí created a special "costume for the year 2045" with Christian Dior.[202]
+
+Photographers with whom he collaborated include Man Ray, Brassaï, Cecil Beaton, and Philippe Halsman. Halsman produced the Dalí Atomica series (1948) –  inspired by Dalí's painting Leda Atomica  –  which in one photograph depicts "a painter's easel, three cats, a bucket of water, and Dalí himself floating in the air".[202]
+
+Dalí's architectural achievements include his Port Lligat house near Cadaqués, as well as his Theatre-Museum in Figueres. A major work outside of Spain was the temporary Dream of Venus Surrealist pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair, which contained a number of unusual sculptures and statues, including live performers posing as statues.[92]
+
+In his only novel Hidden Faces (1944), Dalí describes the intrigues of a group of eccentric aristocrats whose extravagant lifestyle symbolizes the decadence of the 1930s. The Comte de Grandsailles and Solange de Cléda pursue a love affair, but interwar political turmoil and other vicissitudes drive them apart. It is variously set in Paris, rural France, Casablanca in North Africa and Palm Springs in the United States. Secondary characters include aging widow Barbara Rogers, her bisexual daughter Veronica, Veronica's sometime female lover Betka, and Baba, a disfigured US fighter pilot.[203] The novel was written in New York, and translated by Haakon Chevalier.[108]
+
+His other literary works include The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942), Diary of a Genius (1966), and Oui: The Paranoid-Critical Revolution (1971). Dalí also published poetry, essays, art criticism and a technical manual on art.[204]
+
+Dalí worked extensively in the graphic arts, producing many drawings, etchings and lithographs. Among the most notable of these works are forty etchings for an edition of Lautréamont's The Songs of Maldoror (1933) and eighty drypoint reworkings of Goya's Caprichos (1973–77).[205] From the 1960s, however, Dalí would often sell the rights to images but not be involved in the print production itself. In addition, a large number of fakes were produced in the 1980s and 1990s, thus further confusing the Dalí print market.[145]
+
+Book illustrations were an important part of Dalí's work throughout his career. His first book illustration was for the 1924 publication of the Catalan poem Les bruixes de Llers [ca] ("The Witches of Llers") by his friend and schoolmate, poet Carles Fages de Climent.[206][207][208] His other notable book illustrations, apart from The Songs of Maldoror, include 101 watercolors and engravings for The Divine Comedy (1960) and 100 drawings and watercolors for The Arabian Nights (1964).[209]
+
+As a youth Dalí identified as Communist, anti-monarchist and anti-clerical[210] and in 1924 he was briefly imprisoned by the Primo de Rivera dictatorship as a person "intensely liable to cause public disorder."[211] When Dalí officially joined the Surrealist group in 1929 his political activism initially intensified. In 1931 he became involved in the Workers' and Peasants' Front, delivering lectures at meetings and contributing to their party journal.[212] However, as political divisions within the Surrealist group grew, Dalí soon developed a more apolitical stance, refusing to publicly denounce fascism. In 1934 Andre Breton accused him of being sympathetic to Hitler, and Dalí narrowly avoided being expelled from the group.[213] After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 Dalí avoided taking a public stand for or against the Republic.[85] However, immediately after Franco's victory in 1939 Dalí praised Catholicism and the Falange and was expelled from the Surrealist group.[94]
+
+After Dalí's return to his native Catalonia in 1948 he publicly supported Franco's regime and announced his return to the Catholic faith.[214] Dalí was granted an audience with Pope Pius XII in 1949 and with Pope John XXIII in 1959. He had official meetings with General Franco in June 1956, October 1968 and May 1974.[215] In 1968 Dalí stated that on Franco's death there should be no return to democracy and Spain should become an absolute monarchy.[216] In September 1975 Dalí publicly supported Franco's decision to execute three alleged Basque terrorists and repeated his support for an absolute monarchy, adding: "Personally, I'm against freedom; I'm for the Holy Inquisition."  In the following days he fled to New York after his home in Port Lligat was stoned and he had received numerous death threats.[217] When King Juan Carlos visited the ailing Dalí in August 1981, the painter told him: "I have always been an anarchist and a monarchist."[218]
+
+Dalí espoused a mystical view of Catholicism and in his later years he claimed to be a Catholic and an agnostic.[219]  He was interested in the writings of the Jesuit priest and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin[220] and his Omega Point theory. Dalí's painting Tuna Fishing (Homage to Meissonier) (1967) was inspired by his reading of Chardin.[221]
+
+Dalí's sexuality had a profound influence on his work. He stated that as a child he saw a book with graphic illustrations of venereal diseases and this provoked a lifelong disgust of female genitalia and a fear of impotence and sexual intimacy. Dalí frequently stated that his main sexual activity involved voyeurism and masturbation and his preferred sexual orifice was the anus.[222] Dalí said that his wife Gala was the only person with whom he had achieved complete coitus.[223] From 1927 Dalí's work featured graphic and symbolic sexual images usually associated with other images evoking shame and disgust. Images of anality and excrement also abound in his work from this time. Some of the most notable works reflecting these themes include The First Days of Spring (1929), The Great Masturbator (1929) and The Lugubrious Game (1929). Several of Dalí's intimates in the 1960s and 1970s have stated that he would arrange for selected guests to perform choreographed sexual activities to aid his voyeurism and masturbation.[224][225][226]
+
+Dalí was renowned for his eccentric and ostentatious behavior throughout his career. In 1941 the Director of Exhibitions and Publications at MoMA wrote: "The fame of Salvador Dalí has been an issue of particular controversy for more than a decade...Dalí's conduct may have been undignified, but the greater part of his art is a matter of dead earnest."[227] When Dalí was elected to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1979 one of his fellow academicians stated that he hoped Dalí would now abandon his "clowneries".[228]
+
+In 1936, at the premiere screening of Joseph Cornell's film Rose Hobart at Julien Levy's gallery in New York City, Dalí knocked over the projector in a rage. "My idea for a film is exactly that," he said shortly afterward, "I never wrote it down or told anyone, but it is as if he had stolen it!"[229] In 1939, while working on a window display for Bonwit Teller, he became so enraged by unauthorized changes to his work that he pushed a display bathtub through a plate glass window.[6] In 1955 he delivered a lecture at the Sorbonne, arriving in a Rolls Royce full of cauliflowers.[230] To promote Robert Descharnes' 1962 book The World of Salvador Dalí, he appeared in a Manhattan bookstore on a bed, wired up to a machine that traced his brain waves and blood pressure. He would autograph books while thus monitored, and the book buyer would also be given the paper chart recording.[6]
+
+After World War II Dalí became one of the most recognized artists in the world and his long cape, walking stick, haughty expression, and upturned waxed moustache became icons of his brand. His boastfulness and public declarations of his genius became essential elements of the public Dalí persona: "every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí".[231]
+
+Dalí frequently traveled with his pet ocelot Babou, even bringing it aboard the luxury ocean liner SS France.[232] He was also known to avoid paying at restaurants by executing drawings on the checks he wrote. His theory was the restaurant would never want to cash such a valuable piece of art, and he was usually correct.[233]
+
+Dalí's celebrity meant he was a frequent guest on television in Spain, France and the United States, including appearances on The Mike Wallace Interview[234] and the panel show What's My Line?.[235][236] Dalí appeared on The Dick Cavett Show on 6 March 1970 carrying an anteater.[237]
+
+He also appeared in numerous advertising campaigns such for Lanvin [fr] chocolates[238][239] and Braniff International Airlines in 1968.[240]
+
+Two major museums are devoted to Dalí's work: the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, and the Salvador Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, Florida, US.
+
+Dalí's life and work have been an important influence on pop art, other Surrealists and contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.[8][9] He has been portrayed on film by Robert Pattinson in Little Ashes (2008), and by Adrien Brody in Midnight in Paris (2011). The Salvador Dalí Desert in Bolivia and the Dalí crater on the planet Mercury are named for him.
+
+Dalí produced over 1,600 paintings and numerous graphic works, sculptures, three-dimensional objects and designs.[245] Below is a sample of important and representative works.
+
+Gala in the Window (1933), Marbella
+
+The Rainbow (1972), M.T. Abraham Foundation
+
+Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas (1956), Puerto José Banús
+
+Plaza de Dalí (Dalí Square), Madrid
+
+Perseo (Perseus), Marbella
+
+Children at Dalí exhibition in Sakıp Sabancı Museum, Istanbul
+
+Important books by or about Salvador Dalí readily available in English include:

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@@ -0,0 +1,198 @@
+
+
+Salvador (English: Savior), also known as São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos (English: Holy Savior of the Bay of All Saints), is the capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia. With 2.9 million people (2017), it is the largest city proper in the Northeast Region and the 4th largest city proper in the country, after São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília.
+
+Founded by the Portuguese in 1549 as the first capital of Brazil, Salvador is one of the oldest colonial cities in the Americas. A sharp escarpment divides its Lower Town (Cidade Baixa) from its Upper Town (Cidade Alta) by some 85 meters (279 ft). The Elevador Lacerda, Brazil's first urban elevator, has connected the two since 1873. The Pelourinho district of the upper town, still home to many examples of Portuguese colonial architecture and historical monuments, was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985. The city's cathedral is the see of the primate of Brazil and its Carnival celebration has been reckoned as the largest party in the world. Salvador was one of the first slave ports in the Americas and the African influence of the slaves' descendants makes it a center of Afro-Brazilian (negro) culture. The city is noted for its cuisine, music, dance and architecture. Porto da Barra Beach in Barra has been named one of the best beaches in the world. Itaipava Arena Fonte Nova was the site of the city's games during the 2014 Brazilian World Cup and 2013 Confederations Cup.
+
+Salvador forms the heart of the Recôncavo, Bahia's rich agricultural and industrial maritime district, and continues to be a major Brazilian port. Its metropolitan area, housing 3 899 533 people (2018) forms the wealthiest one in Brazil's Northeast Region (2015).
+
+Salvador lies on a small, roughly triangular peninsula that separates the Bay of All Saints, the largest bay in Brazil, from the Atlantic Ocean.[4] It was first reached by Gaspar de Lemos in 1501, just one year after Cabral's purported discovery of Brazil.[5] During his second voyage for Portugal, the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci sighted the bay on All Saints' Day (1 November) 1502 and, in honor of the date and his parish church in Florence, he named it the Bay of the Holy Savior of All the Saints.[6] The first European to settle nearby was Diogo Álvares Correia ("Caramuru"),[7] who was shipwrecked off the end of the peninsula in 1509. He lived among the Tupinambá, marrying Guaibimpara and others. In 1531, Martim Afonso de Sousa led an expedition from Mount St Paul (Morro de São Paulo)[8] and, in 1534, Francisco Pereira Coutinho, the first captain of Bahia, established the settlement of Pereira in modern Salvador's Ladeira da Barra neighborhood. Mistreatment of the Tupinambá by the settlers caused them to turn hostile and the Portuguese were forced to flee to Porto Seguro c. 1546.[9] An attempted restoration of the colony the next year ended in shipwreck and cannibalism.[10]
+
+The present city was established as the fortress of São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos ("Holy Savior of the Bay of All Saints")[11][n 1] in 1549 by Portuguese settlers under Tomé de Sousa, Brazil's first governor-general.[14] It is one of the oldest cities founded by Europeans in the Americas.[15] From a cliff overlooking the Bay of All Saints,[n 2] it served as Brazil's first capital and quickly became a major port for its slave trade and sugarcane industry.[17] Salvador was long divided into an upper and a lower city, divided by a sharp escarpment some 85 meters (279 ft) high.[18] The upper city formed the administrative, religious, and primary residential districts while the lower city was the commercial center, with a port and market.
+
+In the Roman Catholic Church, Brazil and the rest of the Portuguese Empire were initially administered as part of the Diocese of Funchal in Portugal but, in 1551, Salvador became the seat of the first Roman Catholic diocese erected in Brazil.[19] The first parish church[20] was the mud-and-thatch Church of Our Lady of Help (Igreja da Nossa Senhora da Ajuda) erected by the Jesuits (Society of Jesus),[n 3] which served as the first cathedral of the diocese until the Jesuits finished construction of the original basilica on the Terreiro de Jesus in 1553.[20][n 4] Its bishop was made independent of the Archdiocese of Lisbon at the request of King Pedro II in 1676;[23] he served as the primate of the Congo and Angola in central Africa until the elevation of the Diocese of Luanda on 13 January 1844 and its bishop still serves as the national primate and premier see (diocese) of Brazil.
+
+In 1572, the Governorate of Brazil was divided into the separate governorates of Bahia in the north and Rio de Janeiro in the south. These were reunited as Brazil six years later, then redivided from 1607 to 1613. By that time, Portugal had become temporarily united with Spain and was ruled from Madrid by its kings. In 1621, King Philip III replaced the Governorate of Brazil with the states of Brazil, still based in Salvador and now controlling the south, and the Maranhão, which was centered on São Luís and controlled what is now northern Brazil. As Spain was then prosecuting a war against the independence of the Dutch, the Dutch East and West India companies tried to conquer Brazil from them. Salvador played a strategically vital role against Dutch Brazil, but was captured and sacked by a West India Company fleet under Jacob Willekens and Piet Hein on 10 May 1624. Johan van Dorth administered the colony before his assassination, freeing its slaves. The city was recaptured by a Luso-Spanish fleet under Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo y Mendoza on 1 May 1625. John Maurice's two subsequent attempts to retake the town in April and May of 1638 were unsuccessful.
+
+In 1763, the colonial administration was removed to Rio de Janeiro and elevated to a viceroyalty. Salvador remained the heart of the Recôncavo, Bahia's rich agricultural maritime district,[24] but was largely outside Brazil's early modernization. The area formed a center of royal Portuguese support against heir apparent Pedro I's declaration of independence from European Portugal on 7 September 1822. Its elites initially remained loyal to the Portuguese crown[13] while rebels from Cachoeira besieged them for a year until finally receiving Portugal's surrender of the town on 2 July 1823, which is now celebrated as Bahia Independence Day.[25] The local elite was similarly hesitant during Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca's later coup that established the republic in 1889.[13]
+
+Owing to whales' use of the Bay of All Saints as a mating ground, Salvador became a large whaling port in the Southern Hemisphere during the 19th century but the trade had already begun to fall off by the 1870s.[12]
+
+Under the empire and republic periods, however, the town slowly began to industrialize. In 1873, Brazil's first elevator, the powerful hydraulic Elevador Lacerda, was constructed to connect the city's upper and lower towns.[12] Having undergone several upgrades, it continues in use.[26][27] By the First World War, it was joined by a second elevator[n 5] and Salvador was connected to four railroads: the Bahia & Alagoinhas to Joazeiro, the Bahia Central, the Nazareth Tramway, and a short line to Santo Amaro.[13] Its central districts and the major suburbs of Bomsim and Victoria were served by four streetcar lines,[12][13] which had begun to electrify.[13] It also served as a port of call for most steamship lines trading between Europe and South America.[13]
+
+In 1985, UNESCO listed the city's Pelourinho neighborhood as a World Heritage Site.[28][29] In the 1990s, a major municipal project cleaned and restored the neighborhood in order to develop it as the cultural center and heart of the city's tourist trade. The development of the Historical Center, however, involved the forced removal of thousands of working-class residents and now necessitates local and municipal events in order to attract people to the area.[30] The relocated workers, meanwhile, have encountered significant economic hardship in their new homes on the city's periphery, separated from access to work and civic amenities.[31]
+
+In 2007, Porto da Barra Beach in Barra was named by the British Guardian newspaper as the 3rd-best beach in the world.[32] In 2010, the city hosted the 12th UN Congress on Crime Prevention.[33] The city hosted the 2013 Confederations Cup and was one of the host cities of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil at its Arena Fonte Nova.[34] As part of its preparations for the World Cup, the city reëstablished its public transportation lines as the Salvador Metro.
+
+Salvador has a trade-wind tropical rainforest climate (Köppen: Af) Temperatures are relatively consistent, showing little variance throughout the course of the year.[35][36] Salvador's driest months of the year are December and January, when the city receives on average less than 10 cm (4 in) of precipitation. Salvador's wettest months are April, May and June, when at least 20 cm (8 in) of rain falls during each of these three months.[37]
+
+In 2010, the city of Salvador was the third-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.[44] The city had 474,827 opposite-sex couples and 1,595 same-sex couples. The population of Salvador was 53.3% female and 46.7% male.[45]
+
+According to the 2010 IBGE Census, there were 2,675,000 people residing in the city of Salvador.[46] The census revealed the following self-identification: 1,382,543 persons identify as Pardo (Multiracial) (51.7%); 743,718 as Black (27.8%); 505,645 as White (18.9%); 35,785 as Asian (1.3%); and 7,563 as Amerindian(0.3%).[45]
+
+Salvador's population is the result of 500 years of interracial marriage. The majority of the population has African, European and Native American roots. The African ancestry of the city is from Angola, Benin, Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Senegal and Mozambique.[47]
+
+According to an autosomal DNA study from 2008, the ancestral heritage of the population of Salvador was estimated to be 49.2% African, 36.3% European and 14.5% Native American.[49] The study also analyzed the genetic backgrounds of people by type of surname. Those with surnames with a religious connotation were 53.1% African in genetic ancestry and tended to be in lower economic classes. During the colonial era, it was typical practice for Portuguese priests and missionaries to baptize converted African slaves and Native Americans with surnames of religious connotations. These have been passed down to their descendants.
+
+A 2015 autosomal DNA study found out the following ancestral composition in Salvador: 50.5% of African ancestry, 42.4% of European ancestry and 5.8% of Native American ancestry.[50][51] The researchers explained they oversampled
+individuals living in poor environments (page 4).[50]
+
+Another 2015 autosomal DNA found out Salvador to be 50.8% African, 42.9% European and 6.4% Native American.[52]
+
+And another autosomal DNA study, also in 2015, found out Salvador to be: 50.8% European, 40.5% African and 8.7% Native American.[53]
+
+Source: Planet Barsa Ltda.[54]
+
+In Salvador, religion is a major contact point between Portuguese and African influences and, in the last 20 years, Brazil's version of a North American-influenced Pentecostalism.[55] Salvador was the seat of the first bishopric in colonial Brazil (established 1551), and the first bishop, Pero Fernandes Sardinha, arrived already in 1552.[56] The Jesuits, led by the Manuel da Nóbrega, also arrived in the 16th century and worked in converting the Indigenous peoples of the region to Roman Catholicism.
+
+Many religious orders came to the city, following its foundation: Franciscans, Benedictines and Carmelites. Subsequently, to them are created the Third Orders, the Brotherhoods, and Fraternities, which were composed mainly of professional and social groups. The most prominent of these orders were the Terceira do Carmo Order and the de São Francisco Order, founded by white men, and the Nossa Senhora do Rosário and São Beneditino Brotherhoods, composed of black men.[57] In many churches maintained by religious men, were housed the Santíssimo Sacramento brotherhoods.
+
+Besides these organizations, the expansion of Catholicism in the city was consolidated through social care work. Santa Casa the Misericórdia was one of the institution that did this kind of work, maintaining hospitals, shelters for the poor and the elderly, as well providing assistance to convicts and to those who would face death penalties.[57] The convents, on their part, were cultural and religious formation centers, offering seminar coursed that often were attended by the lay.
+
+Even with the present evolution, and the growth of Protestantism and other religions in the city, the Catholic faith remains as one of its most distinctive features, drawing a lot of people to its hundreds of churches. Some aspects, like the use of Portuguese in the Masses, the simplification of the liturgy, and the adoption of "pop" religious songs are key factors to the triumph of Catholicism. In the Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos Church, Masses are held in the Yorubá language, making use of African chants and typical clothes, which attract many people from the African Brazilian communities.[57]
+
+Most enslaved Africans in Bahia were brought from Sub-Saharan Africa, especially the Yoruba-speaking nation (Iorubá or Nagô in Portuguese) from present-day Benin. The enslaved were forced to convert to Roman Catholicism, but their original religion Yorùbá was combined with Roman Catholicism to make the syncretic religion known as, Candomblé, which has survived in spite of prohibitions and persecutions. The enslaved Africans managed to preserve their religion by attributing the names and characteristics of their Yorùbá deities to Catholic saints with similar qualities. Still today all Candomble sessions are conducted in Yoruba, not Portuguese.
+
+These religious entities have been syncretised with some Catholic entities. For instance, Salvador's Feast of Bonfim, celebrated in January, is dedicated to both Our Lord of Bonfim (Jesus Christ) and Oxalá. Another important feast is the Feast de Yemanja every 2 February, on the shores of the borough of Rio Vermelho in
+
+Salvador, on the day the church celebrates Our Lady of the Navigators. 8 December, Immaculate Conception Day for Catholics, is also commonly dedicated to Yemanja' with votive offerings made in the sea throughout the Brazilian coast.[citation needed]
+
+Source: IBGE 2010.[58]
+
+Throughout Brazilian history Salvador has played an important role. Because of its location on Brazil's northeastern coast, the city served as an important link in the Portuguese empire throughout the colonial era, maintaining close commercial ties with Portugal and Portuguese colonies in Africa and Asia.[59]
+
+Salvador remained the preeminent city in Brazil until 1763 when it was replaced as the national capital by Rio de Janeiro. In the last ten years many high-rise office and apartment buildings were constructed, sharing the same blocks with colonial-era housing or commercial buildings.[60]
+
+With its beaches, humid tropical climate, numerous up-to-date shopping malls (The Shopping Iguatemi was the first shopping mall in Northeastern Brazil) and pleasant high-class residential areas, the city has much to offer its residents.
+
+Economically Salvador is one of Brazil's more important cities. Since its founding the city has been one of Brazil's most prominent ports and international trading centers. Boasting a large oil refinery, a petrochemical plant and other important industries, the city has made great strides in reducing its historical dependence on agriculture for its prosperity.[61]
+
+Salvador is the second most popular tourism destination in Brazil, after Rio de Janeiro.[62] Tourism and cultural activity are important generators of employment and income, boosting the arts and the preservation of artistic and cultural heritage.
+
+Chief among the points of interest are its famous Pelourinho (named after the colonial pillories that once stood there) district, its historic churches,[63] and its beaches. Salvador's tourism infrastructure is considered one of the most modern in World, especially in terms of lodging. The city offers accommodation to suit all tastes and standards, from youth hostels to international hotels. Construction is one of the most important activities in the city, and many international (mainly from Spain, Portugal and England)[64] and national developers are investing in the city and in the Bahian littoral zone.
+
+Ford Motor Company has a plant in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador, in the city of Camaçari, assembling the Ford EcoSport, Ford Fiesta, Ford Fiesta Sedan.[65] It was the first Automotive industry in Northeastern Brazil. The industry employs 800 engineers.[66]
+
+JAC Motors will have a plant in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador, in the city of Camaçari, the new industry will result 3,500 direct jobs and 10,000 indirect jobs, the production of 100,000 vehicles by year.[67]
+
+In December 2001, Monsanto Company inaugurated, at the Petrochemical Pole of Camaçari, in Metropolitan Region of Salvador, the first plant of the company designed to produce raw materials for the herbicide Roundup in South America. The investment is equivalent to US$500 million; US$350 million were spent in this initial phase. The Camaçari Plant, the largest unit of Monsanto outside of the United States, is also the only Monsanto plant manufacturing raw materials for the Roundup production line. The company started the civil works for the new plant in January 2000.[68]
+
+The Salvador coastline is one of the longest for cities in Brazil. There are 80 km (50 mi) of beaches distributed between the High City and the Low City, from Inema, in the railroad suburb to the Praia do Flamengo, on the other side of town. While the Low City beaches are bordered by the waters of the All Saints Bay (the country's most extensive bay), the High City beaches, from Farol da Barra to Flamengo, are bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. The exception is Porto da Barra Beach, the only High City beach located in the All Saints Bay.
+
+The capital's beaches range from calm inlets, ideal for swimming, sailing, diving and underwater fishing, as well as open sea inlets with strong waves, sought by surfers. There are also beaches surrounded by reefs, forming natural pools of stone, ideal for children.
+
+Interesting places to visit near Salvador include:
+
+The city is served by many shopping malls, including Shopping Iguatemi,[72] Salvador Shopping,[73] Shopping Barra,[74] and Shopping Paralela.[75]
+
+Salvador has four parks, green areas protected, as Jardim dos Namorados Park, Costa Azul Park, Park of the City, Park of Pituaçu.
+
+Jardim dos Namorados is located right next to Costa Azul Park and occupies an area of 15 hectares in Pituba, where many families used to spend their vacations in the 1950s. It was inaugurated in 1969, initially as a leisure area. It underwent a complete renovation in the 1990s, with the construction of an amphitheater with room for 500 people, sports courts, playgrounds and parking for cars and tourist buses.
+
+Park of the City is an important preservation area of the Atlantic forest. It was completely renovated in 2001, becoming a modern social, cultural and leisure place. The new park has 720 square meter of green area right in the middle of the city. Among the attractions are Praça das Flores (Flowers square), with more than five thousand ornamental plants and flowers.
+
+Besides its environment, the park has an infrastructure for children, with a special schedule of events taking place every October.[76]
+
+Created by state decree in 1973, Pituaçu Park occupies an area of 450 hectares and is one of the few Brazilian ecological parks located in an urban area. It is surrounded by Atlantic forest, with a good variety of plants and animals. There is also an artificial pond in the park, built in 1906 along with the Pituaçu Dam, whose purpose was to supply water to the city.[77]
+
+There are a number of possible leisure activities, ranging from cycloboats rides on the pond, to a 38 km (24 mi) long cycloway circling the entire reserve. A museum is also located in the park. Espaço Cravo is an outdoor museum with 800 pieces created by Mario Cravo, comprising Totems, winged and three-dimensional figures, as well as drawings and paintings.
+
+The city has several universities:
+
+Top high schools of the city according to Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio are:[78]
+
+Salvador is one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country. The number of homicides increased 418% from 2000 to 2010. From 1998 to 2008, the number of homicides of youths between the ages of 15 and 24 increased 435.1%. Gun violence in the state of Bahia more than doubled in the period from 2004 to 2014, and the city is in the top ten for gun violence of the 26 state capitals of Brazil. In 2014 the state of Bahia had the most murderers in the country. At the same time, Salvador has one of the lowest rates of suicide in the nation.[79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86]
+
+Salvador's historical and cultural aspects were inherited by the intermarriage of such ethnic groups as Native-Indian, African and European. This mixture can be seen in the religion, cuisine, cultural manifestations, and custom of Bahia's people. African cultural practices are particularly celebrated.[87]
+
+Gregório de Mattos, born in Salvador in 1636, was also educated by the Jesuits. He became the most important Baroque poet in colonial Brazil for his religious and satirical works. Father António Vieira was born in Lisbon in 1608, but was raised and educated in the Jesuit school of Salvador and died in the city in 1697. His erudite sermons have earned him the title of best writer of the Portuguese language in the Baroque era.[88]
+
+After the Independence of Brazil (1822), Salvador continued to play an important role in Brazilian literature. Significant 19th century writers associated with the city include Romantic poet Castro Alves (1847–1871) and diplomat Ruy Barbosa (1849–1923). In the 20th century, Bahia-born Jorge Amado (1912–2001), although not born in Salvador, helped popularize the culture of the city around the world in novels such as Jubiabá, Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos, and Tenda dos Milagres, the settings of which are in Salvador.[citation needed]
+
+The local cuisine, spicy and based on seafood (shrimp, fish), strongly relies on typically African ingredients and techniques, and is much appreciated throughout Brazil and internationally. The most typical ingredient is azeite-de-dendê, an oil extracted from a palm tree (Elaeis guineensis) brought from West Africa to Brazil during colonial times.[89]
+
+Using the milky coconut juice, they prepared a variety of seafood based dishes, such as Ensopados, Moquecas and Escabeche. The sugar cane bagasse was mixed with molasses and Rapadura, in the creation of coconut desserts like Cocada Branca and Preta. The remaining of the Portuguese Stew sauce was mixed with manioc flour to make a mush, which is a traditional Indian dish.[90] In the markets of Salvador, it is possible to find stands selling typical dishes of the colonial era. In the Sete Portas Market, customers eat Mocotó on Friday nights since the 1940s, when the market was inaugurated. In the restaurants of Mercado Modelo, Sarapatel, stews and several fried dishes are served regularly. In the São Joaquim, Santa Bárbara and São Miguel markets, there are stands selling typical food. They are also sold at stands located on the beaches, specially crab stews and oysters. The restaurants that sell typical dishes are located mostly along the coast and in Pelourinho. They prepare a wide variety of recipes that take palm tree oil.
+
+Traditional dishes include caruru, vatapá, acarajé, bobó-de-camarão, moqueca baiana, and abará. Some of these dishes, like the acarajé and abará, are also used as offerings in Candomblé rituals. But Salvador is not only typical food. Other recipes created by the slaves were the Haussá Rice (rice and jerked beef cooked together), the Munguzá, used as offering to the Candomblé deity Oxalá (who is the father of all deities, according to the religion) pleased the matrons very much. So did the Bolinhos the Fubá, the Cuscuz (cornmeal) and the Mingau (porridge). According to Arany Santana, the African Ipetê (used in the rituals to the deity Oxum) became the Shrimp bobó, and the Akará (honoring the deities Xangô and Iansã) became the world-famous Acarajé. The city has restaurants specialized on international cuisine also. There are also places that serve dishes from other states of Brazil, especially from Minas Gerais and the Northeast region.
+
+Capoeira is a unique mix of dance and martial art of Afro-Brazilian origin, combining agile dance moves with unarmed combat techniques. Capoeira in Portuguese literally means "chicken coop". The capoeira appeared in Quilombo dos Palmares, located in the Captaincy of Pernambuco, and Salvador is considered the home of modern capoeira branches.[91][92] In the first half of the 20th century, Salvador-born masters Mestre Bimba and Mestre Pastinha founded capoeira schools and helped standardize and popularize the art in Brazil and the world. The practice of Capoeira was banned in 1892, though in 1937 it was made legal.[93] In recent years, Capoeira has become more international and accessible even in Salvador.
+
+The artistic, cultural and social heritage of Salvador is preserved in museums. From Museu de Arte da Bahia (MAB), which is the oldest in the State, to Museu Náutico, the newest, the first capital of Brazil displays unique elements of history. Museu de Arte da Bahia has paintings, Chinese porcelain, furniture and sacred images from the 17th and 18th centuries. Museu Costa Pinto has privately owned items such as, pieces of art, crystal objects, and furniture from the 18th and 19th centuries. Museu da Cidade, where many items that help to preserve the heritage of old Salvador are kept. The Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, established in 1960, is located at a historic site on the Bay of All Saints, Solar da União.
+
+Some churches and monasteries also have museums located in their premises. Examples of this are the Carmo da Misericórdia and São Bento museums. After the forts were renovated, Museu Náutico was established in the Forte de Santo Antonio da Barra (Farol da Barra) and the Museum of Communication in Forte São Diogo. Other important museums located in Salvador are: Museu do Cacau, State Museum of Geology, Museu tempostal, Solar do Ferrão, Museu de Arte Antiga e Popular Henriqueta M Catharino, Museu Eugênio Teixeira Leal, Museu Rodin Bahia, and Museu das Portas do Carmo.
+
+The streets of Salvador are decorated with numerous murals and sculptures, many of which have been produced by the resident artist Bel Borba, a native of the city.[94]
+
+
+
+The Bahian Carnival (Portuguese: Carnaval) is the largest party on the planet.[95][96] Its dimensions are gigantic. For an entire week, almost 4 million people celebrate throughout 25 kilometers (16 mi) of streets, avenues, and squares. The direct organization of the party involves the participation of over 100,000 people[97] and Salvador receives an average of over 800,000 visitors. The affair is heavily policed and covered. Streets are patrolled by lines of police in single file and guarded by seated teams of five or six officers.[98] In 2010, coverage was provided by 4,446 journalists from the local, national, and international press and broadcast to 135 countries through 65 radio stations, 75 magazines, 139 video productions, 97 newspapers (including 21 international papers), 14 tv stations, and 168 websites.[99]
+
+The party official begins when Rei Momo ("King Momo", the King of Carnival) is handed the key to the city in the morning of the Thursday before Mardi Gras. In the Campo Grande, streets are lined with grandstands (camarotes). 60-foot-long trucks known as Trios Eléctricos carry a kick line of scantily-clad dancers along with the city's best-loved performers, such as Ivete Sangalo, Daniela Mercury, Cláudia Leitte, Chiclete com Banana, and Carlinhos Brown.[100] Much of the music played is axé or samba-reggae. Groups known as blocos participate, with the most famous being the blocos afros such as Malé Debalé, Olodum, and Filhos de Gandhi.
+
+The parades are organized into separate circuits. The Osmar Circuit, the oldest, goes from Campo Grande to Castro Alves Square. The Downtown Circuit runs through downtown and Pelourinho. The Dodô Circuit goes from Farol da Barra to Ondina along the coast. Since the Osmar Circuit is the oldest, it is where the event's most traditional groups parade. In Dodô, where the artist box seats are located, the party becomes lively toward the end of the afternoon and continues until morning.
+
+Black Bahia Funk Balls play more American music—including English music—than their counterparts in Rio, while Rio's music is considered inferior and less played.[citation needed] The local dancehalls which host the balls are also distinct.[101]
+
+The first books that arrived in Salvador, were brought by the Jesuits, who came with Tomé de Souza.[102] The first libraries or bookstores that appeared were under the control of the religious missionaries and were mostly composed of books on religion.
+
+The handcraft legacy of Bahia using only raw materials (straw, leather, clay, wood, seashells and beads), the most rudimentary crafts are reasonably inexpensive. Other pieces are created with the use of metals like gold, silver, copper and brass. The most sophisticated ones are ornamented with precious and semi-precious gems. The craftsmen and women generally choose religion as the main theme of their work.
+
+They portray the images of Catholic saints and Candomble deities on their pieces. The good luck charms such as the clenched fist, the four-leaf clover, the garlic and the famous Bonfim ribbons express the city's religious syncretism. Nature is also portrayed on these pieces, reflecting the local wildlife. Music appears in the atabaque drums, the rain sticks, the water drums and the famous berimbau, along with other typical instruments.[103]
+
+Salvador holds an international reputation as a city where musical instruments that produce unique sounds are made. These instruments are frequently used by world-famous artists in their recording sessions. The main handcrafts production in Salvador is located in Mercado Modelo, which is the biggest handcraft center in Latin America.[104]
+
+Pieces can also be purchased at Instituto de Artesanato de Mauá and at Instituto do Patrimônio Artístico e Cultural (IPAC). These are organizations that promote typical art in Bahia.
+
+Deputado Luís Eduardo Magalhães International Airport has an area of 6,900 square metres (74,271 sq ft) between sand dunes and native vegetation. It is 28 km (17 mi) north of Central Salvador, and the road to the airport has already become one of the city's main scenic attractions.[105]
+
+With cargo volume that grows every year with the economic growth of the state, the Port of Salvador, located in the Bahia de Todos os Santos, is the port with the most movement of containers of the North/Northeast and the second-leading fruit exporter in Brazil.
+
+Salvador Metro System is in operation since 2014, and its first stage was ready since March 2008, between Lapa and Aceso Norte Stations, and in 2009, it was ready the metro stations between Estação Accesso Norte and Pirajá. In December 2014, it opened as far as Retiro. In 2018, the system had 32 km (20 mi) and 20 stations and linked with the bus system.
+
+The main shareholders in Metro Salvador are the Spanish companies Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, Dimetronic, and ICF. It is expected that Metro Salvador will invest US$150 million in rolling stock and signalling and telecommunications equipment. The contract covers the first 11.9 km (7.4 mi) line from Pirajá to Lapa, which is due to open in 2003. The project is also financed by a US$150 million World Bank loan and contributions from the federal, Bahia state, and Salvador city governments.[106]
+
+The system was one of the actions for urban mobility in preparation for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The connection of Line 2 with Line 1 of Salvador Metro helps to connect the International Airport to Downtown Salvador and the Fonte Nova Stadium. The new Line 2 of Salvador Metro integrates the metro stations of the Rótula do Abacaxi and the beach city of Lauro de Freitas in the metropolitan area, passing through the airport at the Airport metro station.[107]
+
+The two line SkyRail Bahia monorail network is due to open in 2022.[108]
+
+The BR-101 and BR-116 federal highways cross Bahia from north to south, connecting Salvador to the rest of the country. At the Feira de Santana junction, take the BR-324 state highway. The capital of Bahia is served by several coach companies from almost every Brazilian state. BR-242, starting at São Roque do Paraguaçu (transversal direction), is linked to BR-116, bound to the middle–west region. Among the state highways stands BA-099, which makes connection to the north coast and BA-001, which makes connection to the south of Bahia. Buses provide direct service to most major Brazilian cities, including Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Brasília, as well as regional destinations. In 2007, the city had 586,951 vehicles, the largest number of the Northern and Northeastern Brazil.[109] Salvador has 2,500 public buses, and 2 million people are transported every day.[110]
+
+The bus station (rodoviária) is in Iguatemi, with direct buses to larger cities in the country and to many other destinations in the state. On the second floor are the counters for the different bus companies, and on the first floor is a small supermarket and a 24 h left luggage. Across the street is a large shopping center, Iguatemi, with a food court, connected by a pedestrian crossing.[111]
+
+Four paved highways connect the city to the national highway system. Running north from the Farol (lighthouse) de Itapoã are hundreds of kilometres of beaches. The beaches are accessible by the BA-099 highway or (Line of Coconut and Green Line), a (toll) road, which is kept in excellent condition, running parallel to the coast, with access roads leading off to the coast itself. The road runs along dunes of snow-white sand, and the coast itself is an almost unbroken line of coconut palms. The communities along the coast range from fishing villages to Praia do Forte.
+
+The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Salvador, such as to and from work, on a weekday is 94 min, and 33% of public transit riders ride for more than 2 h every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 33 min, and 70% of riders wait for over 20 mib on average every day. The average distance that people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 8 km, and 18% travel for over 12 km in a single trip.[113]
+
+Although the creation of Salvador was masterminded by the Kingdom of Portugal and its project conducted by the Portuguese engineer Luís Dias (who was responsible for the city's original design), the continuous growth of the capital through the decades was completely spontaneous.[citation needed] The walls of the city-fortress could not hold the expansion of the city, towards the Carmo and the area where now stands Castro Alves Square. At the time of its foundation, Salvador had only two squares and the first neighborhood ever built here was the Historic City Center. Pelourinho and Carmo came subsequently, created as a consequence of the growing need of space that the religious orders had. With the rapid expansion, the neighborhoods grew and many of them were clustered in the same area, so today there are not accurate records as to their exact number. For urban management purposes, the city is currently divided on 17 political-administrative zones. However, due to their very cultural relevance and to postal conveniences, the importance of the neighborhoods of Salvador remains intact.
+
+Salvador is divided into a number of distinct neighborhoods, with the most well known districts being Pelourinho, Comércio, and Old Downtown, all located in West Zone. Barra, with its Farol da Barra, beaches and which is where one of the Carnival circuits begins, Barra is home of the Portuguese Hospital and Spanish Hospital, the neighborhood is located in South Zone. Vitória, a neighborhood with many high rise buildings, is located in South Zone.
+Campo Grande, with its Dois de Julho Square and the monument to Bahia's independence, is also located in South Zone, as is Graça, an important residential area.
+Ondina, with Salvador's Zoobotanical Garden and the site where the Barra-Ondina Carnival circuit ends, the neighborhood is home of the Spanish Club, is also a neighborhood in the South Zone.
+
+Itaigara, Pituba, Horto Florestal, Caminho das Árvores, Loteamento Aquárius, Brotas, Stiep, Costa Azul, Armação, Jaguaribe and Stella Maris are the wealthiest and the New Downtown neighborhoods in the East Zone and the city. Rio Vermelho, a neighborhood with a rich architectural history and numerous restaurants and bars, is located in the South Zone. Itapoã, known throughout Brazil as the home of Vinicius de Moraes and for being the setting of the song "Tarde em Itapoã", is located in East Zone.
+
+The Northwest area of the city in along the Bay of All Saints, also known as Cidade Baixa ("Lower city"), contains the impoverished suburban neighborhoods of Periperi, Paripe, Lobato, Liberdade, Nova Esperança, and Calçada. The neighborhood of Liberdade (Liberty) has the largest proportion of Afro-Brazilians of Salvador and Brazil.[114]
+
+The Historic Center of Salvador was designated in 1985 a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.[28] The city represents a fine example the Portuguese urbanism from the middle of the 16th century with its higher administrative town and its lower commercial town, and a large portion of the city has retained the old character of its streets and colourful houses.
+
+As the first capital of Portuguese America, Salvador cultivated slave labor and had its pillories ("pelourinhos") installed in open places like the Terreiro de Jesus and the squares know today as Tomé de Sousa and Castro Alves. The pillories were a symbol of authority and justice for some and of lashings and injustice for the majority.[115] The one erected for a short time in what is now the Historical Center, and later moved to what is now the Praça da Piedade (Square of Piety), ended up lending its name to the historical and architectural complex of Pelourinho, part of the city's upper town.
+
+Since 1992, the Pelourinho neighborhood has been subject to a nearly US$100 million "restoration" that has led to the rebuilding of hundreds of buildings' façades and the expulsion of the vast majority of the neighborhood's Afro-descendent population. This process has given rise to substantial political debate in the State of Bahia, since the Pelourinho's former residents have been for the most part excluded from the renovation's economic benefits (reaped by a few).[116] A major restoration effort resulted in making the area a tourist attraction.[117]
+
+Salvador's considerable wealth and status during colonial times (as capital of the colony during 250 years and which gave rise to the Pelourinho) is reflected in the magnificence of its colonial palaces, churches and convents, most of them dating from the 17th and 18th centuries. These include:
+
+Salvador provides visitors and residents with various sport activities. The Fonte Nova Arena, also known as Estádio Octávio Mangabeira is a football stadium inaugurated on 28 January 1951 in Salvador, Bahia, with a maximum capacity of 66,080 people. The stadium has now been replaced with a new stadium named Itaipava Arena Fonte Nova with a capacity of 56,000 people. This stadium hosted matches of 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and the subsequent 2014 FIFA World Cup, as well as the football competition in the 2016 Summer Olympics.  The stadium is owned by the Bahia government, and is the home ground of Esporte Clube Bahia. Its formal name honors Octávio Cavalcanti Mangabeira, a civil engineer, journalist, and former Bahia state governor from 1947 to 1954. The stadium is nicknamed Fonte Nova, because it is located at Ladeira das Fontes das Pedras. The stadium was in 2007 closed due to an accident, and the E.C. Bahia home matches now happen in another stadium, in Pituaçu.
+
+Esporte Clube Bahia and Esporte Clube Vitória are Salvador's main football teams. Bahia has won 2 national titles, Brazil Trophy in 1959 and the Brazilian League in 1988, while Vitória was a runner up in the Brazilian league in 1993 and Brazil Cup in 2010.
+
+Salvador has two large green areas for the practice of golf. Cajazeiras Golf and Country Club has an 18-hole course, instructors, caddies and equipment for rent. Itapuã Golf club, located in the area of the Sofitel Hotel, has a 9-hole course, equipment store, caddies and clubs for rent. Tennis is very popular among Salvador's elites, with a great number of players and tournaments in the city's private clubs. Brasil Open, the country's most important tournament happens every year in Bahia.[citation needed]
+
+During the last decades, volleyball has grown steadily in Salvador, especially after the gold medal won by Brazil in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.[citation needed] The most important tournaments in Bahia are the State Championship, the State League tournament and the Primavera Games, and the main teams are Associação Atlética da Bahia, Bahiano de Tênis, and Clube the Regatas Itapagipe. There are also beach volleyball events. Salvador has housed many international tournaments. Federação Bahina de Voleibol (the state league) can inform the schedule of tournaments. Bowling is practiced both by teenagers and adults in Salvador. Boliche do Aeroclube and Space Bowling are equipped with automatic lanes as well as a complete bar infrastructure.
+
+Bahia's basketball league exists since 1993 and has 57 teams. The sport is very popular in the city of Salvador, especially among students.[118] There are several courts scattered across the city, where is possible to play for free, like the one located at Bahia Sol square, where people play.[119] There are also several gymnasiums, in clubs like Bahiano de Tênis and Associação Atlética and the Antonio Balbino Gymnasiums (popularly known as "Balbininho"), which is an arena that can hold up to 7,000 people.
+
+Todos os Santos Bay and Salvador's climatic conditions are ideal for competition and recreational sailing. The city is equipped with good infrastructure for practice of sailing, such as rental and sale of dock space, boat maintenance, restaurants, snack bar, convenience stores, nautical products stores, boat rental agencies, VHF and SSB communication systems, events, and total assistance to crews.[120] The large number of sailing events organized by clubs and syndicates, like oceanic races and typical boats (wooden fishing boats and canoes) races, demonstrates the sport's growing force. Currently, Salvador has a national racing schedule with dozens of events, also receiving the Mini Transat 6.50 and Les Illes du Soleil races.[120]
+
+Rowing boat races started in the city more than a hundred years ago.[121] It was originally practiced by young men from traditional families, who spent their summer vacations there. The sport is a leisure option in Cidade Baixa (the lower part of the city). Esporte Clube Vitória and Clube São Salvador were the pioneers in the sport. Nowadays, these two entities and also Clube de Regatas Itapagipe lead the competitions that take place in the city. With the recent renovation of the Dique do Tororó area, Salvador received new lanes for the practice of the sport.
+
+Salvador's Twin towns and sister cities are:[122]

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+Coordinates: 13°41′N 89°11′W / 13.683°N 89.183°W / 13.683; -89.183
+
+El Salvador (/ɛl ˈsælvədɔːr/ (listen); Spanish: [el salβaˈðoɾ] (listen)), officially the Republic of El Salvador (Spanish: República de El Salvador, literally "Republic of The Saviour"), is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is San Salvador. As of 2018[update], the country had a population of approximately 6.42 million, mostly consisting of European and Native American descent.[5][6]
+
+El Salvador was, for millennia, controlled by several Mesoamerican nations, especially Lenca,[11] early Mayans,[12] then later the Cuzcatlecs[13] up until the Spanish conquest. Archaeological monuments also suggest an early Olmec presence around the first millennium BCE.[14] In the early 16th century, the Spanish Empire conquered the territory, incorporating it into the Viceroyalty of New Spain ruled from Mexico City. However the Viceroyalty of Mexico had little to no influence in the daily affairs of the Central American isthmus, which would be colonized in 1524. In 1609 the area became the Captaincy General of Guatemala, of which El Salvador was part until its independence from Spain, which took place in 1821, as part of the First Mexican Empire, then later seceded, as part of the Federal Republic of Central America, in 1823. When the Republic dissolved in 1841, El Salvador became a sovereign nation, then formed a short-lived union with Honduras and Nicaragua called the Greater Republic of Central America, which lasted from 1895 to 1898.[15][16][17]
+
+From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, El Salvador endured chronic political and economic instability characterized by coups, revolts, and a succession of authoritarian rulers. Persistent socioeconomic inequality and civil unrest culminated in the devastating Salvadoran Civil War (1979–1992), which was fought between the military-led government and a coalition of left-wing guerrilla groups. The conflict ended with the Chapultepec Peace Accords. This negotiated settlement established a multiparty constitutional republic, which remains in place to this day.
+
+El Salvador's economy has historically been dominated by agriculture, beginning with the indigo plant (añil in Spanish), the most important crop during the colonial period,[18][19] and followed thereafter by coffee, which by the early 20th century accounted for 90% of export earnings.[20][21] El Salvador has since reduced its dependence on coffee and embarked on diversifying its economy by opening up trade and financial links and expanding the manufacturing sector.[22] The colón, the currency of El Salvador since 1892, was replaced by the United States dollar in 2001.
+
+El Salvador ranks 14th among Latin American countries in terms of the Human Development Index and fourth in Central America (behind Panama, Costa Rica, and Guatemala)[23][circular reference] due in part to ongoing rapid industrialization.[24] However, the country continues to struggle with high rates of poverty, inequality, and gang-related violent crime.
+
+Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado named the new province for Jesus Christ – El Salvador (lit. 'The Saviour'). The full name was Provincia De Nuestro Señor Jesus Cristo, El Salvador Del Mundo (lit. 'Province of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the World'), which was subsequently abbreviated to El Salvador.[25]
+
+Tomayate is a palaeontological site located on the banks of the river of the same name in the municipality of Apopa. The site has produced abundant Salvadoran megafauna fossils belonging to the Pleistocene epoch. The palaeontological site was discovered accidentally in 2000, and in the following year, an excavation by the Museum of Natural History of El Salvador revealed not only several remnants of Cuvieronius, but also several other species of vertebrates. In the Tomayate site, they have recovered at least 19 species of vertebrates, including giant tortoises, Megatherium, Glyptodon, Toxodon, extinct horses, paleo-llamas and especially a large number of skeletal remains of proboscis genus Cuvieronius. The Tomayate site stands out from most Central American Pleistocene deposits, being more ancient and much richer, which provides valuable information of the Great American Interchange, in which the Central American isthmus land bridge played the title primordial role. At the same time, it is considered the richest vertebrate palaeontological site in Central America and one of the largest accumulations of proboscideans in the Americas.
+
+Sophisticated civilization in El Salvador dates to its settlement by the indigenous Lenca people; theirs was the first and the oldest indigenous civilization to settle in there.[11] They were a union of Central American tribes that oversaw most of the isthmus from southern Guatemala to northern Panama, which they called Managuara.[26] The Lenca of eastern El Salvador trace their origins to specific caves with ancient pictographs dating back to at least the year 600 AD[27] and some sources say as far back as 7000 BC.[28] There was also a presence of Olmecs, although their role is unclear. Their influence remains recorded in the form of stone monuments and artefacts preserved in western El Salvador, as well as the national museum.[29] A Mayan population also settled there in the Formative period but their numbers were greatly diminished when the Ilopango supervolcano eruption caused a massive exodus.[30]
+
+Centuries later the Mayans and Lenca were displaced by the Pipil people, Nahua speaking groups who migrated from Mexico beginning around 800 A.D. and occupied the central and western regions of El Salvador.[30] The Pipil were the last indigenous people to arrive in El Salvador.[31] They called their territory Kuskatan, a Pipil word[32] meaning The Place of Precious Jewels, back-formed into Classical Nahuatl Cōzcatlān, and Hispanicized as Cuzcatlán.[33][34] It was the largest domain in Salvadoran territory up until European contact. The term Cuzcatleco is commonly used to identify someone of Salvadoran heritage, although most of the eastern population has indigenous heritage of Lenca origin, as do their place names such as Intipuca, Chirilagua, and Lolotique.
+
+Most of the archaeological sites in western El Salvador such as Lago de Guija, Joya De Ceren, and Cihuatan indicate a pre-Columbian Mayan culture. Cihuatan shows signs of material trade with northern Nahua culture, eastern Mayan and Lenca culture, and southern Nicaraguan and Costa Rican indigenous culture.[35] Tazumal's smaller B1-2 structure shows a talud-tablero style of architecture that is associated with Nahua culture and corresponds with their migration history. In eastern El Salvador, the Lenca site of Quelepa is highlighted as a major pre-Columbian cultural center and demonstrates links to the Mayan site of Copan in western Honduras as well as the previously mentioned sites in Chalchuapa, and Cara Sucia in western El Salvador. An investigation of the site of La Laguna in Usulutan has also produced Copador items which link it to the Lenca-Maya trade route.
+
+By 1521, the indigenous population of the Mesoamerican area had been drastically reduced by the smallpox epidemic that was spreading throughout the territory, although it had not yet reached pandemic levels in Cuzcatlán or the Salvadorian portion Managuara.[36][37][38] The first known visit by Spaniards to what is now Salvadoran territory was made by the Spanish admiral Andrés Niño, who led a Spanish expedition to Central America. He disembarked in the Gulf of Fonseca on 31 May 1522, at Meanguera island, naming it Petronila,[39] and then discovered Jiquilisco Bay on the mouth of Lempa River. The first indigenous people to have contact with the Spanish were the Lenca of eastern El Salvador.
+
+In 1524, after participating in the conquest of Mexico, Spanish conquistadors led by Pedro de Alvarado and his brother Gonzalo crossed the Rio Paz (Peace River) from the area comprising the present Republic of Guatemala into what is now the Republic of El Salvador. The Spaniards were disappointed to discover that the indigenous Pipil people had no gold or jewels like those they had found in Guatemala or Mexico,[40] but recognized the richness of the land's volcanic soil.
+
+Pedro de Alvarado led the first incursion by Spanish forces to extend their dominion to the nation of Cuzcatlan (El Salvador), in June 1524.[41]
+When he arrived at the borders of the Cuzcatlan kingdom he saw that civilians had been evacuated. Cuzcatlec warriors moved to the coastal city of Acajutla and waited for Alvarado and his forces. Alvarado approached, confident that the result would be similar to what occurred in Mexico and Guatemala. He thought he would easily defeat this new indigenous force since his Mexican allies and the Pipil of Cuzcatlan spoke a similar language.[42]
+
+The Indigenous peoples of El Salvador did not see the Spanish as gods, but as foreign invaders. Alvarado saw that the Cuzcatan force outnumbered his Spanish soldiers and Mexican Indian allies. The Spanish withdrew and the Cuzcatlec army attacked, running behind them with war chants and shooting bow arrows.[citation needed]
+
+Alvarado described the Cuzcatlec soldiers in great detail as having shields made of colourful exotic feathers, a vest-like armour made of three inch cotton which arrows could not penetrate, and large spears. Both armies suffered many casualties, with a wounded Alvarado retreating and losing a lot of his men, especially among the Mexican Indian auxiliaries. Once his army had regrouped, Alvarado decided to head to the Cuzcatlan capital and again faced armed Cuzcatlec. Wounded, unable to fight and hiding in the cliffs, Alvarado sent his Spanish men on their horses to approach the Cuzcatlec to see if they would fear the horses, but they did not retreat, Alvarado recalls in his letters to Hernan Cortez.[43]
+
+The Cuzcatlec attacked again, and on this occasion stole Spanish weaponry. Alvarado retreated and sent Mexican Indian messengers to demand that the Cuzcatlec warriors return the stolen weapons and surrender to the Spanish king. The Cuzcatlec responded with the famous response, "If you want your weapons, come get them". As days passed, Alvarado, fearing an ambush, sent more Mexican Indian messengers to negotiate, but these messengers never came back and were presumably executed.
+
+The Spanish efforts were firmly resisted by the indigenous people, including the Pipil and their Mayan-speaking neighbours. They defeated the Spaniards and what was left of their Mexican Tlaxcala Indian allies, forcing them to withdraw to Guatemala. After being wounded, Alvarado abandoned the war and appointed his brother, Gonzalo de Alvarado, to continue the task. Two subsequent expeditions (the first in 1525, followed by a smaller group in 1528) brought the Pipil under Spanish control, since the Pipil also were weakened by a regional epidemic of smallpox. In 1525, the conquest of Cuzcatlán was completed and the city of San Salvador was established. The Spanish faced much resistance from the Pipil and were not able to reach eastern El Salvador, the area of the Lencas.
+
+In 1526 the Spanish founded the garrison town of San Miguel, headed by another explorer and conquistador, Luis de Moscoso Alvarado, nephew of Pedro Alvarado. Oral history holds that a Maya-Lenca crown princess, Antu Silan Ulap I, organized resistance to the conquistadors.[44] The kingdom of the Lenca was alarmed by de Moscoso's invasion, and Antu Silan travelled from village to village, uniting all the Lenca towns in present-day El Salvador and Honduras against the Spaniards. Through surprise attacks and overwhelming numbers, they were able to drive the Spanish out of San Miguel and destroy the garrison.
+
+For ten years the Lencas prevented the Spanish from building a permanent settlement. Then the Spanish returned with more soldiers, including about 2,000 forced conscripts from indigenous communities in Guatemala. They pursued the Lenca leaders further up into the mountains of Intibucá.
+
+Antu Silan Ulap eventually handed over control of the Lenca resistance to Lempira (also called Empira). Lempira was noteworthy among indigenous leaders in that he mocked the Spanish by wearing their clothes after capturing them and using their weapons captured in battle. Lempira fought in command of thousands of Lenca forces for six more years in Managuara until he was killed in battle. The remaining Lenca forces retreated into the hills. The Spanish were then able to rebuild their garrison town of San Miguel in 1537.
+
+During the colonial period, El Salvador was part of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, also known as the Kingdom of Guatemala (Spanish: Reino de Guatemala), created in 1609 as an administrative division of New Spain. The Salvadoran territory was administered by the Mayor of Sonsonate, with San Salvador being established as an intendencia in 1786.
+
+Towards the end of 1811, a combination of internal and external factors motivated Central American elites to attempt to gain independence from the Spanish Crown. The most important internal factors were the desire of local elites to control the country's affairs free of involvement from Spanish authorities, and the long-standing Creole aspiration for independence. The main external factors motivating the independence movement were the success of the French and American revolutions in the 18th century, and the weakening of the Spanish Crown's military power as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, with the resulting inability to control its colonies effectively.
+
+In November 1811 Salvadoran priest José Matías Delgado rang the bells of Iglesia La Merced in San Salvador, calling for insurrection and launching the 1811 Independence Movement. This insurrection was suppressed and many of its leaders were arrested and served sentences in jail. Another insurrection was launched in 1814, and again this insurrection was also suppressed.
+
+In 1821 in light of unrest in Guatemala, Spanish authorities capitulated and signed the Act of Independence of Central America, which released all of the Captaincy of Guatemala (comprising current territories of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica and the Mexican state of Chiapas) from Spanish rule and declared its independence. In 1821, El Salvador joined Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua in a union named the Federal Republic of Central America.
+
+In early 1822, the authorities of the newly independent Central American provinces, meeting in Guatemala City, voted to join the newly constituted First Mexican Empire under Agustín de Iturbide. El Salvador resisted, insisting on autonomy for the Central American countries. A Mexican military detachment marched to San Salvador and suppressed dissent, but with the fall of Iturbide on 19 March 1823, the army decamped back to Mexico. Shortly thereafter, the authorities of the provinces revoked the vote to join Mexico, deciding instead to form a federal union of the five remaining provinces. (Chiapas permanently joined Mexico at this juncture.)
+
+When the Federal Republic of Central America dissolved in 1841, El Salvador maintained its own government until it joined Honduras and Nicaragua in 1896 to form the Greater Republic of Central America, which dissolved in 1898.
+
+After the mid-19th century, the economy was based on coffee growing. As the world market for indigo withered away, the economy prospered or suffered as the world coffee price fluctuated. The enormous profits that coffee yielded as a monoculture export served as an impetus for the concentration of land into the hands of an oligarchy of just a few families.[45]
+
+Throughout the last half of the 19th century, a succession of presidents from the ranks of the Salvadoran oligarchy, nominally both conservative and liberal, generally agreed on the promotion of coffee as the predominant cash crop, the development of infrastructure (railroads and port facilities) primarily in support of the coffee trade, the elimination of communal landholdings to facilitate further coffee production, the passage of anti-vagrancy laws to ensure that displaced campesinos and other rural residents provided sufficient labour for the coffee fincas (plantations), and the suppression of rural discontent. In 1912, the national guard was created as a rural police force.
+
+In 1898, Gen. Tomas Regalado gained power by force, deposing Rafael Antonio Gutiérrez and ruling as president until 1903. Once in office he revived the practice of presidents designating their successors. After serving his term, he remained active in the Army of El Salvador, and was killed 11 July 1906, at El Jicaro during a war against Guatemala. Until 1913 El Salvador was politically stable, with undercurrents of popular discontent. When President Dr. Manuel Enrique Araujo was killed in 1913, many hypotheses were advanced for the political motive of his murder.
+
+Araujo's administration was followed by the Melendez-Quinonez dynasty that lasted from 1913 to 1927. Pio Romero Bosque, ex-Minister of the Government and a trusted collaborator of the dynasty, succeeded President Jorge Meléndez and in 1930 announced free elections, in which Arturo Araujo came to power on 1 March 1931 in what was considered the country's first freely contested election. His government lasted only nine months before it was overthrown by junior military officers who accused his Labor Party of lacking political and governmental experience and of using its government offices inefficiently. President Araujo faced general popular discontent, as the people had expected economic reforms and the redistribution of land. There were demonstrations in front of the National Palace from the first week of his administration. His vice president and minister of war was Gen. Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.
+
+In December 1931, a coup d'état organized by junior officers and led by Gen. Martínez started in the First Regiment of Infantry across from the National Palace in downtown San Salvador. Only the First Regiment of Cavalry and the National Police defended the presidency (the National Police had been on its payroll), but later that night, after hours of fighting, the badly outnumbered defenders surrendered to rebel forces.
+
+The Directorate, composed of officers, hid behind a shadowy figure,[46] a rich anti-Communist banker called Rodolfo Duke, and later installed the ardent fascist Gen. Martínez as president. The revolt was probably due to the army's discontent at not having been paid by President Araujo for some months. Araujo left the National Palace and unsuccessfully tried to organize forces to defeat the revolt.
+
+The U.S. Minister in El Salvador met with the Directorate and later recognized the government of Martínez, which agreed to hold presidential elections. He resigned six months prior to running for re-election, winning back the presidency as the only candidate on the ballot. He ruled from 1935 to 1939, then from 1939 to 1943. He began a fourth term in 1944, but resigned in May after a general strike. Martínez had said he was going to respect the Constitution, which stipulated he could not be re-elected, but he refused to keep his promise.
+
+From December 1931, the year of the coup that brought Martínez to power, there was brutal suppression of rural resistance. The most notable event was the February 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising, originally led by Farabundo Martí and Abel Cuenca, and university students Alfonso Luna and Mario Zapata, but these leaders were captured before the planned insurrection. Only Cuenca survived; the other insurgents were killed by the government. After the capture of the movement leaders, the insurrection erupted in a disorganized and mob-controlled fashion, resulting in government repression that was later referred to as La Matanza (The Massacre), because tens of thousands of peasants died in the ensuing chaos on the orders of President Martinez.
+
+In the unstable political climate of the previous few years, the social activist and revolutionary leader Farabundo Martí helped found the Communist Party of Central America, and led a Communist alternative to the Red Cross called International Red Aid, serving as one of its representatives. Their goal was to help poor and underprivileged Salvadorans through the use of Marxist-Leninist ideology (strongly rejecting Stalinism). In December 1930, at the height of the country's economic and social depression, Martí was once again exiled due to his popularity among the nation's poor and rumours of his upcoming nomination for president the following year. Once Arturo Araujo was elected president in 1931, Martí returned to El Salvador, and along with Alfonso Luna and Mario Zapata began the movement that was later truncated by the military.
+
+They helped start a guerrilla revolt of indigenous farmers. The government responded by killing over 30,000 people at what was to have been a "peaceful meeting" in 1932; this became known as La Matanza (The Slaughter). The peasant uprising against Martínez was crushed by the Salvadoran military ten days after it had begun. The Communist-led rebellion, fomented by collapsing coffee prices, enjoyed some initial success, but was soon drowned in a bloodbath. President Martínez, who had himself toppled an elected government only weeks earlier, ordered the defeated Martí shot after a perfunctory hearing.
+
+Historically, the high Salvadoran population density has contributed to tensions with neighbouring Honduras, as land-poor Salvadorans emigrated to less densely populated Honduras and established themselves as squatters on unused or underused land. This phenomenon was a major cause of the 1969 Football War between the two countries.[47] As many as 130,000 Salvadorans were forcibly expelled or fled from Honduras.[48]
+
+The Christian Democratic Party (PDC) and the National Conciliation Party (PCN) were active in Salvadoran politics from 1960 until 2011, when they were disbanded by the Supreme Court because they had failed to win enough votes in the 2004 presidential election;[49] Both parties have since reconstituted.  They share common ideals, but one represents the middle class and the latter the interests of the Salvadoran military.
+
+PDC leader José Napoleón Duarte was the mayor of San Salvador from 1964 to 1970, winning three elections during the regime of PCN President Julio Adalberto Rivera Carballo, who allowed free elections for mayors and the National Assembly. Duarte later ran for president with a political grouping called the National Opposition Union (UNO) but was defeated in the 1972 presidential elections. He lost to the ex-Minister of Interior, Col. Arturo Armando Molina, in an election that was widely viewed as fraudulent; Molina was declared the winner even though Duarte was said to have received a majority of the votes. Duarte, at some army officers' request, supported a revolt to protest the election fraud, but was captured, tortured and later exiled. Duarte returned to the country in 1979 to enter politics after working on projects in Venezuela as an engineer.
+
+In October 1979, a coup d'état brought the Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador to power. It nationalized many private companies and took over much privately owned land. The purpose of this new junta was to stop the revolutionary movement already underway in response to Duarte's stolen election. Nevertheless, the oligarchy opposed agrarian reform, and a junta formed with young liberal elements from the army such as Gen. Majano and Gen. Gutierrez,[50][51] as well as with progressives such as Guillermo Ungo and Alvarez.
+
+Pressure from the oligarchy soon dissolved the junta because of its inability to control the army in its repression of the people fighting for unionization rights, agrarian reform, better wages, accessible health care and freedom of expression. In the meantime, the guerrilla movement was spreading to all sectors of Salvadoran society. Middle and high school students were organized in MERS (Movimiento Estudiantil Revolucionario de Secundaria, Revolutionary Movement of Secondary Students); college students were involved with AGEUS (Asociacion de Estudiantes Universitarios Salvadorenos; Association of Salvadoran College Students); and workers were organized in BPR (Bloque Popular Revolucionario, Popular Revolutionary Block). In October 1980, several other major guerrilla groups of the Salvadoran left had formed the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or FMLN. By the end of the 1970s, death squads were killing about 10 people each day, and the FMLN had 6,000 – 8,000 active guerrillas and hundreds of thousands of part-time militia, supporters, and sympathizers.[52]
+
+The U.S. supported and financed the creation of a second junta to change the political environment and stop the spread of a leftist insurrection. Napoleón Duarte was recalled from his exile in Venezuela to head this new junta. However, a revolution was already underway and his new role as head of the junta was seen by the general population as opportunistic. He was unable to influence the outcome of the insurrection. Óscar Romero, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador, denounced injustices and massacres committed against civilians by government forces. He was considered "the voice of the voiceless", but he was assassinated by a death squad while saying Mass on 24 March 1980.[53] Some consider this to be the beginning of the full Salvadoran Civil War, which lasted from 1980 to 1992. An unknown number of people "disappeared" during the conflict, and the UN reports that more than 75,000 were killed.[54] The Salvadoran Army's US-trained Atlacatl Battalion was responsible for the El Mozote massacre where more than 800 civilians were murdered, over half of them children, the El Calabozo massacre, and the murder of UCA scholars.[55]
+
+On 16 January 1992, the government of El Salvador, represented by president Alfredo Cristiani, and the FMLN, represented by the commanders of the five guerrilla groups – Shafik Handal, Joaquín Villalobos, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, Francisco Jovel and Eduardo Sancho, all signed peace agreements brokered by the United Nations ending the 12-year civil war. This event, held at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico, was attended by U.N. dignitaries and other representatives of the international community. After signing the armistice, the president stood up and shook hands with all the now ex-guerrilla commanders, an action which was widely admired.
+
+The so-called Chapultepec Peace Accords mandated reductions in the size of the army, and the dissolution of the National Police, the Treasury Police, the National Guard and the Civilian Defence, a paramilitary group. A new Civil Police was to be organized. Judicial immunity for crimes committed by the armed forces ended; the government agreed to submit to the recommendations of a Commission on the Truth for El Salvador (Comisión de la Verdad Para El Salvador), which would "investigate serious acts of violence occurring since 1980, and the nature and effects of the violence, and...recommend methods of promoting national reconciliation". In 1993 the Commission delivered its findings reporting human rights violations on both sides of the conflict.[56] Five days later the El Salvadoran legislature passed an amnesty law for all acts of violence during the period.
+
+From 1989 until 2004, Salvadorans favoured the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, voting in ARENA presidents in every election (Alfredo Cristiani, Armando Calderón Sol, Francisco Flores Pérez, Antonio Saca) until 2009, when Mauricio Funes was elected president from the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) party.
+
+Economic reforms since the early 1990s brought major benefits in terms of improved social conditions, diversification of the export sector, and access to international financial markets at investment grade level. Crime remains a major problem for the investment climate.
+
+This[clarification needed] all ended in 2001, and support for ARENA weakened. Internal turmoil in ARENA weakened the party also, while the FMLN united and broadened its support.[57]
+
+The unsuccessful attempts of the left-wing party to win presidential elections led to its selection of a journalist rather than a former guerrilla leader as a candidate. On 15 March 2009, Mauricio Funes, a television figure, became the first president from the FMLN party. He was inaugurated on 1 June 2009. One focus of the Funes government has been revealing the alleged corruption from the past government.[58]
+
+ARENA formally expelled Saca from the party in December 2009. With 12 loyalists in the National Assembly, Saca established his own party, GANA (Gran Alianza por la Unidad Nacional or Grand Alliance for National Unity), and entered into a tactical legislative alliance with the FMLN.[59] After three years in office, with Saca's GANA party providing the FMLN with a legislative majority, Funes had not taken action to either investigate or to bring corrupt former officials to justice.
+
+Early in the new millennium, El Salvador's government created the Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales — the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) — in response to climate change concerns.[60]
+
+El Salvador lies in the isthmus of Central America between latitudes 13° and 15°N, and longitudes 87° and 91°W. It stretches 270 km (168 mi) from west-northwest to east-southeast and 142 km (88 mi) north to south, with a total area of 21,041 km2 (8,124 sq mi). As the smallest country in continental America, El Salvador is affectionately called Pulgarcito de America (the "Tom Thumb of the Americas"). The highest point in El Salvador is Cerro El Pital, at 2,730 metres (8,957 ft), on the border with Honduras.
+
+El Salvador has a long history of destructive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The capital San Salvador was destroyed in 1756 and 1854, and it suffered heavy damage in the 1919, 1982, and 1986 tremors. El Salvador has over twenty volcanoes, two of them, San Miguel and Izalco, active in recent years. From the early 19th century to the mid-1950s, Izalco erupted with a regularity that earned it the name "Lighthouse of the Pacific". Its brilliant flares were clearly visible for great distances at sea, and at night its glowing lava turned it into a brilliant luminous cone.
+
+El Salvador has over 300 rivers, the most important of which is the Rio Lempa. Originating in Guatemala, the Rio Lempa cuts across the northern range of mountains, flows along much of the central plateau, and cuts through the southern volcanic range to empty into the Pacific. It is El Salvador's only navigable river. It and its tributaries drain about half of the country's area. Other rivers are generally short and drain the Pacific lowlands or flow from the central plateau through gaps in the southern mountain range to the Pacific. These include the Goascorán, Jiboa, Torola, Paz and the Río Grande de San Miguel.
+
+There are several lakes enclosed by volcanic craters in El Salvador, the most important of which are Lake Ilopango (70 km2 or 27 sq mi) and Lake Coatepeque (26 km2 or 10 sq mi). Lake Güija is El Salvador's largest natural lake (44 km2 or 17 sq mi). Several artificial lakes were created by the damming of the Lempa, the largest of which is Embalse Cerrón Grande (135 km2 or 52 sq mi). There are a total 320 km2 (123.6 sq mi) of water within El Salvador's borders.
+
+El Salvador shares borders with Guatemala and Honduras, the total national boundary length is 546 km (339 mi): 126 miles (203 km) with Guatemala and 343 km (213 mi) with Honduras. It is the only Central American country that has no Caribbean coastline. The coastline on the Pacific is 307 km (191 mi) long.
+
+Two parallel mountain ranges cross El Salvador to the west with a central plateau between them and a narrow coastal plain hugging the Pacific. These physical features divide the country into two physiographic regions. The mountain ranges and central plateau, covering 85% of the land, comprise the interior highlands. The remaining coastal plains are referred to as the Pacific lowlands.
+
+El Salvador has a tropical climate with pronounced wet and dry seasons. Temperatures vary primarily with elevation and show little seasonal change. The Pacific lowlands are uniformly hot; the central plateau and mountain areas are more moderate. The rainy season extends from May to October; this time of year is referred to as invierno or winter. Almost all the annual rainfall occurs during this period; yearly totals, particularly on southern-facing mountain slopes, can be as high as 2170 mm.
+
+The best time to visit El Salvador would be at the beginning or end of the dry season. Protected areas and the central plateau receive less, although still significant, amounts. Rainfall during this season generally comes from low pressure systems formed over the Pacific and usually falls in heavy afternoon thunderstorms. Hurricanes occasionally form in the Pacific with the notable exception of Hurricane Mitch, which formed in the Atlantic and crossed Central America.
+
+From November through April, the northeast trade winds control weather patterns; this time of year is referred to as verano, or summer. During these months, air flowing from the Caribbean has lost most of its precipitation while passing over the mountains in Honduras. By the time this air reaches El Salvador, it is dry, hot, and hazy, and the country experiences hot weather, excluding the northern higher mountain ranges, where temperatures will be cool. In the extreme northeastern part of the country near Cerro El Pital, snow is known to fall during summer as well as during winter due to the high elevations (it is the coldest part of the country).
+
+El Salvador's position on the Pacific Ocean also makes it subject to severe weather conditions, including heavy rainstorms and severe droughts, both of which may be made more extreme by the El Niño and La Niña effects.[61]
+
+In the summer of 2001 a severe drought destroyed 80% of El Salvador's crops, causing famine in the countryside.[62][63] On 4 October 2005, severe rains resulted in dangerous flooding and landslides, which caused a minimum of fifty deaths.[64] El Salvador's location in Central America also makes it vulnerable to severe storms and hurricanes coming off the Caribbean.[60]
+
+El Salvador lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire, and is thus subject to significant tectonic activity, including frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity. Recent examples include the earthquake on 13 January 2001 that measured 7.7 on the Richter magnitude scale and caused a landslide that killed more than 800 people;[64] and another earthquake only a month later, on 13 February 2001, that killed 255 people and damaged about 20% of the nation's housing. Luckily, many families were able to find safety from the landslides caused by the earthquake.
+
+The San Salvador area has been hit by earthquakes in 1576, 1659, 1798, 1839, 1854, 1873, 1880, 1917, 1919, 1965, 1986, 2001 and 2005.[65] The 5.7 Mw-earthquake of 1986 resulted in 1,500 deaths, 10,000 injuries, and 100,000 people left homeless.[66][67]
+
+El Salvador's most recent destructive volcanic eruption took place on 1 October 2005, when the Santa Ana Volcano spewed a cloud of ash, hot mud and rocks that fell on nearby villages and caused two deaths. The most severe volcanic eruption in this area occurred in the 5th century AD when the Ilopango volcano erupted with a VEI strength of 6, producing widespread pyroclastic flows and devastating Mayan cities.[68]
+
+The Santa Ana Volcano in El Salvador is active;[69] the most recent eruptions were in 1904 and 2005. Lago de Coatepeque (one of El Salvador's lakes) was created by water filling the caldera that formed after a massive eruption.
+
+The British Imperial College's El Salvador Project aims to build earthquake-proof buildings in remote areas of the country.
+
+There are eight species of sea turtles in the world; six of them nest on the coasts of Central America, and four make their home on the Salvadoran coast: the leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), the hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata), the green sea turtle (black) (Chelonia agasizzii) and the olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea). Of these four species, the most common is the olive ridley turtle, followed by the green sea turtle. The other two species, hawksbill and leatherback, are much more difficult to find as they are critically endangered, while the olive ridley and green sea turtle are in danger of extinction.
+
+Recent conservation efforts provide hope for the future of the country's biological diversity. In 1997, the government established the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources. A general environmental framework law was approved by the National Assembly in 1999. Specific legislation to protect wildlife is still pending.[when?] In addition, a number of non-governmental organizations are doing important work to safeguard some of the country's most important forested areas. Foremost among these is SalvaNatura, which manages El Impossible, the country's largest national park under an agreement with El Salvador's environmental authorities.
+
+Despite these efforts, much remains to be done.
+
+It is estimated that there are 500 species of birds, 1,000 species of butterflies, 400 species of orchids, 800 species of trees, and 800 species of marine fish in El Salvador.
+
+The 1983 Constitution is the highest legal authority in the country. El Salvador has a democratic and representative government, whose three bodies are:
+
+After the Civil War, the Chapultepec Peace Accords (1992) created the new National Civil Police, the Attorney for the Defence of Human Rights and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. The Peace Accords re-imagined the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) as a political party and redefined the role of the army to be for the defence of the sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Accords also removed some security forces who were in command of the army, such as the National Guard, Treasury Police and special battalions that were formed to fight against the insurgency of the 1980s.
+
+The political framework of El Salvador is a presidential representative democratic republic with a multiform, multi-party system. The President, currently Nayib Bukele, is both head of state and head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Legislative Assembly. The country also has an independent Judiciary and Supreme Court.
+
+El Salvador has a multi-party system. Two political parties, the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) have tended to dominate elections. ARENA candidates won four consecutive presidential elections until the election of Mauricio Funes of the FMLN in March 2009. The FMLN Party is leftist in ideology, and is split between the dominant Marxist-Leninist faction in the legislature, and the social liberal wing led by President Funes.However, the two-party dominance was broken after Nayib Bukele,a candidate from Nuevas Ideas won the 2019 Salvadoran presidential election.
+
+Geographically, the departments of the Central region, especially the capital and the coastal regions, known as departamentos rojos, or red departments, are relatively Leftist. The departamentos azules, or blue departments in the east, western and highland regions are relatively conservative. The winner of the 2014 presidential election, Salvador Sánchez Cerén belongs to the FMLN party. In the 2015 elections for mayors and members of the National Assembly, ARENA appeared to be the winner with tight control of the National Assembly.
+
+In November, 1950 El Salvador helped the newly empowered 14th Dalai Lama by supporting his Tibetan Government cabinet minister's telegram requesting an appeal before the General Assembly of the United Nations to stop the Communist China's People's Liberation Army's invasion of Tibet. "Only the tiny country of El Salvador agreed to sponsor Tibet's plea."[70]"At the UN, no one was willing to stand up beside El Salvador. The other nations had overriding self-interests, which made it impossible for them to support San Salvador's attempt to bring the invasion before the General Assembly."[70] With no other countries in support, "the UN unanimously dropped the Tibetan plea from its agenda."[70]
+
+El Salvador is a member of the United Nations and several of its specialized agencies, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Central American Common Market (CACM), the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), and the Central American Integration System (SICA). It actively participates in the Central American Security Commission (CASC), which seeks to promote regional arms control.
+
+El Salvador also is a member of the World Trade Organization and is pursuing regional free trade agreements. An active participant in the Summit of the Americas process, El Salvador chairs a working group on market access under the Free Trade Area of the Americas initiative.
+
+El Salvador has an army, air force, and modest navy. There are around 17,000 personnel in the armed forces in total.[71]
+
+In 2017, El Salvador signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[72][73]
+
+Amnesty International has drawn attention to several arrests of police officers for unlawful police killings. Other current issues to gain Amnesty International's attention in the past 10 years include missing children, failure of law enforcement to properly investigate and prosecute crimes against women, and rendering organized labour illegal.[74]
+
+Discrimination against LGBT people in El Salvador is very widespread.[75][76] According to 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, 62% of Salvadorans believe that homosexuality should not be accepted by society.[77]
+
+El Salvador is divided into 14 departments (departamentos), which in turn are subdivided into 262 municipalities (municipios).
+
+Department names and capitals for the 14 Salvadoran Departments:
+
+El Salvador's economy has been hampered at times by natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, by government policies that mandate large economic subsidies, and by official corruption. Subsidies became such a problem that in April 2012, the International Monetary Fund suspended a $750 million loan to the central government. President Funes' chief of cabinet, Alex Segovia, acknowledged that the economy was at the "point of collapse".[78]
+
+Antiguo Cuscatlán has the highest per capita income of all the cities in the country, and is a centre of international investment.[citation needed]
+
+GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP) in 2008 was estimated at US$25.895 billion. The service sector is the largest component of GDP at 64.1%, followed by the industrial sector at 24.7% (2008 est.). Agriculture represents only 11.2% of GDP (2010 est.)
+
+The GDP grew after 1996 at an annual rate that averaged 3.2% real growth. The government committed to free market initiatives, and the 2007 GDP's real growth rate was 4.7%.[79]
+
+In December 1999, net international reserves equalled US$1.8 billion or roughly five months of imports. Having this hard currency buffer to work with, the Salvadoran government undertook a monetary integration plan beginning 1 January 2001 by which the U.S. dollar became legal tender alongside the Salvadoran colón, and all formal accounting was done in U.S. dollars. Thus, the government has formally limited the implementing of open market monetary policies to influence short-term variables in the economy. As of September 2007, net international reserves stood at $2.42 billion.[64][80]
+
+It has long been a challenge in El Salvador to develop new growth sectors for a more diversified economy. In the past, the country produced gold and silver,[81] but recent attempts to reopen the mining sector, which were expected to add hundreds of millions of dollars to the local economy, collapsed after President Saca shut down the operations of Pacific Rim Mining Corporation.  Nevertheless, according to the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (Instituto Centroamericano for Estudios Fiscales, by its acronym in Spanish), the contribution of metallic mining was a minuscule 0.3% of the country's GDP between 2010 and 2015.[82] Saca's decision although not lacking political motives, had strong support from local residents and grassroots movements in the country. According to NACLA, incoming President Funes later rejected a company's application for a further permit based on the risk of cyanide contamination on one of the country's main rivers.[83]
+
+As with other former colonies, El Salvador was considered a mono-export economy (an economy that depended heavily on one type of export) for many years. During colonial times, El Salvador was a thriving exporter of indigo, but after the invention of synthetic dyes in the 19th century, the newly created modern state turned to coffee as the main export.
+
+The government has sought to improve the collection of its current revenues, with a focus on indirect taxes. A 10% value-added tax (IVA in Spanish), implemented in September 1992, was raised to 13% in July 1995.
+
+Inflation has been steady and among the lowest in the region. Since 1997 inflation has averaged 3%, with recent years increasing to nearly 5%. As a result of the free trade agreements, from 2000 to 2006, total exports have grown 19% from $2.94 billion to $3.51 billion, and total imports have risen 54% from $4.95 billion to $7.63 billion. This has resulted in a 102% increase in the trade deficit, from $2.01 billion to $4.12 billion.[85]
+
+El Salvador has promoted an open trade and investment environment, and has embarked on a wave of privatization extending to telecommunications, electricity distribution, banking, and pension funds. In late 2006, the government and the Millennium Challenge Corporation signed a five-year, $461 million compact to stimulate economic growth and reduce poverty in the country's northern region, the primary conflict zone during the civil war, through investments in education, public services, enterprise development, and transportation infrastructure. With the adoption of the US dollar as its currency in 2001, El Salvador lost control over monetary policy. Any counter-cyclical policy response to the downturn must be through fiscal policy, which is constrained by legislative requirements for a two-thirds majority to approve any international financing.
+
+El Salvador leads the region in remittances per capita, with inflows equivalent to nearly all export income; about a third of all households receive these financial inflows. Remittances from Salvadorans living and working in the United States, sent to family members in El Salvador, are a major source of foreign income and offset the substantial trade deficit of $4.12 billion. Remittances have increased steadily in the last decade, and reached an all-time high of $3.32 billion in 2006 (an increase of 17% over the previous year).[86] approximately 16.2% of gross domestic product(GDP).
+
+Remittances have had positive and negative effects on El Salvador. In 2005, the number of people living in extreme poverty in El Salvador was 20%,[87] according to a United Nations Development Program report. Without remittances, the number of Salvadorans living in extreme poverty would rise to 37%. While Salvadoran education levels have gone up, wage expectations have risen faster than either skills or productivity. For example, some Salvadorans are no longer willing to take jobs that pay them less than what they receive monthly from family members abroad. This has led to an influx of Hondurans and Nicaraguans who are willing to work for the prevailing wage. Also, the local propensity for consumption over investment has increased.
+
+Money from remittances has also increased prices for certain commodities such as real estate. With much higher wages, many Salvadorans abroad can afford higher prices for houses in El Salvador than local Salvadorans, and thus push up the prices that all Salvadorans must pay.[88]
+
+In 2006, El Salvador was the first country to ratify the Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement. CAFTA has bolstered exports of processed foods, sugar, and ethanol, and supported investment in the apparel sector, which faced Asian competition with the expiration of the Multi Fibre Arrangement in 2005. In anticipation of the declines in the apparel sector's competitiveness, the previous administration sought to diversify the economy by promoting the country as a regional distribution and logistics hub, and by promoting tourism investment through tax incentives.
+
+There are a total of 15 free trade zones in El Salvador. El Salvador signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) — negotiated by the five countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic — with the United States in 2004. CAFTA requires that the Salvadoran government adopt policies that foster free trade. El Salvador has signed free trade agreements with Mexico, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Panama and increased its trade with those countries. El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua also are negotiating a free trade agreement with Canada. In October 2007, these four countries and Costa Rica began free trade agreement negotiations with the European Union. Negotiations started in 2006 for a free trade agreement with Colombia.
+
+In an analysis of ARENA's electoral defeat in 2009, the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador pointed to official corruption under the Saca administration as a significant reason for public rejection of continued ARENA government. According to a secret diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks, "While the Salvadoran public may be inured to self-serving behaviour by politicians, many in ARENA believe that the brazen manner in which Saca and his people are widely perceived to have used their positions for personal enrichment went beyond the pale. ARENA deputy Roberto d'Aubuisson, son of ARENA founder Roberto d'Aubuisson, told [a U.S. diplomat] that Saca 'deliberately ignored' his Public Works Minister's government contract kickbacks scheme, even after the case was revealed in the press. Furthermore, considerable evidence exists, including from U.S. business sources, that the Saca administration pushed laws and selectively enforced regulations with the specific intent to benefit Saca family business interests."[89]
+
+Subsequent policies under Funes administrations improved El Salvador to foreign investment, and the World Bank in 2014 rated El Salvador 109, a little better than Belize (118) and Nicaragua (119) in the World Bank's annual "Ease of doing business" index.[90]
+
+As per Santander Trade, a Spanish think tank in foreign investment, "Foreign investment into El Salvador has been steadily growing during the last few years. In 2013, the influx of FDI increased. Nevertheless, El Salvador receives less FDI than other countries of Central America. The government has made little progress in terms of improving the business climate. In addition to this, the limited size of its domestic market, weak infrastructures and institutions, as well as the high level of criminality have been real obstacles to investors. However, El Salvador is the second most "business friendly" country in South America in terms of business taxation. It also has a young and skilled labour force and a strategic geographical position. The country's membership in the DR-CAFTA, as well as its reinforced integration to the C4 countries (producers of cotton) should lead to an increase of FDI."[91]
+
+Foreign companies have lately resorted to arbitration in international trade tribunals in total disagreement with Salvadoran government policies. In 2008, El Salvador sought international arbitration against Italy's Enel Green Power, on behalf of Salvadoran state-owned electric companies for a geothermal project Enel had invested in. Four years later, Enel indicated it would seek arbitration against El Salvador, blaming the government for technical problems that prevent it from completing its investment.[92] The government came to its defence claiming that Art 109 of the constitution does not allow any government (regardless of the party they belong), to privatize the resources of the national soil (in this case geothermic energy). The dispute came to an end in December 2014 when both parties came to a settlement, from which no details have been released. The small country had yielded to pressure from the Washington based powerful ICSID.[93] The U.S. Embassy warned in 2009 that the Salvadoran government's populist policies of mandating artificially low electricity prices were damaging private sector profitability, including the interests of American investors in the energy sector.[94] The U.S. Embassy noted the corruption of El Salvador's judicial system and quietly urged American businesses to include "arbitration clauses, preferably with a foreign venue", when doing business in the country.[95]
+
+On the other hand, a 2008 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development [1] indicates that one third of the generation of electricity in El Salvador was publicly owned while two thirds was in American hands and other foreign ownership. It is only natural for a small, under-developed country like El Salvador to subsidize some of the resources for the vast majority of its poor population.
+
+Although some events may have tarnished the image of the Salvadoran government,[96] not everything is bad news. In terms of how people perceived the levels of public corruption in 2014, El Salvador ranks 80 out of 175 countries as per the Corruption Perception Index.[97] El Salvador's rating compares relatively well with Panama (94 of 175) and Costa Rica (47 of 175).
+
+It was estimated that 1,394,000 international tourists would visit El Salvador in 2014.[98] Tourism contributed US$855.5 million to El Salvador's GDP in 2013. This represented 3.5% of total GDP.[99]
+
+Tourism directly supported 80,500 jobs in 2013. This represented 3.1% of total employment in El Salvador.[99] In 2013, tourism indirectly supported 210,000 jobs, representing 8.1% of total employment in El Salvador.[99]
+
+The airport serving international flights in El Salvador is Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero International Airport. This airport is located about 40 km (25 mi) southeast of San Salvador.[100]
+
+Most North American and European tourists seek out El Salvador's beaches and nightlife. Besides these two attractions, El Salvador's tourism landscape is slightly different from those of other Central American countries. Because of its geographic size and urbanization there are not many nature-themed tourist destinations such as ecotours or archaeological sites open to the public. Surfing is a natural tourism sector that has gained popularity in recent years as Salvadoran beaches have become increasingly popular.
+
+Surfers visit many beaches on the coast of La Libertad and the east end of El Salvador, finding surfing spots that are not yet overcrowded. The use of the United States dollar as Salvadoran currency and direct flights of 4 to 6 hours from most cities in the United States are factors that attract American tourists. Urbanization and Americanization of Salvadoran culture has also led to the abundance of American-style malls, stores, and restaurants in the three main urban areas, especially greater San Salvador.
+
+According to the El Salvadoran newspaper El Diario De Hoy, the top 10 attractions are: the coastal beaches, La Libertad, Ruta Las Flores, Suchitoto, Playa Las Flores in San Miguel, La Palma, Santa Ana (location of the country's highest volcano), Nahuizalco, Apaneca, Juayua, and San Ignacio.[101]
+
+The level of access to water supply and sanitation has been increased significantly. A 2015 conducted study by the University of North Carolina called El Salvador the country that has achieved the greatest progress in the world in terms of increased access to water supply and sanitation and the reduction of inequity in access between urban and rural areas.[102] However, water resources are seriously polluted and a large part of the wastewater discharged into the environment without any treatment. Institutionally a single public institution is both de facto in charge of setting sector policy and of being the main service provider. Attempts at reforming and modernizing the sector through new laws have not borne fruit over the past 20 years.
+
+El Salvador's population was 6,420,746 in 2018,[5][6] compared to 2,200,000 in 1950. In 2010 the percentage of the population below the age of 15 was 32.1%, 61% were between 15 and 65 years of age, while 6.9% were 65 years or older.[103]
+
+The capital city of San Salvador has a population of about 2.1 million people. An estimated 42% of El Salvador's population live in rural areas. Urbanization has expanded at a phenomenal rate in El Salvador since the 1960s, with millions moving to the cities and creating associated problems for urban planning and services.
+
+There are up to 100,000 Nicaraguans living in El Salvador.[104]
+
+El Salvador's population is composed of Mestizos, whites, and indigenous peoples. Eighty-six per cent of Salvadorans are of mestizo ancestry, having mixed indigenous and European ancestry.[105] In the mestizo population, Salvadorans who are racially European, especially Mediterranean, as well as Afro-Salvadoran, and the indigenous people in El Salvador who do not speak indigenous languages or have an indigenous culture, all identify themselves as being culturally mestizo.[106]
+
+12.7% of Salvadorans are white, mostly of ethnically Spanish people, while there are also Salvadorans of French, German, Swiss, English, Irish, and Italian descent. In northern departments like the Chalatenango Department, it is well known that residents in the area are of pure Spanish descent;[citation needed] settling in the region that is now Chalatenango in the late 18th century.[107] The governor of San Salvador, Francisco Luis Héctor de Carondelet, ordered families from northern Spain (Galicia and Asturias) to settle the area to compensate for the lack of indigenous people to work the land; it is not uncommon to see people with blond hair, fair skin, and blue or green eyes in municipalities like Dulce Nombre de María, La Palma, and El Pital. The majority of Salvadorans of Spanish descent possess Mediterranean racial features: olive skin and dark hair and eyes (black or dark brown), and they identify themselves as mestizo, like mentioned above. A majority of Central European immigrants in El Salvador arrived during World War II as refugees from the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Switzerland. There are also small communities of Jews, Palestinian Christians, and Arab Muslims (in particular Palestinians).
+
+0.23% of the population are of full indigenous origin, the ethnic groups are Kakawira which represents 0.07% of the total country's population, then (Pipil) 0.06%, (Lenca) 0.04% and others minors groups 0.06%. Very few Amerindians have retained their customs and traditions, having over time assimilated into the dominant Mestizo/Spanish culture.[108]
+
+There is a small Afro-Salvadoran that is 0.13% of the total population, with Blacks having traditionally been prevented from immigrating via government policies.[109][110]
+
+Among the immigrant groups in El Salvador, Palestinian Christians stand out.[111] Though few in number, their descendants have attained great economic and political power in the country, as evidenced by the election of ex-president Antonio Saca, whose opponent in the 2004 election, Schafik Handal, was also of Palestinian descent, and the flourishing commercial, industrial, and construction firms owned by this ethnic group.
+
+As of 2004[update], there were approximately 3.2 million Salvadorans living outside El Salvador, with the United States traditionally being the destination of choice for Salvadoran economic migrants. By 2012, there were about 2.0 million Salvadoran immigrants and Americans of Salvadoran descent in the U.S.,[112][113] making them the sixth largest immigrant group in the country.[114] The second destination of Salvadorans living outside is Guatemala, with more than 111,000 persons, mainly in Guatemala City. Salvadorans also live in other nearby countries such as Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua.[115] Other countries with notable Salvadoran communities include Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom (including the Cayman Islands), Sweden, Brazil, Italy, Colombia, and Australia.
+
+Spanish is the official language and is spoken by virtually all inhabitants. Some indigenous people speak their native tongues (such as Nawat and Maya), but indigenous Salvadorans who do not identify as mestizo constitute only 1% of the country's population. However, all of them can speak Spanish. Q'eqchi' is spoken by immigrants of Guatemalan and Belizean indigenous people living in El Salvador. There have also been recent large migrations of Hondurans and Nicaraguans into the country.[116]
+
+The local Spanish vernacular is called Caliche. Salvadorans use voseo, which is also used in Argentina, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Uruguay. This refers to the use of "vos" as the second person pronoun, instead of "tú". "Caliche" is considered informal, and a few people choose not to use it. Nawat is an indigenous language that has survived, though it is only used by small communities of some elderly Salvadorans in western El Salvador.
+
+The majority of the population in El Salvador is Christian. Roman Catholics (47%) and Protestants (33%) are the two major religious groups in the country, with the Catholic Church the largest denomination.[118] Those not affiliated with any religious group amount to 17% of the population.[118] The remainder of the population (3%) is made up of Jehovah's Witnesses, Hare Krishnas, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Latter-day Saints, and those adhering to indigenous religious beliefs.[118] The number of evangelicals in the country is growing rapidly.[119] Óscar Romero, the first Salvadoran saint, was canonized by Pope Francis on 14 October 2018.
+
+See Health in El Salvador
+
+The public education system in El Salvador is severely lacking in resources. Class sizes in public schools can be as large as 50 children per classroom. Salvadorans who can afford the cost often choose to send their children to private schools, which are regarded as being better-quality than public schools. Most private schools follow American, European or other advanced systems. Lower-income families are forced to rely on public education.[120]
+
+Education in El Salvador is free through high school. After nine years of basic education (elementary–middle school), students have the option of a two-year high school or a three-year high school. A two-year high school prepares the student for transfer to a university. A three-year high school allows the student to graduate and enter the workforce in a vocational career, or to transfer to a university to further their education in their chosen field.[121]
+
+Universities in El Salvador include a central public institution, the Universidad de El Salvador, and many other specialized private universities.
+
+Since the early twenty-first century, El Salvador has experienced high crime rates, including gang-related crimes and juvenile delinquency.[122]
+
+El Salvador had the highest murder rate in the world in 2012 but experienced a sharp decline in 2019 with a new centrist government in power.[123][124] It is also considered an epicentre of a gang crisis, along with Guatemala and Honduras.[125] In response to this, the government has set up countless programs to try to guide the youth away from gang membership; so far its efforts have not produced any quick results. One of the government programs was a gang reform called "Super Mano Dura" (Super Firm Hand). Super Mano Dura had little success and was highly criticized by the UN. It saw temporary success in 2004 but then saw a rise in crime after 2005. In 2004, the rate of intentional homicides per 100,000 citizens was 41, with 60% of the homicides committed being gang-related.[125]
+
+The Salvadoran government reported that the Super Mano Dura gang legislation led to a 14% drop in murders in 2004. However, El Salvador had 66 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012, more than triple the rate in Mexico that year.[126][127][128]  There are an estimated 25,000 gang members at large in El Salvador with another 9,000 in prison.[126] The most well-known gangs, called "maras" in colloquial Spanish, are Mara Salvatrucha and their rivals Barrio 18. Maras are hunted by death squads including Sombra Negra. New rivals also include the rising mara, The Rebels 13.[129]
+
+As of March 2012[update], El Salvador has seen a 40% drop in crime due to what the Salvadoran government called a gang truce; however, extortion affecting small businesses are not taken into account. In early 2012, there were an average of 16 killings per day; in late March of that year that number dropped to fewer than 5 per day. On 14 April 2012 for the first time in over 3 years there were no killings in El Salvador.[130] Overall, there were 411 killings in January 2012, and in March the number was 188, more than a 40% reduction,[131] while crime in neighbouring Honduras had risen to an all-time high.[132] In 2014, crime rose 56% in El Salvador, with the government attributing the rise to a break in the truce between the two major gangs in El Salvador, which began having turf wars.[133]
+
+Presently, the Alto al Crimen or Crime Stoppers program is in operation and provides financial rewards for information leading to the capture of gang leadership. The reward often ranges between US$100 and $500 per call.[134]
+
+Mestizo culture dominates the country, heavy in both Native American Indigenous and European Spanish influences. A new composite population was formed as a result of intermarrying between the native Mesoamerican population of Cuzcatlan with the European settlers. The Catholic Church plays an important role in the Salvadoran culture. Archbishop Óscar Romero is a national hero for his role in resisting human rights violations that were occurring in the lead-up to the Salvadoran Civil War.[135] Significant foreign personalities in El Salvador were the Jesuit priests and professors Ignacio Ellacuría, Ignacio Martín-Baró, and Segundo Montes, who were murdered in 1989 by the Salvadoran Army during the height of the civil war.
+
+Painting, ceramics and textiles are the principal manual artistic mediums. Writers Francisco Gavidia (1863–1955), Salarrué (Salvador Salazar Arrué) (1899–1975), Claudia Lars, Alfredo Espino, Pedro Geoffroy Rivas, Manlio Argueta, José Roberto Cea, and poet Roque Dalton are among the most important writers from El Salvador. Notable 20th-century personages include the late filmmaker Baltasar Polio, female film director Patricia Chica, artist Fernando Llort, and caricaturist Toño Salazar.
+
+Among the more renowned representatives of the graphic arts are the painters Augusto Crespin, Noe Canjura, Carlos Cañas, Giovanni Gil, Julia Díaz, Mauricio Mejia, Maria Elena Palomo de Mejia, Camilo Minero, Ricardo Carbonell, Roberto Huezo, Miguel Angel Cerna, (the painter and writer better known as MACLo), Esael Araujo, and many others. For more information on prominent citizens of El Salvador, check the List of Salvadorans.
+
+One of El Salvador's notable dishes is the pupusa. Pupusas are handmade corn tortillas (made of masa de maíz or masa de arroz, a maize or rice flour dough used in Latin American cuisine) stuffed with one or more of the following: cheese (usually a soft Salvadoran cheese such as quesillo, similar to mozzarella), chicharrón, or refried beans. Sometimes the filling is queso con loroco (cheese combined with loroco, a vine flower bud native to Central America).[137]
+
+Pupusas revueltas are pupusas filled with beans, cheese and pork. There are also vegetarian options. Some adventurous restaurants even offer pupusas stuffed with shrimp or spinach. The name pupusa comes from the Pipil-Nahuatl word, pupushahua. The precise origins of the pupusa are debated, although its presence in El Salvador is known to predate the arrival of the Spaniards.[137]
+
+Two other typical Salvadoran dishes are yuca frita and panes con pollo. Yuca frita is deep fried cassava root served with curtido (a pickled cabbage, onion and carrot topping) and pork rinds with pescaditas (fried baby sardines). The Yuca is sometimes served boiled instead of fried. Pan con pollo/pavo (bread with chicken/turkey) are warm turkey or chicken-filled submarine sandwiches. The bird is marinated and then roasted with Pipil spices and hand-pulled. This sandwich is traditionally served with tomato and watercress along with cucumber, onion, lettuce, mayonnaise, and mustard.
+
+One of El Salvador's typical breakfasts is fried plantain, usually served with cream. It is common in Salvadoran restaurants and homes, including those of immigrants to the United States.
+
+Alguashte, a condiment made from dried, ground pepitas, is commonly incorporated into savoury and sweet Salvadoran dishes.
+
+"Maria Luisa" is a dessert commonly found in El Salvador. It is a layered cake that is soaked in orange marmalade and sprinkled with powdered sugar.
+
+A popular drink that Salvadorans enjoy is Horchata, a drink native to the Valencian Community in Spain. Horchata is most commonly made of the morro seed ground into a powder and added to milk or water, and sugar. Horchata is drank year-round, and can be drank at any time of day. It mostly is accompanied by a plate of pupusas or fried yuca. Horchata from El Salvador has a very distinct taste and is not to be confused with Mexican horchata, which is rice-based. Coffee is also a common morning beverage.[138]
+
+Other popular drinks in El Salvador include Ensalada,  a drink made of chopped fruit swimming in fruit juice, and Kolachampan, a sugar cane-flavoured carbonated beverage.
+
+One of the most popular desserts is the cake Pastel de tres leches (Cake of three milks),  consisting of three types of milk: evaporated milk, condensed milk, and cream.
+
+Salvadoran music is a mixture of indigenous Lenca, Maya, Cacaopera, Pipil and Spanish influences. Music includes religious songs (mostly used to celebrate Christmas and other holidays, especially feast days of the saints). Satirical and rural lyrical themes are common. Cuban, Colombian, and Mexican music has infiltrated the country, especially salsa and cumbia. Popular music in El Salvador uses marimba, tehpe'ch, flutes, drums, scrapers and gourds, as well as more recently imported guitars and other instruments. El Salvador's well known folk dance is known as Xuc which originated in Cojutepeque, Cuscatlan. Other musical repertoire consists of danza, pasillo, marcha and canciones.
+
+Football is the most popular sport in El Salvador. The El Salvador national football team qualified for the FIFA World Cup in 1970 and 1982. Their qualification for the 1970 tournament was marred by the Football War, a war against Honduras, whose team El Salvador's had defeated.
+
+The national football team play at the Estadio Cuscatlán in San Salvador. It opened in 1976 and seats 53,400, making it the largest stadium in Central America and the Caribbean.[139]

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+
+
+Salvatore Garau (born 1953) is an Italian artist from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia.
+
+Garau was born in Santa Giusta, in the province of Oristano in the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, Italy. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, where he graduated in 1974. In 1977 he became the drummer of the progressive rock group Stormy Six. After the group disbanded he became a visual artist. He had his first solo show in 1984.[1] He participated in the 50th Biennale di Venezia in 2003[2] and showed work at the European Parliament in Strasbourg in the same year.
+
+In 2005 he painted an abstract work on a 200 m2 sheet of PVC, which was then hung to cover the scaffolding on a building in Corso Magenta in Milan.[3] For his installation Ichthys Sacro Stagno in Sardinia in 2006 he created large ponds on the floors of three churches in towns in the province of Oristano, which he then populated with fish from nearby ponds.[1][4]
+
+In 2009 he had a solo show at the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain of Saint-Etienne, in France.[5]
+
+Garau has work in the collections of several museums including the Museo del Novecento (formerly in the Civico Museo d'Arte Contemporanea),[6]:383 the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna and the Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan.[1]

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+Salzburg (Austrian: [ˈsaltsbʊʁk]; German: [ˈzaltsbʊʁk] (listen); [note 1] literally "Salt Fortress"; Bavarian: Soizburg) is the capital city of the State of Salzburg and with 155,031[7] inhabitants, it is the fourth-largest city in Austria.
+
+The town is located on the site of the former Roman settlement of Iuvavum. Salzburg was founded as an episcopal see in 696 and became a seat of the archbishop in 798. Its main sources of income were salt extraction and trade and, at times, gold mining. The fortress of Hohensalzburg, one of the largest medieval fortresses in Europe, dates from the 11th century. In the 17th century, Salzburg became a centre of the Counter-Reformation, where monasteries and numerous Baroque churches were built.
+
+Salzburg's historic centre (German: Altstadt) is thus renowned for its Baroque architecture and is one of the best-preserved city centres north of the Alps, with 27 churches. It was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. The city has three universities and a large population of students. Tourists also visit Salzburg to tour the historic centre and the scenic Alpine surroundings. Salzburg was the birthplace of the 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Because of its history, culture, and attractions, Salzburg has been labeled Austria's "most inspiring city."[8]
+
+Traces of human settlements have been found in the area, dating to the Neolithic Age. The first settlements in Salzburg continuous with the present were apparently by the Celts around the 5th century BC.
+
+Around 15 BC the Roman Empire merged the settlements into one city. At this time, the city was called "Juvavum" and was awarded the status of a Roman municipium in 45 AD. Juvavum developed into an important town of the Roman province of Noricum. After the Norican frontier's collapse, Juvavum declined so sharply that by the late 7th century it nearly became a ruin.[9]
+
+The Life of Saint Rupert credits the 8th-century saint with the city's rebirth. When Theodo of Bavaria asked Rupert to become bishop c. 700, Rupert reconnoitered the river for the site of his basilica. Rupert chose Juvavum, ordained priests, and annexed the manor of Piding. Rupert named the city "Salzburg". He travelled to evangelise among pagans.
+
+The name Salzburg means "Salt Castle" (Latin: Salis Burgium). The name derives from the barges carrying salt on the River Salzach, which were subject to a toll in the 8th century as was customary for many communities and cities on European rivers. Hohensalzburg Fortress, the city's fortress, was built in 1077 by Archbishop Gebhard, who made it his residence.[10] It was greatly expanded during the following centuries.
+
+Independence from Bavaria was secured in the late 14th century. Salzburg was the seat of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, a prince-bishopric of the Holy Roman Empire. As the Reformation movement gained steam, riots broke out among peasants in the areas in and around Salzburg. The city was occupied during the German Peasants' War, and the Archbishop had to flee to the safety of the fortress.[11] It was besieged for three months in 1525.
+
+Eventually, tensions were quelled, and the city's independence led to an increase in wealth and prosperity, culminating in the late 16th to 18th centuries under the Prince Archbishops Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau, Markus Sittikus, and Paris Lodron. It was in the 17th century that Italian architects (and Austrians who had studied the Baroque style) rebuilt the city centre as it is today along with many palaces.[12]
+
+On 31 October 1731, the 214th anniversary of the 95 Theses, Archbishop Count Leopold Anton von Firmian signed an Edict of Expulsion, the Emigrationspatent, directing all Protestant citizens to recant their non-Catholic beliefs. 21,475 citizens refused to recant their beliefs and were expelled from Salzburg. Most of them accepted an offer by King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia, travelling the length and breadth of Germany to their new homes in East Prussia.[13] The rest settled in other Protestant states in Europe and the British colonies in America.
+
+In 1772–1803, under archbishop Hieronymus Graf von Colloredo, Salzburg was a centre of late Illuminism. Colloredo is known for being one of the main employers of Mozart. He often had several arguments with Mozart he dismissed him by  saying, “Soll er doch gehen, ich brauche ihn nicht!” (He should just go then; I don’t need him!)  Mozart would leave Salzburg for Vienna in 1781 with his family including his father Leopold staying back as he and Colloredo had a close relationship.
+
+In 1803, the archbishopric was secularised by Emperor Napoleon; he transferred the territory to Ferdinando III of Tuscany, former Grand Duke of Tuscany, as the Electorate of Salzburg.
+
+In 1805, Salzburg was annexed to the Austrian Empire, along with the Berchtesgaden Provostry.
+
+In 1809, the territory of Salzburg was transferred to the Kingdom of Bavaria after Austria's defeat at Wagram.
+
+After the Congress of Vienna with the Treaty of Munich (1816), Salzburg was definitively returned to Austria, but without Rupertigau and Berchtesgaden, which remained with Bavaria. Salzburg was integrated into the Province of Salzach and Salzburgerland was ruled from Linz.[14]
+
+In 1850, Salzburg's status was restored as the capital of the Duchy of Salzburg, a crownland of the Austrian Empire. The city became part of Austria-Hungary in 1866 as the capital of a crownland of the Austrian Empire. The nostalgia of the Romantic Era led to increased tourism. In 1892, a funicular was installed to facilitate tourism to Hohensalzburg Fortress[15]
+
+Following World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Salzburg, as the capital of one of the Austro-Hungarian territories, became part of the new German Austria. In 1918, it represented the residual German-speaking territories of the Austrian heartlands. This was replaced by the First Austrian Republic in 1919, after the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (1919).
+
+The Anschluss (the occupation and annexation of Austria, including Salzburg, into the Third Reich) took place on 12 March 1938, one day before a scheduled referendum on Austria's independence. German troops moved into the city. Political opponents, Jewish citizens and other minorities were subsequently arrested and deported to concentration camps. The synagogue was destroyed. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, several POW camps for prisoners from the Soviet Union and other enemy nations were organized in the city.
+
+During the Nazi occupation, a Romani camp was built in Salzburg-Maxglan. It was an Arbeitserziehungslager (work 'education' camp), which provided slave labour to local industry. It also operated as a Zwischenlager (transit camp), holding Roma before their deportation to German camps or ghettos in German-occupied territories in eastern Europe.[16]
+
+Allied bombing destroyed 7,600 houses and killed 550 inhabitants. Fifteen air strikes destroyed 46 percent of the city's buildings, especially those around Salzburg railway station. Although the town's bridges and the dome of the cathedral were destroyed, much of its Baroque architecture remained intact. As a result, Salzburg is one of the few remaining examples of a town of its style. American troops entered the city on 5 May 1945 and it became the centre of the American-occupied area in Austria.  Several displaced persons camps were established in Salzburg—among them Riedenburg, Camp Herzl (Franz-Josefs-Kaserne), Camp Mülln, Bet Bialik, Bet Trumpeldor, and New Palestine.
+
+After World War II, Salzburg became the capital city of the Federal State of Salzburg (Land Salzburg) and saw the Americans leave the area once Austria had signed a 1955 treaty reestablishing the country as a democratic and independent nation and subsequently declared its perpetual neutrality. On 27 January 2006, the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, all 35 churches of Salzburg rang their bells after 8:00 p.m. (local time) to celebrate the occasion. Major celebrations took place throughout the year.
+
+As of 2017 Salzburg had a GDP per capita of €46,100, which was greater than the average for Austria and for most European countries.[17]
+
+Salzburg is on the banks of the River Salzach, at the northern boundary of the Alps. The mountains to Salzburg's south contrast with the rolling plains to the north. The closest alpine peak, the 1,972‑metre-high Untersberg, is less than 16 kilometres (10 miles) from the city centre. The Altstadt, or "old town", is dominated by its baroque towers and churches and the massive Hohensalzburg Fortress. This area is flanked by two smaller hills, the Mönchsberg and Kapuzinerberg, which offer green relief within the city.  Salzburg is approximately 150 km (93 mi) east of Munich, 281 km (175 mi) northwest of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and 300 km (186 mi) west of Vienna. Salzburg has about the same latitude of Seattle.
+
+Salzburg is part of the temperate zone. The Köppen climate classification specifies the climate as a humid continental climate (Dfb), however, with the −3 °C (27 °F) isotherm for the coldest month, Salzburg can be classified as having four-season oceanic climate with significant temperature differences between seasons. Due to the location at the northern rim of the Alps, the amount of precipitation is comparatively high, mainly in the summer months. The specific drizzle is called Schnürlregen in the local dialect. In winter and spring, pronounced foehn winds regularly occur.
+
+In 2018, 31% of the total population is foreign born according to Statistik Austria.
+
+Salzburg's official population significantly increased in 1935 when the city absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was constructed for American soldiers of the postwar occupation, and could be used for refugees when they left. Around 1950, Salzburg passed the mark of 100,000 citizens, and in 2016, it reached the mark of 150,000 citizens.
+
+The Romanesque and Gothic churches, the monasteries and the early carcass houses dominated the medieval city for a long time. The Cathedral of Archbishop Conrad of Wittelsbach was the largest basilica north of the Alps. The choir of the Franciscan Church, construction was begun by Hans von Burghausen and completed by Stephan Krumenauer, is one of the most prestigious religious gothic constructions of southern Germany. At the end of the Gothic era the Collegiate church "Nonnberg", Margaret Chapel in St. Peter's Cemetery, the St. George's Chapel and the stately halls of the "Hoher Stock" in Hohensalzburg Fortress were constructed.
+
+Inspired by Vincenzo Scamozzi, Prince Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau began to transform the medieval town to the architectural ideals of the late Renaissance. Plans for a massive cathedral by Scamozzi failed to materialize upon the fall of the archbishop. A second cathedral planned by Santino Solari rose as the first early Baroque church in Salzburg. It served as an example for many other churches in Southern Germany and Austria. Markus Sittikus and Paris von Lodron continued to rebuild the city with major projects such as Hellbrunn Palace, the prince archbishop's residence, the university buildings, fortifications, and many other buildings. Giovanni Antonio Daria managed by order of Prince Archbishop Guido von Thun the construction of the residential well. Giovanni Gaspare Zuccalli, by order of the same archbishop, created the Erhard and the Kajetan church in the south of the town. The city's redesign was completed with buildings designed by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, donated by Prince Archbishop Johann Ernst von Thun.
+
+After the era of Ernst von Thun, the city's expansion came to a halt, which is the reason why there are no churches built in the Rococo style. Sigismund von Schrattenbach continued with the construction of "Sigmundstor" and the statue of holy Maria on the cathedral square. With the fall and division of the former "Fürsterzbistum Salzburg" (Archbishopric) to Upper Austria, Bavaria (Rupertigau) and Tyrol (Zillertal Matrei) began a long period of urban stagnancy. This era didn't end before the period of promoterism (Gründerzeit) brought new life into urban development. The builder dynasty Jakob Ceconi and Carl Freiherr von Schwarz filled major positions in shaping the city in this era.[27]
+
+Buildings of classical modernism and in particular the post-war modernism are frequently encountered in Salzburg. Examples are the Zahnwurzen house (a house in the Linzergasse 22 in the right center of the old town), the "Lepi" (a public baths in Leopoldskron) (built 1964) and the original 1957 constructed congress centre of Salzburg, which was replaced by a new building in 2001. An important and famous example of architecture of this era is the 1960 opening of the Großes Festspielhaus by Clemens Holzmeister.
+
+Adding contemporary architecture to Salzburg's old town without risking its UNESCO World Heritage status is problematic. Nevertheless, some new structures have been added: the Mozarteum at the Baroque Mirabell Garden (Architecture Robert Rechenauer),[28] the 2001 Congress House (Architecture: Freemasons), the 2011 Unipark Nonntal (Architecture: Storch Ehlers Partners), the 2001 "Makartsteg" bridge (Architecture: HALLE1), and the "Residential and Studio House" of the architects Christine and Horst Lechner in the middle of Salzburg's old town (winner of the architecture award of Salzburg 2010).[29][30] Other examples of contemporary architecture lie outside the old town: the Faculty of Science building (Universität Salzburg – Architecture Willhelm Holzbauer) built on the edge of free green space, the blob architecture of Red Bull Hangar‑7 (Architecture: Volkmar Burgstaller[31]) at Salzburg Airport, home to Dietrich Mateschitz's Flying Bulls and the Europark Shopping Centre. (Architecture: Massimiliano Fuksas)
+
+Salzburg has twenty-four urban districts and three extra-urban populations.
+Urban districts (Stadtteile):
+
+Extra-urban populations (Landschaftsräume):
+
+Salzburg is a tourist favourite, with the number of visitors outnumbering locals by a large margin in peak times. In addition to Mozart's birthplace noted above, other notable places include:
+
+Old Town
+
+Outside the Old Town
+
+Greater Salzburg area
+
+Salzburg is a centre of education and home to three universities, as well as several professional colleges and gymnasiums (high schools).
+
+Salzburg Hauptbahnhof is served by comprehensive rail connections, with frequent east–west trains serving Vienna, Munich, Innsbruck, and Zürich, including daily high-speed ICE services. The city acts as a hub for south-bound trains through the Alps into Italy.
+
+Salzburg Airport has scheduled flights to European cities such as Frankfurt, Vienna, London, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Brussels, Düsseldorf, and Zürich, as well as Hamburg, Edinburgh and Dublin. In addition to these, there are numerous charter flights.
+
+In the main city, there is the Salzburg trolleybus system and bus system with a total of more than 20 lines, and service every 10 minutes. Salzburg has an S-Bahn system with four Lines (S1, S2, S3, S11), trains depart from the main station every 30 minutes, and they are part of the ÖBB network. Suburb line number S1 reaches the world-famous Silent Night chapel in Oberndorf in about 25 minutes.
+
+In the 1960s, the movie The Sound of Music used some locations in and around Salzburg and the state of Salzburg. The movie was based on the true story of Maria von Trapp, who took up with an aristocratic family and fled the German Anschluss. The town draws many visitors who wish to visit the filming locations, alone or on tours.
+
+The city briefly appears on the map when Indiana Jones travels through the city in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
+
+Salzburg is the setting for the Austrian crime series Stockinger.
+
+In the 2010 film Knight & Day, Salzburg serves as the backdrop for a large portion of the film.
+
+The 2017 novel 'A Rock 'n' Roll Lovestyle' by Kiltie Jackson is set predominately in Salzburg and surrounding areas.
+
+Austrian German is widely written and differs from Germany's standard variation only in some vocabulary and a few grammar points. Salzburg belongs to the region of Austro-Bavarian dialects, in particular Central Bavarian.[35] It is widely spoken by young and old alike although professors of linguistics from the Universität Salzburg, Irmgard Kaiser and Hannes Scheutz, have seen over the past few years a reduction in the number of dialect speakers in the city.[36] [37] Although more and more school children are speaking standard German, Scheutz feels it has less to do with parental influence and more to do with media consumption.[38]
+
+The former SV Austria Salzburg reached the UEFA Cup final in 1994. On 6 April 2005 Red Bull bought the club and changed its name into FC Red Bull Salzburg. The home stadium of Red Bull Salzburg is the Wals Siezenheim Stadium in a suburb in the agglomeration of Salzburg and was one of the venues for the 2008 European Football Championship. The FC Red Bull Salzburg plays in the Austrian Bundesliga.
+
+After Red Bull had bought the SV Austria Salzburg and changed its name and team colors, some supporters of the club decided to leave and form a new club with the old name and old colors, wanting to preserve the traditions of their club. The reformed SV Austria Salzburg was founded in 2005 and currently plays in the Erste Liga, only one tier below the Bundesliga.
+
+Red Bull also sponsors the local ice hockey team, the EC Salzburg Red Bulls. The team plays in the Erste Bank Eishockey Liga, an Austria-headquartered crossborder league featuring the best teams from Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and Italy, as well as one Czech team.
+
+Salzburg was a candidate city for the 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics, but lost to Vancouver and Sochi respectively.
+
+Salzburg is twinned with:[39]
+
+Mozart's birthplace at Getreidegasse 9
+
+View from Mirabellgarten at night
+
+The famous fountain in Mirabell Gardens (seen in the "Do-Re-Mi" song from The Sound of Music)
+
+The Sunset at the Staatsbrücke
+
+Sigmund Haffner Gasse – Rathaus
+
+Residential and studio house Lechner in the old town
+
+The Salzburg basin
+
+The fortress (background), Salzburg Cathedral (middle), the Salzach (foreground)
+
+ÖBB rail connection to Salzburg in Innsbruck
+
+Mozart monument
+
+Fountain in the Residenzplatz
+
+Palace of Mirabell.
+
+View of the old town and fortress, seen from Kapuzinerberg
+
+Salzburg at ight

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+Salzburg (Austrian: [ˈsaltsbʊʁk]; German: [ˈzaltsbʊʁk] (listen);[note 1] literally "Salt Fortress") is a state (Land) of Austria. It is officially named Land Salzburg, colloquially Salzburgerland, to distinguish it from its eponymous capital Salzburg city and as such is the only state to be named after its capital (apart from Vienna which is both a city and a state). By its centuries-long history as an independent Prince-Bishopric, Salzburg's tradition differs from the other Austrian lands.
+
+Salzburg state stretches along its primary river, the Salzach running from the Central Eastern Alps in the south – reaching a height of 3,657 metres (11,998 ft) at the mountain Großvenediger – down into the Alpine foothills in the north, with an area of 7,156 km2 (2,763 sq mi). It is located in the north of the country, close to the border with the German state of Bavaria. It is surrounded by the Austrian lands of Upper Austria in the northeast, by Styria in the east, by Carinthia in the south as well as by Tyrol, South Tyrol (Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol, Italy) and East Tyrol in the southwest. With 529,085 inhabitants, it is one of the country's smaller states in terms of population.
+
+Running through the south are the main ranges of the Alpine divide (incl. the Hohe Tauern mountains) with numerous three-thousanders. The Dachstein massif and the Berchtesgaden Alps ranges of the Northern Limestone Alps border Salzburg Land to the east and north.
+
+The state is traditionally subdivided in five major regions (Gaue), congruent with its political districts (Bezirke, see administrative divisions).
+
+Salzburg municipalities with town privileges:
+
+Wals-Siezenheim, a common municipality with about 12,000 inhabitants, is known as 'Austria's largest village'.
+
+Salt has played an important role in the region's development; Salzburg means "salt castle".
+
+Independence from Bavaria was secured in the late 14th century. The Archbishopric of Salzburg was an independent prince-bishopric and State of the Holy Roman Empire until German Mediatisation in 1803.
+
+The territory was secularized and, as the Electorate of Salzburg, given as compensation to Ferdinand III, former Grand Duke of Tuscany, the brother of Emperor Francis II.
+
+Following the Austrian defeat at Austerlitz in 1805, Salzburg was annexed by Austria as compensation for the loss of Tyrol to the Kingdom of Bavaria, and Ferdinand was transferred to the Grand Duchy of Würzburg.
+
+After Austria's defeat in 1809, the province was handed over to Bavaria in 1810.
+
+In 1816, following the defeat of Napoleon and the provision of adequate compensation to Bavaria at the Congress of Vienna, it was returned to Austria with the exception of the north-western Rupertiwinkel which remained Bavarian. The Salzburger Land was administered as the department of Salzach from Linz, the capital of Upper Austria. In 1849 the Duchy of Salzburg was established as a crown land of the Austrian Empire and, after 1866, Austria-Hungary.
+
+Salzburg participated in World War I, as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 49,000 Salzburgers were called to arms, of whom 6,000 were killed.[6]
+
+In 1918 after World War I, the Duchy of Salzburg was dissolved and replaced with the State of Salzburg, as a component part initially of German Austria and subsequently of the First Republic of Austria, the separate state which was mandated by the Allied powers. (However, in the November Plebiscite 99% of Salzburgers voted in favor of union with Germany.)
+
+After the plebiscite of 1938, Salzburg state and all the territory of Austria was annexed to the Third Reich.
+
+After the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Allies occupied the territory of Austria, being recognized as an independent territory under their rule. Salzburg was occupied by the United States.
+
+In 1955 Austria was again declared independent of the Allies and Salzburg was once again one of the reconstituted federal states of the second Republic Austria.
+
+Salzburg adopted its current state constitution in 1999. The state government (Landesregierung) is headed by a Landeshauptmann (governor), who is elected by a majority in the Landtag parliament. State elections are held every five years.
+
+After World War II, most state governments were led by the conservative Austrian People's Party (ÖVP). The ÖVP politician Josef Klaus (1910-2001), later Chancellor of Austria, served as Landeshauptmann from 1949 to 1961. In 2004 Gabi Burgstaller became the first Social Democratic (and first female) Salzburg governor.
+
+The last results, in April 2018 (compared to 2013) were:
+
+The elected Salzburg Landeshauptmann is Wilfried Haslauer (ÖVP), chairing a coalition government of ÖVP, Greens and NEOS ministers (Landesräte). The current president (speaker) of the Salzburg Landtag is his party fellow Brigitta Pallauf.
+
+The State of Salzburg comprises six districts, known as Bezirke or vernacularly Gaue:
+
+Salzburg city is its own administrative district.
+
+The state is divided into 119 municipalities, including Salzburg city. 11 of them have city status (Städte), 24 are market towns (Marktgemeinden) and the other 84 are simple municipalities (Gemeinden). Below it is shown a list of all the municipalities divided per district:
+
+The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the state was 29 billion € in 2018, accounting for 7.5% of the Austria's economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 46,500 € or 154% of the EU27 average in the same year. Salzburg is the state with the highest GDP per capita in Austria before Vienna.[8]
+
+The Salzburg Cathedral was the first Baroque building in the German-speaking artistic world.  Two other important buildings initiated by the Salzburg archbishops were Hohenwerfen Castle and Hohensalzburg Fortress. The first Archbishop of Salzburg was Arno of Salzburg (785–821), in whose honor the world-famous hiking circuit — the Arnoweg — is named.
+
+The predominant stylistic elements of Salzburg architecture have their origins in the Baroque and the Rococo periods.
+
+Salzburg city's historic centre was named by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
+
+Austrian German is the local written language, and it can be heard especially in the cities. Austro-Bavarian is also spoken, especially in the rural areas and the common language of Salzburgerland.
+
+Altenmarkt im Pongau, Flachau, Wagrain, St. Johann, Zell am See (Saalbach-Hinterglemm), Obertauern, Bad Gastein, Rauris, Lofer, hochkönig, Krispl
+
+Coordinates: 47°46′01″N 13°21′51″E / 47.76706°N 13.364131°E / 47.76706; 13.364131

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+Coordinates: 47°42′N 13°35′E / 47.700°N 13.583°E / 47.700; 13.583
+
+The Salzkammergut (German: [ˈzaltskamɐɡuːt]; Central Bavarian: Soizkaumaguad) is a resort area located in Austria, stretching from the city of Salzburg eastwards along the Alpine Foreland and the Northern Limestone Alps to the peaks of the Dachstein Mountains. The main river of the region is the Traun, a right tributary of the Danube.
+
+The name Salzkammergut translates to "salt demesne", Kammergut being a German word for territories held by princes of the Holy Roman Empire, in early modern Austria specifically territories of the Habsburg Monarchy.
+The salt mines of Salzkammergut were administered by the imperial Salzoberamt in Gmunden from 1745 to 1850.
+
+Parts of the region were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.[1]
+
+The lands on the shore of the Traun River comprise numerous glacial lakes and raised bogs, and the Salzkammergut Mountains and the adjacent Dachstein Mountains, the Totes Gebirge and the Upper Austrian Prealps with prominent Mt. Traunstein in the east. The towering mountain slopes are characterized by bright limestone (karst) and flysch rocks.
+
+Salzkammergut is not an official administrative division of Austria and as such has no clear borders. 
+The historical term referred not to a region but to specific possessions (salt mines) of the Habsburg Monarchy within the region.
+Since 2002, however, there has been a well-defined Tourismusregion Salzkammergut, marketed by Salzkammergut Tourismus-Marketing GmbH, a  company with seat in Bad Ischl
+As defined by this company, Salzkammergut as a region of the tourism industry includes 
+58 municipalities in three Austrian states, the majority within Upper Austria (Gmunden and Vöcklabruck districts), besides smaller portions of Styria and
+Salzburg.
+Salzkammergut Tourismus-Marketing GmbH divides the Salzkammergut region into ten sub-regions, as follows:
+
+Archaeological findings in the area date back to the Neolithic era, especially the stilt houses of the Mondsee group culture, who settled the region from about 3800 BC onwards. The Germanic name hall of several settlements refers to the region's numerous salt mines, which had been in use at least since the days of the Celtic Hallstatt culture, centered at the mining town of Hallstatt. These operations were continued by the Romans, after the area had been incorporated into the Noricum province in 15 BC. A Roman settlement and salt evaporation pond at Hallstatt is documented about 100, affected by several Germanic invasions after the Marcomannic Wars, until the province was finally evacuated at the behest of the Italian king Odoacer in 488.
+
+From about 530, Bavarii tribes settled the region from the west, they met with Alpine Slavs who had moved northwards through the Enns Valley and across the Dachstein Mountains. From 900 salt trade is again documented along the Traun River, when the area was part of the Traungau region of the German stem duchy of Bavaria, held by the comital dynasty of the Otakars, who from 1056 also ruled over the neighbouring March of Styria. While most of the Traungau fell to the Babenberg duchy of Austria upon the deposition of the Bavarian duke Henry the Lion in 1180, the southeastern Ausseerland remained with the newly established Duchy of Styria, which nevertheless from 1192 was held in personal union by the Austrian Babenbergs.
+
+In 1278 King Rudolph I of Germany, a scion of the Swabian House of Habsburg, finally seized both duchies from King Ottokar II of Bohemia, whom he defeated in the Battle on the Marchfeld. Rudolph's son King Albert I of Germany defended his hegemony against the rivaling Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg in the west and in 1298 made the lands of Ischl a present to his wife Countess Elisabeth of Gorizia-Tyrol. 
+Emperor Maximilian I added to the territory[clarification needed] the estates of Mondsee Abbey in 1506.
+
+The Habsburg officials resided at Wildenstein Castle near Ischl and the surrounding estates were designated a Kammergut, as first documented in a 1656 deed.[citation needed]
+In the 17th century, Ischl and Hallstatt were considered separate Kammergüter.[2]
+The salt mines at were immediate domains of the Habsburg King of the Romans and mining part of his princely regalia. 
+The salt mines  were administered by the financial aulic chamber at Vienna, represented by the salt chamber (Salzamt) in Gmunden, established in the 15th century.
+The Salzkammer in Gmunden was made Salzoberamt by a decree of empress Maria Theresia of 22 May 1745.
+The term Salzkammergut dates to this period, during which the Gmunden Salzoberamt was the administrative seat of all salt mines in the region,[3]  with subordinate offices at Ischl, Ebensee am Traunsee, Stadl, Lambach, Wels, Zizlau, Enghagen, Mauthausen and Linz.[4]
+The Salzämter were dissolved in the 19th century. Emperor  Franz Joseph I in 1850 transformed the Gmunden Salzoberamt into the k.k. Salinen- und Forstdirektion , the predecessor of the modern Salinen Austria AG (a joint-stock company since 1979, fully privatised in 1997).
+
+During the time of Emperor Franz Joseph I, the Salzkammergut area was a hub of cultured life.[5] The Emperor spent his summer holidays in Bad Ischl in the Kaiservilla, from which he governed his empire in the warmer months. This was also where he signed the declaration of war with Serbia that started World War I.[citation needed]
+
+There used to be a salt mining industry but it is today relatively minor contributor to the local economy.[citation needed] More important is the forest industry.
+Industrial sites include Ebensee, Gmunden, Laakirchen and Steyrermühl.[citation needed] The Salzkammergut also profits from its tradition of small businesses and trade companies, many of which originated due to the salt mining.[citation needed]
+
+The unemployment rate was approximately 4.8% in 2005, compared to an overall figure of 7.3% for Austria.[6]
+
+A well-known narrow-gauge railway, the Salzkammergut-Lokalbahn formerly ran from Salzburg to Bad Ischl, but it closed in 1957.[7] A standard gauge railroad continues to run through the region, as well as the Schafbergbahn rack railway in St. Wolfgang.[8]
+
+Recreational facilities include swimming and water sports at the many lakes, mountaineering, cycling and horse riding holidays, winter sports and cultural events. The region owes its reputation as a recreational area not only to its landscape and climate but also to its many spas.[5] It remains a major tourist area despite its age.[5]
+
+Since 2002, the tourism region has marketed itself with the Salzkammergut Tourismus-Marketing GmbH (salzkammergut.at),[9] a holding company of the 54 municipalities of the Salzkammergut that are entitled to use the name “Salzkammergut” as a brand according to the tourism regulations of the three provinces.
+
+UNESCO designated "Hallstatt–Dachstein/Salzkammergut Cultural Landscape" (Kulturlandschaft Hallstatt–Dachstein/Salzkammergut) a World Heritage Site in 1997, with the description: "Human activity in the magnificent natural landscape of the Salzkammergut began in prehistoric times, with the salt deposits being exploited as early as the 2nd millennium B.C. This resource formed the basis of the area's prosperity up to the middle of the 20th century, a prosperity that is reflected in the fine architecture of the town of Hallstatt."
+
+The area designated was defined on an area of 284 square kilometres, with a "buffer zone" of another 200 square kilometres.
+The core zone includes the towns Hallstatt, Obertraun, Gosau and Bad Goisern.[1]

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+Saturday is the day of the week between Friday and Sunday. The Romans named Saturday Sāturni diēs ("Saturn's Day") no later than the 2nd century for the planet Saturn, which controlled the first hour of that day, according to Vettius Valens.[1][2] The day's name was introduced into West Germanic languages and is recorded in the Low German languages such as Middle Low German sater(s)dach, Middle Dutch saterdag (Modern Dutch zaterdag) and Old English Sætern(es)dæġ and Sæterdæġ.[3] In Old English, Saturday was also known as sunnanæfen ("sun" + "eve" cf. dialectal German Sonnabend).[4]
+
+Between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, the Roman Empire gradually replaced the eight-day Roman nundinal cycle with the seven-day week. The astrological order of the days was explained by Vettius Valens and Dio Cassius (and Chaucer gave the same explanation in his Treatise on the Astrolabe). According to these authors, it was a principle of astrology that the heavenly bodies presided, in succession, over the hours of the day. The association of the weekdays with the respective deities is thus indirect, the days are named for the planets, which were in turn named for the deities.
+
+The Germanic peoples adapted the system introduced by the Romans but glossed their indigenous gods over the Roman deities in a process known as interpretatio germanica.  In the case of Saturday, however, the Roman name was borrowed directly by West Germanic peoples, apparently because none of the Germanic gods were considered to be counterparts of the Roman god Saturn. Otherwise Old Norse and Old High German did not borrow the name of the Roman god (Icelandic laugardagur, German Samstag).
+
+In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Saturdays are days on which the Theotokos (Mother of God) and All Saints are commemorated, and the day on which prayers for the dead are especially offered, in remembrance that it was on a Saturday that Jesus lay dead in the tomb. The Octoechos contains hymns on these themes, arranged in an eight-week cycle, that are chanted on Saturdays throughout the year.  At the end of services on Saturday, the dismissal begins with the words: "May Christ our True God, through the intercessions of his most-pure Mother, of the holy, glorious and right victorious Martyrs, of our reverend and God-bearing Fathers…". For the Orthodox, Saturday — with the sole exception of Holy Saturday — is never a strict fast day. When a Saturday falls during one of the fasting seasons (Great Lent, Nativity Fast, Apostles' Fast, Dormition Fast) the fasting rules are always lessened to an extent. The Great Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross and the Beheading of St. John the Baptist are normally observed as strict fast days, but if they fall on a Saturday or Sunday, the fast is lessened.
+
+Today, Saturday is officially called Samstag in all German-speaking countries, but there it has two names in modern Standard German. Samstag is always used in Austria, Liechtenstein, and the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and generally used in southern and western Germany. It derives from Old High German sambaztac, which itself derives from Greek Σάββατο, and this Greek word derives from Hebrew שבת (Shabbat). However, the current German word for Sabbath is Sabbat. The second name for Saturday in German is Sonnabend, which derives from Old High German sunnunaband, and is closely related to the Old English word sunnanæfen. It means literally "Sun eve", i.e., "The day before Sunday". Sonnabend is generally used in northern and eastern Germany, and was also the official name for Saturday in East Germany.
+
+In West Frisian there are also two words for Saturday. In Wood Frisian it is  saterdei, and in Clay Frisian it is sneon, derived from snjoen, a combination of Old Frisian sunne, meaning sun and joen, meaning eve.
+
+In the Westphalian dialects of Low Saxon, in East Frisian Low Saxon and in the Saterland Frisian language, Saturday is called Satertag, also akin to Dutch zaterdag, which has the same linguistic roots as the English word Saturday. It was formerly thought that the English name referred to a deity named Sætere who was venerated by the pre-Christian peoples of north-western Germany, some of whom were the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons. Sætere was identified as either a god associated with the harvest of possible Slav origin,[5] or another name for Loki[6] a complex deity associated with both good and evil; this latter suggestion may be due to Jacob Grimm.[7] However, modern dictionaries derive the name from Saturn.[8][9][10][11]
+
+In most languages of India, Saturday is Shanivāra, vāra meaning day, based on Shani, the Vedic god manifested in the planet Saturn. In the Thai solar calendar of Thailand, the day is named from the Pali word for Saturn, and the color associated with Saturday is purple.[citation needed] In Pakistan, Saturday is Hafta, meaning the week. In Eastern Indian languages like Bengali Saturday is called Shonibar or শনিবার meaning Saturn's Day and is the first day of the Bengali Week in the Bengali calendar.
+In Islamic countries, Fridays are considered as the last or penultimate day of the week and are holidays along with Thursdays or Saturdays; Saturday is called سبت or Sabt (cognate to Sabbath) and it is the first day of the week in many Arab countries but the Last Day in other Islamic countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Central Asian countries.
+
+In Japanese, the word Saturday is 土曜日 (doyōbi), meaning 'soil day' and is associated with 土星 (dosei): Saturn (the planet), literally meaning "soil star". Similarly, in Korean the word Saturday is 토요일 (tho yo il), also meaning earth day. The element Earth was associated with the planet Saturn in Chinese astrology and philosophy.
+
+The modern Maori name for Saturday, rahoroi, literally means "washing-day" – a vestige of early colonized life when Māori converts would set aside time on the Saturday to wash their whites for Church on Sunday.[citation needed] A common alternative Māori name for Saturday is the transliteration Hatarei.
+
+Quakers traditionally referred to Saturday as "Seventh Day", eschewing the "pagan" origin of the name.[12]
+
+In Scandinavian countries, Saturday is called lördag, lørdag, or laurdag, the name being derived from the old word laugr/laug (hence Icelandic name Laugardagur), meaning bath, thus Lördag equates to bath-day. This is due to the Viking practice of bathing on Saturdays.[13] The roots lör, laugar and so forth are cognate to the English word lye, in the sense of detergent. The Finnish and Estonian names for the day, lauantai and laupäev, respectively, are also derived from this term.
+
+The international standard ISO 8601 sets Saturday as the sixth day of the week. The three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) regard Saturday as the seventh day of the week. As a result, many refused the ISO 8601 standards and continue to use Saturday as their seventh day.
+
+For Jews, Messianics, Seventh Day Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists, the seventh day of the week, known as Shabbat (or Sabbath for Seventh-day Adventists), stretches from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday and is the day of rest. Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches distinguish between Saturday (Sabbath) and the Lord's Day (Sunday). Other Protestant groups, such as Seventh-day Adventists, hold that the Lord's Day is the Sabbath, according to the fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8),and not Sunday.
+
+But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.
+
+In astrology, Saturn is associated with Saturday, its planet's symbol , and the astrological signs Capricorn and Aquarius.

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+Sanaa (Arabic: صَنْعَاء‎, Ṣanʿāʾ [sˤɑnʕaːʔ], Yemeni Arabic: [ˈsˤɑnʕɑ]; Old South Arabian: 𐩮𐩬𐩲𐩥 Ṣnʿw), also spelled Sanaʽa or Sana, is the largest city in Yemen and the centre of Sanaa Governorate. The city is not part of the Governorate, but forms the separate administrative district of "Amanat Al-Asemah". Under the Yemeni constitution, Sanaʽa is the capital of the country,[1] although the seat of the Yemeni government moved to Aden in the aftermath of the Houthi occupation. Aden was declared as the temporary capital by President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in March 2015.[2]
+
+Sanaʽa is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. At an elevation of 2,300 metres (7,500 ft),[3] it is also one of the highest capital cities in the world and is next to the Sarawat Mountains of Jabal An-Nabi Shu'ayb and Jabal Tiyal, considered to be the highest mountains in the country and amongst the highest in the region. Sanaʽa has a population of approximately 3,937,500 (2012), making it Yemen's largest city.
+
+The Old City of Sanaʽa, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has a distinctive architectural character, most notably expressed in its multi-storey buildings decorated with geometric patterns. In the conflict that raged in 2015, bombs hit UNESCO sites in the old city.[4][5] Located here is the Al Saleh Mosque, the largest in the city.
+
+According to popular legend, it was founded at the base of Jabal Nuqum[3] by Shem, the son of Noah,[6][7][8] after the latter's death. It was known as "Azal" in ancient times, which has been connected to Uzal, a son of Qahtan, a great-grandson of Shem, in the biblical accounts of Genesis.[9] Its name is related to the Sabaic word for "well-fortified".[10][11]
+
+The Arab historian al-Hamdani wrote that Sanaʽa was walled by the Sabaeans under their ruler Sha'r Awtar, who also arguably built the Ghumdan Palace in the city. Because of its location, Sanaʽa has served as an urban center for the surrounding tribes of the region, and as a nucleus of regional trade in southern Arabia. It was positioned at the crossroad of two major ancient trade routes linking Ma'rib in the east to the Red Sea in the west.[8]
+
+When King Yousef Athar (or Dhu Nuwas), the last of the Himyarite kings, was in power, Sanaʽa was also the capital of the Ethiopian viceroys.
+
+From the era of Muhammad (ca. 622 CE) until the founding of independent sub-states in many parts of the Yemen Islamic Caliphate, Sanaʽa persisted as the governing seat. The Caliph's deputy ran the affairs of one of Yemen's three Makhalifs: Mikhlaf Sanaʽa, Mikhlaf al-Janad, and Mikhlaf Hadhramaut. The city of Sanaʽa regularly regained an important status and all Yemenite States competed to control it.[citation needed]
+
+Imam Al-Shafi'i, the 8th-century Islamic jurist and founder of the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence, visited Sanaʽa several times. He praised the city, writing La budda min Ṣanʻāʼ, or "Sanaʽa must be seen." In the 9th–10th centuries, the Yemeni geographer al-Hamdani took note of the city's cleanliness, saying "The least dwelling there has a well or two, a garden and long cesspits separate from each other, empty of ordure, without smell or evil odors, because of the hard concrete (adobe and cob, probably) and fine pastureland and clean places to walk." Later in the 10th-century, the Persian geographer Ibn Rustah wrote of Sanaʽa "It is the city of Yemen — there cannot be found ... a city greater, more populous or more prosperous, of nobler origin or with more delicious food than it."
+
+In 1062 Sanaʽa was taken over by the Sulayhid dynasty led by Ali al-Sulayhi and his wife, the popular Queen Asma. He made the city capital of his relatively small kingdom, which also included the Haraz Mountains. The Sulayhids were aligned with the Ismaili Muslim-leaning Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt, rather than the Baghdad-based Abbasid Caliphate that most of Arabia followed. Al-Sulayhi ruled for about 20 years but he was assassinated by his principal local rivals, the Zabid-based Najahids. Following his death, al-Sulayhi's daughter, Arwa al-Sulayhi, inherited the throne. She withdrew from Sanaʽa, transferring the Sulayhid capital to Jibla, where she ruled much of Yemen from 1067 to 1138. As a result of the Sulayhid departure, the Hamdanid dynasty took control of Sanaʽa.[12]
+
+In 1173 Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, sent his brother Turan-Shah on an expedition to conquer Yemen. The Ayyubids gained control of Sanaʽa in 1175 and united the various Yemeni tribal states, except for the northern mountains controlled by the Zaydi imams, into one entity.[12] The Ayyubids switched the country's official religious allegiance to the Sunni Muslim Abbasids. During the reign of the Ayyubid emir Tughtekin ibn Ayyub, the city underwent significant improvements. These included the incorporation of the garden lands on the western bank of the Sa'ilah, known as Bustan al-Sultan, where the Ayyubids built one of their palaces.[13] Despite Sanaʽa's strategic position, the Ayyubids chose Ta'izz as their capital while Aden was their principal income-producing city.
+
+While the Rasulids controlled most of Yemen, followed by their successors the Tahirids, Sanaʽa largely remained in the political orbit of the Zaydi imams from 1323 to 1454 and outside the former two dynasties' rule.[14] The Mamelukes arrived in Yemen in 1517.
+
+The Ottoman Empire entered Yemen in 1538 when Suleiman the Magnificent was Sultan.[15] Under the military leadership of Özdemir Pasha, the Ottomans conquered Sanaʽa in 1547.[14] With Ottoman approval, European captains based in the Yemeni port towns of Aden and Mocha frequented Sanaʽa to maintain special privileges and capitulations for their trade. In 1602 the local Zaydi imams led by Imam al-Mu'ayyad reasserted their control over the area,[15] and forced out Ottoman troops in 1629. Although the Ottomans fled during al-Mu'ayyad's reign, his predecessor al-Mansur al-Qasim had already vastly weakened the Ottoman army in Sanaʽa and Yemen.[14] Consequently, European traders were stripped of their previous privileges.[15]
+
+The Zaydi imams maintained their rule over Sanaʽa until the mid-19th-century when the Ottomans relaunched their campaign to control the region. In 1835, Ottoman troops arrived on the Yemeni coast under the guise of Muhammad Ali of Egypt's troops.[15] They did not capture Sanaʽa until 1872 when their troops led by Ahmed Muhtar Pasha entered the city.[14] The Ottoman Empire instituted the Tanzimat reforms throughout the lands they governed.
+
+In Sanaʽa, city planning was initiated for the first time, new roads were built, and schools and hospitals were established. The reforms were rushed by the Ottomans to solidify their control of Sanaʽa to compete with an expanding Egypt, British influence in Aden and imperial Italian and French influence along the coast of Somalia, particularly in the towns of Djibouti and Berbera. The modernization reforms in Sanaʽa were still very limited, however.[16]
+
+In 1904, as Ottoman influence was waning in Yemen, Imam Yahya of the Zaydi imams took power in Sanaʽa. In a bid to secure North Yemen's independence, Yahya embarked on a policy of isolationism, avoiding international and Arab world politics, cracking down on embryonic liberal movements, not contributing to the development of infrastructure in Sanaʽa and elsewhere and closing down the Ottoman girls' school. As a consequence of Yahya's measures, Sanaʽa increasingly became a center of the anti-government organization and intellectual revolt.[16]
+
+In the 1930s, several organizations opposing or demanding reform of the Zaydi imamate sprung up in the city, particularly Fatat al-Fulayhi, a group of various Yemeni Muslim scholars based in Sanaʽa's Fulayhi Madrasa, and Hait al-Nidal ("Committee of the Struggle.") By 1936 most of the leaders of these movements were imprisoned. In 1941 another group based in the city, the Shabab al-Amr bil-Maruf wal-Nahian al-Munkar, called for a nahda ("renaissance") in the country as well as the establishment of a parliament with Islam being the instrument of Yemeni revival. Yahya largely repressed the Shabab and most of its leaders were executed following his son, Imam Ahmad's inheritance of power in 1948.[16] That year, Sanaʽa was replaced with Ta'izz as capital following Ahmad's new residence there. Most government offices followed suit. A few years later, most of the city's Jewish population emigrated to Israel.[17]
+
+Ahmad began a process of gradual economic and political liberalization, but by 1961 Sanaʽa was witnessing major demonstrations and riots demanding quicker reform and change. Pro-republican officers in the North Yemeni military sympathetic of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt's government and pan-Arabist policies staged a coup overthrowing the Imamate government in September 1962, a week after Ahmad's death.[16] Sanaʽa's role as a capital was restored afterward.
+[17] Neighboring Saudi Arabia opposed this development and actively supported North Yemen's rural tribes, pitting large parts of the country against the urban and largely pro-republican inhabitants of Sanaʽa.[16] The North Yemen Civil War resulted in the destruction of some parts of the city's ancient heritage and continued until 1968 when a deal between the republicans and the royalists was reached,[17] establishing a presidential system. Instability in Sanaʽa continued due to continuing coups and political assassinations until the situation in the country stabilized in the late 1970s.[16]
+
+British writer Jonathan Raban visited in the 1970s and described the city as fortress-like, its architecture and layout resembling a labyrinth", further noting "It was like stepping out into the middle of a vast pop-up picturebook. Away from the street, the whole city turned into a maze of another kind, a dense, jumbled alphabet of signs and symbols."
+
+Following the unification of Yemen, Sanaʽa was designated capital of the new Republic of Yemen. It houses the presidential palace, the parliament, the supreme court, and the country's government ministries. The largest source of employment is provided by governmental civil service. Due to massive rural immigration, Sanaʽa has grown far outside its Old City, but this has placed a huge strain on the city's underdeveloped infrastructure and municipal services, particularly water.[16]
+
+Sanaʽa was chosen as the 2004 Arab Cultural Capital by the Arab League. In 2008, the Al Saleh Mosque was completed. It holds over 40,000 worshipers.
+
+In 2011, Sanaʽa, as the Yemeni capital, was the center of the Yemeni Revolution in which President Ali Abdullah Saleh was ousted. Between May and November, the city was a battleground, in what became known as the 2011 Battle of Sanaʽa.
+
+On 21 May 2012, Sanaʽa was attacked by a suicide bomber, resulting in the deaths of 120 soldiers.
+
+On 23 January 2013, a drone strike near Al-Masna'ah village killed two civilians, according to a report[18] issued by Radhya Al-Mutawakel and Abdulrasheed Al-Faqih and Open Societies Foundations.
+
+On 21 September 2014, during the Houthi insurgency, the Houthis seized  control of Sanaʽa.
+
+On 12 June 2015,  Saudi-led airstrikes targeting Shiite rebels and their allies in Yemen destroyed historic houses in the center of the capital. A UNESCO World Heritage site was severely damaged.[19]
+
+On 8 October 2016, Saudi-led airstrikes targeted a hall in Sanaʽa where a funeral was taking place. At least 140 people were killed and about 600 were wounded. After initially denying it was behind the attack, the Coalition's Joint Incidents Assessment Team admitted that it had bombed the hall but claimed that this attack had been a mistake caused by bad information.[20]
+
+On May 2017, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, an outbreak of cholera killed 115 people and left 8,500 ill.[21] In late 2017, another Battle of Sanaʽa broke out between the Houthis and forces loyal to former President Saleh, who was killed.
+
+Generally, Sanaʽa is divided into two parts: the Old City District ("al-Qadeemah") and the new city ("al-Jadid.") The former is much smaller and retains the city's ancient heritage and mercantile way-of-living while the latter is an urban sprawl with many suburbs and modern buildings. The newer parts of the city were largely developed in the 1960s and onward when Sanaʽa was chosen as the republican capital.[17]
+
+The following are the list of districts in the city:
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Sanaʽa features the very rare mild version of a desert climate (Köppen: BWk).[23] Sanaʽa sees on average 265 mm (10.43 in) of precipitation per year. Due to its high elevation, however, temperatures are much more moderate than many other cities on the Arabian Peninsula; average temperatures remain relatively constant throughout the year in Sanaʽa, with its coldest month being January and its warmest month July. Even considering this, as a result of its lower latitude and higher elevation, UV radiation from the sun is much stronger than in the hotter climates farther north on the Arab peninsula.
+
+The city seldom experiences extreme heat or cold. Some areas around the city, however, can see temperatures fall to around −9 °C (16 °F) or −7 °C (19 °F) during winter. Frost usually occurs in the early winter mornings, and there is a slight wind chill in the city at elevated areas that causes the cold mornings to be bitter, including low humidity. The sun warms the city to the high 15–20 °C (59–68 °F) and low 21–26 °C (70–79 °F) during the noontime but it drops drastically as night falls in.
+
+The city experiences many microclimates from district to district because of its location in the Sanaʽa basin and uneven elevations throughout the city. Summers are warm and can cool rapidly at night, especially after rainfall. Sanaʽa receives half of its annual rainfall during July and August. Rainfall amounts vary from year to year; some years could see 500–600 mm (20–24 inches) of rainfall, while others can barely get 150 mm (5.9 inches). High temperatures have increased slightly during the summer over the past few years, but low temperatures and winter temperatures have dramatically fallen over the same period.
+
+The Old City of Sanaʽa[22] (Arabic: مَدِيْنَة صَنْعَاء ٱلْقَدِيْمَة‎, romanized: Madīnat Ṣanʿāʾ Al-Qadīmah) is recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The old fortified city has been inhabited for more than 2,500 years and contains many intact architectural gems. The oldest, partially standing architectural structure in the Old City of Sanaʽa is Ghumdan Palace. The city was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations in 1986. Efforts are underway to preserve some of the oldest buildings some of which, such as the Samsarh and the Great Mosque of Sanaʽa,are  more than 1,400 years old. Surrounded by ancient clay walls that stand 9–14 metres (30–46 ft) high, the Old City contains more than 100 mosques, 12 hammams (baths) and 6,500 houses. Many of the houses resemble ancient skyscrapers, reaching several stories high and topped with flat roofs. They are decorated with elaborate friezes and intricately carved frames and stained-glass windows.
+
+One of the most popular attractions is Suq al-Milh (Salt Market), where it is possible to buy salt along with bread, spices, raisins, cotton, copper, pottery, silverware, and antiques. The 7th-century Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr (the Great Mosque) is one of the oldest mosques in the world. The Bāb al-Yaman[22] ("Gate of the Yemen") is an iconized entry point through the city walls and is more than 1,000 years old.
+
+A commercial area of the Old City is known as Al Madina where development is proceeding rapidly. In addition to three large hotels, there are numerous stores and restaurants. The area also contains three parks and the President's palace. The National Museum of Yemen is located here.
+
+Football (soccer) is the most popular sport in Sanaʽa. The city is home to the Ali Muhesen Stadium, home of the Yemen national football team, and is mostly used for football matches. The stadium holds 25,000 people.
+
+The city's population growth soared from the 1960s onward as a result of mass rural migration to the city in search of employment and improved standard of living.[17] Sanaʽa is the fastest-growing capital city in the world with a growth rate of 7%,[31] while the growth rate of the nation as a whole is 3.2%.[32] About 10% of the population resides in the Old City, while the remainder lives in the outside districts.[17]
+
+Jews have been present in Yemen since the 5th century BCE and form one of the most historic Jewish diasporas.[33] In Sanaʽa, Jews had initially settled within the enclosed citadel, known as al-Qaṣr, near the ruins of the old tower known as Ghumdan Palace, but were evicted from there in the late 6th century by the ruling monarch, and moved to a different section of the city, known as al-Marbaki (also called the Falayhi Quarter). From there, they again uprooted and were made to settle in the section of the city known as al-Quzali, and eventually moved and settled in the neighborhood of al-Sa'ilah. In 1679, during the Mawza Exile, they were once again evicted from their place of residence. Upon returning to the city in 1680, they were given a plot of land outside of the city walls, where they built the new Jewish Quarter, al-Qāʻ (now Qāʻ al-ʻUlufi), and where they remained until the community's demise in the mid-20th century.[34] After the creation of the political State of Israel in 1948, about 49,000 (of an estimated 51,000) of Yemenite Jews were airlifted to Israel, almost 10,000 of whom were from Sanaʽa (see the English-language book Jews and Muslims in lower Yemen: a study in protection and restraint, 1918–1949). There was essentially no Jewish population in Sanaʽa until the Shia insurgency broke out in northern Yemen in 2004. The Houthis directly threatened the Jewish community in 2007, prompting the government of President Saleh to offer them refuge in Sanaʽa. As of 2010[update], around 700 Jews were living in the capital under government protection.[35]In April 2017, it was reported that 40 of the last 50 Jews were in an enclave next to the American Embassy in Sana'a, and they were subject to threats of ethnic cleansing by the Houthis.[36]
+On April 28, 2020 Yemenite Minister Moammer al-Iryani remarked the fate of the last 50 Jews in Yemen is unknown. [37]
+
+Historically, Sanaʽa had a mining industry. The hills around Sanaʽa were mined for onyx, chalcedony, and cornelian.[38] The city was also known for its metalwork, which the British described as "famous" in the early 20th century, but declining in popularity.[39] As of 1920, Sanaʽa was described by the British as being "well supplied with fruit and grapes, and has good water."[40]
+
+As the capital city of Yemen, 40% of jobs in Sanaʽa are in the public sector. Other primary sources of formal employment in the city are trade and industry. Like many other cities in the developing world, Sanaʽa has a large informal sector that is estimated to constitute 32% of nongovernmental employment.
+While there is a greater variety of jobs in Sanaʽa as compared to other cities in Yemen, there is also greater poverty and unemployment. It is estimated that 25% of the labor force in Sanaʽa is unemployed.[41]
+
+Yemenia, the national airline of Yemen, has its head office in Sanaʽa.[42] Sanaʽa International Airport is Yemen's main domestic and international airport. A primary means of transport in the city is via dababs, minibuses that carry about 10 people. Taxis are also a common form of public transport and there are coaches to major cities such as Aden and Taiz.
+
+Like Ta'izz Zoo, this zoo held fauna caught in the wild, such as the Arabian leopard, as well as imported animals such as African lions and gazelles.[43] The lions were thought to be of Ethiopian origin, but a phylogeographic test demonstrated them to be different from captive Ethiopian lions kept at Addis Ababa Zoo, and more similar to lions from Eastern and Southern Africa.[44]
+
+Houses in old Sana'a. Ibex and Bull were sacred animals in ancient Yemen. Yemenis put Ibex or Bull horns at top of houses to protect from evil eyes.[45]
+
+A house in Sana'a
+
+House with traditional ''Qamariah''
+
+A dome in old Sana'a
+

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+MSA—$548.6 billion (4th)
+
+San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco and colloquially known as The City, SF, or Frisco and San Fran[20][21] is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 16th most populous city in the United States, and the fourth most populous in California, with 881,549 residents as of 2019.[15] It covers an area of about 46.89 square miles (121.4 km2),[22] mostly at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city, and the fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is the 12th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States by population, with 4.7 million people, and the fourth-largest by economic output, with GDP of $549 billion in 2018.[23] With San Jose, it forms the fifth most populous combined statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area (9.67 million residents in 2018).
+
+As of 2020, San Francisco has the highest salaries, disposable income, and median home prices in the world at $1.7 million,[24][25] as well as the highest median rents.[26] In 2018, San Francisco was the seventh-highest-income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $130,696.[27] In the same year, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $183.2 billion, and a GDP per capita of $207,371.[28][29] The CSA San Francisco shares with San Jose and Oakland was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2018, with a GDP of $1.03 trillion.[30]  Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the U.S., this CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2018, at $106,757.[30] San Francisco was ranked 8th in the world and 2nd in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of March 2020.[31]  As of 2016, the San Francisco metropolitan area had the highest GDP per capita, labor productivity, and household income levels in the OECD.[32] As of 2019[update], it is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings.[33]
+
+San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for St. Francis of Assisi.[3] The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856.[34] San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper.[35]  After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire,[36] San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.[37] It then became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945.[38][39][40] After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines.
+
+A popular tourist destination,[41] San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, and its Chinatown district. San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Dropbox, Reddit, Square, Inc., Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Craigslist. The city, and the surrounding Bay Area, is a global center of the sciences and arts[42][43] and is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco (USF), University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco State University (SFSU), the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the SFJAZZ Center, and the California Academy of Sciences.
+
+The earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC.[44] The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolá, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay.[45] Seven years later, on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores), established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza.[3]
+
+Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, William Richardson, a naturalized Mexican citizen of English birth, erected the first independent homestead,[46] near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, and Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, and Mexico officially ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war in 1848. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography.[47]
+
+The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers (known as "forty-niners", as in "1849"). With their sourdough bread in tow,[48] prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia,[49] raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849.[50] The promise of great wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor.[51]
+Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels; many were left to rot and some were sunk to establish title to the underwater lot. By 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land. Buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings.[52]
+
+California was quickly granted statehood in 1850, and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and a fort on Alcatraz Island to secure the San Francisco Bay. Silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth.[53] With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, and gambling.[54]
+
+Entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush. Early winners were the banking industry, with the founding of Wells Fargo in 1852 and the Bank of California in 1864. Development of the Port of San Francisco and the establishment in 1869 of overland access to the eastern U.S. rail system via the newly completed Pacific Railroad (the construction of which the city only reluctantly helped support[55]) helped make the Bay Area a center for trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Chinese immigrants made the city a polyglot culture, drawn to "Old Gold Mountain", creating the city's Chinatown quarter. In 1870, Asians made up 8% of the population.[56] The first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for a spacious public park, resulting in plans for Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life. The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast.[57] By 1890, San Francisco's population approached 300,000, making it the eighth-largest city in the United States at the time. Around 1901, San Francisco was a major city known for its flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill, and a thriving arts scene.[58] The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904.[59]
+
+At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across the city and burned out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks.[60] More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core.[36] Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people lost their lives, though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands.[61] More than half of the city's population of 400,000 was left homeless.[62] Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay.
+
+Rebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed.[64] Amadeo Giannini's Bank of Italy, later to become Bank of America, provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated. The influential San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association or SPUR was founded in 1910 to address the quality of housing after the earthquake.[65] The earthquake hastened development of western neighborhoods that survived the fire, including Pacific Heights, where many of the city's wealthy rebuilt their homes.[66] In turn, the destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose again in splendid Beaux Arts style, and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in 1915.[67]
+
+It was during this period San Francisco built some of its most important infrastructure. Civil Engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy was hired by San Francisco Mayor James Rolph as chief engineer for the city in September 1912 to supervise the construction of the Twin Peaks Reservoir, the Stockton Street Tunnel, the Twin Peaks Tunnel, the San Francisco Municipal Railway, the Auxiliary Water Supply System, and new sewers. San Francisco's streetcar system, of which the J, K, L, M, and N lines survive today, was pushed to completion by O'Shaughnessy between 1915 and 1927. It was the O'Shaughnessy Dam, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct that would have the largest effect on San Francisco.[68] An abundant water supply enabled San Francisco to develop into the city it has become today.
+
+In ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed.[69] Indeed, it was at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937, respectively. It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz, a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone, and Robert Franklin Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz. San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939–40, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house it.[citation needed]
+
+During World War II, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity, and Fort Mason became the primary port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations.[37] The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South, to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from service abroad and civilians who had originally come to work decided to stay. The United Nations Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco officially ended the war with Japan.[citation needed]
+
+Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s involved widespread destruction and redevelopment of west-side neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways, of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by citizen-led opposition.[70] The onset of containerization made San Francisco's small piers obsolete, and cargo activity moved to the larger Port of Oakland.[71] The city began to lose industrial jobs and turned to tourism as the most important segment of its economy.[72] The suburbs experienced rapid growth, and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America.[73][74] From 1950 to 1980, the city lost over 10 percent of its population.
+
+Over this period, San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture. Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s.[75] Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love.[76] In 1974, the Zebra murders left at least 16 people dead.[77] In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement, with the emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village, the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, and his assassination, along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.[78]
+
+Bank of America completed 555 California Street in 1969 and the Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972,[79] igniting a wave of "Manhattanization" that lasted until the late 1980s, a period of extensive high-rise development downtown.[80] The 1980s also saw a dramatic increase in the number of homeless people in the city, an issue that remains today, despite many attempts to address it.[81] The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim The Embarcadero as its historic downtown waterfront and revitalizing the Hayes Valley neighborhood.[citation needed]
+
+Two recent decades have seen two booms driven by the internet industry. First was the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once-poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified.[82] Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district.[83] By 2000, the city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid-2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a common place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.[84]
+
+The Ferry Station Post Office Building, Armour & Co. Building, Atherton House, and YMCA Hotel are historic buildings among dozens of historical landmarks in the city according to the National Register of Historic Places listings in San Francisco.[citation needed]
+
+San Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several picturesque islands—Alcatraz, Treasure Island and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island, and small portions of Alameda Island, Red Rock Island, and Angel Island—are part of the city. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands, 27 miles (43 km) offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The mainland within the city limits roughly forms a "seven-by-seven-mile square", a common local colloquialism referring to the city's shape, though its total area, including water, is nearly 232 square miles (600 km2).
+
+There are more than 50 hills within the city limits.[85] Some neighborhoods are named after the hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill, Potrero Hill, and Russian Hill.
+Near the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Twin Peaks, a pair of hills forming one of the city's highest points, forms an overlook spot. San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson, is 928 feet (283 m) high and is capped with a 103-foot (31 m) tall cross built in 1934.[86] Dominating this area is Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio and television transmission tower.
+
+The nearby San Andreas and Hayward Faults are responsible for much earthquake activity, although neither physically passes through the city itself. The San Andreas Fault caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthquakes occur on a regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. The city constructed an auxiliary water supply system and has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction.[87] However, there are still thousands of smaller buildings that remain vulnerable to quake damage.[88] USGS has released the California earthquake forecast which models earthquake occurrence in California.[89]
+
+San Francisco's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina, Mission Bay, and Hunters Point, as well as large sections of the Embarcadero, sit on areas of landfill. Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from the excavation of the Yerba Buena Tunnel through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes. The resulting soil liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.[90] Most of the city's natural watercourses, such as Islais Creek and Mission Creek, have been culverted and built over, although the Public Utilities Commission is studying proposals to daylight or restore some creeks.[91]
+
+The historic center of San Francisco is the northeast quadrant of the city anchored by Market Street and the waterfront. It is here that the Financial District is centered, with Union Square, the principal shopping and hotel district, and the Tenderloin nearby. Cable cars carry riders up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill, once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to the waterfront tourist attractions of Fisherman's Wharf, and Pier 39, where many restaurants feature Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street; North Beach, the city's Little Italy and the former center of the Beat Generation; and Telegraph Hill, which features Coit Tower. Abutting Russian Hill and North Beach is San Francisco's Chinatown, the oldest Chinatown in North America.[92][93][94][95] The South of Market, which was once San Francisco's industrial core, has seen significant redevelopment following the construction of Oracle Park and an infusion of startup companies. New skyscrapers, live-work lofts, and condominiums dot the area. Further development is taking place just to the south in Mission Bay area, a former railroad yard, which now has a second campus of the University of California, San Francisco and Chase Center, which opened in 2019 as the new home of the Golden State Warriors.[96]
+
+West of downtown, across Van Ness Avenue, lies the large Western Addition neighborhood, which became established with a large African American population after World War II. The Western Addition is usually divided into smaller neighborhoods including Hayes Valley, the Fillmore, and Japantown, which was once the largest Japantown in North America but suffered when its Japanese American residents were forcibly removed and interned during World War II. The Western Addition survived the 1906 earthquake with its Victorians largely intact, including the famous "Painted Ladies", standing alongside Alamo Square. To the south, near the geographic center of the city is Haight-Ashbury, famously associated with 1960s hippie culture. The Haight is now home to some expensive boutiques[97] and a few controversial chain stores,[98] although it still retains some bohemian character.
+
+North of the Western Addition is Pacific Heights, an affluent neighborhood that features the homes built by wealthy San Franciscans in the wake of the 1906 earthquake. Directly north of Pacific Heights facing the waterfront is the Marina, a neighborhood popular with young professionals that was largely built on reclaimed land from the Bay.[99]
+
+In the south-east quadrant of the city is the Mission District—populated in the 19th century by Californios and working-class immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scandinavia. In the 1910s, a wave of Central American immigrants settled in the Mission and, in the 1950s, immigrants from Mexico began to predominate.[100] In recent years, gentrification has changed the demographics of parts of the Mission from Latino, to twenty-something professionals. Noe Valley to the southwest and Bernal Heights to the south are both increasingly popular among young families with children. East of the Mission is the Potrero Hill neighborhood, a mostly residential neighborhood that features sweeping views of downtown San Francisco. West of the Mission, the area historically known as Eureka Valley, now popularly called the Castro, was once a working-class Scandinavian and Irish area. It has become North America's first gay village, and is now the center of gay life in the city.[101] Located near the city's southern border, the Excelsior District is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco. The predominantly African American Bayview-Hunters Point in the far southeast corner of the city is one of the poorest neighborhoods and suffers from a high rate of crime, though the area has been the focus of several revitalizing and controversial urban renewal projects.
+
+The construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1918 connected southwest neighborhoods to downtown via streetcar, hastening the development of West Portal, and nearby affluent Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood. Further west, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean and north to Golden Gate Park lies the vast Sunset District, a large middle-class area with a predominantly Asian population.[102]
+The northwestern quadrant of the city contains the Richmond, also a mostly middle-class neighborhood north of Golden Gate Park, home to immigrants from other parts of Asia as well as many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Together, these areas are known as The Avenues. These two districts are each sometimes further divided into two regions: the Outer Richmond and Outer Sunset can refer to the more western portions of their respective district and the Inner Richmond and Inner Sunset can refer to the more eastern portions.
+
+Many piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing for redevelopment. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building, while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as a gourmet marketplace.
+
+San Francisco has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csb) characteristic of California's coast, with moist mild winters and dry summers.[104] San Francisco's weather is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean on the west side of the city, and the water of San Francisco Bay to the north and east. This moderates temperature swings and produces a remarkably mild year-round climate with little seasonal temperature variation.[citation needed]
+
+Among major U.S. cities, San Francisco has the coolest daily mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures for June, July, and August.[105]
+During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific High through the Golden Gate, which creates the city's characteristic cool winds and fog.[106] The fog is less pronounced in eastern neighborhoods and during the late summer and early fall. As a result, the year's warmest month, on average, is September, and on average, October is warmer than July, especially in daytime.
+
+Because of its sharp topography and maritime influences, San Francisco exhibits a multitude of distinct microclimates. The high hills in the geographic center of the city are responsible for a 20% variance in annual rainfall between different parts of the city. They also protect neighborhoods directly to their east from the foggy and sometimes very cold and windy conditions experienced in the Sunset District; for those who live on the eastern side of the city, San Francisco is sunnier, with an average of 260 clear days, and only 105 cloudy days per year.[citation needed]
+
+Temperatures reach or exceed 80 °F (27 °C) on an average of only 21 and 23 days a year at downtown and San Francisco International Airport (SFO), respectively.[107] The dry period of May to October is mild to warm, with the normal monthly mean temperature peaking in September at 62.7 °F (17.1 °C).[107] The rainy period of November to April is slightly cooler, with the normal monthly mean temperature reaching its lowest in January at 51.3 °F (10.7 °C).[107] On average, there are 73 rainy days a year, and annual precipitation averages 23.65 inches (601 mm).[107] Variation in precipitation from year to year is high. Above average rain years are often associated with warm El Niño conditions in the Pacific while dry years often occur in cold water La Niña periods. In 2013 (a "La Niña" year), a record low 5.59 in (142 mm) of rainfall was recorded at downtown San Francisco, where records have been kept since 1849.[107] Snowfall in the city is very rare, with only 10 measurable accumulations recorded since 1852, most recently in 1976 when up to 5 inches (130 mm) fell on Twin Peaks.[108][109]
+
+The highest recorded temperature at the official National Weather Service downtown observation station (currently at the United States Mint building) was 106 °F (41 °C) on September 1, 2017.[110] The lowest recorded temperature was 27 °F (−3 °C) on December 11, 1932.[111] The National Weather Service provides a helpful visual aid[112] graphing the information in the table below to display visually by month the annual typical temperatures, the past year's temperatures, and record temperatures.
+
+San Francisco falls under the USDA 10b Plant Hardiness zone.[113][114]
+
+Historically, tule elk were present in San Francisco County, based on archeological evidence of elk remains in at least five different Native American shellmounds: at Hunter's Point, Fort Mason, Stevenson Street, Market Street, and Yerba Buena.[118][119] When Richard Henry Dana, Jr. visited San Francisco Bay in 1835, he wrote about vast elk herds near the Golden Gate: on December 27 "...we came to anchor near the mouth of the bay, under a high and beautifully sloping hill, upon which herds of hundreds and hundreds of red deer [note: "red deer" is the European term for "elk"], and the stag, with his high branching antlers, were bounding about...", although it is not clear whether this was the Marin side or the San Francisco side.[120]
+
+The U.S. Census Bureau estimates San Francisco's population to be 881,549 as of July 1, 2019, with a population density of 18,838/sq mi.[15] With roughly one-quarter the population density of Manhattan, San Francisco is the second-most densely populated large American city, behind only New York City among cities greater than 200,000 population, and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, following only four of the five New York City boroughs.
+
+San Francisco forms part of the five-county San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 4.7 million people, and has served as its traditional demographic focal point. It is also part of the greater 14-county San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area, whose population is over 9.6 million, making it the fifth-largest in the United States as of 2018.[15]
+
+San Francisco has a minority-majority population, as non-Hispanic whites comprise less than half of the population, 41.9%, down from 92.5% in 1940.[56]
+As of the 2010 census, the ethnic makeup and population of San Francisco included: 390,387 whites (48%), 267,915 Asians (33%), 48,870 African Americans (6%), and others. There were 121,744 Hispanics or Latinos of any race (15%).
+
+In 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population; the other Asian groups are Filipinos (5%) and Vietnamese (2%).[124] 
+The population of Chinese ancestry is most heavily concentrated in Chinatown, Sunset District, and Richmond District, whereas Filipinos are most concentrated in the Crocker-Amazon (which is contiguous with the Filipino community of Daly City, which has one of the highest concentrations of Filipinos in North America), as well as in SoMa.[124][125] The Tenderloin District is home to a large portion of the city's Vietnamese population as well as businesses and restaurants, which is known as the city's Little Saigon.[124]
+
+The principal Hispanic groups in the city were those of Mexican (7%) and Salvadoran (2%) ancestry. The Hispanic population is most heavily concentrated in the Mission District, Tenderloin District, and Excelsior District.[126] The city's percentage of Hispanic residents is less than half of that of the state.
+The population of African Americans in San Francisco is 6% of the city's population.[56][127] The percentage of African Americans in San Francisco is similar to that of California.[127] The majority of the city's black population reside within the neighborhoods of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, and in the Fillmore District.[126]
+
+According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, the largest religious groupings in San Francisco's metropolitan area are Christians (48%), followed by those of no religion (35%), Hindus (5%), Jews (3%), Buddhists (2%), Muslims (1%) and a variety of other religions have smaller followings. According to the same study by the Pew Research Center, about 20% of residents in the area are Protestant, and 25% professing Roman Catholic beliefs. Meanwhile, 10% of the residents in metropolitan San Francisco identifies as agnostics, while 5% identifies as atheists.[132][133]
+
+As of 2010[update], 55% (411,728) of San Francisco residents spoke only English at home, while 19% (140,302) spoke a variety of Chinese (mostly Taishanese and Cantonese[134][135]), 12% (88,147) Spanish, 3% (25,767) Tagalog, and 2% (14,017) Russian. In total, 45% (342,693) of San Francisco's population spoke a language at home other than English.[136]
+
+San Francisco has several prominent Chinese, Mexican, and Filipino ethnic neighborhoods including Chinatown and the Mission District. Research collected on the immigrant clusters in the city show that more than half of the Asian population in San Francisco is either Chinese born (40.3%) or Philippine born (13.1%), and of the Mexican population 21% were Mexican born, meaning these are people who recently immigrated to the United States.[138] Between the years of 1990 and 2000, the number foreign born residents increased from 33% to nearly 40%,[138] During this same time period, the San Francisco Metropolitan area received 850,000 immigrants, ranking third in the United States after Los Angeles and New York.[138]
+
+Of all major cities in the United States, San Francisco has the second-highest percentage of residents with a college degree, behind only Seattle. Over 44% of adults have a bachelor's or higher degree.[139]
+San Francisco had the highest rate at 7,031 per square mile, or over 344,000 total graduates in the city's 46.7 square miles (121 km2).[140]
+
+San Francisco has the highest estimated percentage of gay and lesbian individuals of any of the 50 largest U.S. cities, at 15%.[141]
+San Francisco also has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any American county, with the Bay Area having a higher concentration than any other metropolitan area.[142]
+
+San Francisco ranks third of American cities in median household income[146] with a 2007 value of $65,519.[127] Median family income is $81,136.[127]
+An emigration of middle-class families has left the city with a lower proportion of children than any other large American city,[147] with the dog population cited as exceeding the child population of 115,000, in 2018.[148]
+The city's poverty rate is 12%, lower than the national average.[149]
+Homelessness has been a chronic problem for San Francisco since the early 1970s.[150]
+The city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major U.S. city.[151][152]
+
+There are 345,811 households in the city, out of which: 133,366 households (39%) were individuals, 109,437 (32%) were opposite-sex married couples, 63,577 (18%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 21,677 (6%) were unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 10,384 (3%) were same-sex married couples or partnerships. The average household size was 2.26; the average family size was 3.11. 452,986 people (56%) lived in rental housing units, and 327,985 people (41%) lived in owner-occupied housing units.
+The median age of the city population is 38 years.
+
+San Francisco "declared itself a sanctuary city in 1989, and city officials strengthened the stance in 2013 with its 'Due Process for All' ordinance. The law declared local authorities could not hold immigrants for immigration officials if they had no violent felonies on their records and did not currently face charges."[153] The city issues a Resident ID Card regardless of the applicant's immigration status.[154]
+
+Homelessness, historically, has been a major problem in the city and remains a growing problem in modern times.[155]
+
+In 2017, 7,500 homeless people were officially counted in the city, two-thirds of whom were dealing with serious health issues like mental illness or HIV.[156]
+[157]
+The city of San Francisco has been dramatically increasing expenditure directed to alleviate the homelessness crisis: spending jumped by $241 million in 2016–17 to total $275 million, compared to a budget of just $34 million the previous year. In 2017–18 the budget for combatting homelessness, much of which is directed towards the building of new shelters and expanding capacity, stood at $305 million.[158]
+
+In January 2018 a United Nations special rapporteur on homelessness, Leilani Farha, stated that she was "completely shocked" by San Francisco's homelessness crisis during a visit to the city. She compared the "deplorable conditions" of the homeless camps she witnessed on San Francisco's streets to those she had seen in Mumbai.[158]
+
+According to academic Rob Wilson, San Francisco is a global city, a status that pre-dated the city's popularity during the California Gold Rush.[159] Such cities are characterized by their ethnic clustering, network of international connectivity, and convergence of technological innovation.[138] Global cities, such as San Francisco, are considered to be complex and require a high level of talent as well as large masses of low wage workers. A divide is created within the city of ethnic, typically lower-class neighborhoods, and expensive ones with newly developed buildings. This in turn creates a population of highly educated, white-collar individuals as well as blue-collar workers, many of whom are immigrants, and who both are drawn to the increasing number of opportunities available.[160] Competition for these opportunities pushes growth and adaptation in world centers.[161]
+
+San Francisco has a diversified service economy, with employment spread across a wide range of professional services, including financial services, tourism, and (increasingly) high technology.[162] In 2016, approximately 27% of workers were employed in professional business services; 14% in leisure and hospitality; 13% in government services; 12% in education and health care; 11% in trade, transportation, and utilities; and 8% in financial activities.[162] In 2017, GDP in the five-county San Francisco metropolitan area grew 3.4% to $501 billion.[163] Additionally, in 2017 the 14-county San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area had a GDP of $907 billion,[164] ranking 3rd among CSAs, and ahead of all but 16 countries. As of 2017, San Francisco County was the 7th highest-income county in the United States (among 3,142), with a per capita personal income of $119,868.[165] Marin County, directly to the north over the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Mateo County, directly to the south on the Peninsula, were the 5th and 9th highest-income counties respectively.
+
+The legacy of the California Gold Rush turned San Francisco into the principal banking and finance center of the West Coast in the early twentieth century.[166] Montgomery Street in the Financial District became known as the "Wall Street of the West", home to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Wells Fargo corporate headquarters, and the site of the now-defunct Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.[166] Bank of America, a pioneer in making banking services accessible to the middle class, was founded in San Francisco and in the 1960s, built the landmark modern skyscraper at 555 California Street for its corporate headquarters. Many large financial institutions, multinational banks, and venture capital firms are based in or have regional headquarters in the city. With over 30 international financial institutions,[167] six Fortune 500 companies,[168] and a large support infrastructure of professional services—including law, public relations, architecture and design—San Francisco is designated as an Alpha(-) World City.[169] The 2017 Global Financial Centres Index ranked San Francisco as the sixth-most competitive financial center in the world.[170]
+
+Since the 1990s, San Francisco's economy has diversified away from finance and tourism towards the growing fields of high tech, biotechnology, and medical research.[172] Technology jobs accounted for just 1 percent of San Francisco's economy in 1990, growing to 4 percent in 2010 and an estimated 8 percent by the end of 2013.[173] San Francisco became a center of Internet start-up companies during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and the subsequent social media boom of the late 2000s (decade).[174] Since 2010, San Francisco proper has attracted an increasing share of venture capital investments as compared to nearby Silicon Valley, attracting 423 financings worth US$4.58 billion in 2013.[175][176][177] In 2004, the city approved a payroll tax exemption for biotechnology companies[178] to foster growth in the Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a second campus and hospital of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Mission Bay hosts the UCSF Medical Center, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, and Gladstone Institutes,[179] as well as more than 40 private-sector life sciences companies.[180]
+
+The top employer in the city is the city government itself, employing 5.6% (31,000+ people) of the city's workforce, followed by UCSF with over 25,000 employees.[181] The largest private-sector employer is Salesforce, with 8,500 employees, as of 2018.[182]  Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees and self-employed firms make up 85% of city establishments,[183] and the number of San Franciscans employed by firms of more than 1,000 employees has fallen by half since 1977.[184] The growth of national big box and formula retail chains into the city has been made intentionally difficult by political and civic consensus. In an effort to buoy small privately owned businesses in San Francisco and preserve the unique retail personality of the city, the Small Business Commission started a publicity campaign in 2004 to keep a larger share of retail dollars in the local economy,[185] and the Board of Supervisors has used the planning code to limit the neighborhoods where formula retail establishments can set up shop,[186] an effort affirmed by San Francisco voters.[187] However, by 2016, San Francisco was rated low by small businesses in a Business Friendliness Survey.[188]
+
+Like many U.S. cities, San Francisco once had a significant manufacturing sector employing nearly 60,000 workers in 1969, but nearly all production left for cheaper locations by the 1980s.[189] As of 2014[update], San Francisco has seen a small resurgence in manufacturing, with more than 4,000 manufacturing jobs across 500 companies, doubling since 2011. The city's largest manufacturing employer is Anchor Brewing Company, and the largest by revenue is Timbuk2.[189]
+
+San Francisco became a hub for technological driven economic growth during the internet boom of the 1990s, and still holds an important position in the world city network today.[138][161] Intense redevelopment towards the "new economy" makes business more technologically minded. Between the years of 1999 and 2000, the job growth rate was 4.9%, creating over 50,000 jobs in technology firms and internet content production.[138]
+
+In the second technological boom driven by social media in the mid 2000s, San Francisco became a location for companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter to base their tech offices and for their employees to live.[190] Since then, tech employment has continued to increase. In 2014, San Francisco's tech employment grew nearly 90% between 2010 and 2014, beating out Silicon Valley's 30% growth rate over the same period.[191]
+
+The tech sector's dominance in the Bay Area is internationally recognized and continues to attract new businesses and young entrepreneurs from all over the globe.[191] San Francisco is now widely considered the most important city in the world for new technology startups.[192] A recent high of 7 billion dollars in venture capital was invested in the region.[191] These startup companies hire a high concentration of well educated individuals looking to work in the tech industry, and creates a city population of highly concentrated levels of education. Over 50% of San Franciscans have a 4-year university degree, ranking the city among the highest levels of education in the country and world.[190]
+
+Tourism is one of the city's largest private-sector industries, accounting for more than one out of seven jobs in the city.[172][193] The city's frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide. In 2016, it attracted the fifth-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the United States.[194] More than 25 million visitors arrived in San Francisco in 2016, adding US$9.96 billion to the economy.[195]
+With a large hotel infrastructure and a world-class convention facility in the Moscone Center, San Francisco is a popular destination for annual conventions and conferences.[196]
+
+Some of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco noted by the Travel Channel include the Golden Gate Bridge and Alamo Square Park, which is home to the famous "Painted Ladies". Both of these locations were often used as landscape shots for the hit American sitcom Full House. There is also Lombard Street, known for its "crookedness" and extensive views. Tourists also visit Pier 39, which offers dining, shopping, entertainment, and views of the bay, sun-bathing seals, and the famous Alcatraz Island.[197]
+
+San Francisco also offers tourists cultural and unique nightlife in its neighborhoods.[198]
+
+The new Terminal Project at Pier 27 opened September 25, 2014 as a replacement for the old Pier 35.[199] Itineraries from San Francisco usually include round trip cruises to Alaska and Mexico.
+
+A heightened interest in conventioneering in San Francisco, marked by the establishment of convention centers such as Yerba Buena, acted as a feeder into the local tourist economy and resulted in an increase in the hotel industry: "In 1959, the city had fewer than thirty-three hundred first-class hotel rooms; by 1970, the number was nine thousand; and by 1999, there were more than thirty thousand."[200] The commodification of the Castro District has contributed to San Francisco's tourist economy.[201]
+
+Although the Financial District, Union Square, and Fisherman's Wharf are well known around the world, San Francisco is also characterized by its numerous culturally rich streetscapes featuring mixed-use neighborhoods anchored around central commercial corridors to which residents and visitors alike can walk. Because of these characteristics, San Francisco is ranked the second "most walkable" city in the United States by Walkscore.com.[202] Many neighborhoods feature a mix of businesses, restaurants and venues that cater to both the daily needs of local residents while also serving many visitors and tourists. Some neighborhoods are dotted with boutiques, cafés and nightlife such as Union Street in Cow Hollow, 24th Street in Noe Valley, Valencia Street in the Mission, Grant Avenue in North Beach, and Irving Street in the Inner Sunset. This approach especially has influenced the continuing South of Market neighborhood redevelopment with businesses and neighborhood services rising alongside high-rise residences.[203]
+
+Since the 1990s, the demand for skilled information technology workers from local startups and nearby Silicon Valley has attracted white-collar workers from all over the world and created a high standard of living in San Francisco.[204] Many neighborhoods that were once blue-collar, middle, and lower class have been gentrifying, as many of the city's traditional business and industrial districts have experienced a renaissance driven by the redevelopment of the Embarcadero, including the neighborhoods South Beach and Mission Bay. The city's property values and household income have risen to among the highest in the nation,[205][206][207] creating a large and upscale restaurant, retail, and entertainment scene. According to a 2014 quality of life survey of global cities, San Francisco has the highest quality of living of any U.S. city.[208] However, due to the exceptionally high cost of living, many of the city's middle and lower-class families have been leaving the city for the outer suburbs of the Bay Area, or for California's Central Valley.[209] By June 2, 2015, the median rent was reported to be as high as $4,225.[210] The high cost of living is due in part to restrictive planning laws which limit new residential construction.[211]
+
+The international character that San Francisco has enjoyed since its founding is continued today by large numbers of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. With 39% of its residents born overseas,[184] San Francisco has numerous neighborhoods filled with businesses and civic institutions catering to new arrivals. In particular, the arrival of many ethnic Chinese, which accelerated beginning in the 1970s, has complemented the long-established community historically based in Chinatown throughout the city and has transformed the annual Chinese New Year Parade into the largest event of its kind in its hemisphere.[212][213]
+
+With the arrival of the "beat" writers and artists of the 1950s and societal changes culminating in the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district during the 1960s, San Francisco became a center of liberal activism and of the counterculture that arose at that time. The Democrats and to a lesser extent the Green Party have dominated city politics since the late 1970s, after the last serious Republican challenger for city office lost the 1975 mayoral election by a narrow margin. San Francisco has not voted more than 20% for a Republican presidential or senatorial candidate since 1988.[214] In 2007, the city expanded its Medicaid and other indigent medical programs into the Healthy San Francisco program,[215] which subsidizes certain medical services for eligible residents.[216][217][218]
+
+San Francisco also has had a very active environmental community. Starting with the founding of the Sierra Club in 1892 to the establishment of the non-profit Friends of the Urban Forest in 1981, San Francisco has been at the forefront of many global discussions regarding the environment.[219][220] The 1980 San Francisco Recycling Program was one of the earliest curbside recycling programs.[221] The city's GoSolarSF incentive promotes solar installations and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is rolling out the CleanPowerSF program to sell electricity from local renewable sources.[222][223] SF Greasecycle is a program to recycle used cooking oil for conversion to biodiesel.[224]
+
+The Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, completed in 2010, installed 24,000 solar panels on the roof of the reservoir. The 5-megawatt plant more than tripled the city's 2-megawatt solar generation capacity when it opened in December 2010.[225][226]
+
+San Francisco has long had an LGBT-friendly history. It was home to the first lesbian-rights organization in the United States, Daughters of Bilitis; the first openly gay person to run for public office in the United States, José Sarria; the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk; the first openly lesbian judge appointed in the U.S., Mary C. Morgan; and the first transgender police commissioner, Theresa Sparks. The city's large gay population has created and sustained a politically and culturally active community over many decades, developing a powerful presence in San Francisco's civic life. Survey data released in 2015 by Gallup place the proportion of the San Francisco metro area at 6.2%, which is the highest such proportion observed of the 50 most populous metropolitan areas as measured by the polling organization.[227]
+
+One of the most popular destinations for gay tourists internationally, the city hosts San Francisco Pride, one of the largest and oldest pride parades. San Francisco Pride events have been held continuously since 1972. The events are themed and a new theme is created each year. In 2013, over 1.5 million people attended, around 500,000 more than the previous year.[228]
+
+The Folsom Street Fair (FSF) is an annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair that is held in September, capping San Francisco's "Leather Pride Week".[229] It started in 1984 and is California's third-largest single-day, outdoor spectator event and the world's largest leather event and showcase for BDSM products and culture.[230]
+
+The major daily newspaper in San Francisco is the San Francisco Chronicle, which is currently Northern California's most widely circulated newspaper.[231] The Chronicle is most famous for a former columnist, the late Herb Caen, whose daily musings attracted critical acclaim and represented the "voice of San Francisco". The San Francisco Examiner, once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire and the home of Ambrose Bierce, declined in circulation over the years and now takes the form of a free daily tabloid, under new ownership.[232][233] Sing Tao Daily claims to be the largest of several Chinese language dailies that serve the Bay Area.[234] SF Weekly is the city's alternative weekly newspaper. San Francisco and 7x7 are major glossy magazines about San Francisco. The national newsmagazine Mother Jones is also based in San Francisco.
+
+The San Francisco Bay Area is the sixth-largest television market[235] and the fourth-largest radio market[236] in the U.S. The city's oldest radio station, KCBS, began as an experimental station in San Jose in 1909, before the beginning of commercial broadcasting. KALW was the city's first FM radio station when it signed on the air in 1941. The city's first television station was KPIX, which began broadcasting in 1948.
+
+All major U.S. television networks have affiliates serving the region, with most of them based in the city. CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Al Jazeera America, Russia Today, and CCTV America also have regional news bureaus in San Francisco. Bloomberg West was launched in 2011 from a studio on the Embarcadero and CNBC broadcasts from One Market Plaza since 2015. ESPN uses the local ABC studio for their broadcasting. The regional sports network, Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and its sister station Comcast SportsNet California, are both located in San Francisco. The Pac-12 Network is also based in San Francisco.
+
+Public broadcasting outlets include both a television station and a radio station, both broadcasting under the call letters KQED from a facility near the Potrero Hill neighborhood. KQED-FM is the most-listened-to National Public Radio affiliate in the country.[237] Another local broadcaster, KPOO, is an independent, African-American owned and operated noncommercial radio station established in 1971.[238] CNET, founded 1994, and Salon.com, 1995, are based in San Francisco.
+
+San Francisco-based inventors made important contributions to modern media. During the 1870s, Eadweard Muybridge began recording motion photographically and invented a zoopraxiscope with which to view his recordings. These were the first motion pictures. Then in 1927, Philo Farnsworth's image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image. This was the first television.
+
+San Francisco has several nicknames, including "The City by the Bay", "Golden Gate City",[239] "Frisco", "SF", "San Fran", and "Fog City", as well as older ones like "The City that Knows How", "Baghdad by the Bay", "The Paris of the West", or, as locals call it, "The City".[1] San Fran and Frisco are only used outside of San Francisco itself and disparaged by residents.[240][241][242]
+
+San Francisco's War Memorial and Performing Arts Center hosts some of the most enduring performing-arts companies in the country. The War Memorial Opera House houses the San Francisco Opera, the second-largest opera company in North America[243] as well as the San Francisco Ballet, while the San Francisco Symphony plays in Davies Symphony Hall. Opened in 2013, the SFJAZZ Center hosts jazz performances year round.
+
+The Fillmore is a music venue located in the Western Addition. It is the second incarnation of the historic venue that gained fame in the 1960s, housing the stage where now-famous musicians such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane first performed, fostering the San Francisco Sound.
+
+San Francisco has a large number of theaters and live performance venues. Local theater companies have been noted for risk taking and innovation.[244] The Tony Award-winning non-profit American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a member of the national League of Resident Theatres. Other local winners of the Regional Theatre Tony Award include the San Francisco Mime Troupe.[245]
+San Francisco theaters frequently host pre-Broadway engagements and tryout runs,[246] and some original San Francisco productions have later moved to Broadway.[247]
+
+The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) houses 20th century and contemporary works of art. It moved to its current building in the South of Market neighborhood in 1995 and attracted more than 600,000 visitors annually.[248] SFMOMA closed for renovation and expansion in 2013. The museum reopened on May 14, 2016 with an addition, designed by Snøhetta, that has doubled the museum's size.[249]
+
+The Palace of the Legion of Honor holds primarily European antiquities and works of art at its Lincoln Park building modeled after its Parisian namesake. The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park features American decorative pieces and anthropological holdings from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, while Asian art is housed in the Asian Art Museum. Opposite the de Young stands the California Academy of Sciences, a natural history museum that also hosts the Morrison Planetarium and Steinhart Aquarium. Located on Pier 15 on the Embarcadero, the Exploratorium is an interactive science museum. The Contemporary Jewish Museum is a non-collecting institution that hosts a broad array of temporary exhibitions. On Nob Hill, the Cable Car Museum is a working museum featuring the cable car power house, which drives the cables.[250]
+
+Several of San Francisco's parks and nearly all of its beaches form part of the regional Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States with over 13 million visitors a year. Among the GGNRA's attractions within the city are Ocean Beach, which runs along the Pacific Ocean shoreline and is frequented by a vibrant surfing community, and Baker Beach, which is located in a cove west of the Golden Gate and part of the Presidio, a former military base. Also within the Presidio is Crissy Field, a former airfield that was restored to its natural salt marsh ecosystem. The GGNRA also administers Fort Funston, Lands End, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz. The National Park Service separately administers the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park – a fleet of historic ships and waterfront property around Aquatic Park.
+
+There are more than 220 parks maintained by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department.[251] The largest and best-known city park is Golden Gate Park,[252] which stretches from the center of the city west to the Pacific Ocean. Once covered in native grasses and sand dunes, the park was conceived in the 1860s and was created by the extensive planting of thousands of non-native trees and plants. The large park is rich with cultural and natural attractions such as the Conservatory of Flowers, Japanese Tea Garden and San Francisco Botanical Garden. Lake Merced is a fresh-water lake surrounded by parkland and near the San Francisco Zoo, a city-owned park that houses more than 250 animal species, many of which are endangered.[253] The only park managed by the California State Park system located principally in San Francisco, Candlestick Point was the state's first urban recreation area.[254]
+
+San Francisco is the first city in the U.S. to have a park within a 10-Minute Walk of every resident.[255][256] It also ranks fifth in the U.S. for park access and quality in the 2018 ParkScore ranking of the top 100 park systems across the United States, according to the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.[257]
+
+Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants have played in San Francisco since moving from New York in 1958. The Giants play at Oracle Park, which opened in 2000.[258] The Giants won World Series titles in 2010, 2012, and in 2014. The Giants have boasted such stars as Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Barry Bonds. In 2012, San Francisco was ranked No. 1 in a study that examined which U.S. metro areas have produced the most Major Leaguers since 1920.[259]
+
+The San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) were the longest-tenured major professional sports franchise in the city until moving in 2013. The team began play in 1946 as an All-America Football Conference (AAFC) league charter member, moved to the NFL in 1950 and into Candlestick Park in 1971. The team began playing its home games at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara in 2014, closer to the city of San Jose.[260][261] The 49ers won five Super Bowl titles in the 1980s and 1990s.
+
+The San Francisco Warriors played in the NBA from 1962–1971, before being renamed the Golden State Warriors prior to the 1971–1972 season in an attempt to present the team as a representation of the whole state of California.[262] The Warrior's arena, Chase Center, is currently located in San Francisco.[263] They have won 6 championships,[264] including three of the last five.
+
+At the collegiate level, the San Francisco Dons compete in NCAA Division I. Bill Russell led the Don's basketball team to NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956. There is also the San Francisco State Gators, who compete in NCAA Division II.[265] Oracle Park hosted the annual Fight Hunger Bowl college football game from 2002 through 2013 before it moved to Santa Clara.
+
+The Bay to Breakers footrace, held annually since 1912, is best known for colorful costumes and a celebratory community spirit.[266] The San Francisco Marathon attracts more than 21,000 participants.[267] The Escape from Alcatraz triathlon has, since 1980, attracted 2,000 top professional and amateur triathletes for its annual race.[268] The Olympic Club, founded in 1860, is the oldest athletic club in the United States. Its private golf course has hosted the U.S. Open on five occasions. San Francisco hosted the 2013 America's Cup yacht racing competition.[269]
+
+With an ideal climate for outdoor activities, San Francisco has ample resources and opportunities for amateur and participatory sports and recreation. There are more than 200 miles (320 km) of bicycle paths, lanes and bike routes in the city.[270]
+San Francisco residents have often ranked among the fittest in the country.[271] Golden Gate Park has miles of paved and unpaved running trails as well as a golf course and disc golf course.
+Boating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing are among the popular activities on San Francisco Bay, and the city maintains a yacht harbor in the Marina District.
+
+San Francisco—officially known as the City and County of San Francisco—is a consolidated city-county, a status it has held since the 1856 secession of what is now San Mateo County.[34] It is the only such consolidation in California.[272] The mayor is also the county executive, and the county Board of Supervisors acts as the city council. The government of San Francisco is a charter city and is constituted of two co-equal branches: the executive branch is headed by the mayor and includes other citywide elected and appointed officials as well as the civil service; the 11-member Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch, is headed by a president and is responsible for passing laws and budgets, though San Franciscans also make use of direct ballot initiatives to pass legislation.[273]
+
+The members of the Board of Supervisors are elected as representatives of specific districts within the city.[274] Upon the death or resignation of mayor, the President of the Board of Supervisors becomes acting mayor until the full Board elects an interim replacement for the remainder of the term. In 1978, Dianne Feinstein assumed the office following the assassination of George Moscone and was later selected by the board to finish the term. In 2011, Ed Lee was selected by the board to finish the term of Gavin Newsom, who resigned to take office as Lieutenant Governor of California.[275] Lee (who won 2 elections to remain mayor) was temporarily replaced by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed after he died on December 12, 2017.  Supervisor Mark Farrell was appointed by the Board of Supervisors to finish Lee's term on January 23, 2018.
+
+Because of its unique city-county status, the local government is able to exercise jurisdiction over certain property outside city limits. San Francisco International Airport, though located in San Mateo County, is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco's largest jail complex (County Jail No. 5) is located in San Mateo County, in an unincorporated area adjacent to San Bruno. San Francisco was also granted a perpetual leasehold over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and watershed in Yosemite National Park by the Raker Act in 1913.[272]
+
+San Francisco serves as the regional hub for many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the U.S. Mint. Until decommissioning in the early 1990s, the city had major military installations at the Presidio, Treasure Island, and Hunters Point—a legacy still reflected in the annual celebration of Fleet Week. The State of California uses San Francisco as the home of the state supreme court and other state agencies. Foreign governments maintain more than seventy consulates in San Francisco.[276]
+
+The municipal budget for fiscal year 2015–16 was $8.99 billion,[277] and is one of the largest city budgets in the United States.[278] The City of San Francisco spends more per resident than any city other than Washington D.C, over $10,000 in FY 2015–2016.[278] The city employs around 27,000 workers.[279]
+
+In the United States House of Representatives, San Francisco is split between California's 12th and 14th districts.
+
+The following table includes the number of incidents reported and the rate per 1,000 persons for each type of offense.
+
+In 2011, 50 murders were reported, which is 6.1 per 100,000 people.[281] There were about 134 rapes, 3,142 robberies, and about 2,139 assaults. There were about 4,469 burglaries, 25,100 thefts, and 4,210 motor vehicle thefts.[282] The Tenderloin area has the highest crime rate in San Francisco: 70% of the city's violent crimes, and around one-fourth of the city's murders, occur in this neighborhood. The Tenderloin also sees high rates of drug abuse, gang violence, and prostitution.[283] Another area with high crime rates is the Bayview-Hunters Point area. In the first six months of 2015 there were 25 murders compared to 14 in the first six months of 2014. However, the murder rate is still much lower than in past decades.[284] That rate, though, did rise again by the close of 2016.  According to the San Francisco Police Department, there were 59 murders in the city in 2016, an annual total that marked a 13.5% increase in the number of homicides (52) from 2015.[285]
+
+During the first half of 2018, human feces on San Francisco sidewalks were the second-most-frequent complaint of city residents, with about 65 calls per day. The city has formed a "poop patrol" to attempt to combat the problem.[286]
+
+Several street gangs operate in the city, including MS-13,[287] the Sureños and Norteños in the Mission District.[288] African-American street gangs familiar in other cities, including the Crips, have struggled to establish footholds in San Francisco,[289] while police and prosecutors have been accused of liberally labeling young African-American males as gang members.[290] Criminal gangs with shotcallers in China, including Triad groups such as the Wo Hop To, have been reported active in San Francisco.[291] In 1977, an ongoing rivalry between two Chinese gangs led to a shooting attack at the Golden Dragon restaurant in Chinatown, which left 5 people dead and 11 wounded. None of the victims in this attack were gang members. Five members of the Joe Boys gang were arrested and convicted of the crime.[292] In 1990, a gang-related shooting killed one man and wounded six others outside a nightclub near Chinatown.[293] In 1998, six teenagers were shot and wounded at the Chinese Playground; a 16-year-old boy was subsequently arrested.[294]
+
+The San Francisco Police Department was founded in 1849.[295] The portions of Golden Gate National Recreation Area located within the city, including the Presidio and Ocean Beach, are patrolled by the United States Park Police.
+
+The San Francisco Fire Department provides both fire suppression and emergency medical services to the city.[296]
+
+The city operates 22 public "pit stop" toilets.[286]
+
+To prevent the spread of diseases from needles, the city gives away 400,000 free syringes every month.  Only 60% are ever returned.  Some end up as potentially dangerous litter.[297]
+
+San Francisco participates in the Sister Cities program.[298] A total of 41 consulates general and 23 honorary consulates have offices in the San Francisco Bay Area.[299]
+
+The University of California, San Francisco is the sole campus of the University of California system entirely dedicated to graduate education in health and biomedical sciences. It is ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States[300] and operates the UCSF Medical Center, which ranks as the number one hospital in California and the number 5 in the country.[301] UCSF is a major local employer, second in size only to the city and county government.[302][303][304] A 43-acre (17 ha) Mission Bay campus was opened in 2003, complementing its original facility in Parnassus Heights. It contains research space and facilities to foster biotechnology and life sciences entrepreneurship and will double the size of UCSF's research enterprise.[305] All in all, UCSF operates more than 20 facilities across San Francisco.[306] The University of California, Hastings College of the Law, founded in Civic Center in 1878, is the oldest law school in California and claims more judges on the state bench than any other institution.[307]
+San Francisco's two University of California institutions have recently formed an official affiliation in the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy.[308]
+
+San Francisco State University is part of the California State University system and is located near Lake Merced.[309] The school has approximately 30,000 students and awards undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees in more than 100 disciplines.[309] The City College of San Francisco, with its main facility in the Ingleside district, is one of the largest two-year community colleges in the country. It has an enrollment of about 100,000 students and offers an extensive continuing education program.[310]
+
+Founded in 1855, the University of San Francisco, a private Jesuit university located on Lone Mountain, is the oldest institution of higher education in San Francisco and one of the oldest universities established west of the Mississippi River.[311] Golden Gate University is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational university formed in 1901 and located in the Financial District.
+With an enrollment of 13,000 students, the Academy of Art University is the largest institute of art and design in the nation.[312] Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute is the oldest art school west of the Mississippi.[313] The California College of the Arts, located north of Potrero Hill, has programs in architecture, fine arts, design, and writing.[314] The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the only independent music school on the West Coast, grants degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition, and conducting. The California Culinary Academy, associated with the Le Cordon Bleu program, offers programs in the culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and hospitality and restaurant management.
+California Institute of Integral Studies, founded in 1968, offers a variety of graduate programs in its Schools of Professional Psychology & Health, and Consciousness and Transformation.
+
+Public schools are run by the San Francisco Unified School District as well as the State Board of Education for some charter schools. Lowell High School, the oldest public high school in the U.S. west of the Mississippi,[315] and the smaller School of the Arts High School are two of San Francisco's magnet schools at the secondary level. Public school students attend schools based on an assignment system rather than neighborhood proximity.[316]
+
+Just under 30% of the city's school-age population attends one of San Francisco's more than 100 private or parochial schools, compared to a 10% rate nationwide.[317] Nearly 40 of those schools are Catholic schools managed by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.[318]
+
+San Francisco has nearly 300 preschool programs primarily operated by Head Start, San Francisco Unified School District, private for-profit, private non-profit and family child care providers.[319] All 4-year-old children living in San Francisco are offered universal access to preschool through the Preschool for All program.[320]
+
+Due to its unique geography, and the freeway revolts of the late 1950s,[321]
+Interstate 80 begins at the approach to the Bay Bridge and is the only direct automobile link to the East Bay. U.S. Route 101 connects to the western terminus of Interstate 80 and provides access to the south of the city along San Francisco Bay toward Silicon Valley. Northward, the routing for U.S. 101 uses arterial streets to connect to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only direct automobile link to Marin County and the North Bay.
+
+As part of the retrofitting of the Golden Gate Bridge and installation of a suicide barrier, starting in 2019 the railings on the west side of the pedestrian walkway were replaced with thinner, more flexible slats in order to improve the bridge's aerodynamic tolerance of high wind to 100 mph (161 km/h). Starting in June 2020, reports were received of a loud hum produced by the new railing slats, heard across the city when a strong west wind was blowing.[322]
+
+State Route 1 also enters San Francisco from the north via the Golden Gate Bridge and bisects the city as the 19th Avenue arterial thoroughfare, joining with Interstate 280 at the city's southern border. Interstate 280 continues south from San Francisco, and also turns to the east along the southern edge of the city, terminating just south of the Bay Bridge in the South of Market neighborhood. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, city leaders demolished the Embarcadero Freeway and a portion of the Central Freeway, converting them into street-level boulevards.[321]
+
+State Route 35 enters the city from the south as Skyline Boulevard and terminates at its intersection with Highway 1. State Route 82 enters San Francisco from the south as Mission Street, and terminates shortly thereafter at its junction with 280. The western terminus of the historic transcontinental Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, is in San Francisco's Lincoln Park.
+
+32% of San Francisco residents use public transportation for their daily commute to work, ranking it first on the West Coast and third overall in the United States.[323] The San Francisco Municipal Railway, primarily known as Muni, is the primary public transit system of San Francisco. Muni is the seventh-largest transit system in the United States, with 210,848,310 rides in 2006.[324] The system operates a combined light rail and subway system, the Muni Metro, as well as large bus and trolley coach networks.[325] Additionally, it runs a historic streetcar line, which runs on Market Street from Castro Street to Fisherman's Wharf.[325] It also operates the famous cable cars,[325] which have been designated as a National Historic Landmark and are a major tourist attraction.[326]
+
+Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a regional Rapid Transit system, connects San Francisco with the East Bay through the underwater Transbay Tube. The line runs under Market Street to Civic Center where it turns south to the Mission District, the southern part of the city, and through northern San Mateo County, to the San Francisco International Airport, and Millbrae.[325]
+
+Another commuter rail system, Caltrain, runs from San Francisco along the San Francisco Peninsula to San Jose.[325] Historically, trains operated by Southern Pacific Lines ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles, via Palo Alto and San Jose.
+
+Amtrak California Thruway Motorcoach runs a shuttle bus from three locations in San Francisco to its station across the bay in Emeryville.[327]  Additionally, BART offers connections to San Francisco from Amtrak's stations in Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond, and Caltrain offers connections in San Jose and Santa Clara. Thruway service also runs south to San Luis Obispo with connection to the Pacific Surfliner.
+
+San Francisco Bay Ferry operates from the Ferry Building and Pier 39 to points in Oakland, Alameda, Bay Farm Island, South San Francisco, and north to Vallejo in Solano County.[328] The Golden Gate Ferry is the other ferry operator with service between San Francisco and Marin County.[329] SolTrans runs supplemental bus service between the Ferry Building and Vallejo.
+
+San Francisco was an early adopter of carsharing in America. The non-profit City CarShare opened in 2001.[330] Zipcar closely followed.[331]
+
+To accommodate the large amount of San Francisco citizens who commute to the Silicon Valley daily, companies like Google and Apple have begun to provide private bus transportation for their employees, from San Francisco locations to the tech start-up hotspot. These buses have quickly become a heated topic of debate within the city, as protesters claim they block bus lanes and delay public buses.[332]
+
+Though located 13 miles (21 km) south of downtown in unincorporated San Mateo County, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. SFO is a hub for United Airlines[333] and Alaska Airlines.[334] SFO is a major international gateway to Asia and Europe, with the largest international terminal in North America.[335] In 2011, SFO was the eighth-busiest airport in the U.S. and the 22nd-busiest in the world, handling over 40.9 million passengers.[336]
+
+Located across the bay, Oakland International Airport is a popular, low-cost alternative to SFO. Geographically, Oakland Airport is approximately the same distance from downtown San Francisco as SFO, but due to its location across San Francisco Bay, it is greater driving distance from San Francisco.
+
+Cycling is a popular mode of transportation in San Francisco, with 75,000 residents commuting by bicycle each day.[337] Bay Wheels, previously named Bay Area Bike Share at inception, launched in August 2013 with 700 bikes in downtown San Francisco, selected cities in the East Bay, and San Jose. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Bay Area Air Quality Management District are responsible for the operation with management provided by Motivate.[338] A major expansion started in 2017, along with a rebranding as Ford GoBike; the company received its current name in 2019.[339]
+Pedestrian traffic is also widespread. In 2015, Walk Score ranked San Francisco the second-most walkable city in the United States.[340][341][342]
+
+San Francisco has significantly higher rates of pedestrian and bicyclist traffic deaths than the United States on average. In 2013, 21 pedestrians were killed in vehicle collisions, the highest since 2001,[343] which is 2.5 deaths per 100,000 population – 70% higher than the national average of 1.5.[344]
+
+Cycling is becoming increasingly popular in the city. Annual bicycle counts conducted by the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) in 2010 showed the number of cyclists at 33 locations had increased 58% from the 2006 baseline counts.[345] In 2008, the MTA estimated that about 128,000 trips were made by bicycle each day in the city, or 6% of total trips.[346] Since 2002, improvements in cycling infrastructure such as additional bike lanes and parking racks have made cycling in San Francisco safer and more convenient.[347] Since 2006, San Francisco has received a Bicycle Friendly Community status of "Gold" from the League of American Bicyclists.[348]

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+The blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal belonging to the baleen whale suborder Mysticeti. Reaching a maximum confirmed length of 29.9 meters (98 feet) and weight of 173 tonnes (190 tons),[3] it is the largest animal known to have ever existed.[4] The blue whale’s long and slender body can be various shades of grayish-blue dorsally and somewhat lighter underneath.
+
+There are currently five subspecies of blue whale, recognized by the Society for Marine Mammalogy's Committee on Taxonomy: B. m. musculus in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, B. m. intermedia  in the Southern Ocean, B. m. brevicauda  (the pygmy blue whale) in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, B. m. indica in the Northern Indian Ocean, and B. m. unnamed subsp. in the waters off Chile. The blue whale diet consists almost exclusively of euphausiids (krill).
+
+The blue whale was once abundant in nearly all the oceans on Earth until the end of the 19th century. It was hunted almost to the point of extinction by whaling until the International Whaling Commission banned all hunting of blue whales in 1967. The International Whaling Commission catch database estimates that 382,595 blue whales were caught between 1868 and 1978. The global blue whale population abundance is estimated to be 10,000-25,000 blue whales, roughly 3-11% of the population size estimated in 1911.[5] There remain only much smaller concentrations in the Eastern North Pacific (1,647),[6] Central North Pacific (63-133),[7][8] North Atlantic (1,000-2,000),[9] Antarctic (2,280),[10] New Zealand (718),[11] Northern Indian Ocean (270),[12] and Chile (570-760).[13]
+
+Blue whales have long, slender mottled grayish-blue bodies, although they appear blue underwater.[14][15][16]
+
+The mottling pattern is highly variable and the unique pigmentation pattern along the back in the region of the dorsal fin can be used to identify known individuals.[17][18][19]
+
+Additional distinguishing features of the blue whale include a broad, flat head, which appears U-shaped from above; 270–395 entirely black baleen plates on each side of their upper jaw; 60–88 expandable throat pleats; long, slender flippers; a small (up to 13 inches (33 cm)) falcate dorsal fin positioned far back toward the tail; a thick tail stock; and a massive, slender fluke.[14][15][16][20][21]
+
+Their pale underside can accumulate a yellowish diatom coat,[14][15][16] which historically earned them the nickname sulphur bottom.[22][23] The blue whale’s two blowholes (the analogue of human nostrils) create a tall, columnar spray, which can be seen 30–40 ft (9–12 m) above the water’s surface.[14][16][21]
+
+The blue whale is the largest known animal.[24][14][25][26] In the International Whaling Commission (IWC) whaling database, 88 individuals longer than 30 m were reported, including one up to 33.0 m, but problems with how the measurements were made suggest that measurements longer than 30.5 m are somewhat suspect.[27] The Discovery Committee reported lengths up to 102 ft (31.1 m);[28] however, the longest scientifically measured (e.g., from rostrum tip to tail notch) individual blue whale was 98 ft (29.9 m).[3] Female blue whales are larger than males.[16][29] Hydrodynamic models suggest that a blue whale could not exceed 108 ft (33 m) due to metabolic and energy constraints.[30]
+
+The average length of sexually mature female blue whales is 72.1 ft (22.1 m) for Eastern North Pacific blue whales, 79 ft (24.1 m) for central and western North Pacific blue whales, 92 ft (28.1 m) for North Atlantic blue whales, 83.4–86.3 ft (25.4–26.6 m) for Antarctic blue whales, 77.1 ft (23.5 m) for Chilean blue whales, and 69.9 ft (21.3 m) for pygmy blue whales.[16][31][32]
+
+In the Northern Hemisphere, males weigh an average 100 tons (200,000 lb) and females 112 tons (224,000 lb). Eastern North Pacific blue whale males average 88.5 tons (177,000 lb) and females 100 tons (200,000 lb). Antarctic males averaged 112 tons (224,000 lb) and females 130 tons (260,000 lb). Pygmy blue whale males average 83.5 (167,000 lb) and 99 tons (198,000 lb).[33] The largest heart weight measured from a stranded North Atlantic blue whale was 0.1985 tons (397 lb), the largest known in any animal.[34]
+
+The most reliable age estimations are from ear plugs. Blue whales secrete earwax (cerumen) throughout their lives forming long, multilayered plugs. Each chronologically deposited light and dark layer (lamina) indicate a switch between fasting during migration and feeding, and one set is laid down per year, and thus the number of these layers can be used as an indicator of age.[35][36][37] The maximum age determined from earplug laminae for a pygmy whale is 73 years (n=1133).[38] Prior to the development of ear plugs as an ageing method, layers in baleen plates were used, but these wear down and are not a reliable measure. In addition, the ovaries of female blue whales form a permanent record of the number of ovulations (or perhaps pregnancies), in the form of corpora albicantia. These fibrous masses are permanent scars that have been used in the past as an indication of age.[39] In pygmy blue whales, one corpus albicans is formed every 2.6 years on average,[38] which matches the two- to three-year interval between calves.
+
+Mounted blue whale skeletons can be found prominently in the cathedral-like entrance hall to the Natural History Museum (London, UK); the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz (California); the Melbourne Museum (Australia); Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (California); New Bedford Whaling Museum (Massachusetts); North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh, NC); Iziko South African Museum (Cape Town, South Africa); Canadian Museum of Nature (Ottawa); Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Canada); Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada); Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg, Russia); Iceland Husavik Museum (Húsavík, Iceland), the Museum of South-East Sulawesi (Kendari, Indonesia), the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Wellington, New Zealand) and the Marine Science Museum at Tokai University (Tokyo, Japan). Skulls are kept in the Paris Museum of Paleontology (France), Phan Tiet City, Vietnam, and the Regional Museum of Ancud (Chile).
+
+The Göteborg Natural History Museum (Sweden) contains the only taxidermized blue whale in the world, a 52 ft (16 m) juvenile killed after stranding alive in 1865, with its skeleton mounted beside the mount.[40]
+
+The five blue whale subspecies recognized by the Society for Marine Mammalogy’s Committee on Taxonomy[41][42] are distributed in all major ocean basins, except the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, although blue whales have been sighted near the ice edge in the North Atlantic.[41][42][43]
+
+The distributions of the five subspecies of blue whale are outlined below. Some of these blue whale subspecies have been further divided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, resulting in at least nine recognized management units,[42] based largely on unique song types.[44]
+
+1. The northern subspecies, B. m. musculus [45] is found in the North Pacific and North Atlantic, although given the geographic separation and genetic differences, populations in these two regions are unlikely to be closely linked.
+
+2.The Antarctic subspecies, B. m. intermedia [66] is found mostly south of the Antarctic Convergence Zone in austral summer, but spread widely from the Southern ocean to the equator in all oceans during the austral winter[51][52][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78]
+
+3.The pygmy subspecies, B. m. brevicauda ,[79] is found in the waters off Indonesia, Australia, Madagascar, and New Zealand[79][80][5]
+
+4.The Northern Indian Ocean subspecies, B. m. indica [93] is found from Somalia to southern Arabia to the southwest coast of India, and off the coasts of Sri Lanka and the Maldives,[94] with an apparent breeding season six months out of phase from pygmy blue whales.[95] However, this putative subspecies is the subject of an unresolved debate, with many suggesting they are pygmy blue whales, given that their song type is heard considerably south of the equator,[77][96] that the description in Blyth[93] is insufficient to distinguish them from pygmy blue whales, that they are of similar size to pygmy blue whales (e.g.[97]), and that Soviet whalers did not distinguish between B. m. indica and B. m. brevicauda despite catching thousands of each. Northern Indian Ocean blue whales may be separated into one or more populations as songs are collected from more areas in this region.
+
+In the North Pacific, blue whales can be seen in large numbers in Monterey Bay, CA from July through October. They may also be seen off San Diego, CA in July and August, and off Baja California Sur, Mexico and in the Sea of Cortez from January through March. In the North Atlantic, blue whales can be seen in the Gulf of St. Lawrence June through September, especially in the Saguenay–St. Lawrence Marine Park in Canada. Blue whales can best be found off Reykjavík and Húsavík in Iceland from May to August. Around the Azores, the best chance to see blue whales is February to March. In the Indian Ocean, blue whales can be seen off Mirissa, Sri Lanka in March and April. In the Southern Hemisphere, blue whales can be seen in Gulf of Corcovado between Guaitecas Archipelago, Chiloé Island, and the Chilean mainland, and off the west coast of Chiloe Island from December through March.[98][99]) In Australia, blue whales and pygmy blue whales can be seen from March through May in the Perth Canyon,[100] and in Bass Strait between Victoria and Tasmania from November to May.[101] In New Zealand, blue whales and pygmy blue whales may be seen in Kaikōura on the South Island between July and August.[102]
+
+The International Whaling Commission’s whale watching guidelines,[103] mirror these recommendations to minimize risk and adverse impacts on whales, including noise disturbance. They also provide a whale watch handbook,[104] providing more detailed guidelines for managers, regulators, operators, and anyone interested in whale watching.
+
+In the United States, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service[105] suggests that while whale watching, be alert and avoid disturbing whales from changing their normal behaviors and stay at least 100 yards (the length of a football field) away from a whale. Operate at a no-wake speeds and do not move into the path of a whale, move faster than a whale, make erratic speed or directional changes unless to avoid collision, get between two whales, chase, feed, or touch the whales.
+
+The mechanism behind modern whale migration is debated.[106][107][108] Migration may function to reduce parasitism, pathogens, and competition,[109][110] provide greater access to prey in the spring and summer, reduce calf predation from orcas, and optimize thermoregulation for growth in the winter.[106][107][111][112] For many baleen whales, such as humpback and grey whales, a general migration pattern can be defined as to-and-fro migration between feeding grounds at higher latitudes and breeding habitats at lower latitudes on an annual basis.[113] However, blue whales are not as specific in their movement patterns, and there is substantial evidence of alternative strategies, such as year-round residency, partial or differential migration, and anomalous habits such as feeding on breeding grounds.[114] For Antarctic blue whales, for example, some remain year-round in the Antarctic, some remain year-round in northerly grounds, and most disperse throughout the Southern Hemisphere in the austral winter months.
+
+Northern subspecies (B. m. musculus) – Eastern North Pacific population: This population migrates annually to the U.S. West Coast in the summer and fall to feed.[18][48][115][116] Their documented migration to secondary feeding areas off Oregon, Washington,[117] the Alaska Gyre, and the Aleutian Islands.[58][118] The northern extent can seasonally overlap with the Central North Pacific population in the Gulf of Alaska.[54][58] The Eastern North Pacific population migrates in the winter to their breeding grounds in the Gulf of California[18][50][119] and the Costa Rica Dome in the Eastern Tropical Pacific.[49][50] Acoustic recordings suggest that some individuals may remain on their feeding grounds[120][121][122] and on their breeding grounds year-round.[49][51][52][58]
+
+Northern subspecies (B. m. musculus) – Western and Central North Pacific population:  Little is known about the migration of this population. In the summer, this population migrates to their feeding grounds southwest of Kamchatka, south of the Aleutian Islands, to the Gulf of Alaska,[53][54] and to waters off Vancouver Island, Canada.[97][123][124][125] In the winter, they migrate to low-latitude waters, including Hawaii.[55][56][58][7] Acoustic data suggests that some individuals may remain on their feeding grounds year-round.[53][54][126]
+
+Northern subspecies (B. m. musculus) – North Atlantic population: Little is known about the winter distribution and migration patterns of this population in the North Atlantic.[127] In the Western North Atlantic, blue whales migrate to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the summer to feed, but some may remain year-round. Sightings in the Gulf of St. Lawrence peak late August-early September[128] and tagging suggests they migrate as far south as the Mid-Atlantic Bight coastal from Delaware to North Carolina and South Carolina.[129] In the Eastern North Atlantic, blue whales have been documented south of the Azores[130] and off northwest Africa in the winter,[131] in the Azores in late spring,[132] and in Iceland in the summer.[133] There has been one photograph-identification match between an individual blue whale in Iceland and Mauritania[134] and one match between an individual blue whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Azores,[134] suggesting connectivity among blue whales in the region.
+
+Antarctic subspecies (B. m. intermedia): Acoustic recordings indicate that this population is distributed around Antarctica and south of the Antarctic Convergence Zone in the summer, and then move into mid- and low-latitude habitats in fall and winter.[52][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][135] Antarctic blue whale calls have been acoustically detected in the Eastern Tropical Pacific in May–September.[69] Most migrate annually; however, year-round acoustic detections near the West Antarctic Peninsula,[68][136] the Weddell Sea and along the Greenwich meridian,[137] eastern Antarctica,[70][136] and year-round catches around South Georgia[138][139] suggest a small portion may remain in Antarctica year-round.[82][140]
+
+Pygmy subspecies (B. m. brevicauda) – Madagascar population: This population is found off the Seychelles and Amirante Islands, through the Mozambique Channel to the Crozet Islands and Prince Edward Islands in the spring and summer, with a nearly continuous distribution in sub-Antarctic waters in the Indian Ocean in the summer.[82] In the fall they were caught on the Madagascar Plateau[87] and sighted there in December in substantial numbers in recent decades.[141] Vocalizations have been recorded north near Diego Garcia in May–July,[142] in the Mozambique Channel in November–December[143] and Madagascar Basin south of La Reunion Island in March–June,[77] southwest of Amsterdam Island in December–May,[77] off Crozet Island in December–June.[86] Pygmy blue whales typically remain north of 52°S,[82][144] except on rare occasions, e.g. one was acoustically detected at 61.5° S near the Antarctic continental shelf.[88]
+
+Pygmy subspecies (B. m. brevicauda) – Western Australia/Indonesia population: This population feeds in Perth Canyon off Western Australia[83] and between the Great Australian Bight and Bass Strait off South Australia and Victoria[81][145] in the summer before migrating to waters off Indonesia to breed in the winter.[81][82][83][84][85] Acoustic data indicate that they are distributed in the sub-Antarctic waters of the southern Indian Ocean in summer and fall, including near the Crozet Islands and Amsterdam Island.[77][86] Like the Madagascar population, this population’s distribution remains north of 52°S.[82][144]
+
+Pygmy subspecies (B. m. brevicauda) – Eastern Australia/New Zealand population: Data from strandings, sightings, and acoustic detections suggest that this population is present in New Zealand waters nearly year-round.[11] They have also been detected as far south as 52°S in summer[90] and in the Tasman Sea and Lau Basin near Tonga in winter,[92] and likely range farther afield in the south-western Pacific. Major feeding grounds have been identified in the South Taranaki Bight between the North and South Islands, along the east coast of Northland (North Island), and off the east and west coasts of the South Island and the Hauraki Gulf.[89][91]
+
+Northern Indian Ocean subspecies (B. m. indica): Although its taxonomic status is in flux, historical catches were taken from waters off Somalia and southern Arabia from May–October, and they are thought to then disperse to the east coast of Sri Lanka, west of the Maldives, the Indus Canyon, and the southern Indian Ocean in December–March.[94] Sighting and stranding data[57][82][94][146] suggest that most remain in the central northern Indian Ocean year-round[147][148] Acoustic evidence of Sri Lanka song types suggest some travel to sub-Antarctic waters around Crozet Islands in late summer and early fall.[86] Recent evidence of a new song type off Oman and north-west Madagascar (and the absence of the Sri Lanka song type there) suggests there might be a separate north-western Indian Ocean population making “Oman” calls and a central Indian Ocean population making “Sri Lanka” calls.[149]
+
+Chilean population In summer and fall, Chilean blue whales feed along the west coast of South America, particularly the Chiloense Ecoregion, including the Corcovado Gulf, Pacific and northwest coasts of Chiloé Island, and inner sea of Chiloe Archipelago.[99][98][150][151] The whales then migrate to lower latitude areas including the Galapagos Islands and the Eastern Tropical Pacific.[99][152][153] Acoustic recordings in the Eastern Tropical Pacific may be year-round but generally peak in June[154] and are infrequently detected from September to March.[51][155]
+
+Data from individual satellite tagged Eastern North Pacific blue whales suggest leisurely traveling rates of 4 knots, or 4.6 mph (7.41 km/h),[156] with a minimum average speed of 1.55 ± 1.68 mph (2.49 ± 2.7 km/h).[157] With additional satellite tagged animals (n=10),[50] reported mean swim speeds of 108 ± 33.3 km/day, ranging 58–172 km/day. That would translate to 2.79 ± 0.86 mph (4.5 ± 1.39 km/h), ranging from 1.5–4.45 mph (2.42–7.17 km/h). Lagerquist et al.[158] reported mean swim speed using only high-quality satellite locations as 2.55 ± 1.43 mph (4.1 ± 2.3 km/h) from 11 tagged blue whales. A pygmy blue whale tagged off Perth Canyon, Western Australia traveled at mean speeds of 2.8 ± 2.2 km/h. There are regular reports of much faster migration speeds and rapid sustained bursts of speeds; notably their swimming speeds were too fast for whalers until the modern era of whaling introduced steam-powered boats and explosive-tipped harpoons. The maximum speed of a blue whale while being chased or harassed has been reported at 20 to 48 km/h (10–25 knots).[57]
+
+The blue whale diet consists almost exclusively of euphausiids (krill) except off Sri Lanka. Blue whales have been observed near Magdalena Bay (along the western coast of Baja California, Mexico) feeding on pelagic red crabs.[159][160][161] However, this has not been confirmed by recent observations or fecal samples. Other accidental or opportunistic consumption of copepods and amphipods have been documented.[162][163] Blue whales feed on krill at the surface and at depths greater than 328 ft (100 m), following their prey’s diel vertical migration through the water column.[16][164][165][166] The main prey species of krill targeted by blue whales varies among habitat in the different ocean basins.
+
+Blue whales capture krill through lunge feeding, a bulk filter-feeding strategy that involves accelerating toward a prey patch at high speeds,[183][184][185] opening the mouth 80–90°,[186][187] and inverting the tongue, creating a large sac.[188] This allows them to engulf a large volume of krill-laden water,[176][189][190] up to 220 tons of water at one time.[191] The water is then squeezed out through their baleen plates with pressure from the ventral pouch and tongue, and the remaining krill are swallowed.[186][189][192] Blue whales have been recorded making 180° rolls during lunge-feeding, allowing them to engulf krill patches while inverted; and they rolled while searching for prey between lunges, which has been hypothesized as allowing them to visually process the prey field find the densest prey patches.[193]
+
+The Eastern North Pacific population of blue whales have been well studied. The greatest dive depth reported from tagged blue whales was 315 meters.[192] Their theoretical aerobic dive limit was estimated at 31.2 min,[194] however, the longest dive duration measured was 15.2 minutes.[192] The deepest confirmed dive from a pygmy blue whale was 1,660 ft (506 m).[195]
+
+Blue whales maximize the intake of energy by increasing the number of lunges they make during a dive while targeting dense krill patches. This allows them to acquire the energy necessary for sustaining basic metabolic maintenance costs while storing additional energy necessary for migration and reproduction. Because of the high cost of lunge feeding, it has been estimated that blue whales must target densities greater than 100 krill/m3.[192][196] They can consume 34,776–1,912,680 kJ (~480,000 kilocalories) from one mouthful of krill, which can provide up to 240 times more energy than used in a single lunge.[192] Energetic models have estimated that the daily prey biomass requirement for an average-sized blue whale is 1,120 ± 359 kg krill.[197][198]
+
+Using the number of earwax lamina deposited in the earplug and development of sexual organs from dead whales,[57] it has been determined blue whales reach sexual maturity at about 10 years old and at an average length of 23.5 m for female Antarctic blue whales.[26][57][97][199][200] Another method for determining age at sexual maturity, involves measurements of testosterone from the baleen of male blue whales.[201][202] Testosterone concentrations measured from baleen suggest that the age at sexual maturity for one blue whale was 9 years.[201] Male pygmy blue whales averaged 61.4 ft (18.7 m) at sexual maturity.[203][204] Female pygmy blue whales are 68.9–71.2 ft (21.0–21.7 m) in length[31] and roughly 10 years old at age of sexual maturity.[31][97][32]
+
+Blue whales exhibit no well-defined social structure[205] other than mother-calf bonds from birth until weaning.[206] They are generally solitary or found in small groups.[207] Little is known about mating behavior, or breeding and birthing areas.[26][200] As a traveling pair, a male blue whale typically trails a female,[166][208] and is generally successful at repelling an intruder male after a short and vigorous battle.[209] Blue whale anatomy, specifically a small testis-to-body weight ratio[210] and documented visual observations of a second male joining the traveling pair,[211] suggest a polygynous, antagonistic male-male competition strategy.[200][211] Mating is thought to occur fall through winter.[26][200]
+
+Female blue whales give birth every two to three years, depending on body condition and lactation period.[38][57][199][211][212][213] Pygmy blue whales were estimated to give birth every 2.6 years (95% CI=2.2–3.0).[38] Pregnant females gain roughly 4% of their body weight daily,[174] amounting to 60% of their overall body weight throughout summer foraging periods.[199] Gestation lasts 10–11 months. No records of natural births are known,[211] although a blue whale that ended up in Trincomalee harbor gave birth to a calf before being towed back to sea the following day.[214]
+
+For Antarctic blue whales, a single calf is born at 23 ft (7 m) in length and weighs 2.8-3 tons (2540–2722 kg).[26][113] There is a 6–8 month weaning period until the calf is 53 ft (16 m) in length.[26][16][113][200][211][215][216]
+
+Blue whale milk is roughly (g/100 g) 45–48 water, 39–41 fat, 11–12 protein, 7.4 carbohydrates and 1.3 sugar,[217][218] thus containing 12 times more fat than whole milk from cows. The amount of milk transferred from mother to calf has not been measured. Blue whale milk contains 18 megajoules (MJ) per kg, which is roughly 4,302 Kilocalorie/kg.[219] Blue whale calves gain roughly 37,500 lb (17,000 kg) during the weaning period.[25] Estimates suggest that because calves require 2–4 kg milk per kg of mass gain, blue whales likely produce 220 kg milk/d (ranging from 110–320 kg milk/d).[220] The first video of a calf thought to be nursing was filmed in New Zealand in 2016.[221] Additional videos of blue whale calves nursing have been captured by drones, including off Dana Point, CA and off the South Coast of Sri Lanka.
+
+There is reference to a “well-documented” humpback-blue whale hybrid in the South Pacific, attributed to marine biologist Dr. Michael Poole,[21][222] however no published proof exists. Hybridization between blue and fin whales has been documented across multiple ocean basins. The earliest description of a possible hybrid between a blue and fin whale was a 65 ft anomalous female whale with the features of both the blue and the fin whales taken in the North Pacific.[223] In 1983 a 65 ft (19.8 m) long male specimen taken was 65 ft long and sexually immature. Based upon the number of layers in the earwax, the age of the animal was determined to be seven years. In 1984, a female hybrid between a fin and a blue whale was caught by whalers off northwestern Spain. Molecular analyses revealed a blue whale mother and a fin whale father.[224] In 1986, a 70 ft (21.3 m) pregnant female whale was caught. Molecular analyses of the whale showed that it was a hybrid between a female blue whale and a male fin whale, and that the fetus had a blue whale father. It was the first example of any cetacean hybridization giving rise to a fertile offspring.[225] Two live blue-fin whale hybrids have since been documented in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada and in the Azores (Portugal).[226] DNA tests done in Iceland of a blue whale killed July 7, 2018 by the Icelandic whaling company Hvalur hf, found that the whale was a hybrid of a fin whale father and a blue whale mother;[227] however, the results are pending independent testing and verification of the samples. Because blue whales are classed as a “Protection Stock” by the International Whaling Commission, trading their meat is illegal, and the kill is an infraction that must be reported.[228] Blue-fin hybrids have also been detected from genetic analysis of whale meat samples taken from Japanese markets.[229]
+
+There are no direct measurements of the hearing sensitivity of blue whales. Hearing predictions are inferred from anatomical studies,[223][230][231][232] vocalization ranges,[233][234][235] and behavioral responses to sound.[236][237] Blue whale inner ears appear well adapted for detecting low-frequency sounds.[238][239][240][241] Their vocalizations are also predominantly low frequency; thus, their hearing is presumably best at detecting those frequency ranges.[233] Southall et al.[242] estimated the hearing range of cetaceans to extend from approximately 7 Hz to 22 kHz.
+
+Blue whale vocalizations are among the loudest and lowest frequency sounds made by any animal.[42][243] The source level of blue whales off Chile in the 14 to 222 Hz band were estimated to be 188 dB re 1 μPa at 1 m,[243] 189 dB re 1 μPa at 1 m for Antarctic blue whales,[244] and 174 dB re 1 μPa at 1 m for pygmy blue whales.[86]
+
+The fundamental frequency for blue whale vocalizations ranges from 8 to 25 Hz.[245] Blue whale song types were initially divided into nine song types,[74] although ongoing research suggests at least 13 song types.[246] The correlation between song types and genetic subdivisions is unknown, but song types are currently used as the primary method of separating blue whale populations because they are stable in shape over multiple decades for each region. The characteristics of specific call types vary with respect to fundamental frequency, bandwidth, and duration, among others. The production of vocalizations may vary by region, season, behavior, and time of day. The purpose of vocalization is unknown, but songs produced only by males appear to have a sexually related purpose, while “D-calls” and other non-repeating calls are produced during feeding by both sexes.
+
+Possible reasons for calling include:
+
+Vocalizations produced by the Eastern North Pacific population have been well studied. This population produces long-duration, low frequency pulses (“A”) and tonal calls (“B”), upswept tones that precede type B calls (“C”), moderate-duration downswept tones (“D”), and variable amplitude-modulated and frequency-modulated sounds.[247][248][249][250] A and B calls are often produced in repeated co-occurring sequences as song only by males, suggesting a reproductive function.[250][165] D calls are produced by both sexes during social interactions while foraging and may considered multi-purpose contact calls.[165][251][252] Because the calls have also been recorded from blue whale trios from in a putative reproductive context, it has been recently suggested that this call has different functions.[209] The blue whale call recorded off Sri Lanka is a three‐unit phrase. The first unit is a pulsive call ranging 19.8 to 43.5 Hz, lasting 17.9 ± 5.2 s. The second unit is a FM upsweep 55.9 to 72.4 Hz lasting 13.8 ± 1.1 s. The final unit is a long (28.5 ± 1.6 s) tone that sweeps from 108 to 104.7 Hz.[253] The blue whale call recorded off Madagascar, a two‐unit phrase,[254] starts with 5–7 pulses with a center frequency of 35.1 ± 0.7 Hz and duration of 4.4 ± 0.5 s followed by a 35 ± 0 Hz tone lasting 10.9 ± 1.1 s.[253] In the Southern Ocean, blue whales calls last roughly 18 seconds and consist of a 9-s-long, 27 Hz tone, followed by a 1-s downsweep to 19 Hz, and another downsweep to 18 Hz.[68][71] They also produce short, 1–4 s duration, frequency-modulated calls ranging in frequency between 80 and 38 Hz.[71][255]
+
+At least seven blue whale song types have been shifting linearly downward in tonal frequency over time, though at different rates.[256][257][258]
+
+The Eastern North Pacific blue whale tonal frequency is 31% lower than it was in the early 1960s.[256][257] The frequency of pygmy blue whales in the Antarctic has steadily decreased at a rate of a few tenths of hertz per year since 2002.[258] One hypothesis is that as blue whale populations recover from whaling, this is increasing sexual selection pressure (i.e., lower frequency indicates larger body size),[257] although given the difficulties in measuring length from living whales, there is little evidence for changes in body size since whaling ended.
+
+The genus name, Balaenoptera, means winged whale[21] while the species name, musculus, could mean “muscle” or a diminutive form of “mouse”, potentially a clever pun by Carl Linnaeus,[15][21] who named the species in Systema Naturae.[45] One of the first published descriptions of a blue whale comes from Robert Sibbald’s Phalainologia Nova,[259] after Sibbald found a stranded whale in the estuary of the Firth of Forth in 1692. The name ‘blue whale’ was derived from the Norwegian ‘blåhval’, coined by Svend Foyn shortly after he had perfected the harpoon gun. The Norwegian scientist G.O. Sars adopted it as the common name in 1874.[260]
+
+Blue whales were referred to as ‘Sibbald’s rorqual’, after Robert Sibbald, who first described the species.[259] Herman Melville called the blue whale "sulphur bottom" in his novel Moby Dick[22] due to the accumulation of diatoms creating a yellowish appearance on their pale underside.[15][16]
+
+The name  rorqual  comes from the Norwegian word rørhval, a reference to the whale’s throat grooves, which are an elastic structure of blubber and muscle also known as the ventral grove blubber[188][261][262][263] extending from the chin to the umbilicus.[264][265]
+
+Blue whales are rorquals, in the family Balaenopteridae[266] whose extant members include the fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis), Bryde’s whale (Balaenoptera brydei), Eden's whale (Balaenoptera edeni), common minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), Antarctic minke whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis), Omura's whale (Balaenoptera omurai), and humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae).[267]
+
+Molecular evidence places blue whales in the Superorder Cetartiodactyla, which includes the Orders Cetacea (under which blue whales are classified) and Artiodactyla, even-toed ungulates. This classification is supported by evidence of morphological homology between cetaceans and artiodactyls in two described archaic whales.[268][269]
+
+The phylogeny of the blue whales is still debated because their placement varies depending on the molecular markers and phylogenetic analysis used.[270][271][272][273][274][275] The most recent analysis estimates that the Balaenopteridae family diverged from other families in the late Miocene, between 10.48 and 4.98 million years ago.[275]
+
+The earliest discovered anatomically modern blue whale is a partial skull fossil found in southern Italy, dating to the Early Pleistocene, roughly 1.5–1.25 million years ago.[276] The Australian pygmy blue whale diverged during the Last Glacial Maximum. Their more recent divergence has resulted the subspecies to have a relatively low genetic diversity,[277] and New Zealand blue whales have even lower genetic diversity.[11]
+
+Molecular evidence has suggested that common and pygmy hippopotamus, extant members of the family Hippopotamidae, are the closest living relatives to the order Cetacea.[278][279] This monophyletic clade is nested in Cetartiodactyla, which includes the even-toed ungulates.[280] Whole genome sequencing of blue whales and other rorqual species suggests that blue whales are most closely related to sei whales with grey whales as a sister group,[275] which is curious given the most common hybrids are with fin whales. This study also found significant gene flow between minke whales and the ancestors of the blue and sei whale. Blue whale also displayed a high degree of genetic variability (i.e., heterozygosity).[275]
+
+There are four subspecies of blue whale,[41][42] recognized by the Society for Marine Mammalogy’s Committee on Taxonomy:
+
+Some of these blue whale subspecies have been further divided, resulting in nine recognized management units:[42]
+
+Northern subspecies
+
+There are three populations in the Northern subspecies B. m. musculus. It was previously thought that blue whales in the North Pacific belonged to at least five separate populations;[216] however, evidence from movement data derived from satellite tags,[50][281] photograph-identification,[18] and acoustic data[54][58][74] supports two populations in the North Pacific—the Eastern and Central and Western North Pacific populations, with divisions according to acoustic calls being estimated by Monnahan et al.[282]
+
+The third population, the western North Atlantic population, is the only population currently recognized in the North Atlantic. However, it is thought that these whales should be split into eastern and western North Atlantic populations[59][283][284] based on photo-identification data.
+
+Antarctic subspecies
+
+Despite having the greatest haplotype diversity of any subspecies,[285] the Antarctic subspecies of blue whales is recognized as one stock for management purposes. Additionally, only one blue whale call type has been recorded in the Southern Ocean,[71][74][136][286] and mark-recapture data suggests movements of individuals entirely around the Antarctic.[82]
+
+Pygmy subspecies
+
+The pygmy blue whale subspecies, B. m. brevicauda, has three populations corresponding with acoustic populations, including a Madagascar population, Eastern Australia/New Zealand population, and Western Australia/Indonesia population.[287] Although the Western Australia/Indonesia population and the Eastern Australia/New Zealand population are morphologically similar and not genetically separated,[288] there are no photograph-identification matches between the two populations,[289] and mitochondrial DNA haplotype frequencies suggest a high degree of genetic isolation of the New Zealand population.[11] An acoustic boundary between the Western Australia/Indonesia population and the Eastern Australia/New Zealand population has been identified as the junction of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.[92][96]
+
+Northern Indian Ocean subspecies
+
+B. m. indica is currently considered a blue whale subspecies.[41][94][290] Evidence includes a breeding season asynchronous with Southern Hemisphere blue whales,[95] a distinct Sri Lanka call type,[74][147] a slightly smaller total length at maturity,[97] and potential year-round residency.[147][148] However, the Sri Lanka call has not been detected west of Sri Lanka, and there is another call type in the western North Indian Ocean, off Oman and north-western Madagascar, termed the Oman call[149] suggesting a central Indian Ocean population.
+
+Chilean subspecies
+
+Evidence suggesting that blue whales off the Chilean coast are a separate subspecies includes discrete geographic separation (latitudinally from Antarctic blue whales and longitudinally from pygmy blue whales), a difference in the mean length of mature females,[31][32] significant genetic differentiation,[31][152][285][291] and unique song types.[243][292][293] Chilean blue whales may overlap in the Eastern Tropical Pacific with Antarctica blue whales and Eastern North Pacific blue whales. Chilean blue whales are genetically differentiated from Antarctica blue whales[294] and are unlikely to be interbreeding; however, the genetic differentiation is lesser with Eastern North Pacific blue whale, there may gene flow between hemispheres.[294]
+
+Blue whales were nearly hunted to extinction in the 19th and 20th centuries by commercial whalers until the International Whaling Commission banned the taking of blue whales in 1967.[295] The International Whaling Commission catch database estimates that 382,595 blue whales that were caught between 1868 and 1978, including 7,973 in the North Pacific (2.09%), 10,442 in the North Atlantic (2.73%), 5,383 in the South Pacific (1.41%), and in the Southern Ocean, 13,022 pygmy blue whales (3.40%) and 345,775 Antarctic blue whales (90.40%).[296] The Soviet Union continued to illegally hunt blue whales in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere through to 1973,[87][297][298][299] and Spanish vessels caught occasional blue whales up until 1978. The global blue whale population abundance is estimated to be 10,000–25,000 blue whales, roughly 3–11% of the population size estimated in 1911.[5] Recovery and current population sizes vary regionally and by subspecies.
+
+North Pacific (B. m. musculus)
+
+The reported take of all North Pacific blue whales by commercial whalers totaled 9,773 between 1905 and 1977.[282]
+
+North Atlantic (B. m. musculus)
+
+Roughly 15,000 blue whales may have inhabited the North Atlantic before whaling began.[305][306][307] In the western North Atlantic, there were an estimated 1,100–1,500 prior to modern whaling,[305][306] and in the eastern North Atlantic, estimates range from a “few thousand” to 10,000 blue whales in the Denmark Strait and 2,500 from northern Norway.[307] Little is known about the population trends outside of the Gulf of St. Lawrence area. Between 1979 and 2009, 440 blue whales were photo-identified in the Gulf of St. Lawrence estuary and northwestern Gulf of St. Lawrence.[128] Researchers speculate that there may be between 400 and 1,500 individuals.[3][64][308] A summer shipboard survey in 1987 resulted in a maximum estimate of 442 blue whales off Iceland.[284] Sightings from ship-based surveys in the Central and Northeast Atlantic in 1987, 1989, 1995 and 2001 provided abundances estimates ranging from 222 (CI=115–440) in 1987 to 979 (CI=137-2,542) in 1995.[133] The most recent estimate is between 1,000–2,000[9] off the east coast of Greenland, Denmark Strait, Iceland, Jan Mayen, Faroe Islands, west coast of Ireland, and north of the United Kingdom.
+
+Antarctic population (B. m. intermedia)
+
+Catches of Antarctic blue whales (345,775 whales) reduced the population from 239,000 (95% CI=202,000–311,000) in the 1920s to a low of 360 (150–840) animals in the early 1970s, which is 0.15% (0.07–0.29%) of pre-exploitation levels.[309] The best abundance estimate for Antarctic blue whales is 2,280 individuals (CV=0.36) based on the International Whaling Commission International Decade of Cetacean Research and the Southern Ocean Whale Ecosystem Research (SOWER) annual summer surveys from 1991/92 through 2003/04, which covered 99.7% of the area between the pack ice and 60° S.[10] The population is estimated to be increasing, at a rate of 7.3% per year (95% CI=1.4–11.6%) but the most recent abundance estimate is less than 1% of pre-exploitation levels,[309] although if population growth has continued at 7.3% per year, there may now be as many as 10,000 individuals. In 2020, during a 23-day survey, scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) detected a population of 55 blue whales near a sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia. Prior to the survey, only a couple of animals have been observed in this area after mass hunting in the early 20th century.[310]
+
+Pygmy subspecies (B. m. brevicauda)
+
+Few reliable estimates exist for population status of pygmy blue whales. Given historical catches, pre-exploitation abundance estimates must have been at least 7,598 individuals for the Madagascar population, and 2,900 individuals for the Australia/Indonesia population.[87] There is no abundance estimate for overall pygmy blue whale abundance, which includes the Madagascar population, Western Australia/Indonesia population, and Eastern Australia/New Zealand population. Best[141] suggest a minimum abundance of 424 (CV=0.42) pygmy blue whales on the Madagascar Plateau, or 472 (CV=0.48). Kato et al.[311] estimated 671 (279–1613) pygmy blue whales from a line-transect survey of a small area off the southern coast of Australia. Acoustic monitoring during migrations of Australian pygmy whales in the southeastern Indian Ocean resulted in an estimate of 660–1,750 whales.[84][145][312] The estimate of pygmy blue whale off New Zealand from mark-recapture data is 718 (95% CI=279-1926, SD=433).[11]
+
+Northern Indian Ocean subspecies (B. m. indica)
+
+Roughly 1,300 blue whales were caught illegally by Soviet Union whalers from 1963–1966 in the Arabian Sea.[95] Models from a number of surveys in 2014 from a small area 150 km east–west and 50 km north–south just south of Sri Lanka suggest an abundance estimate of 270 blue whales (CV=0.09, 95%, CI=226–322).[12]
+
+Chilean population
+
+The Chilean blue whale is found in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, especially the Chiloé-Corcovado region (,[31][99] and lower latitude areas including Peru, the Galapagos Islands and the southern portions of the Eastern Tropical Pacific[99][152][153][155]
+
+Roughly 5,728 blue whales from the Chilean subspecies were killed by whalers in the Southeast Pacific,[313] 4,288 off Chile.[314] The minimum pre-exploitation abundance was estimated at 1,500–5,000.[313][315] The best abundance estimates from open population models off Isla Grande de Chiloé spanning 2004-2012 suggest that ~570-760 whales are feeding seasonally in this region.[13] Closed population models for the same feeding grounds in 2012 estimate 762 (95% CI=638–933) and 570 (95% CI=475–705) for photographs of left and right sides of the animals, respectively.[13]
+
+Blue whales were initially tough to hunt because of their size and speed.[42] Large-scale takes did not begin until 1864, when the Norwegian Svend Foyn invented the exploding harpoon gun and by using them with steam and diesel-powered ships.[389][390] From 1866–1978, more than 380,000 blue whales were taken, mostly from Antarctic waters.[296] Blue whale takes peaked in 1931 when over 29,000 blue whales were killed. The International Whaling Commission banned all hunting of blue whales in 1966 and gave them worldwide protection. However, the Soviet Union continued illegal whaling into the 1970s,[95][297] and the last catch was taken by a Spanish expedition in 1978.
+
+Blue whales were protected in areas of the Southern Hemisphere starting in 1939. In 1955 they were given complete protection in the North Atlantic under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling; this protection was extended to the Antarctic in 1965 and the North Pacific in 1966.[391][392] The protected status of North Atlantic blue whales was not recognized by Iceland until 1960.[393]
+
+Blue whales are formally classified as endangered under the Endangered Species Act[394] and considered depleted and strategic under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.[318][395] The International Union for Conservation of Nature[396] has listed blue whales as endangered.
+
+They are also listed on Appendix I under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora[397] and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.[398] Although for some populations there is not enough information on current abundance trends (e.g., Pygmy blue whales), others are critically endangered (e.g., Antarctic blue whales).[77][399]

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+
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+MSA—$548.6 billion (4th)
+
+San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco and colloquially known as The City, SF, or Frisco and San Fran[20][21] is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 16th most populous city in the United States, and the fourth most populous in California, with 881,549 residents as of 2019.[15] It covers an area of about 46.89 square miles (121.4 km2),[22] mostly at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city, and the fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is the 12th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States by population, with 4.7 million people, and the fourth-largest by economic output, with GDP of $549 billion in 2018.[23] With San Jose, it forms the fifth most populous combined statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area (9.67 million residents in 2018).
+
+As of 2020, San Francisco has the highest salaries, disposable income, and median home prices in the world at $1.7 million,[24][25] as well as the highest median rents.[26] In 2018, San Francisco was the seventh-highest-income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $130,696.[27] In the same year, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $183.2 billion, and a GDP per capita of $207,371.[28][29] The CSA San Francisco shares with San Jose and Oakland was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2018, with a GDP of $1.03 trillion.[30]  Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the U.S., this CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2018, at $106,757.[30] San Francisco was ranked 8th in the world and 2nd in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of March 2020.[31]  As of 2016, the San Francisco metropolitan area had the highest GDP per capita, labor productivity, and household income levels in the OECD.[32] As of 2019[update], it is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings.[33]
+
+San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for St. Francis of Assisi.[3] The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856.[34] San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper.[35]  After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire,[36] San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.[37] It then became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945.[38][39][40] After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines.
+
+A popular tourist destination,[41] San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, and its Chinatown district. San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Dropbox, Reddit, Square, Inc., Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Craigslist. The city, and the surrounding Bay Area, is a global center of the sciences and arts[42][43] and is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco (USF), University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco State University (SFSU), the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the SFJAZZ Center, and the California Academy of Sciences.
+
+The earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC.[44] The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolá, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay.[45] Seven years later, on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores), established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza.[3]
+
+Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, William Richardson, a naturalized Mexican citizen of English birth, erected the first independent homestead,[46] near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, and Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, and Mexico officially ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war in 1848. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography.[47]
+
+The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers (known as "forty-niners", as in "1849"). With their sourdough bread in tow,[48] prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia,[49] raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849.[50] The promise of great wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor.[51]
+Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels; many were left to rot and some were sunk to establish title to the underwater lot. By 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land. Buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings.[52]
+
+California was quickly granted statehood in 1850, and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and a fort on Alcatraz Island to secure the San Francisco Bay. Silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth.[53] With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, and gambling.[54]
+
+Entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush. Early winners were the banking industry, with the founding of Wells Fargo in 1852 and the Bank of California in 1864. Development of the Port of San Francisco and the establishment in 1869 of overland access to the eastern U.S. rail system via the newly completed Pacific Railroad (the construction of which the city only reluctantly helped support[55]) helped make the Bay Area a center for trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Chinese immigrants made the city a polyglot culture, drawn to "Old Gold Mountain", creating the city's Chinatown quarter. In 1870, Asians made up 8% of the population.[56] The first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for a spacious public park, resulting in plans for Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life. The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast.[57] By 1890, San Francisco's population approached 300,000, making it the eighth-largest city in the United States at the time. Around 1901, San Francisco was a major city known for its flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill, and a thriving arts scene.[58] The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904.[59]
+
+At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across the city and burned out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks.[60] More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core.[36] Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people lost their lives, though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands.[61] More than half of the city's population of 400,000 was left homeless.[62] Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay.
+
+Rebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed.[64] Amadeo Giannini's Bank of Italy, later to become Bank of America, provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated. The influential San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association or SPUR was founded in 1910 to address the quality of housing after the earthquake.[65] The earthquake hastened development of western neighborhoods that survived the fire, including Pacific Heights, where many of the city's wealthy rebuilt their homes.[66] In turn, the destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose again in splendid Beaux Arts style, and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in 1915.[67]
+
+It was during this period San Francisco built some of its most important infrastructure. Civil Engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy was hired by San Francisco Mayor James Rolph as chief engineer for the city in September 1912 to supervise the construction of the Twin Peaks Reservoir, the Stockton Street Tunnel, the Twin Peaks Tunnel, the San Francisco Municipal Railway, the Auxiliary Water Supply System, and new sewers. San Francisco's streetcar system, of which the J, K, L, M, and N lines survive today, was pushed to completion by O'Shaughnessy between 1915 and 1927. It was the O'Shaughnessy Dam, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct that would have the largest effect on San Francisco.[68] An abundant water supply enabled San Francisco to develop into the city it has become today.
+
+In ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed.[69] Indeed, it was at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937, respectively. It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz, a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone, and Robert Franklin Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz. San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939–40, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house it.[citation needed]
+
+During World War II, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity, and Fort Mason became the primary port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations.[37] The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South, to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from service abroad and civilians who had originally come to work decided to stay. The United Nations Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco officially ended the war with Japan.[citation needed]
+
+Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s involved widespread destruction and redevelopment of west-side neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways, of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by citizen-led opposition.[70] The onset of containerization made San Francisco's small piers obsolete, and cargo activity moved to the larger Port of Oakland.[71] The city began to lose industrial jobs and turned to tourism as the most important segment of its economy.[72] The suburbs experienced rapid growth, and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America.[73][74] From 1950 to 1980, the city lost over 10 percent of its population.
+
+Over this period, San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture. Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s.[75] Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love.[76] In 1974, the Zebra murders left at least 16 people dead.[77] In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement, with the emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village, the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, and his assassination, along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.[78]
+
+Bank of America completed 555 California Street in 1969 and the Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972,[79] igniting a wave of "Manhattanization" that lasted until the late 1980s, a period of extensive high-rise development downtown.[80] The 1980s also saw a dramatic increase in the number of homeless people in the city, an issue that remains today, despite many attempts to address it.[81] The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim The Embarcadero as its historic downtown waterfront and revitalizing the Hayes Valley neighborhood.[citation needed]
+
+Two recent decades have seen two booms driven by the internet industry. First was the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once-poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified.[82] Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district.[83] By 2000, the city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid-2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a common place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.[84]
+
+The Ferry Station Post Office Building, Armour & Co. Building, Atherton House, and YMCA Hotel are historic buildings among dozens of historical landmarks in the city according to the National Register of Historic Places listings in San Francisco.[citation needed]
+
+San Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several picturesque islands—Alcatraz, Treasure Island and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island, and small portions of Alameda Island, Red Rock Island, and Angel Island—are part of the city. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands, 27 miles (43 km) offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The mainland within the city limits roughly forms a "seven-by-seven-mile square", a common local colloquialism referring to the city's shape, though its total area, including water, is nearly 232 square miles (600 km2).
+
+There are more than 50 hills within the city limits.[85] Some neighborhoods are named after the hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill, Potrero Hill, and Russian Hill.
+Near the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Twin Peaks, a pair of hills forming one of the city's highest points, forms an overlook spot. San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson, is 928 feet (283 m) high and is capped with a 103-foot (31 m) tall cross built in 1934.[86] Dominating this area is Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio and television transmission tower.
+
+The nearby San Andreas and Hayward Faults are responsible for much earthquake activity, although neither physically passes through the city itself. The San Andreas Fault caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthquakes occur on a regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. The city constructed an auxiliary water supply system and has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction.[87] However, there are still thousands of smaller buildings that remain vulnerable to quake damage.[88] USGS has released the California earthquake forecast which models earthquake occurrence in California.[89]
+
+San Francisco's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina, Mission Bay, and Hunters Point, as well as large sections of the Embarcadero, sit on areas of landfill. Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from the excavation of the Yerba Buena Tunnel through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes. The resulting soil liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.[90] Most of the city's natural watercourses, such as Islais Creek and Mission Creek, have been culverted and built over, although the Public Utilities Commission is studying proposals to daylight or restore some creeks.[91]
+
+The historic center of San Francisco is the northeast quadrant of the city anchored by Market Street and the waterfront. It is here that the Financial District is centered, with Union Square, the principal shopping and hotel district, and the Tenderloin nearby. Cable cars carry riders up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill, once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to the waterfront tourist attractions of Fisherman's Wharf, and Pier 39, where many restaurants feature Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street; North Beach, the city's Little Italy and the former center of the Beat Generation; and Telegraph Hill, which features Coit Tower. Abutting Russian Hill and North Beach is San Francisco's Chinatown, the oldest Chinatown in North America.[92][93][94][95] The South of Market, which was once San Francisco's industrial core, has seen significant redevelopment following the construction of Oracle Park and an infusion of startup companies. New skyscrapers, live-work lofts, and condominiums dot the area. Further development is taking place just to the south in Mission Bay area, a former railroad yard, which now has a second campus of the University of California, San Francisco and Chase Center, which opened in 2019 as the new home of the Golden State Warriors.[96]
+
+West of downtown, across Van Ness Avenue, lies the large Western Addition neighborhood, which became established with a large African American population after World War II. The Western Addition is usually divided into smaller neighborhoods including Hayes Valley, the Fillmore, and Japantown, which was once the largest Japantown in North America but suffered when its Japanese American residents were forcibly removed and interned during World War II. The Western Addition survived the 1906 earthquake with its Victorians largely intact, including the famous "Painted Ladies", standing alongside Alamo Square. To the south, near the geographic center of the city is Haight-Ashbury, famously associated with 1960s hippie culture. The Haight is now home to some expensive boutiques[97] and a few controversial chain stores,[98] although it still retains some bohemian character.
+
+North of the Western Addition is Pacific Heights, an affluent neighborhood that features the homes built by wealthy San Franciscans in the wake of the 1906 earthquake. Directly north of Pacific Heights facing the waterfront is the Marina, a neighborhood popular with young professionals that was largely built on reclaimed land from the Bay.[99]
+
+In the south-east quadrant of the city is the Mission District—populated in the 19th century by Californios and working-class immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scandinavia. In the 1910s, a wave of Central American immigrants settled in the Mission and, in the 1950s, immigrants from Mexico began to predominate.[100] In recent years, gentrification has changed the demographics of parts of the Mission from Latino, to twenty-something professionals. Noe Valley to the southwest and Bernal Heights to the south are both increasingly popular among young families with children. East of the Mission is the Potrero Hill neighborhood, a mostly residential neighborhood that features sweeping views of downtown San Francisco. West of the Mission, the area historically known as Eureka Valley, now popularly called the Castro, was once a working-class Scandinavian and Irish area. It has become North America's first gay village, and is now the center of gay life in the city.[101] Located near the city's southern border, the Excelsior District is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco. The predominantly African American Bayview-Hunters Point in the far southeast corner of the city is one of the poorest neighborhoods and suffers from a high rate of crime, though the area has been the focus of several revitalizing and controversial urban renewal projects.
+
+The construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1918 connected southwest neighborhoods to downtown via streetcar, hastening the development of West Portal, and nearby affluent Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood. Further west, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean and north to Golden Gate Park lies the vast Sunset District, a large middle-class area with a predominantly Asian population.[102]
+The northwestern quadrant of the city contains the Richmond, also a mostly middle-class neighborhood north of Golden Gate Park, home to immigrants from other parts of Asia as well as many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Together, these areas are known as The Avenues. These two districts are each sometimes further divided into two regions: the Outer Richmond and Outer Sunset can refer to the more western portions of their respective district and the Inner Richmond and Inner Sunset can refer to the more eastern portions.
+
+Many piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing for redevelopment. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building, while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as a gourmet marketplace.
+
+San Francisco has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csb) characteristic of California's coast, with moist mild winters and dry summers.[104] San Francisco's weather is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean on the west side of the city, and the water of San Francisco Bay to the north and east. This moderates temperature swings and produces a remarkably mild year-round climate with little seasonal temperature variation.[citation needed]
+
+Among major U.S. cities, San Francisco has the coolest daily mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures for June, July, and August.[105]
+During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific High through the Golden Gate, which creates the city's characteristic cool winds and fog.[106] The fog is less pronounced in eastern neighborhoods and during the late summer and early fall. As a result, the year's warmest month, on average, is September, and on average, October is warmer than July, especially in daytime.
+
+Because of its sharp topography and maritime influences, San Francisco exhibits a multitude of distinct microclimates. The high hills in the geographic center of the city are responsible for a 20% variance in annual rainfall between different parts of the city. They also protect neighborhoods directly to their east from the foggy and sometimes very cold and windy conditions experienced in the Sunset District; for those who live on the eastern side of the city, San Francisco is sunnier, with an average of 260 clear days, and only 105 cloudy days per year.[citation needed]
+
+Temperatures reach or exceed 80 °F (27 °C) on an average of only 21 and 23 days a year at downtown and San Francisco International Airport (SFO), respectively.[107] The dry period of May to October is mild to warm, with the normal monthly mean temperature peaking in September at 62.7 °F (17.1 °C).[107] The rainy period of November to April is slightly cooler, with the normal monthly mean temperature reaching its lowest in January at 51.3 °F (10.7 °C).[107] On average, there are 73 rainy days a year, and annual precipitation averages 23.65 inches (601 mm).[107] Variation in precipitation from year to year is high. Above average rain years are often associated with warm El Niño conditions in the Pacific while dry years often occur in cold water La Niña periods. In 2013 (a "La Niña" year), a record low 5.59 in (142 mm) of rainfall was recorded at downtown San Francisco, where records have been kept since 1849.[107] Snowfall in the city is very rare, with only 10 measurable accumulations recorded since 1852, most recently in 1976 when up to 5 inches (130 mm) fell on Twin Peaks.[108][109]
+
+The highest recorded temperature at the official National Weather Service downtown observation station (currently at the United States Mint building) was 106 °F (41 °C) on September 1, 2017.[110] The lowest recorded temperature was 27 °F (−3 °C) on December 11, 1932.[111] The National Weather Service provides a helpful visual aid[112] graphing the information in the table below to display visually by month the annual typical temperatures, the past year's temperatures, and record temperatures.
+
+San Francisco falls under the USDA 10b Plant Hardiness zone.[113][114]
+
+Historically, tule elk were present in San Francisco County, based on archeological evidence of elk remains in at least five different Native American shellmounds: at Hunter's Point, Fort Mason, Stevenson Street, Market Street, and Yerba Buena.[118][119] When Richard Henry Dana, Jr. visited San Francisco Bay in 1835, he wrote about vast elk herds near the Golden Gate: on December 27 "...we came to anchor near the mouth of the bay, under a high and beautifully sloping hill, upon which herds of hundreds and hundreds of red deer [note: "red deer" is the European term for "elk"], and the stag, with his high branching antlers, were bounding about...", although it is not clear whether this was the Marin side or the San Francisco side.[120]
+
+The U.S. Census Bureau estimates San Francisco's population to be 881,549 as of July 1, 2019, with a population density of 18,838/sq mi.[15] With roughly one-quarter the population density of Manhattan, San Francisco is the second-most densely populated large American city, behind only New York City among cities greater than 200,000 population, and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, following only four of the five New York City boroughs.
+
+San Francisco forms part of the five-county San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 4.7 million people, and has served as its traditional demographic focal point. It is also part of the greater 14-county San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area, whose population is over 9.6 million, making it the fifth-largest in the United States as of 2018.[15]
+
+San Francisco has a minority-majority population, as non-Hispanic whites comprise less than half of the population, 41.9%, down from 92.5% in 1940.[56]
+As of the 2010 census, the ethnic makeup and population of San Francisco included: 390,387 whites (48%), 267,915 Asians (33%), 48,870 African Americans (6%), and others. There were 121,744 Hispanics or Latinos of any race (15%).
+
+In 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population; the other Asian groups are Filipinos (5%) and Vietnamese (2%).[124] 
+The population of Chinese ancestry is most heavily concentrated in Chinatown, Sunset District, and Richmond District, whereas Filipinos are most concentrated in the Crocker-Amazon (which is contiguous with the Filipino community of Daly City, which has one of the highest concentrations of Filipinos in North America), as well as in SoMa.[124][125] The Tenderloin District is home to a large portion of the city's Vietnamese population as well as businesses and restaurants, which is known as the city's Little Saigon.[124]
+
+The principal Hispanic groups in the city were those of Mexican (7%) and Salvadoran (2%) ancestry. The Hispanic population is most heavily concentrated in the Mission District, Tenderloin District, and Excelsior District.[126] The city's percentage of Hispanic residents is less than half of that of the state.
+The population of African Americans in San Francisco is 6% of the city's population.[56][127] The percentage of African Americans in San Francisco is similar to that of California.[127] The majority of the city's black population reside within the neighborhoods of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, and in the Fillmore District.[126]
+
+According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, the largest religious groupings in San Francisco's metropolitan area are Christians (48%), followed by those of no religion (35%), Hindus (5%), Jews (3%), Buddhists (2%), Muslims (1%) and a variety of other religions have smaller followings. According to the same study by the Pew Research Center, about 20% of residents in the area are Protestant, and 25% professing Roman Catholic beliefs. Meanwhile, 10% of the residents in metropolitan San Francisco identifies as agnostics, while 5% identifies as atheists.[132][133]
+
+As of 2010[update], 55% (411,728) of San Francisco residents spoke only English at home, while 19% (140,302) spoke a variety of Chinese (mostly Taishanese and Cantonese[134][135]), 12% (88,147) Spanish, 3% (25,767) Tagalog, and 2% (14,017) Russian. In total, 45% (342,693) of San Francisco's population spoke a language at home other than English.[136]
+
+San Francisco has several prominent Chinese, Mexican, and Filipino ethnic neighborhoods including Chinatown and the Mission District. Research collected on the immigrant clusters in the city show that more than half of the Asian population in San Francisco is either Chinese born (40.3%) or Philippine born (13.1%), and of the Mexican population 21% were Mexican born, meaning these are people who recently immigrated to the United States.[138] Between the years of 1990 and 2000, the number foreign born residents increased from 33% to nearly 40%,[138] During this same time period, the San Francisco Metropolitan area received 850,000 immigrants, ranking third in the United States after Los Angeles and New York.[138]
+
+Of all major cities in the United States, San Francisco has the second-highest percentage of residents with a college degree, behind only Seattle. Over 44% of adults have a bachelor's or higher degree.[139]
+San Francisco had the highest rate at 7,031 per square mile, or over 344,000 total graduates in the city's 46.7 square miles (121 km2).[140]
+
+San Francisco has the highest estimated percentage of gay and lesbian individuals of any of the 50 largest U.S. cities, at 15%.[141]
+San Francisco also has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any American county, with the Bay Area having a higher concentration than any other metropolitan area.[142]
+
+San Francisco ranks third of American cities in median household income[146] with a 2007 value of $65,519.[127] Median family income is $81,136.[127]
+An emigration of middle-class families has left the city with a lower proportion of children than any other large American city,[147] with the dog population cited as exceeding the child population of 115,000, in 2018.[148]
+The city's poverty rate is 12%, lower than the national average.[149]
+Homelessness has been a chronic problem for San Francisco since the early 1970s.[150]
+The city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major U.S. city.[151][152]
+
+There are 345,811 households in the city, out of which: 133,366 households (39%) were individuals, 109,437 (32%) were opposite-sex married couples, 63,577 (18%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 21,677 (6%) were unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 10,384 (3%) were same-sex married couples or partnerships. The average household size was 2.26; the average family size was 3.11. 452,986 people (56%) lived in rental housing units, and 327,985 people (41%) lived in owner-occupied housing units.
+The median age of the city population is 38 years.
+
+San Francisco "declared itself a sanctuary city in 1989, and city officials strengthened the stance in 2013 with its 'Due Process for All' ordinance. The law declared local authorities could not hold immigrants for immigration officials if they had no violent felonies on their records and did not currently face charges."[153] The city issues a Resident ID Card regardless of the applicant's immigration status.[154]
+
+Homelessness, historically, has been a major problem in the city and remains a growing problem in modern times.[155]
+
+In 2017, 7,500 homeless people were officially counted in the city, two-thirds of whom were dealing with serious health issues like mental illness or HIV.[156]
+[157]
+The city of San Francisco has been dramatically increasing expenditure directed to alleviate the homelessness crisis: spending jumped by $241 million in 2016–17 to total $275 million, compared to a budget of just $34 million the previous year. In 2017–18 the budget for combatting homelessness, much of which is directed towards the building of new shelters and expanding capacity, stood at $305 million.[158]
+
+In January 2018 a United Nations special rapporteur on homelessness, Leilani Farha, stated that she was "completely shocked" by San Francisco's homelessness crisis during a visit to the city. She compared the "deplorable conditions" of the homeless camps she witnessed on San Francisco's streets to those she had seen in Mumbai.[158]
+
+According to academic Rob Wilson, San Francisco is a global city, a status that pre-dated the city's popularity during the California Gold Rush.[159] Such cities are characterized by their ethnic clustering, network of international connectivity, and convergence of technological innovation.[138] Global cities, such as San Francisco, are considered to be complex and require a high level of talent as well as large masses of low wage workers. A divide is created within the city of ethnic, typically lower-class neighborhoods, and expensive ones with newly developed buildings. This in turn creates a population of highly educated, white-collar individuals as well as blue-collar workers, many of whom are immigrants, and who both are drawn to the increasing number of opportunities available.[160] Competition for these opportunities pushes growth and adaptation in world centers.[161]
+
+San Francisco has a diversified service economy, with employment spread across a wide range of professional services, including financial services, tourism, and (increasingly) high technology.[162] In 2016, approximately 27% of workers were employed in professional business services; 14% in leisure and hospitality; 13% in government services; 12% in education and health care; 11% in trade, transportation, and utilities; and 8% in financial activities.[162] In 2017, GDP in the five-county San Francisco metropolitan area grew 3.4% to $501 billion.[163] Additionally, in 2017 the 14-county San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area had a GDP of $907 billion,[164] ranking 3rd among CSAs, and ahead of all but 16 countries. As of 2017, San Francisco County was the 7th highest-income county in the United States (among 3,142), with a per capita personal income of $119,868.[165] Marin County, directly to the north over the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Mateo County, directly to the south on the Peninsula, were the 5th and 9th highest-income counties respectively.
+
+The legacy of the California Gold Rush turned San Francisco into the principal banking and finance center of the West Coast in the early twentieth century.[166] Montgomery Street in the Financial District became known as the "Wall Street of the West", home to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Wells Fargo corporate headquarters, and the site of the now-defunct Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.[166] Bank of America, a pioneer in making banking services accessible to the middle class, was founded in San Francisco and in the 1960s, built the landmark modern skyscraper at 555 California Street for its corporate headquarters. Many large financial institutions, multinational banks, and venture capital firms are based in or have regional headquarters in the city. With over 30 international financial institutions,[167] six Fortune 500 companies,[168] and a large support infrastructure of professional services—including law, public relations, architecture and design—San Francisco is designated as an Alpha(-) World City.[169] The 2017 Global Financial Centres Index ranked San Francisco as the sixth-most competitive financial center in the world.[170]
+
+Since the 1990s, San Francisco's economy has diversified away from finance and tourism towards the growing fields of high tech, biotechnology, and medical research.[172] Technology jobs accounted for just 1 percent of San Francisco's economy in 1990, growing to 4 percent in 2010 and an estimated 8 percent by the end of 2013.[173] San Francisco became a center of Internet start-up companies during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and the subsequent social media boom of the late 2000s (decade).[174] Since 2010, San Francisco proper has attracted an increasing share of venture capital investments as compared to nearby Silicon Valley, attracting 423 financings worth US$4.58 billion in 2013.[175][176][177] In 2004, the city approved a payroll tax exemption for biotechnology companies[178] to foster growth in the Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a second campus and hospital of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Mission Bay hosts the UCSF Medical Center, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, and Gladstone Institutes,[179] as well as more than 40 private-sector life sciences companies.[180]
+
+The top employer in the city is the city government itself, employing 5.6% (31,000+ people) of the city's workforce, followed by UCSF with over 25,000 employees.[181] The largest private-sector employer is Salesforce, with 8,500 employees, as of 2018.[182]  Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees and self-employed firms make up 85% of city establishments,[183] and the number of San Franciscans employed by firms of more than 1,000 employees has fallen by half since 1977.[184] The growth of national big box and formula retail chains into the city has been made intentionally difficult by political and civic consensus. In an effort to buoy small privately owned businesses in San Francisco and preserve the unique retail personality of the city, the Small Business Commission started a publicity campaign in 2004 to keep a larger share of retail dollars in the local economy,[185] and the Board of Supervisors has used the planning code to limit the neighborhoods where formula retail establishments can set up shop,[186] an effort affirmed by San Francisco voters.[187] However, by 2016, San Francisco was rated low by small businesses in a Business Friendliness Survey.[188]
+
+Like many U.S. cities, San Francisco once had a significant manufacturing sector employing nearly 60,000 workers in 1969, but nearly all production left for cheaper locations by the 1980s.[189] As of 2014[update], San Francisco has seen a small resurgence in manufacturing, with more than 4,000 manufacturing jobs across 500 companies, doubling since 2011. The city's largest manufacturing employer is Anchor Brewing Company, and the largest by revenue is Timbuk2.[189]
+
+San Francisco became a hub for technological driven economic growth during the internet boom of the 1990s, and still holds an important position in the world city network today.[138][161] Intense redevelopment towards the "new economy" makes business more technologically minded. Between the years of 1999 and 2000, the job growth rate was 4.9%, creating over 50,000 jobs in technology firms and internet content production.[138]
+
+In the second technological boom driven by social media in the mid 2000s, San Francisco became a location for companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter to base their tech offices and for their employees to live.[190] Since then, tech employment has continued to increase. In 2014, San Francisco's tech employment grew nearly 90% between 2010 and 2014, beating out Silicon Valley's 30% growth rate over the same period.[191]
+
+The tech sector's dominance in the Bay Area is internationally recognized and continues to attract new businesses and young entrepreneurs from all over the globe.[191] San Francisco is now widely considered the most important city in the world for new technology startups.[192] A recent high of 7 billion dollars in venture capital was invested in the region.[191] These startup companies hire a high concentration of well educated individuals looking to work in the tech industry, and creates a city population of highly concentrated levels of education. Over 50% of San Franciscans have a 4-year university degree, ranking the city among the highest levels of education in the country and world.[190]
+
+Tourism is one of the city's largest private-sector industries, accounting for more than one out of seven jobs in the city.[172][193] The city's frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide. In 2016, it attracted the fifth-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the United States.[194] More than 25 million visitors arrived in San Francisco in 2016, adding US$9.96 billion to the economy.[195]
+With a large hotel infrastructure and a world-class convention facility in the Moscone Center, San Francisco is a popular destination for annual conventions and conferences.[196]
+
+Some of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco noted by the Travel Channel include the Golden Gate Bridge and Alamo Square Park, which is home to the famous "Painted Ladies". Both of these locations were often used as landscape shots for the hit American sitcom Full House. There is also Lombard Street, known for its "crookedness" and extensive views. Tourists also visit Pier 39, which offers dining, shopping, entertainment, and views of the bay, sun-bathing seals, and the famous Alcatraz Island.[197]
+
+San Francisco also offers tourists cultural and unique nightlife in its neighborhoods.[198]
+
+The new Terminal Project at Pier 27 opened September 25, 2014 as a replacement for the old Pier 35.[199] Itineraries from San Francisco usually include round trip cruises to Alaska and Mexico.
+
+A heightened interest in conventioneering in San Francisco, marked by the establishment of convention centers such as Yerba Buena, acted as a feeder into the local tourist economy and resulted in an increase in the hotel industry: "In 1959, the city had fewer than thirty-three hundred first-class hotel rooms; by 1970, the number was nine thousand; and by 1999, there were more than thirty thousand."[200] The commodification of the Castro District has contributed to San Francisco's tourist economy.[201]
+
+Although the Financial District, Union Square, and Fisherman's Wharf are well known around the world, San Francisco is also characterized by its numerous culturally rich streetscapes featuring mixed-use neighborhoods anchored around central commercial corridors to which residents and visitors alike can walk. Because of these characteristics, San Francisco is ranked the second "most walkable" city in the United States by Walkscore.com.[202] Many neighborhoods feature a mix of businesses, restaurants and venues that cater to both the daily needs of local residents while also serving many visitors and tourists. Some neighborhoods are dotted with boutiques, cafés and nightlife such as Union Street in Cow Hollow, 24th Street in Noe Valley, Valencia Street in the Mission, Grant Avenue in North Beach, and Irving Street in the Inner Sunset. This approach especially has influenced the continuing South of Market neighborhood redevelopment with businesses and neighborhood services rising alongside high-rise residences.[203]
+
+Since the 1990s, the demand for skilled information technology workers from local startups and nearby Silicon Valley has attracted white-collar workers from all over the world and created a high standard of living in San Francisco.[204] Many neighborhoods that were once blue-collar, middle, and lower class have been gentrifying, as many of the city's traditional business and industrial districts have experienced a renaissance driven by the redevelopment of the Embarcadero, including the neighborhoods South Beach and Mission Bay. The city's property values and household income have risen to among the highest in the nation,[205][206][207] creating a large and upscale restaurant, retail, and entertainment scene. According to a 2014 quality of life survey of global cities, San Francisco has the highest quality of living of any U.S. city.[208] However, due to the exceptionally high cost of living, many of the city's middle and lower-class families have been leaving the city for the outer suburbs of the Bay Area, or for California's Central Valley.[209] By June 2, 2015, the median rent was reported to be as high as $4,225.[210] The high cost of living is due in part to restrictive planning laws which limit new residential construction.[211]
+
+The international character that San Francisco has enjoyed since its founding is continued today by large numbers of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. With 39% of its residents born overseas,[184] San Francisco has numerous neighborhoods filled with businesses and civic institutions catering to new arrivals. In particular, the arrival of many ethnic Chinese, which accelerated beginning in the 1970s, has complemented the long-established community historically based in Chinatown throughout the city and has transformed the annual Chinese New Year Parade into the largest event of its kind in its hemisphere.[212][213]
+
+With the arrival of the "beat" writers and artists of the 1950s and societal changes culminating in the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district during the 1960s, San Francisco became a center of liberal activism and of the counterculture that arose at that time. The Democrats and to a lesser extent the Green Party have dominated city politics since the late 1970s, after the last serious Republican challenger for city office lost the 1975 mayoral election by a narrow margin. San Francisco has not voted more than 20% for a Republican presidential or senatorial candidate since 1988.[214] In 2007, the city expanded its Medicaid and other indigent medical programs into the Healthy San Francisco program,[215] which subsidizes certain medical services for eligible residents.[216][217][218]
+
+San Francisco also has had a very active environmental community. Starting with the founding of the Sierra Club in 1892 to the establishment of the non-profit Friends of the Urban Forest in 1981, San Francisco has been at the forefront of many global discussions regarding the environment.[219][220] The 1980 San Francisco Recycling Program was one of the earliest curbside recycling programs.[221] The city's GoSolarSF incentive promotes solar installations and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is rolling out the CleanPowerSF program to sell electricity from local renewable sources.[222][223] SF Greasecycle is a program to recycle used cooking oil for conversion to biodiesel.[224]
+
+The Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, completed in 2010, installed 24,000 solar panels on the roof of the reservoir. The 5-megawatt plant more than tripled the city's 2-megawatt solar generation capacity when it opened in December 2010.[225][226]
+
+San Francisco has long had an LGBT-friendly history. It was home to the first lesbian-rights organization in the United States, Daughters of Bilitis; the first openly gay person to run for public office in the United States, José Sarria; the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk; the first openly lesbian judge appointed in the U.S., Mary C. Morgan; and the first transgender police commissioner, Theresa Sparks. The city's large gay population has created and sustained a politically and culturally active community over many decades, developing a powerful presence in San Francisco's civic life. Survey data released in 2015 by Gallup place the proportion of the San Francisco metro area at 6.2%, which is the highest such proportion observed of the 50 most populous metropolitan areas as measured by the polling organization.[227]
+
+One of the most popular destinations for gay tourists internationally, the city hosts San Francisco Pride, one of the largest and oldest pride parades. San Francisco Pride events have been held continuously since 1972. The events are themed and a new theme is created each year. In 2013, over 1.5 million people attended, around 500,000 more than the previous year.[228]
+
+The Folsom Street Fair (FSF) is an annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair that is held in September, capping San Francisco's "Leather Pride Week".[229] It started in 1984 and is California's third-largest single-day, outdoor spectator event and the world's largest leather event and showcase for BDSM products and culture.[230]
+
+The major daily newspaper in San Francisco is the San Francisco Chronicle, which is currently Northern California's most widely circulated newspaper.[231] The Chronicle is most famous for a former columnist, the late Herb Caen, whose daily musings attracted critical acclaim and represented the "voice of San Francisco". The San Francisco Examiner, once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire and the home of Ambrose Bierce, declined in circulation over the years and now takes the form of a free daily tabloid, under new ownership.[232][233] Sing Tao Daily claims to be the largest of several Chinese language dailies that serve the Bay Area.[234] SF Weekly is the city's alternative weekly newspaper. San Francisco and 7x7 are major glossy magazines about San Francisco. The national newsmagazine Mother Jones is also based in San Francisco.
+
+The San Francisco Bay Area is the sixth-largest television market[235] and the fourth-largest radio market[236] in the U.S. The city's oldest radio station, KCBS, began as an experimental station in San Jose in 1909, before the beginning of commercial broadcasting. KALW was the city's first FM radio station when it signed on the air in 1941. The city's first television station was KPIX, which began broadcasting in 1948.
+
+All major U.S. television networks have affiliates serving the region, with most of them based in the city. CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Al Jazeera America, Russia Today, and CCTV America also have regional news bureaus in San Francisco. Bloomberg West was launched in 2011 from a studio on the Embarcadero and CNBC broadcasts from One Market Plaza since 2015. ESPN uses the local ABC studio for their broadcasting. The regional sports network, Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and its sister station Comcast SportsNet California, are both located in San Francisco. The Pac-12 Network is also based in San Francisco.
+
+Public broadcasting outlets include both a television station and a radio station, both broadcasting under the call letters KQED from a facility near the Potrero Hill neighborhood. KQED-FM is the most-listened-to National Public Radio affiliate in the country.[237] Another local broadcaster, KPOO, is an independent, African-American owned and operated noncommercial radio station established in 1971.[238] CNET, founded 1994, and Salon.com, 1995, are based in San Francisco.
+
+San Francisco-based inventors made important contributions to modern media. During the 1870s, Eadweard Muybridge began recording motion photographically and invented a zoopraxiscope with which to view his recordings. These were the first motion pictures. Then in 1927, Philo Farnsworth's image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image. This was the first television.
+
+San Francisco has several nicknames, including "The City by the Bay", "Golden Gate City",[239] "Frisco", "SF", "San Fran", and "Fog City", as well as older ones like "The City that Knows How", "Baghdad by the Bay", "The Paris of the West", or, as locals call it, "The City".[1] San Fran and Frisco are only used outside of San Francisco itself and disparaged by residents.[240][241][242]
+
+San Francisco's War Memorial and Performing Arts Center hosts some of the most enduring performing-arts companies in the country. The War Memorial Opera House houses the San Francisco Opera, the second-largest opera company in North America[243] as well as the San Francisco Ballet, while the San Francisco Symphony plays in Davies Symphony Hall. Opened in 2013, the SFJAZZ Center hosts jazz performances year round.
+
+The Fillmore is a music venue located in the Western Addition. It is the second incarnation of the historic venue that gained fame in the 1960s, housing the stage where now-famous musicians such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane first performed, fostering the San Francisco Sound.
+
+San Francisco has a large number of theaters and live performance venues. Local theater companies have been noted for risk taking and innovation.[244] The Tony Award-winning non-profit American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a member of the national League of Resident Theatres. Other local winners of the Regional Theatre Tony Award include the San Francisco Mime Troupe.[245]
+San Francisco theaters frequently host pre-Broadway engagements and tryout runs,[246] and some original San Francisco productions have later moved to Broadway.[247]
+
+The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) houses 20th century and contemporary works of art. It moved to its current building in the South of Market neighborhood in 1995 and attracted more than 600,000 visitors annually.[248] SFMOMA closed for renovation and expansion in 2013. The museum reopened on May 14, 2016 with an addition, designed by Snøhetta, that has doubled the museum's size.[249]
+
+The Palace of the Legion of Honor holds primarily European antiquities and works of art at its Lincoln Park building modeled after its Parisian namesake. The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park features American decorative pieces and anthropological holdings from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, while Asian art is housed in the Asian Art Museum. Opposite the de Young stands the California Academy of Sciences, a natural history museum that also hosts the Morrison Planetarium and Steinhart Aquarium. Located on Pier 15 on the Embarcadero, the Exploratorium is an interactive science museum. The Contemporary Jewish Museum is a non-collecting institution that hosts a broad array of temporary exhibitions. On Nob Hill, the Cable Car Museum is a working museum featuring the cable car power house, which drives the cables.[250]
+
+Several of San Francisco's parks and nearly all of its beaches form part of the regional Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States with over 13 million visitors a year. Among the GGNRA's attractions within the city are Ocean Beach, which runs along the Pacific Ocean shoreline and is frequented by a vibrant surfing community, and Baker Beach, which is located in a cove west of the Golden Gate and part of the Presidio, a former military base. Also within the Presidio is Crissy Field, a former airfield that was restored to its natural salt marsh ecosystem. The GGNRA also administers Fort Funston, Lands End, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz. The National Park Service separately administers the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park – a fleet of historic ships and waterfront property around Aquatic Park.
+
+There are more than 220 parks maintained by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department.[251] The largest and best-known city park is Golden Gate Park,[252] which stretches from the center of the city west to the Pacific Ocean. Once covered in native grasses and sand dunes, the park was conceived in the 1860s and was created by the extensive planting of thousands of non-native trees and plants. The large park is rich with cultural and natural attractions such as the Conservatory of Flowers, Japanese Tea Garden and San Francisco Botanical Garden. Lake Merced is a fresh-water lake surrounded by parkland and near the San Francisco Zoo, a city-owned park that houses more than 250 animal species, many of which are endangered.[253] The only park managed by the California State Park system located principally in San Francisco, Candlestick Point was the state's first urban recreation area.[254]
+
+San Francisco is the first city in the U.S. to have a park within a 10-Minute Walk of every resident.[255][256] It also ranks fifth in the U.S. for park access and quality in the 2018 ParkScore ranking of the top 100 park systems across the United States, according to the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.[257]
+
+Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants have played in San Francisco since moving from New York in 1958. The Giants play at Oracle Park, which opened in 2000.[258] The Giants won World Series titles in 2010, 2012, and in 2014. The Giants have boasted such stars as Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Barry Bonds. In 2012, San Francisco was ranked No. 1 in a study that examined which U.S. metro areas have produced the most Major Leaguers since 1920.[259]
+
+The San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) were the longest-tenured major professional sports franchise in the city until moving in 2013. The team began play in 1946 as an All-America Football Conference (AAFC) league charter member, moved to the NFL in 1950 and into Candlestick Park in 1971. The team began playing its home games at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara in 2014, closer to the city of San Jose.[260][261] The 49ers won five Super Bowl titles in the 1980s and 1990s.
+
+The San Francisco Warriors played in the NBA from 1962–1971, before being renamed the Golden State Warriors prior to the 1971–1972 season in an attempt to present the team as a representation of the whole state of California.[262] The Warrior's arena, Chase Center, is currently located in San Francisco.[263] They have won 6 championships,[264] including three of the last five.
+
+At the collegiate level, the San Francisco Dons compete in NCAA Division I. Bill Russell led the Don's basketball team to NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956. There is also the San Francisco State Gators, who compete in NCAA Division II.[265] Oracle Park hosted the annual Fight Hunger Bowl college football game from 2002 through 2013 before it moved to Santa Clara.
+
+The Bay to Breakers footrace, held annually since 1912, is best known for colorful costumes and a celebratory community spirit.[266] The San Francisco Marathon attracts more than 21,000 participants.[267] The Escape from Alcatraz triathlon has, since 1980, attracted 2,000 top professional and amateur triathletes for its annual race.[268] The Olympic Club, founded in 1860, is the oldest athletic club in the United States. Its private golf course has hosted the U.S. Open on five occasions. San Francisco hosted the 2013 America's Cup yacht racing competition.[269]
+
+With an ideal climate for outdoor activities, San Francisco has ample resources and opportunities for amateur and participatory sports and recreation. There are more than 200 miles (320 km) of bicycle paths, lanes and bike routes in the city.[270]
+San Francisco residents have often ranked among the fittest in the country.[271] Golden Gate Park has miles of paved and unpaved running trails as well as a golf course and disc golf course.
+Boating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing are among the popular activities on San Francisco Bay, and the city maintains a yacht harbor in the Marina District.
+
+San Francisco—officially known as the City and County of San Francisco—is a consolidated city-county, a status it has held since the 1856 secession of what is now San Mateo County.[34] It is the only such consolidation in California.[272] The mayor is also the county executive, and the county Board of Supervisors acts as the city council. The government of San Francisco is a charter city and is constituted of two co-equal branches: the executive branch is headed by the mayor and includes other citywide elected and appointed officials as well as the civil service; the 11-member Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch, is headed by a president and is responsible for passing laws and budgets, though San Franciscans also make use of direct ballot initiatives to pass legislation.[273]
+
+The members of the Board of Supervisors are elected as representatives of specific districts within the city.[274] Upon the death or resignation of mayor, the President of the Board of Supervisors becomes acting mayor until the full Board elects an interim replacement for the remainder of the term. In 1978, Dianne Feinstein assumed the office following the assassination of George Moscone and was later selected by the board to finish the term. In 2011, Ed Lee was selected by the board to finish the term of Gavin Newsom, who resigned to take office as Lieutenant Governor of California.[275] Lee (who won 2 elections to remain mayor) was temporarily replaced by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed after he died on December 12, 2017.  Supervisor Mark Farrell was appointed by the Board of Supervisors to finish Lee's term on January 23, 2018.
+
+Because of its unique city-county status, the local government is able to exercise jurisdiction over certain property outside city limits. San Francisco International Airport, though located in San Mateo County, is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco's largest jail complex (County Jail No. 5) is located in San Mateo County, in an unincorporated area adjacent to San Bruno. San Francisco was also granted a perpetual leasehold over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and watershed in Yosemite National Park by the Raker Act in 1913.[272]
+
+San Francisco serves as the regional hub for many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the U.S. Mint. Until decommissioning in the early 1990s, the city had major military installations at the Presidio, Treasure Island, and Hunters Point—a legacy still reflected in the annual celebration of Fleet Week. The State of California uses San Francisco as the home of the state supreme court and other state agencies. Foreign governments maintain more than seventy consulates in San Francisco.[276]
+
+The municipal budget for fiscal year 2015–16 was $8.99 billion,[277] and is one of the largest city budgets in the United States.[278] The City of San Francisco spends more per resident than any city other than Washington D.C, over $10,000 in FY 2015–2016.[278] The city employs around 27,000 workers.[279]
+
+In the United States House of Representatives, San Francisco is split between California's 12th and 14th districts.
+
+The following table includes the number of incidents reported and the rate per 1,000 persons for each type of offense.
+
+In 2011, 50 murders were reported, which is 6.1 per 100,000 people.[281] There were about 134 rapes, 3,142 robberies, and about 2,139 assaults. There were about 4,469 burglaries, 25,100 thefts, and 4,210 motor vehicle thefts.[282] The Tenderloin area has the highest crime rate in San Francisco: 70% of the city's violent crimes, and around one-fourth of the city's murders, occur in this neighborhood. The Tenderloin also sees high rates of drug abuse, gang violence, and prostitution.[283] Another area with high crime rates is the Bayview-Hunters Point area. In the first six months of 2015 there were 25 murders compared to 14 in the first six months of 2014. However, the murder rate is still much lower than in past decades.[284] That rate, though, did rise again by the close of 2016.  According to the San Francisco Police Department, there were 59 murders in the city in 2016, an annual total that marked a 13.5% increase in the number of homicides (52) from 2015.[285]
+
+During the first half of 2018, human feces on San Francisco sidewalks were the second-most-frequent complaint of city residents, with about 65 calls per day. The city has formed a "poop patrol" to attempt to combat the problem.[286]
+
+Several street gangs operate in the city, including MS-13,[287] the Sureños and Norteños in the Mission District.[288] African-American street gangs familiar in other cities, including the Crips, have struggled to establish footholds in San Francisco,[289] while police and prosecutors have been accused of liberally labeling young African-American males as gang members.[290] Criminal gangs with shotcallers in China, including Triad groups such as the Wo Hop To, have been reported active in San Francisco.[291] In 1977, an ongoing rivalry between two Chinese gangs led to a shooting attack at the Golden Dragon restaurant in Chinatown, which left 5 people dead and 11 wounded. None of the victims in this attack were gang members. Five members of the Joe Boys gang were arrested and convicted of the crime.[292] In 1990, a gang-related shooting killed one man and wounded six others outside a nightclub near Chinatown.[293] In 1998, six teenagers were shot and wounded at the Chinese Playground; a 16-year-old boy was subsequently arrested.[294]
+
+The San Francisco Police Department was founded in 1849.[295] The portions of Golden Gate National Recreation Area located within the city, including the Presidio and Ocean Beach, are patrolled by the United States Park Police.
+
+The San Francisco Fire Department provides both fire suppression and emergency medical services to the city.[296]
+
+The city operates 22 public "pit stop" toilets.[286]
+
+To prevent the spread of diseases from needles, the city gives away 400,000 free syringes every month.  Only 60% are ever returned.  Some end up as potentially dangerous litter.[297]
+
+San Francisco participates in the Sister Cities program.[298] A total of 41 consulates general and 23 honorary consulates have offices in the San Francisco Bay Area.[299]
+
+The University of California, San Francisco is the sole campus of the University of California system entirely dedicated to graduate education in health and biomedical sciences. It is ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States[300] and operates the UCSF Medical Center, which ranks as the number one hospital in California and the number 5 in the country.[301] UCSF is a major local employer, second in size only to the city and county government.[302][303][304] A 43-acre (17 ha) Mission Bay campus was opened in 2003, complementing its original facility in Parnassus Heights. It contains research space and facilities to foster biotechnology and life sciences entrepreneurship and will double the size of UCSF's research enterprise.[305] All in all, UCSF operates more than 20 facilities across San Francisco.[306] The University of California, Hastings College of the Law, founded in Civic Center in 1878, is the oldest law school in California and claims more judges on the state bench than any other institution.[307]
+San Francisco's two University of California institutions have recently formed an official affiliation in the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy.[308]
+
+San Francisco State University is part of the California State University system and is located near Lake Merced.[309] The school has approximately 30,000 students and awards undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees in more than 100 disciplines.[309] The City College of San Francisco, with its main facility in the Ingleside district, is one of the largest two-year community colleges in the country. It has an enrollment of about 100,000 students and offers an extensive continuing education program.[310]
+
+Founded in 1855, the University of San Francisco, a private Jesuit university located on Lone Mountain, is the oldest institution of higher education in San Francisco and one of the oldest universities established west of the Mississippi River.[311] Golden Gate University is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational university formed in 1901 and located in the Financial District.
+With an enrollment of 13,000 students, the Academy of Art University is the largest institute of art and design in the nation.[312] Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute is the oldest art school west of the Mississippi.[313] The California College of the Arts, located north of Potrero Hill, has programs in architecture, fine arts, design, and writing.[314] The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the only independent music school on the West Coast, grants degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition, and conducting. The California Culinary Academy, associated with the Le Cordon Bleu program, offers programs in the culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and hospitality and restaurant management.
+California Institute of Integral Studies, founded in 1968, offers a variety of graduate programs in its Schools of Professional Psychology & Health, and Consciousness and Transformation.
+
+Public schools are run by the San Francisco Unified School District as well as the State Board of Education for some charter schools. Lowell High School, the oldest public high school in the U.S. west of the Mississippi,[315] and the smaller School of the Arts High School are two of San Francisco's magnet schools at the secondary level. Public school students attend schools based on an assignment system rather than neighborhood proximity.[316]
+
+Just under 30% of the city's school-age population attends one of San Francisco's more than 100 private or parochial schools, compared to a 10% rate nationwide.[317] Nearly 40 of those schools are Catholic schools managed by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.[318]
+
+San Francisco has nearly 300 preschool programs primarily operated by Head Start, San Francisco Unified School District, private for-profit, private non-profit and family child care providers.[319] All 4-year-old children living in San Francisco are offered universal access to preschool through the Preschool for All program.[320]
+
+Due to its unique geography, and the freeway revolts of the late 1950s,[321]
+Interstate 80 begins at the approach to the Bay Bridge and is the only direct automobile link to the East Bay. U.S. Route 101 connects to the western terminus of Interstate 80 and provides access to the south of the city along San Francisco Bay toward Silicon Valley. Northward, the routing for U.S. 101 uses arterial streets to connect to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only direct automobile link to Marin County and the North Bay.
+
+As part of the retrofitting of the Golden Gate Bridge and installation of a suicide barrier, starting in 2019 the railings on the west side of the pedestrian walkway were replaced with thinner, more flexible slats in order to improve the bridge's aerodynamic tolerance of high wind to 100 mph (161 km/h). Starting in June 2020, reports were received of a loud hum produced by the new railing slats, heard across the city when a strong west wind was blowing.[322]
+
+State Route 1 also enters San Francisco from the north via the Golden Gate Bridge and bisects the city as the 19th Avenue arterial thoroughfare, joining with Interstate 280 at the city's southern border. Interstate 280 continues south from San Francisco, and also turns to the east along the southern edge of the city, terminating just south of the Bay Bridge in the South of Market neighborhood. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, city leaders demolished the Embarcadero Freeway and a portion of the Central Freeway, converting them into street-level boulevards.[321]
+
+State Route 35 enters the city from the south as Skyline Boulevard and terminates at its intersection with Highway 1. State Route 82 enters San Francisco from the south as Mission Street, and terminates shortly thereafter at its junction with 280. The western terminus of the historic transcontinental Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, is in San Francisco's Lincoln Park.
+
+32% of San Francisco residents use public transportation for their daily commute to work, ranking it first on the West Coast and third overall in the United States.[323] The San Francisco Municipal Railway, primarily known as Muni, is the primary public transit system of San Francisco. Muni is the seventh-largest transit system in the United States, with 210,848,310 rides in 2006.[324] The system operates a combined light rail and subway system, the Muni Metro, as well as large bus and trolley coach networks.[325] Additionally, it runs a historic streetcar line, which runs on Market Street from Castro Street to Fisherman's Wharf.[325] It also operates the famous cable cars,[325] which have been designated as a National Historic Landmark and are a major tourist attraction.[326]
+
+Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a regional Rapid Transit system, connects San Francisco with the East Bay through the underwater Transbay Tube. The line runs under Market Street to Civic Center where it turns south to the Mission District, the southern part of the city, and through northern San Mateo County, to the San Francisco International Airport, and Millbrae.[325]
+
+Another commuter rail system, Caltrain, runs from San Francisco along the San Francisco Peninsula to San Jose.[325] Historically, trains operated by Southern Pacific Lines ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles, via Palo Alto and San Jose.
+
+Amtrak California Thruway Motorcoach runs a shuttle bus from three locations in San Francisco to its station across the bay in Emeryville.[327]  Additionally, BART offers connections to San Francisco from Amtrak's stations in Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond, and Caltrain offers connections in San Jose and Santa Clara. Thruway service also runs south to San Luis Obispo with connection to the Pacific Surfliner.
+
+San Francisco Bay Ferry operates from the Ferry Building and Pier 39 to points in Oakland, Alameda, Bay Farm Island, South San Francisco, and north to Vallejo in Solano County.[328] The Golden Gate Ferry is the other ferry operator with service between San Francisco and Marin County.[329] SolTrans runs supplemental bus service between the Ferry Building and Vallejo.
+
+San Francisco was an early adopter of carsharing in America. The non-profit City CarShare opened in 2001.[330] Zipcar closely followed.[331]
+
+To accommodate the large amount of San Francisco citizens who commute to the Silicon Valley daily, companies like Google and Apple have begun to provide private bus transportation for their employees, from San Francisco locations to the tech start-up hotspot. These buses have quickly become a heated topic of debate within the city, as protesters claim they block bus lanes and delay public buses.[332]
+
+Though located 13 miles (21 km) south of downtown in unincorporated San Mateo County, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. SFO is a hub for United Airlines[333] and Alaska Airlines.[334] SFO is a major international gateway to Asia and Europe, with the largest international terminal in North America.[335] In 2011, SFO was the eighth-busiest airport in the U.S. and the 22nd-busiest in the world, handling over 40.9 million passengers.[336]
+
+Located across the bay, Oakland International Airport is a popular, low-cost alternative to SFO. Geographically, Oakland Airport is approximately the same distance from downtown San Francisco as SFO, but due to its location across San Francisco Bay, it is greater driving distance from San Francisco.
+
+Cycling is a popular mode of transportation in San Francisco, with 75,000 residents commuting by bicycle each day.[337] Bay Wheels, previously named Bay Area Bike Share at inception, launched in August 2013 with 700 bikes in downtown San Francisco, selected cities in the East Bay, and San Jose. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Bay Area Air Quality Management District are responsible for the operation with management provided by Motivate.[338] A major expansion started in 2017, along with a rebranding as Ford GoBike; the company received its current name in 2019.[339]
+Pedestrian traffic is also widespread. In 2015, Walk Score ranked San Francisco the second-most walkable city in the United States.[340][341][342]
+
+San Francisco has significantly higher rates of pedestrian and bicyclist traffic deaths than the United States on average. In 2013, 21 pedestrians were killed in vehicle collisions, the highest since 2001,[343] which is 2.5 deaths per 100,000 population – 70% higher than the national average of 1.5.[344]
+
+Cycling is becoming increasingly popular in the city. Annual bicycle counts conducted by the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) in 2010 showed the number of cyclists at 33 locations had increased 58% from the 2006 baseline counts.[345] In 2008, the MTA estimated that about 128,000 trips were made by bicycle each day in the city, or 6% of total trips.[346] Since 2002, improvements in cycling infrastructure such as additional bike lanes and parking racks have made cycling in San Francisco safer and more convenient.[347] Since 2006, San Francisco has received a Bicycle Friendly Community status of "Gold" from the League of American Bicyclists.[348]

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+
+
+
+
+MSA—$548.6 billion (4th)
+
+San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco and colloquially known as The City, SF, or Frisco and San Fran[20][21] is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. San Francisco is the 16th most populous city in the United States, and the fourth most populous in California, with 881,549 residents as of 2019.[15] It covers an area of about 46.89 square miles (121.4 km2),[22] mostly at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city, and the fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. San Francisco is the 12th-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States by population, with 4.7 million people, and the fourth-largest by economic output, with GDP of $549 billion in 2018.[23] With San Jose, it forms the fifth most populous combined statistical area in the United States, the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area (9.67 million residents in 2018).
+
+As of 2020, San Francisco has the highest salaries, disposable income, and median home prices in the world at $1.7 million,[24][25] as well as the highest median rents.[26] In 2018, San Francisco was the seventh-highest-income county in the United States, with a per capita personal income of $130,696.[27] In the same year, San Francisco proper had a GDP of $183.2 billion, and a GDP per capita of $207,371.[28][29] The CSA San Francisco shares with San Jose and Oakland was the country's third-largest urban economy as of 2018, with a GDP of $1.03 trillion.[30]  Of the 500+ primary statistical areas in the U.S., this CSA had among the highest GDP per capita in 2018, at $106,757.[30] San Francisco was ranked 8th in the world and 2nd in the United States on the Global Financial Centres Index as of March 2020.[31]  As of 2016, the San Francisco metropolitan area had the highest GDP per capita, labor productivity, and household income levels in the OECD.[32] As of 2019[update], it is the highest rated American city on world liveability rankings.[33]
+
+San Francisco was founded on June 29, 1776, when colonists from Spain established Presidio of San Francisco at the Golden Gate and Mission San Francisco de Asís a few miles away, both named for St. Francis of Assisi.[3] The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856.[34] San Francisco's status as the West Coast's largest city peaked between 1870 and 1900, when around 25% of California's population resided in the city proper.[35]  After three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire,[36] San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a major port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater.[37] It then became the birthplace of the United Nations in 1945.[38][39][40] After the war, the confluence of returning servicemen, significant immigration, liberalizing attitudes, along with the rise of the "hippie" counterculture, the Sexual Revolution, the Peace Movement growing from opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and other factors led to the Summer of Love and the gay rights movement, cementing San Francisco as a center of liberal activism in the United States. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines.
+
+A popular tourist destination,[41] San Francisco is known for its cool summers, fog, steep rolling hills, eclectic mix of architecture, and landmarks, including the Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars, the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, Fisherman's Wharf, and its Chinatown district. San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., Fitbit, Salesforce.com, Dropbox, Reddit, Square, Inc., Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation and Craigslist. The city, and the surrounding Bay Area, is a global center of the sciences and arts[42][43] and is home to a number of educational and cultural institutions, such as the University of San Francisco (USF), University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco State University (SFSU), the De Young Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the SFJAZZ Center, and the California Academy of Sciences.
+
+The earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC.[44] The Yelamu group of the Ohlone people resided in a few small villages when an overland Spanish exploration party, led by Don Gaspar de Portolá, arrived on November 2, 1769, the first documented European visit to San Francisco Bay.[45] Seven years later, on March 28, 1776, the Spanish established the Presidio of San Francisco, followed by a mission, Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores), established by the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza.[3]
+
+Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the area became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the mission system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, William Richardson, a naturalized Mexican citizen of English birth, erected the first independent homestead,[46] near a boat anchorage around what is today Portsmouth Square. Together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7, 1846, during the Mexican–American War, and Captain John B. Montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, and Mexico officially ceded the territory to the United States at the end of the war in 1848. Despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography.[47]
+
+The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers (known as "forty-niners", as in "1849"). With their sourdough bread in tow,[48] prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia,[49] raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849.[50] The promise of great wealth was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor.[51]
+Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels; many were left to rot and some were sunk to establish title to the underwater lot. By 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land. Buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings.[52]
+
+California was quickly granted statehood in 1850, and the U.S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate and a fort on Alcatraz Island to secure the San Francisco Bay. Silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth.[53] With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, and gambling.[54]
+
+Entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush. Early winners were the banking industry, with the founding of Wells Fargo in 1852 and the Bank of California in 1864. Development of the Port of San Francisco and the establishment in 1869 of overland access to the eastern U.S. rail system via the newly completed Pacific Railroad (the construction of which the city only reluctantly helped support[55]) helped make the Bay Area a center for trade. Catering to the needs and tastes of the growing population, Levi Strauss opened a dry goods business and Domingo Ghirardelli began manufacturing chocolate. Chinese immigrants made the city a polyglot culture, drawn to "Old Gold Mountain", creating the city's Chinatown quarter. In 1870, Asians made up 8% of the population.[56] The first cable cars carried San Franciscans up Clay Street in 1873. The city's sea of Victorian houses began to take shape, and civic leaders campaigned for a spacious public park, resulting in plans for Golden Gate Park. San Franciscans built schools, churches, theaters, and all the hallmarks of civic life. The Presidio developed into the most important American military installation on the Pacific coast.[57] By 1890, San Francisco's population approached 300,000, making it the eighth-largest city in the United States at the time. Around 1901, San Francisco was a major city known for its flamboyant style, stately hotels, ostentatious mansions on Nob Hill, and a thriving arts scene.[58] The first North American plague epidemic was the San Francisco plague of 1900–1904.[59]
+
+At 5:12 am on April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and northern California. As buildings collapsed from the shaking, ruptured gas lines ignited fires that spread across the city and burned out of control for several days. With water mains out of service, the Presidio Artillery Corps attempted to contain the inferno by dynamiting blocks of buildings to create firebreaks.[60] More than three-quarters of the city lay in ruins, including almost all of the downtown core.[36] Contemporary accounts reported that 498 people lost their lives, though modern estimates put the number in the several thousands.[61] More than half of the city's population of 400,000 was left homeless.[62] Refugees settled temporarily in makeshift tent villages in Golden Gate Park, the Presidio, on the beaches, and elsewhere. Many fled permanently to the East Bay.
+
+Rebuilding was rapid and performed on a grand scale. Rejecting calls to completely remake the street grid, San Franciscans opted for speed.[64] Amadeo Giannini's Bank of Italy, later to become Bank of America, provided loans for many of those whose livelihoods had been devastated. The influential San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association or SPUR was founded in 1910 to address the quality of housing after the earthquake.[65] The earthquake hastened development of western neighborhoods that survived the fire, including Pacific Heights, where many of the city's wealthy rebuilt their homes.[66] In turn, the destroyed mansions of Nob Hill became grand hotels. City Hall rose again in splendid Beaux Arts style, and the city celebrated its rebirth at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in 1915.[67]
+
+It was during this period San Francisco built some of its most important infrastructure. Civil Engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy was hired by San Francisco Mayor James Rolph as chief engineer for the city in September 1912 to supervise the construction of the Twin Peaks Reservoir, the Stockton Street Tunnel, the Twin Peaks Tunnel, the San Francisco Municipal Railway, the Auxiliary Water Supply System, and new sewers. San Francisco's streetcar system, of which the J, K, L, M, and N lines survive today, was pushed to completion by O'Shaughnessy between 1915 and 1927. It was the O'Shaughnessy Dam, Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, and Hetch Hetchy Aqueduct that would have the largest effect on San Francisco.[68] An abundant water supply enabled San Francisco to develop into the city it has become today.
+
+In ensuing years, the city solidified its standing as a financial capital; in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, not a single San Francisco-based bank failed.[69] Indeed, it was at the height of the Great Depression that San Francisco undertook two great civil engineering projects, simultaneously constructing the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, completing them in 1936 and 1937, respectively. It was in this period that the island of Alcatraz, a former military stockade, began its service as a federal maximum security prison, housing notorious inmates such as Al Capone, and Robert Franklin Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz. San Francisco later celebrated its regained grandeur with a World's fair, the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939–40, creating Treasure Island in the middle of the bay to house it.[citation needed]
+
+During World War II, the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a hub of activity, and Fort Mason became the primary port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater of Operations.[37] The explosion of jobs drew many people, especially African Americans from the South, to the area. After the end of the war, many military personnel returning from service abroad and civilians who had originally come to work decided to stay. The United Nations Charter creating the United Nations was drafted and signed in San Francisco in 1945 and, in 1951, the Treaty of San Francisco officially ended the war with Japan.[citation needed]
+
+Urban planning projects in the 1950s and 1960s involved widespread destruction and redevelopment of west-side neighborhoods and the construction of new freeways, of which only a series of short segments were built before being halted by citizen-led opposition.[70] The onset of containerization made San Francisco's small piers obsolete, and cargo activity moved to the larger Port of Oakland.[71] The city began to lose industrial jobs and turned to tourism as the most important segment of its economy.[72] The suburbs experienced rapid growth, and San Francisco underwent significant demographic change, as large segments of the white population left the city, supplanted by an increasing wave of immigration from Asia and Latin America.[73][74] From 1950 to 1980, the city lost over 10 percent of its population.
+
+Over this period, San Francisco became a magnet for America's counterculture. Beat Generation writers fueled the San Francisco Renaissance and centered on the North Beach neighborhood in the 1950s.[75] Hippies flocked to Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, reaching a peak with the 1967 Summer of Love.[76] In 1974, the Zebra murders left at least 16 people dead.[77] In the 1970s, the city became a center of the gay rights movement, with the emergence of The Castro as an urban gay village, the election of Harvey Milk to the Board of Supervisors, and his assassination, along with that of Mayor George Moscone, in 1978.[78]
+
+Bank of America completed 555 California Street in 1969 and the Transamerica Pyramid was completed in 1972,[79] igniting a wave of "Manhattanization" that lasted until the late 1980s, a period of extensive high-rise development downtown.[80] The 1980s also saw a dramatic increase in the number of homeless people in the city, an issue that remains today, despite many attempts to address it.[81] The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caused destruction and loss of life throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the quake severely damaged structures in the Marina and South of Market districts and precipitated the demolition of the damaged Embarcadero Freeway and much of the damaged Central Freeway, allowing the city to reclaim The Embarcadero as its historic downtown waterfront and revitalizing the Hayes Valley neighborhood.[citation needed]
+
+Two recent decades have seen two booms driven by the internet industry. First was the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, startup companies invigorated the San Francisco economy. Large numbers of entrepreneurs and computer application developers moved into the city, followed by marketing, design, and sales professionals, changing the social landscape as once-poorer neighborhoods became increasingly gentrified.[82] Demand for new housing and office space ignited a second wave of high-rise development, this time in the South of Market district.[83] By 2000, the city's population reached new highs, surpassing the previous record set in 1950. When the bubble burst in 2001, many of these companies folded and their employees were laid off. Yet high technology and entrepreneurship remain mainstays of the San Francisco economy. By the mid-2000s (decade), the social media boom had begun, with San Francisco becoming a popular location for tech offices and a common place to live for people employed in Silicon Valley companies such as Apple and Google.[84]
+
+The Ferry Station Post Office Building, Armour & Co. Building, Atherton House, and YMCA Hotel are historic buildings among dozens of historical landmarks in the city according to the National Register of Historic Places listings in San Francisco.[citation needed]
+
+San Francisco is located on the West Coast of the United States at the north end of the San Francisco Peninsula and includes significant stretches of the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay within its boundaries. Several picturesque islands—Alcatraz, Treasure Island and the adjacent Yerba Buena Island, and small portions of Alameda Island, Red Rock Island, and Angel Island—are part of the city. Also included are the uninhabited Farallon Islands, 27 miles (43 km) offshore in the Pacific Ocean. The mainland within the city limits roughly forms a "seven-by-seven-mile square", a common local colloquialism referring to the city's shape, though its total area, including water, is nearly 232 square miles (600 km2).
+
+There are more than 50 hills within the city limits.[85] Some neighborhoods are named after the hill on which they are situated, including Nob Hill, Potrero Hill, and Russian Hill.
+Near the geographic center of the city, southwest of the downtown area, are a series of less densely populated hills. Twin Peaks, a pair of hills forming one of the city's highest points, forms an overlook spot. San Francisco's tallest hill, Mount Davidson, is 928 feet (283 m) high and is capped with a 103-foot (31 m) tall cross built in 1934.[86] Dominating this area is Sutro Tower, a large red and white radio and television transmission tower.
+
+The nearby San Andreas and Hayward Faults are responsible for much earthquake activity, although neither physically passes through the city itself. The San Andreas Fault caused the earthquakes in 1906 and 1989. Minor earthquakes occur on a regular basis. The threat of major earthquakes plays a large role in the city's infrastructure development. The city constructed an auxiliary water supply system and has repeatedly upgraded its building codes, requiring retrofits for older buildings and higher engineering standards for new construction.[87] However, there are still thousands of smaller buildings that remain vulnerable to quake damage.[88] USGS has released the California earthquake forecast which models earthquake occurrence in California.[89]
+
+San Francisco's shoreline has grown beyond its natural limits. Entire neighborhoods such as the Marina, Mission Bay, and Hunters Point, as well as large sections of the Embarcadero, sit on areas of landfill. Treasure Island was constructed from material dredged from the bay as well as material resulting from the excavation of the Yerba Buena Tunnel through Yerba Buena Island during the construction of the Bay Bridge. Such land tends to be unstable during earthquakes. The resulting soil liquefaction causes extensive damage to property built upon it, as was evidenced in the Marina district during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.[90] Most of the city's natural watercourses, such as Islais Creek and Mission Creek, have been culverted and built over, although the Public Utilities Commission is studying proposals to daylight or restore some creeks.[91]
+
+The historic center of San Francisco is the northeast quadrant of the city anchored by Market Street and the waterfront. It is here that the Financial District is centered, with Union Square, the principal shopping and hotel district, and the Tenderloin nearby. Cable cars carry riders up steep inclines to the summit of Nob Hill, once the home of the city's business tycoons, and down to the waterfront tourist attractions of Fisherman's Wharf, and Pier 39, where many restaurants feature Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. Also in this quadrant are Russian Hill, a residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street; North Beach, the city's Little Italy and the former center of the Beat Generation; and Telegraph Hill, which features Coit Tower. Abutting Russian Hill and North Beach is San Francisco's Chinatown, the oldest Chinatown in North America.[92][93][94][95] The South of Market, which was once San Francisco's industrial core, has seen significant redevelopment following the construction of Oracle Park and an infusion of startup companies. New skyscrapers, live-work lofts, and condominiums dot the area. Further development is taking place just to the south in Mission Bay area, a former railroad yard, which now has a second campus of the University of California, San Francisco and Chase Center, which opened in 2019 as the new home of the Golden State Warriors.[96]
+
+West of downtown, across Van Ness Avenue, lies the large Western Addition neighborhood, which became established with a large African American population after World War II. The Western Addition is usually divided into smaller neighborhoods including Hayes Valley, the Fillmore, and Japantown, which was once the largest Japantown in North America but suffered when its Japanese American residents were forcibly removed and interned during World War II. The Western Addition survived the 1906 earthquake with its Victorians largely intact, including the famous "Painted Ladies", standing alongside Alamo Square. To the south, near the geographic center of the city is Haight-Ashbury, famously associated with 1960s hippie culture. The Haight is now home to some expensive boutiques[97] and a few controversial chain stores,[98] although it still retains some bohemian character.
+
+North of the Western Addition is Pacific Heights, an affluent neighborhood that features the homes built by wealthy San Franciscans in the wake of the 1906 earthquake. Directly north of Pacific Heights facing the waterfront is the Marina, a neighborhood popular with young professionals that was largely built on reclaimed land from the Bay.[99]
+
+In the south-east quadrant of the city is the Mission District—populated in the 19th century by Californios and working-class immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Scandinavia. In the 1910s, a wave of Central American immigrants settled in the Mission and, in the 1950s, immigrants from Mexico began to predominate.[100] In recent years, gentrification has changed the demographics of parts of the Mission from Latino, to twenty-something professionals. Noe Valley to the southwest and Bernal Heights to the south are both increasingly popular among young families with children. East of the Mission is the Potrero Hill neighborhood, a mostly residential neighborhood that features sweeping views of downtown San Francisco. West of the Mission, the area historically known as Eureka Valley, now popularly called the Castro, was once a working-class Scandinavian and Irish area. It has become North America's first gay village, and is now the center of gay life in the city.[101] Located near the city's southern border, the Excelsior District is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco. The predominantly African American Bayview-Hunters Point in the far southeast corner of the city is one of the poorest neighborhoods and suffers from a high rate of crime, though the area has been the focus of several revitalizing and controversial urban renewal projects.
+
+The construction of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1918 connected southwest neighborhoods to downtown via streetcar, hastening the development of West Portal, and nearby affluent Forest Hill and St. Francis Wood. Further west, stretching all the way to the Pacific Ocean and north to Golden Gate Park lies the vast Sunset District, a large middle-class area with a predominantly Asian population.[102]
+The northwestern quadrant of the city contains the Richmond, also a mostly middle-class neighborhood north of Golden Gate Park, home to immigrants from other parts of Asia as well as many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. Together, these areas are known as The Avenues. These two districts are each sometimes further divided into two regions: the Outer Richmond and Outer Sunset can refer to the more western portions of their respective district and the Inner Richmond and Inner Sunset can refer to the more eastern portions.
+
+Many piers remained derelict for years until the demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway reopened the downtown waterfront, allowing for redevelopment. The centerpiece of the port, the Ferry Building, while still receiving commuter ferry traffic, has been restored and redeveloped as a gourmet marketplace.
+
+San Francisco has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen Csb) characteristic of California's coast, with moist mild winters and dry summers.[104] San Francisco's weather is strongly influenced by the cool currents of the Pacific Ocean on the west side of the city, and the water of San Francisco Bay to the north and east. This moderates temperature swings and produces a remarkably mild year-round climate with little seasonal temperature variation.[citation needed]
+
+Among major U.S. cities, San Francisco has the coolest daily mean, maximum, and minimum temperatures for June, July, and August.[105]
+During the summer, rising hot air in California's interior valleys creates a low pressure area that draws winds from the North Pacific High through the Golden Gate, which creates the city's characteristic cool winds and fog.[106] The fog is less pronounced in eastern neighborhoods and during the late summer and early fall. As a result, the year's warmest month, on average, is September, and on average, October is warmer than July, especially in daytime.
+
+Because of its sharp topography and maritime influences, San Francisco exhibits a multitude of distinct microclimates. The high hills in the geographic center of the city are responsible for a 20% variance in annual rainfall between different parts of the city. They also protect neighborhoods directly to their east from the foggy and sometimes very cold and windy conditions experienced in the Sunset District; for those who live on the eastern side of the city, San Francisco is sunnier, with an average of 260 clear days, and only 105 cloudy days per year.[citation needed]
+
+Temperatures reach or exceed 80 °F (27 °C) on an average of only 21 and 23 days a year at downtown and San Francisco International Airport (SFO), respectively.[107] The dry period of May to October is mild to warm, with the normal monthly mean temperature peaking in September at 62.7 °F (17.1 °C).[107] The rainy period of November to April is slightly cooler, with the normal monthly mean temperature reaching its lowest in January at 51.3 °F (10.7 °C).[107] On average, there are 73 rainy days a year, and annual precipitation averages 23.65 inches (601 mm).[107] Variation in precipitation from year to year is high. Above average rain years are often associated with warm El Niño conditions in the Pacific while dry years often occur in cold water La Niña periods. In 2013 (a "La Niña" year), a record low 5.59 in (142 mm) of rainfall was recorded at downtown San Francisco, where records have been kept since 1849.[107] Snowfall in the city is very rare, with only 10 measurable accumulations recorded since 1852, most recently in 1976 when up to 5 inches (130 mm) fell on Twin Peaks.[108][109]
+
+The highest recorded temperature at the official National Weather Service downtown observation station (currently at the United States Mint building) was 106 °F (41 °C) on September 1, 2017.[110] The lowest recorded temperature was 27 °F (−3 °C) on December 11, 1932.[111] The National Weather Service provides a helpful visual aid[112] graphing the information in the table below to display visually by month the annual typical temperatures, the past year's temperatures, and record temperatures.
+
+San Francisco falls under the USDA 10b Plant Hardiness zone.[113][114]
+
+Historically, tule elk were present in San Francisco County, based on archeological evidence of elk remains in at least five different Native American shellmounds: at Hunter's Point, Fort Mason, Stevenson Street, Market Street, and Yerba Buena.[118][119] When Richard Henry Dana, Jr. visited San Francisco Bay in 1835, he wrote about vast elk herds near the Golden Gate: on December 27 "...we came to anchor near the mouth of the bay, under a high and beautifully sloping hill, upon which herds of hundreds and hundreds of red deer [note: "red deer" is the European term for "elk"], and the stag, with his high branching antlers, were bounding about...", although it is not clear whether this was the Marin side or the San Francisco side.[120]
+
+The U.S. Census Bureau estimates San Francisco's population to be 881,549 as of July 1, 2019, with a population density of 18,838/sq mi.[15] With roughly one-quarter the population density of Manhattan, San Francisco is the second-most densely populated large American city, behind only New York City among cities greater than 200,000 population, and the fifth-most densely populated U.S. county, following only four of the five New York City boroughs.
+
+San Francisco forms part of the five-county San Francisco–Oakland–Hayward, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 4.7 million people, and has served as its traditional demographic focal point. It is also part of the greater 14-county San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area, whose population is over 9.6 million, making it the fifth-largest in the United States as of 2018.[15]
+
+San Francisco has a minority-majority population, as non-Hispanic whites comprise less than half of the population, 41.9%, down from 92.5% in 1940.[56]
+As of the 2010 census, the ethnic makeup and population of San Francisco included: 390,387 whites (48%), 267,915 Asians (33%), 48,870 African Americans (6%), and others. There were 121,744 Hispanics or Latinos of any race (15%).
+
+In 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population; the other Asian groups are Filipinos (5%) and Vietnamese (2%).[124] 
+The population of Chinese ancestry is most heavily concentrated in Chinatown, Sunset District, and Richmond District, whereas Filipinos are most concentrated in the Crocker-Amazon (which is contiguous with the Filipino community of Daly City, which has one of the highest concentrations of Filipinos in North America), as well as in SoMa.[124][125] The Tenderloin District is home to a large portion of the city's Vietnamese population as well as businesses and restaurants, which is known as the city's Little Saigon.[124]
+
+The principal Hispanic groups in the city were those of Mexican (7%) and Salvadoran (2%) ancestry. The Hispanic population is most heavily concentrated in the Mission District, Tenderloin District, and Excelsior District.[126] The city's percentage of Hispanic residents is less than half of that of the state.
+The population of African Americans in San Francisco is 6% of the city's population.[56][127] The percentage of African Americans in San Francisco is similar to that of California.[127] The majority of the city's black population reside within the neighborhoods of Bayview-Hunters Point, Visitacion Valley, and in the Fillmore District.[126]
+
+According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Center, the largest religious groupings in San Francisco's metropolitan area are Christians (48%), followed by those of no religion (35%), Hindus (5%), Jews (3%), Buddhists (2%), Muslims (1%) and a variety of other religions have smaller followings. According to the same study by the Pew Research Center, about 20% of residents in the area are Protestant, and 25% professing Roman Catholic beliefs. Meanwhile, 10% of the residents in metropolitan San Francisco identifies as agnostics, while 5% identifies as atheists.[132][133]
+
+As of 2010[update], 55% (411,728) of San Francisco residents spoke only English at home, while 19% (140,302) spoke a variety of Chinese (mostly Taishanese and Cantonese[134][135]), 12% (88,147) Spanish, 3% (25,767) Tagalog, and 2% (14,017) Russian. In total, 45% (342,693) of San Francisco's population spoke a language at home other than English.[136]
+
+San Francisco has several prominent Chinese, Mexican, and Filipino ethnic neighborhoods including Chinatown and the Mission District. Research collected on the immigrant clusters in the city show that more than half of the Asian population in San Francisco is either Chinese born (40.3%) or Philippine born (13.1%), and of the Mexican population 21% were Mexican born, meaning these are people who recently immigrated to the United States.[138] Between the years of 1990 and 2000, the number foreign born residents increased from 33% to nearly 40%,[138] During this same time period, the San Francisco Metropolitan area received 850,000 immigrants, ranking third in the United States after Los Angeles and New York.[138]
+
+Of all major cities in the United States, San Francisco has the second-highest percentage of residents with a college degree, behind only Seattle. Over 44% of adults have a bachelor's or higher degree.[139]
+San Francisco had the highest rate at 7,031 per square mile, or over 344,000 total graduates in the city's 46.7 square miles (121 km2).[140]
+
+San Francisco has the highest estimated percentage of gay and lesbian individuals of any of the 50 largest U.S. cities, at 15%.[141]
+San Francisco also has the highest percentage of same-sex households of any American county, with the Bay Area having a higher concentration than any other metropolitan area.[142]
+
+San Francisco ranks third of American cities in median household income[146] with a 2007 value of $65,519.[127] Median family income is $81,136.[127]
+An emigration of middle-class families has left the city with a lower proportion of children than any other large American city,[147] with the dog population cited as exceeding the child population of 115,000, in 2018.[148]
+The city's poverty rate is 12%, lower than the national average.[149]
+Homelessness has been a chronic problem for San Francisco since the early 1970s.[150]
+The city is believed to have the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major U.S. city.[151][152]
+
+There are 345,811 households in the city, out of which: 133,366 households (39%) were individuals, 109,437 (32%) were opposite-sex married couples, 63,577 (18%) had children under the age of 18 living in them, 21,677 (6%) were unmarried opposite-sex partnerships, and 10,384 (3%) were same-sex married couples or partnerships. The average household size was 2.26; the average family size was 3.11. 452,986 people (56%) lived in rental housing units, and 327,985 people (41%) lived in owner-occupied housing units.
+The median age of the city population is 38 years.
+
+San Francisco "declared itself a sanctuary city in 1989, and city officials strengthened the stance in 2013 with its 'Due Process for All' ordinance. The law declared local authorities could not hold immigrants for immigration officials if they had no violent felonies on their records and did not currently face charges."[153] The city issues a Resident ID Card regardless of the applicant's immigration status.[154]
+
+Homelessness, historically, has been a major problem in the city and remains a growing problem in modern times.[155]
+
+In 2017, 7,500 homeless people were officially counted in the city, two-thirds of whom were dealing with serious health issues like mental illness or HIV.[156]
+[157]
+The city of San Francisco has been dramatically increasing expenditure directed to alleviate the homelessness crisis: spending jumped by $241 million in 2016–17 to total $275 million, compared to a budget of just $34 million the previous year. In 2017–18 the budget for combatting homelessness, much of which is directed towards the building of new shelters and expanding capacity, stood at $305 million.[158]
+
+In January 2018 a United Nations special rapporteur on homelessness, Leilani Farha, stated that she was "completely shocked" by San Francisco's homelessness crisis during a visit to the city. She compared the "deplorable conditions" of the homeless camps she witnessed on San Francisco's streets to those she had seen in Mumbai.[158]
+
+According to academic Rob Wilson, San Francisco is a global city, a status that pre-dated the city's popularity during the California Gold Rush.[159] Such cities are characterized by their ethnic clustering, network of international connectivity, and convergence of technological innovation.[138] Global cities, such as San Francisco, are considered to be complex and require a high level of talent as well as large masses of low wage workers. A divide is created within the city of ethnic, typically lower-class neighborhoods, and expensive ones with newly developed buildings. This in turn creates a population of highly educated, white-collar individuals as well as blue-collar workers, many of whom are immigrants, and who both are drawn to the increasing number of opportunities available.[160] Competition for these opportunities pushes growth and adaptation in world centers.[161]
+
+San Francisco has a diversified service economy, with employment spread across a wide range of professional services, including financial services, tourism, and (increasingly) high technology.[162] In 2016, approximately 27% of workers were employed in professional business services; 14% in leisure and hospitality; 13% in government services; 12% in education and health care; 11% in trade, transportation, and utilities; and 8% in financial activities.[162] In 2017, GDP in the five-county San Francisco metropolitan area grew 3.4% to $501 billion.[163] Additionally, in 2017 the 14-county San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area had a GDP of $907 billion,[164] ranking 3rd among CSAs, and ahead of all but 16 countries. As of 2017, San Francisco County was the 7th highest-income county in the United States (among 3,142), with a per capita personal income of $119,868.[165] Marin County, directly to the north over the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Mateo County, directly to the south on the Peninsula, were the 5th and 9th highest-income counties respectively.
+
+The legacy of the California Gold Rush turned San Francisco into the principal banking and finance center of the West Coast in the early twentieth century.[166] Montgomery Street in the Financial District became known as the "Wall Street of the West", home to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Wells Fargo corporate headquarters, and the site of the now-defunct Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.[166] Bank of America, a pioneer in making banking services accessible to the middle class, was founded in San Francisco and in the 1960s, built the landmark modern skyscraper at 555 California Street for its corporate headquarters. Many large financial institutions, multinational banks, and venture capital firms are based in or have regional headquarters in the city. With over 30 international financial institutions,[167] six Fortune 500 companies,[168] and a large support infrastructure of professional services—including law, public relations, architecture and design—San Francisco is designated as an Alpha(-) World City.[169] The 2017 Global Financial Centres Index ranked San Francisco as the sixth-most competitive financial center in the world.[170]
+
+Since the 1990s, San Francisco's economy has diversified away from finance and tourism towards the growing fields of high tech, biotechnology, and medical research.[172] Technology jobs accounted for just 1 percent of San Francisco's economy in 1990, growing to 4 percent in 2010 and an estimated 8 percent by the end of 2013.[173] San Francisco became a center of Internet start-up companies during the dot-com bubble of the 1990s and the subsequent social media boom of the late 2000s (decade).[174] Since 2010, San Francisco proper has attracted an increasing share of venture capital investments as compared to nearby Silicon Valley, attracting 423 financings worth US$4.58 billion in 2013.[175][176][177] In 2004, the city approved a payroll tax exemption for biotechnology companies[178] to foster growth in the Mission Bay neighborhood, site of a second campus and hospital of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Mission Bay hosts the UCSF Medical Center, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, and Gladstone Institutes,[179] as well as more than 40 private-sector life sciences companies.[180]
+
+The top employer in the city is the city government itself, employing 5.6% (31,000+ people) of the city's workforce, followed by UCSF with over 25,000 employees.[181] The largest private-sector employer is Salesforce, with 8,500 employees, as of 2018.[182]  Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees and self-employed firms make up 85% of city establishments,[183] and the number of San Franciscans employed by firms of more than 1,000 employees has fallen by half since 1977.[184] The growth of national big box and formula retail chains into the city has been made intentionally difficult by political and civic consensus. In an effort to buoy small privately owned businesses in San Francisco and preserve the unique retail personality of the city, the Small Business Commission started a publicity campaign in 2004 to keep a larger share of retail dollars in the local economy,[185] and the Board of Supervisors has used the planning code to limit the neighborhoods where formula retail establishments can set up shop,[186] an effort affirmed by San Francisco voters.[187] However, by 2016, San Francisco was rated low by small businesses in a Business Friendliness Survey.[188]
+
+Like many U.S. cities, San Francisco once had a significant manufacturing sector employing nearly 60,000 workers in 1969, but nearly all production left for cheaper locations by the 1980s.[189] As of 2014[update], San Francisco has seen a small resurgence in manufacturing, with more than 4,000 manufacturing jobs across 500 companies, doubling since 2011. The city's largest manufacturing employer is Anchor Brewing Company, and the largest by revenue is Timbuk2.[189]
+
+San Francisco became a hub for technological driven economic growth during the internet boom of the 1990s, and still holds an important position in the world city network today.[138][161] Intense redevelopment towards the "new economy" makes business more technologically minded. Between the years of 1999 and 2000, the job growth rate was 4.9%, creating over 50,000 jobs in technology firms and internet content production.[138]
+
+In the second technological boom driven by social media in the mid 2000s, San Francisco became a location for companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter to base their tech offices and for their employees to live.[190] Since then, tech employment has continued to increase. In 2014, San Francisco's tech employment grew nearly 90% between 2010 and 2014, beating out Silicon Valley's 30% growth rate over the same period.[191]
+
+The tech sector's dominance in the Bay Area is internationally recognized and continues to attract new businesses and young entrepreneurs from all over the globe.[191] San Francisco is now widely considered the most important city in the world for new technology startups.[192] A recent high of 7 billion dollars in venture capital was invested in the region.[191] These startup companies hire a high concentration of well educated individuals looking to work in the tech industry, and creates a city population of highly concentrated levels of education. Over 50% of San Franciscans have a 4-year university degree, ranking the city among the highest levels of education in the country and world.[190]
+
+Tourism is one of the city's largest private-sector industries, accounting for more than one out of seven jobs in the city.[172][193] The city's frequent portrayal in music, film, and popular culture has made the city and its landmarks recognizable worldwide. In 2016, it attracted the fifth-highest number of foreign tourists of any city in the United States.[194] More than 25 million visitors arrived in San Francisco in 2016, adding US$9.96 billion to the economy.[195]
+With a large hotel infrastructure and a world-class convention facility in the Moscone Center, San Francisco is a popular destination for annual conventions and conferences.[196]
+
+Some of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco noted by the Travel Channel include the Golden Gate Bridge and Alamo Square Park, which is home to the famous "Painted Ladies". Both of these locations were often used as landscape shots for the hit American sitcom Full House. There is also Lombard Street, known for its "crookedness" and extensive views. Tourists also visit Pier 39, which offers dining, shopping, entertainment, and views of the bay, sun-bathing seals, and the famous Alcatraz Island.[197]
+
+San Francisco also offers tourists cultural and unique nightlife in its neighborhoods.[198]
+
+The new Terminal Project at Pier 27 opened September 25, 2014 as a replacement for the old Pier 35.[199] Itineraries from San Francisco usually include round trip cruises to Alaska and Mexico.
+
+A heightened interest in conventioneering in San Francisco, marked by the establishment of convention centers such as Yerba Buena, acted as a feeder into the local tourist economy and resulted in an increase in the hotel industry: "In 1959, the city had fewer than thirty-three hundred first-class hotel rooms; by 1970, the number was nine thousand; and by 1999, there were more than thirty thousand."[200] The commodification of the Castro District has contributed to San Francisco's tourist economy.[201]
+
+Although the Financial District, Union Square, and Fisherman's Wharf are well known around the world, San Francisco is also characterized by its numerous culturally rich streetscapes featuring mixed-use neighborhoods anchored around central commercial corridors to which residents and visitors alike can walk. Because of these characteristics, San Francisco is ranked the second "most walkable" city in the United States by Walkscore.com.[202] Many neighborhoods feature a mix of businesses, restaurants and venues that cater to both the daily needs of local residents while also serving many visitors and tourists. Some neighborhoods are dotted with boutiques, cafés and nightlife such as Union Street in Cow Hollow, 24th Street in Noe Valley, Valencia Street in the Mission, Grant Avenue in North Beach, and Irving Street in the Inner Sunset. This approach especially has influenced the continuing South of Market neighborhood redevelopment with businesses and neighborhood services rising alongside high-rise residences.[203]
+
+Since the 1990s, the demand for skilled information technology workers from local startups and nearby Silicon Valley has attracted white-collar workers from all over the world and created a high standard of living in San Francisco.[204] Many neighborhoods that were once blue-collar, middle, and lower class have been gentrifying, as many of the city's traditional business and industrial districts have experienced a renaissance driven by the redevelopment of the Embarcadero, including the neighborhoods South Beach and Mission Bay. The city's property values and household income have risen to among the highest in the nation,[205][206][207] creating a large and upscale restaurant, retail, and entertainment scene. According to a 2014 quality of life survey of global cities, San Francisco has the highest quality of living of any U.S. city.[208] However, due to the exceptionally high cost of living, many of the city's middle and lower-class families have been leaving the city for the outer suburbs of the Bay Area, or for California's Central Valley.[209] By June 2, 2015, the median rent was reported to be as high as $4,225.[210] The high cost of living is due in part to restrictive planning laws which limit new residential construction.[211]
+
+The international character that San Francisco has enjoyed since its founding is continued today by large numbers of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. With 39% of its residents born overseas,[184] San Francisco has numerous neighborhoods filled with businesses and civic institutions catering to new arrivals. In particular, the arrival of many ethnic Chinese, which accelerated beginning in the 1970s, has complemented the long-established community historically based in Chinatown throughout the city and has transformed the annual Chinese New Year Parade into the largest event of its kind in its hemisphere.[212][213]
+
+With the arrival of the "beat" writers and artists of the 1950s and societal changes culminating in the Summer of Love in the Haight-Ashbury district during the 1960s, San Francisco became a center of liberal activism and of the counterculture that arose at that time. The Democrats and to a lesser extent the Green Party have dominated city politics since the late 1970s, after the last serious Republican challenger for city office lost the 1975 mayoral election by a narrow margin. San Francisco has not voted more than 20% for a Republican presidential or senatorial candidate since 1988.[214] In 2007, the city expanded its Medicaid and other indigent medical programs into the Healthy San Francisco program,[215] which subsidizes certain medical services for eligible residents.[216][217][218]
+
+San Francisco also has had a very active environmental community. Starting with the founding of the Sierra Club in 1892 to the establishment of the non-profit Friends of the Urban Forest in 1981, San Francisco has been at the forefront of many global discussions regarding the environment.[219][220] The 1980 San Francisco Recycling Program was one of the earliest curbside recycling programs.[221] The city's GoSolarSF incentive promotes solar installations and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is rolling out the CleanPowerSF program to sell electricity from local renewable sources.[222][223] SF Greasecycle is a program to recycle used cooking oil for conversion to biodiesel.[224]
+
+The Sunset Reservoir Solar Project, completed in 2010, installed 24,000 solar panels on the roof of the reservoir. The 5-megawatt plant more than tripled the city's 2-megawatt solar generation capacity when it opened in December 2010.[225][226]
+
+San Francisco has long had an LGBT-friendly history. It was home to the first lesbian-rights organization in the United States, Daughters of Bilitis; the first openly gay person to run for public office in the United States, José Sarria; the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk; the first openly lesbian judge appointed in the U.S., Mary C. Morgan; and the first transgender police commissioner, Theresa Sparks. The city's large gay population has created and sustained a politically and culturally active community over many decades, developing a powerful presence in San Francisco's civic life. Survey data released in 2015 by Gallup place the proportion of the San Francisco metro area at 6.2%, which is the highest such proportion observed of the 50 most populous metropolitan areas as measured by the polling organization.[227]
+
+One of the most popular destinations for gay tourists internationally, the city hosts San Francisco Pride, one of the largest and oldest pride parades. San Francisco Pride events have been held continuously since 1972. The events are themed and a new theme is created each year. In 2013, over 1.5 million people attended, around 500,000 more than the previous year.[228]
+
+The Folsom Street Fair (FSF) is an annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair that is held in September, capping San Francisco's "Leather Pride Week".[229] It started in 1984 and is California's third-largest single-day, outdoor spectator event and the world's largest leather event and showcase for BDSM products and culture.[230]
+
+The major daily newspaper in San Francisco is the San Francisco Chronicle, which is currently Northern California's most widely circulated newspaper.[231] The Chronicle is most famous for a former columnist, the late Herb Caen, whose daily musings attracted critical acclaim and represented the "voice of San Francisco". The San Francisco Examiner, once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire and the home of Ambrose Bierce, declined in circulation over the years and now takes the form of a free daily tabloid, under new ownership.[232][233] Sing Tao Daily claims to be the largest of several Chinese language dailies that serve the Bay Area.[234] SF Weekly is the city's alternative weekly newspaper. San Francisco and 7x7 are major glossy magazines about San Francisco. The national newsmagazine Mother Jones is also based in San Francisco.
+
+The San Francisco Bay Area is the sixth-largest television market[235] and the fourth-largest radio market[236] in the U.S. The city's oldest radio station, KCBS, began as an experimental station in San Jose in 1909, before the beginning of commercial broadcasting. KALW was the city's first FM radio station when it signed on the air in 1941. The city's first television station was KPIX, which began broadcasting in 1948.
+
+All major U.S. television networks have affiliates serving the region, with most of them based in the city. CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Al Jazeera America, Russia Today, and CCTV America also have regional news bureaus in San Francisco. Bloomberg West was launched in 2011 from a studio on the Embarcadero and CNBC broadcasts from One Market Plaza since 2015. ESPN uses the local ABC studio for their broadcasting. The regional sports network, Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and its sister station Comcast SportsNet California, are both located in San Francisco. The Pac-12 Network is also based in San Francisco.
+
+Public broadcasting outlets include both a television station and a radio station, both broadcasting under the call letters KQED from a facility near the Potrero Hill neighborhood. KQED-FM is the most-listened-to National Public Radio affiliate in the country.[237] Another local broadcaster, KPOO, is an independent, African-American owned and operated noncommercial radio station established in 1971.[238] CNET, founded 1994, and Salon.com, 1995, are based in San Francisco.
+
+San Francisco-based inventors made important contributions to modern media. During the 1870s, Eadweard Muybridge began recording motion photographically and invented a zoopraxiscope with which to view his recordings. These were the first motion pictures. Then in 1927, Philo Farnsworth's image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image. This was the first television.
+
+San Francisco has several nicknames, including "The City by the Bay", "Golden Gate City",[239] "Frisco", "SF", "San Fran", and "Fog City", as well as older ones like "The City that Knows How", "Baghdad by the Bay", "The Paris of the West", or, as locals call it, "The City".[1] San Fran and Frisco are only used outside of San Francisco itself and disparaged by residents.[240][241][242]
+
+San Francisco's War Memorial and Performing Arts Center hosts some of the most enduring performing-arts companies in the country. The War Memorial Opera House houses the San Francisco Opera, the second-largest opera company in North America[243] as well as the San Francisco Ballet, while the San Francisco Symphony plays in Davies Symphony Hall. Opened in 2013, the SFJAZZ Center hosts jazz performances year round.
+
+The Fillmore is a music venue located in the Western Addition. It is the second incarnation of the historic venue that gained fame in the 1960s, housing the stage where now-famous musicians such as the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin and Jefferson Airplane first performed, fostering the San Francisco Sound.
+
+San Francisco has a large number of theaters and live performance venues. Local theater companies have been noted for risk taking and innovation.[244] The Tony Award-winning non-profit American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a member of the national League of Resident Theatres. Other local winners of the Regional Theatre Tony Award include the San Francisco Mime Troupe.[245]
+San Francisco theaters frequently host pre-Broadway engagements and tryout runs,[246] and some original San Francisco productions have later moved to Broadway.[247]
+
+The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) houses 20th century and contemporary works of art. It moved to its current building in the South of Market neighborhood in 1995 and attracted more than 600,000 visitors annually.[248] SFMOMA closed for renovation and expansion in 2013. The museum reopened on May 14, 2016 with an addition, designed by Snøhetta, that has doubled the museum's size.[249]
+
+The Palace of the Legion of Honor holds primarily European antiquities and works of art at its Lincoln Park building modeled after its Parisian namesake. The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park features American decorative pieces and anthropological holdings from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, while Asian art is housed in the Asian Art Museum. Opposite the de Young stands the California Academy of Sciences, a natural history museum that also hosts the Morrison Planetarium and Steinhart Aquarium. Located on Pier 15 on the Embarcadero, the Exploratorium is an interactive science museum. The Contemporary Jewish Museum is a non-collecting institution that hosts a broad array of temporary exhibitions. On Nob Hill, the Cable Car Museum is a working museum featuring the cable car power house, which drives the cables.[250]
+
+Several of San Francisco's parks and nearly all of its beaches form part of the regional Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States with over 13 million visitors a year. Among the GGNRA's attractions within the city are Ocean Beach, which runs along the Pacific Ocean shoreline and is frequented by a vibrant surfing community, and Baker Beach, which is located in a cove west of the Golden Gate and part of the Presidio, a former military base. Also within the Presidio is Crissy Field, a former airfield that was restored to its natural salt marsh ecosystem. The GGNRA also administers Fort Funston, Lands End, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz. The National Park Service separately administers the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park – a fleet of historic ships and waterfront property around Aquatic Park.
+
+There are more than 220 parks maintained by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department.[251] The largest and best-known city park is Golden Gate Park,[252] which stretches from the center of the city west to the Pacific Ocean. Once covered in native grasses and sand dunes, the park was conceived in the 1860s and was created by the extensive planting of thousands of non-native trees and plants. The large park is rich with cultural and natural attractions such as the Conservatory of Flowers, Japanese Tea Garden and San Francisco Botanical Garden. Lake Merced is a fresh-water lake surrounded by parkland and near the San Francisco Zoo, a city-owned park that houses more than 250 animal species, many of which are endangered.[253] The only park managed by the California State Park system located principally in San Francisco, Candlestick Point was the state's first urban recreation area.[254]
+
+San Francisco is the first city in the U.S. to have a park within a 10-Minute Walk of every resident.[255][256] It also ranks fifth in the U.S. for park access and quality in the 2018 ParkScore ranking of the top 100 park systems across the United States, according to the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.[257]
+
+Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants have played in San Francisco since moving from New York in 1958. The Giants play at Oracle Park, which opened in 2000.[258] The Giants won World Series titles in 2010, 2012, and in 2014. The Giants have boasted such stars as Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Barry Bonds. In 2012, San Francisco was ranked No. 1 in a study that examined which U.S. metro areas have produced the most Major Leaguers since 1920.[259]
+
+The San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) were the longest-tenured major professional sports franchise in the city until moving in 2013. The team began play in 1946 as an All-America Football Conference (AAFC) league charter member, moved to the NFL in 1950 and into Candlestick Park in 1971. The team began playing its home games at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara in 2014, closer to the city of San Jose.[260][261] The 49ers won five Super Bowl titles in the 1980s and 1990s.
+
+The San Francisco Warriors played in the NBA from 1962–1971, before being renamed the Golden State Warriors prior to the 1971–1972 season in an attempt to present the team as a representation of the whole state of California.[262] The Warrior's arena, Chase Center, is currently located in San Francisco.[263] They have won 6 championships,[264] including three of the last five.
+
+At the collegiate level, the San Francisco Dons compete in NCAA Division I. Bill Russell led the Don's basketball team to NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956. There is also the San Francisco State Gators, who compete in NCAA Division II.[265] Oracle Park hosted the annual Fight Hunger Bowl college football game from 2002 through 2013 before it moved to Santa Clara.
+
+The Bay to Breakers footrace, held annually since 1912, is best known for colorful costumes and a celebratory community spirit.[266] The San Francisco Marathon attracts more than 21,000 participants.[267] The Escape from Alcatraz triathlon has, since 1980, attracted 2,000 top professional and amateur triathletes for its annual race.[268] The Olympic Club, founded in 1860, is the oldest athletic club in the United States. Its private golf course has hosted the U.S. Open on five occasions. San Francisco hosted the 2013 America's Cup yacht racing competition.[269]
+
+With an ideal climate for outdoor activities, San Francisco has ample resources and opportunities for amateur and participatory sports and recreation. There are more than 200 miles (320 km) of bicycle paths, lanes and bike routes in the city.[270]
+San Francisco residents have often ranked among the fittest in the country.[271] Golden Gate Park has miles of paved and unpaved running trails as well as a golf course and disc golf course.
+Boating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing are among the popular activities on San Francisco Bay, and the city maintains a yacht harbor in the Marina District.
+
+San Francisco—officially known as the City and County of San Francisco—is a consolidated city-county, a status it has held since the 1856 secession of what is now San Mateo County.[34] It is the only such consolidation in California.[272] The mayor is also the county executive, and the county Board of Supervisors acts as the city council. The government of San Francisco is a charter city and is constituted of two co-equal branches: the executive branch is headed by the mayor and includes other citywide elected and appointed officials as well as the civil service; the 11-member Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch, is headed by a president and is responsible for passing laws and budgets, though San Franciscans also make use of direct ballot initiatives to pass legislation.[273]
+
+The members of the Board of Supervisors are elected as representatives of specific districts within the city.[274] Upon the death or resignation of mayor, the President of the Board of Supervisors becomes acting mayor until the full Board elects an interim replacement for the remainder of the term. In 1978, Dianne Feinstein assumed the office following the assassination of George Moscone and was later selected by the board to finish the term. In 2011, Ed Lee was selected by the board to finish the term of Gavin Newsom, who resigned to take office as Lieutenant Governor of California.[275] Lee (who won 2 elections to remain mayor) was temporarily replaced by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed after he died on December 12, 2017.  Supervisor Mark Farrell was appointed by the Board of Supervisors to finish Lee's term on January 23, 2018.
+
+Because of its unique city-county status, the local government is able to exercise jurisdiction over certain property outside city limits. San Francisco International Airport, though located in San Mateo County, is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco's largest jail complex (County Jail No. 5) is located in San Mateo County, in an unincorporated area adjacent to San Bruno. San Francisco was also granted a perpetual leasehold over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and watershed in Yosemite National Park by the Raker Act in 1913.[272]
+
+San Francisco serves as the regional hub for many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the U.S. Mint. Until decommissioning in the early 1990s, the city had major military installations at the Presidio, Treasure Island, and Hunters Point—a legacy still reflected in the annual celebration of Fleet Week. The State of California uses San Francisco as the home of the state supreme court and other state agencies. Foreign governments maintain more than seventy consulates in San Francisco.[276]
+
+The municipal budget for fiscal year 2015–16 was $8.99 billion,[277] and is one of the largest city budgets in the United States.[278] The City of San Francisco spends more per resident than any city other than Washington D.C, over $10,000 in FY 2015–2016.[278] The city employs around 27,000 workers.[279]
+
+In the United States House of Representatives, San Francisco is split between California's 12th and 14th districts.
+
+The following table includes the number of incidents reported and the rate per 1,000 persons for each type of offense.
+
+In 2011, 50 murders were reported, which is 6.1 per 100,000 people.[281] There were about 134 rapes, 3,142 robberies, and about 2,139 assaults. There were about 4,469 burglaries, 25,100 thefts, and 4,210 motor vehicle thefts.[282] The Tenderloin area has the highest crime rate in San Francisco: 70% of the city's violent crimes, and around one-fourth of the city's murders, occur in this neighborhood. The Tenderloin also sees high rates of drug abuse, gang violence, and prostitution.[283] Another area with high crime rates is the Bayview-Hunters Point area. In the first six months of 2015 there were 25 murders compared to 14 in the first six months of 2014. However, the murder rate is still much lower than in past decades.[284] That rate, though, did rise again by the close of 2016.  According to the San Francisco Police Department, there were 59 murders in the city in 2016, an annual total that marked a 13.5% increase in the number of homicides (52) from 2015.[285]
+
+During the first half of 2018, human feces on San Francisco sidewalks were the second-most-frequent complaint of city residents, with about 65 calls per day. The city has formed a "poop patrol" to attempt to combat the problem.[286]
+
+Several street gangs operate in the city, including MS-13,[287] the Sureños and Norteños in the Mission District.[288] African-American street gangs familiar in other cities, including the Crips, have struggled to establish footholds in San Francisco,[289] while police and prosecutors have been accused of liberally labeling young African-American males as gang members.[290] Criminal gangs with shotcallers in China, including Triad groups such as the Wo Hop To, have been reported active in San Francisco.[291] In 1977, an ongoing rivalry between two Chinese gangs led to a shooting attack at the Golden Dragon restaurant in Chinatown, which left 5 people dead and 11 wounded. None of the victims in this attack were gang members. Five members of the Joe Boys gang were arrested and convicted of the crime.[292] In 1990, a gang-related shooting killed one man and wounded six others outside a nightclub near Chinatown.[293] In 1998, six teenagers were shot and wounded at the Chinese Playground; a 16-year-old boy was subsequently arrested.[294]
+
+The San Francisco Police Department was founded in 1849.[295] The portions of Golden Gate National Recreation Area located within the city, including the Presidio and Ocean Beach, are patrolled by the United States Park Police.
+
+The San Francisco Fire Department provides both fire suppression and emergency medical services to the city.[296]
+
+The city operates 22 public "pit stop" toilets.[286]
+
+To prevent the spread of diseases from needles, the city gives away 400,000 free syringes every month.  Only 60% are ever returned.  Some end up as potentially dangerous litter.[297]
+
+San Francisco participates in the Sister Cities program.[298] A total of 41 consulates general and 23 honorary consulates have offices in the San Francisco Bay Area.[299]
+
+The University of California, San Francisco is the sole campus of the University of California system entirely dedicated to graduate education in health and biomedical sciences. It is ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States[300] and operates the UCSF Medical Center, which ranks as the number one hospital in California and the number 5 in the country.[301] UCSF is a major local employer, second in size only to the city and county government.[302][303][304] A 43-acre (17 ha) Mission Bay campus was opened in 2003, complementing its original facility in Parnassus Heights. It contains research space and facilities to foster biotechnology and life sciences entrepreneurship and will double the size of UCSF's research enterprise.[305] All in all, UCSF operates more than 20 facilities across San Francisco.[306] The University of California, Hastings College of the Law, founded in Civic Center in 1878, is the oldest law school in California and claims more judges on the state bench than any other institution.[307]
+San Francisco's two University of California institutions have recently formed an official affiliation in the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy.[308]
+
+San Francisco State University is part of the California State University system and is located near Lake Merced.[309] The school has approximately 30,000 students and awards undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees in more than 100 disciplines.[309] The City College of San Francisco, with its main facility in the Ingleside district, is one of the largest two-year community colleges in the country. It has an enrollment of about 100,000 students and offers an extensive continuing education program.[310]
+
+Founded in 1855, the University of San Francisco, a private Jesuit university located on Lone Mountain, is the oldest institution of higher education in San Francisco and one of the oldest universities established west of the Mississippi River.[311] Golden Gate University is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational university formed in 1901 and located in the Financial District.
+With an enrollment of 13,000 students, the Academy of Art University is the largest institute of art and design in the nation.[312] Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute is the oldest art school west of the Mississippi.[313] The California College of the Arts, located north of Potrero Hill, has programs in architecture, fine arts, design, and writing.[314] The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the only independent music school on the West Coast, grants degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition, and conducting. The California Culinary Academy, associated with the Le Cordon Bleu program, offers programs in the culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and hospitality and restaurant management.
+California Institute of Integral Studies, founded in 1968, offers a variety of graduate programs in its Schools of Professional Psychology & Health, and Consciousness and Transformation.
+
+Public schools are run by the San Francisco Unified School District as well as the State Board of Education for some charter schools. Lowell High School, the oldest public high school in the U.S. west of the Mississippi,[315] and the smaller School of the Arts High School are two of San Francisco's magnet schools at the secondary level. Public school students attend schools based on an assignment system rather than neighborhood proximity.[316]
+
+Just under 30% of the city's school-age population attends one of San Francisco's more than 100 private or parochial schools, compared to a 10% rate nationwide.[317] Nearly 40 of those schools are Catholic schools managed by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.[318]
+
+San Francisco has nearly 300 preschool programs primarily operated by Head Start, San Francisco Unified School District, private for-profit, private non-profit and family child care providers.[319] All 4-year-old children living in San Francisco are offered universal access to preschool through the Preschool for All program.[320]
+
+Due to its unique geography, and the freeway revolts of the late 1950s,[321]
+Interstate 80 begins at the approach to the Bay Bridge and is the only direct automobile link to the East Bay. U.S. Route 101 connects to the western terminus of Interstate 80 and provides access to the south of the city along San Francisco Bay toward Silicon Valley. Northward, the routing for U.S. 101 uses arterial streets to connect to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only direct automobile link to Marin County and the North Bay.
+
+As part of the retrofitting of the Golden Gate Bridge and installation of a suicide barrier, starting in 2019 the railings on the west side of the pedestrian walkway were replaced with thinner, more flexible slats in order to improve the bridge's aerodynamic tolerance of high wind to 100 mph (161 km/h). Starting in June 2020, reports were received of a loud hum produced by the new railing slats, heard across the city when a strong west wind was blowing.[322]
+
+State Route 1 also enters San Francisco from the north via the Golden Gate Bridge and bisects the city as the 19th Avenue arterial thoroughfare, joining with Interstate 280 at the city's southern border. Interstate 280 continues south from San Francisco, and also turns to the east along the southern edge of the city, terminating just south of the Bay Bridge in the South of Market neighborhood. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, city leaders demolished the Embarcadero Freeway and a portion of the Central Freeway, converting them into street-level boulevards.[321]
+
+State Route 35 enters the city from the south as Skyline Boulevard and terminates at its intersection with Highway 1. State Route 82 enters San Francisco from the south as Mission Street, and terminates shortly thereafter at its junction with 280. The western terminus of the historic transcontinental Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, is in San Francisco's Lincoln Park.
+
+32% of San Francisco residents use public transportation for their daily commute to work, ranking it first on the West Coast and third overall in the United States.[323] The San Francisco Municipal Railway, primarily known as Muni, is the primary public transit system of San Francisco. Muni is the seventh-largest transit system in the United States, with 210,848,310 rides in 2006.[324] The system operates a combined light rail and subway system, the Muni Metro, as well as large bus and trolley coach networks.[325] Additionally, it runs a historic streetcar line, which runs on Market Street from Castro Street to Fisherman's Wharf.[325] It also operates the famous cable cars,[325] which have been designated as a National Historic Landmark and are a major tourist attraction.[326]
+
+Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a regional Rapid Transit system, connects San Francisco with the East Bay through the underwater Transbay Tube. The line runs under Market Street to Civic Center where it turns south to the Mission District, the southern part of the city, and through northern San Mateo County, to the San Francisco International Airport, and Millbrae.[325]
+
+Another commuter rail system, Caltrain, runs from San Francisco along the San Francisco Peninsula to San Jose.[325] Historically, trains operated by Southern Pacific Lines ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles, via Palo Alto and San Jose.
+
+Amtrak California Thruway Motorcoach runs a shuttle bus from three locations in San Francisco to its station across the bay in Emeryville.[327]  Additionally, BART offers connections to San Francisco from Amtrak's stations in Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond, and Caltrain offers connections in San Jose and Santa Clara. Thruway service also runs south to San Luis Obispo with connection to the Pacific Surfliner.
+
+San Francisco Bay Ferry operates from the Ferry Building and Pier 39 to points in Oakland, Alameda, Bay Farm Island, South San Francisco, and north to Vallejo in Solano County.[328] The Golden Gate Ferry is the other ferry operator with service between San Francisco and Marin County.[329] SolTrans runs supplemental bus service between the Ferry Building and Vallejo.
+
+San Francisco was an early adopter of carsharing in America. The non-profit City CarShare opened in 2001.[330] Zipcar closely followed.[331]
+
+To accommodate the large amount of San Francisco citizens who commute to the Silicon Valley daily, companies like Google and Apple have begun to provide private bus transportation for their employees, from San Francisco locations to the tech start-up hotspot. These buses have quickly become a heated topic of debate within the city, as protesters claim they block bus lanes and delay public buses.[332]
+
+Though located 13 miles (21 km) south of downtown in unincorporated San Mateo County, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. SFO is a hub for United Airlines[333] and Alaska Airlines.[334] SFO is a major international gateway to Asia and Europe, with the largest international terminal in North America.[335] In 2011, SFO was the eighth-busiest airport in the U.S. and the 22nd-busiest in the world, handling over 40.9 million passengers.[336]
+
+Located across the bay, Oakland International Airport is a popular, low-cost alternative to SFO. Geographically, Oakland Airport is approximately the same distance from downtown San Francisco as SFO, but due to its location across San Francisco Bay, it is greater driving distance from San Francisco.
+
+Cycling is a popular mode of transportation in San Francisco, with 75,000 residents commuting by bicycle each day.[337] Bay Wheels, previously named Bay Area Bike Share at inception, launched in August 2013 with 700 bikes in downtown San Francisco, selected cities in the East Bay, and San Jose. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Bay Area Air Quality Management District are responsible for the operation with management provided by Motivate.[338] A major expansion started in 2017, along with a rebranding as Ford GoBike; the company received its current name in 2019.[339]
+Pedestrian traffic is also widespread. In 2015, Walk Score ranked San Francisco the second-most walkable city in the United States.[340][341][342]
+
+San Francisco has significantly higher rates of pedestrian and bicyclist traffic deaths than the United States on average. In 2013, 21 pedestrians were killed in vehicle collisions, the highest since 2001,[343] which is 2.5 deaths per 100,000 population – 70% higher than the national average of 1.5.[344]
+
+Cycling is becoming increasingly popular in the city. Annual bicycle counts conducted by the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) in 2010 showed the number of cyclists at 33 locations had increased 58% from the 2006 baseline counts.[345] In 2008, the MTA estimated that about 128,000 trips were made by bicycle each day in the city, or 6% of total trips.[346] Since 2002, improvements in cycling infrastructure such as additional bike lanes and parking racks have made cycling in San Francisco safer and more convenient.[347] Since 2006, San Francisco has received a Bicycle Friendly Community status of "Gold" from the League of American Bicyclists.[348]

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+
+
+Blood is a body fluid in humans and other animals that delivers necessary substances such as nutrients and oxygen to the cells and transports metabolic waste products away from those same cells.[1]
+
+In vertebrates, it is composed of blood cells suspended in blood plasma. Plasma, which constitutes 55% of blood fluid, is mostly water (92% by volume),[2] and contains proteins, glucose, mineral ions, hormones, carbon dioxide (plasma being the main medium for excretory product transportation), and blood cells themselves. Albumin is the main protein in plasma, and it functions to regulate the colloidal osmotic pressure of blood. The blood cells are mainly red blood cells (also called RBCs or erythrocytes), white blood cells (also called WBCs or leukocytes) and platelets (also called thrombocytes). The most abundant cells in vertebrate blood are red blood cells. These contain hemoglobin, an iron-containing protein, which facilitates oxygen transport by reversibly binding to this respiratory gas and greatly increasing its solubility in blood. In contrast, carbon dioxide is mostly transported extracellularly as bicarbonate ion transported in plasma.
+
+Vertebrate blood is bright red when its hemoglobin is oxygenated and dark red when it is deoxygenated. Some animals, such as crustaceans and mollusks, use hemocyanin to carry oxygen, instead of hemoglobin. Insects and some mollusks use a fluid called hemolymph instead of blood, the difference being that hemolymph is not contained in a closed circulatory system. In most insects, this "blood" does not contain oxygen-carrying molecules such as hemoglobin because their bodies are small enough for their tracheal system to suffice for supplying oxygen.
+
+Jawed vertebrates have an adaptive immune system, based largely on white blood cells. White blood cells help to resist infections and parasites. Platelets are important in the clotting of blood. Arthropods, using hemolymph, have hemocytes as part of their immune system.
+
+Blood is circulated around the body through blood vessels by the pumping action of the heart. In animals with lungs, arterial blood carries oxygen from inhaled air to the tissues of the body, and venous blood carries carbon dioxide, a waste product of metabolism produced by cells, from the tissues to the lungs to be exhaled.
+
+Medical terms related to blood often begin with hemo- or hemato- (also spelled haemo- and haemato-) from the Greek word αἷμα (haima) for "blood". In terms of anatomy and histology, blood is considered a specialized form of connective tissue, given its origin in the bones and the presence of potential molecular fibers in the form of fibrinogen.
+
+Blood performs many important functions within the body, including:
+
+Blood accounts for 7% of the human body weight,[3][4] with an average density around 1060 kg/m3, very close to pure water's density of 1000 kg/m3.[5] The average adult has a blood volume of roughly 5 litres (11 US pt) or 1.3 gallons,[4] which is composed of plasma and several kinds of cells. These blood cells (which are also called corpuscles or "formed elements") consist of erythrocytes (red blood cells, RBCs), leukocytes (white blood cells), and thrombocytes (platelets). By volume, the red blood cells constitute about 45% of whole blood, the plasma about 54.3%, and white cells about 0.7%.
+
+Whole blood (plasma and cells) exhibits non-Newtonian fluid dynamics.[specify]
+
+Human blood fractioned by centrifugation: Plasma (upper, yellow layer), buffy coat (middle, thin white layer) and erythrocyte layer (bottom, red layer) can be seen.
+
+Blood circulation: Red = oxygenated, blue = deoxygenated
+
+Illustration depicting formed elements of blood
+
+Two tubes of EDTA-anticoagulated blood. Left tube: after standing, the RBCs have settled at the bottom of the tube. Right tube: Freshly drawn blood
+
+One microliter of blood contains:
+
+45 ± 7 (38–52%) for males
+42 ± 5 (37–47%) for females
+
+Oxygenated: 98–99%
+Deoxygenated: 75%
+
+About 55% of blood is blood plasma, a fluid that is the blood's liquid medium, which by itself is straw-yellow in color. The blood plasma volume totals of 2.7–3.0 liters (2.8–3.2 quarts) in an average human. It is essentially an aqueous solution containing 92% water, 8% blood plasma proteins, and trace amounts of other materials. Plasma circulates dissolved nutrients, such as glucose, amino acids, and fatty acids (dissolved in the blood or bound to plasma proteins), and removes waste products, such as carbon dioxide, urea, and lactic acid.
+
+Other important components include:
+
+The term serum refers to plasma from which the clotting proteins have been removed. Most of the proteins remaining are albumin and immunoglobulins.
+
+Blood pH is regulated to stay within the narrow range of 7.35 to 7.45, making it slightly basic.[9][10] Blood that has a pH below 7.35 is too acidic, whereas blood pH above 7.45 is too basic. Blood pH, partial pressure of oxygen (pO2), partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2), and bicarbonate (HCO3−) are carefully regulated by a number of homeostatic mechanisms, which exert their influence principally through the respiratory system and the urinary system to control the acid-base balance and respiration. An arterial blood gas test measures these. Plasma also circulates hormones transmitting their messages to various tissues. The list of normal reference ranges for various blood electrolytes is extensive.
+
+Human blood is typical of that of mammals, although the precise details concerning cell numbers, size, protein structure, and so on, vary somewhat between species. In non-mammalian vertebrates, however, there are some key differences:[11]
+
+Blood is circulated around the body through blood vessels by the pumping action of the heart. In humans, blood is pumped from the strong left ventricle of the heart through arteries to peripheral tissues and returns to the right atrium of the heart through veins. It then enters the right ventricle and is pumped through the pulmonary artery to the lungs and returns to the left atrium through the pulmonary veins. Blood then enters the left ventricle to be circulated again. Arterial blood carries oxygen from inhaled air to all of the cells of the body, and venous blood carries carbon dioxide, a waste product of metabolism by cells, to the lungs to be exhaled. However, one exception includes pulmonary arteries, which contain the most deoxygenated blood in the body, while the pulmonary veins contain oxygenated blood.
+
+Additional return flow may be generated by the movement of skeletal muscles, which can compress veins and push blood through the valves in veins toward the right atrium.
+
+The blood circulation was famously described by William Harvey in 1628.[12]
+
+In vertebrates, the various cells of blood are made in the bone marrow in a process called hematopoiesis, which includes erythropoiesis, the production of red blood cells; and myelopoiesis, the production of white blood cells and platelets. During childhood, almost every human bone produces red blood cells; as adults, red blood cell production is limited to the larger bones: the bodies of the vertebrae, the breastbone (sternum), the ribcage, the pelvic bones, and the bones of the upper arms and legs. In addition, during childhood, the thymus gland, found in the mediastinum, is an important source of T lymphocytes.[13]
+The proteinaceous component of blood (including clotting proteins) is produced predominantly by the liver, while hormones are produced by the endocrine glands and the watery fraction is regulated by the hypothalamus and maintained by the kidney.
+
+Healthy erythrocytes have a plasma life of about 120 days before they are degraded by the spleen, and the Kupffer cells in the liver. The liver also clears some proteins, lipids, and amino acids. The kidney actively secretes waste products into the urine.
+
+About 98.5% [14] of the oxygen in a sample of arterial blood in a healthy human breathing air at sea-level pressure is chemically combined with the hemoglobin. About 1.5% is physically dissolved in the other blood liquids and not connected to hemoglobin. The hemoglobin molecule is the primary transporter of oxygen in mammals and many other species (for exceptions, see below). Hemoglobin has an oxygen binding capacity between 1.36 and 1.40 ml O2 per gram hemoglobin,[15] which increases the total blood oxygen capacity seventyfold,[16] compared to if oxygen solely were carried by its solubility of 0.03 ml O2 per liter blood per mm Hg partial pressure of oxygen (about 100 mm Hg in arteries).[16]
+
+With the exception of pulmonary and umbilical arteries and their corresponding veins, arteries carry oxygenated blood away from the heart and deliver it to the body via arterioles and capillaries, where the oxygen is consumed; afterwards, venules and veins carry deoxygenated blood back to the heart.
+
+Under normal conditions in adult humans at rest, hemoglobin in blood leaving the lungs is about 98–99% saturated with oxygen, achieving an oxygen delivery between 950 and 1150 ml/min[17] to the body. In a healthy adult at rest, oxygen consumption is approximately 200–250 ml/min,[17] and deoxygenated blood returning to the lungs is still roughly 75%[18][19] (70 to 78%)[17] saturated. Increased oxygen consumption during sustained exercise reduces the oxygen saturation of venous blood, which can reach less than 15% in a trained athlete; although breathing rate and blood flow increase to compensate, oxygen saturation in arterial blood can drop to 95% or less under these conditions.[20] Oxygen saturation this low is considered dangerous in an individual at rest (for instance, during surgery under anesthesia). Sustained hypoxia (oxygenation less than 90%), is dangerous to health, and severe hypoxia (saturations less than 30%) may be rapidly fatal.[21]
+
+A fetus, receiving oxygen via the placenta, is exposed to much lower oxygen pressures (about 21% of the level found in an adult's lungs), so fetuses produce another form of hemoglobin with a much higher affinity for oxygen (hemoglobin F) to function under these conditions.[22]
+
+CO2 is carried in blood in three different ways. (The exact percentages vary depending whether it is arterial or venous blood). Most of it (about 70%) is converted to bicarbonate ions HCO−3 by the enzyme carbonic anhydrase in the red blood cells by the reaction CO2 + H2O → H2CO3 → H+ + HCO−3; about 7% is dissolved in the plasma; and about 23% is bound to hemoglobin as carbamino compounds.[23][24]
+
+Hemoglobin, the main oxygen-carrying molecule in red blood cells, carries both oxygen and carbon dioxide. However, the CO2 bound to hemoglobin does not bind to the same site as oxygen. Instead, it combines with the N-terminal groups on the four globin chains. However, because of allosteric effects on the hemoglobin molecule, the binding of CO2 decreases the amount of oxygen that is bound for a given partial pressure of oxygen. The decreased binding to carbon dioxide in the blood due to increased oxygen levels is known as the Haldane effect, and is important in the transport of carbon dioxide from the tissues to the lungs. A rise in the partial pressure of CO2 or a lower pH will cause offloading of oxygen from hemoglobin, which is known as the Bohr effect.
+
+Some oxyhemoglobin loses oxygen and becomes deoxyhemoglobin. Deoxyhemoglobin binds most of the hydrogen ions as it has a much greater affinity for more hydrogen than does oxyhemoglobin.
+
+In mammals, blood is in equilibrium with lymph, which is continuously formed in tissues from blood by capillary ultrafiltration. Lymph is collected by a system of small lymphatic vessels and directed to the thoracic duct, which drains into the left subclavian vein, where lymph rejoins the systemic blood circulation.
+
+Blood circulation transports heat throughout the body, and adjustments to this flow are an important part of thermoregulation. Increasing blood flow to the surface (e.g., during warm weather or strenuous exercise) causes warmer skin, resulting in faster heat loss. In contrast, when the external temperature is low, blood flow to the extremities and surface of the skin is reduced and to prevent heat loss and is circulated to the important organs of the body, preferentially.
+
+Rate of blood flow varies greatly between different organs. Liver has the most abundant blood supply with an approximate flow of 1350 ml/min. Kidney and brain are the second and the third most supplied organs, with 1100 ml/min and ~700 ml/min, respectively.[25]
+
+Relative rates of blood flow per 100 g of tissue are different, with kidney, adrenal gland and thyroid being the first, second and third most supplied tissues, respectively.[25]
+
+The restriction of blood flow can also be used in specialized tissues to cause engorgement, resulting in an erection of that tissue; examples are the erectile tissue in the penis and clitoris.
+
+Another example of a hydraulic function is the jumping spider, in which blood forced into the legs under pressure causes them to straighten for a powerful jump, without the need for bulky muscular legs.[26]
+
+In insects, the blood (more properly called hemolymph) is not involved in the transport of oxygen. (Openings called tracheae allow oxygen from the air to diffuse directly to the tissues.) Insect blood moves nutrients to the tissues and removes waste products in an open system.
+
+Other invertebrates use respiratory proteins to increase the oxygen-carrying capacity. Hemoglobin is the most common respiratory protein found in nature. Hemocyanin (blue) contains copper and is found in crustaceans and mollusks. It is thought that tunicates (sea squirts) might use vanabins (proteins containing vanadium) for respiratory pigment (bright-green, blue, or orange).
+
+In many invertebrates, these oxygen-carrying proteins are freely soluble in the blood; in vertebrates they are contained in specialized red blood cells, allowing for a higher concentration of respiratory pigments without increasing viscosity or damaging blood filtering organs like the kidneys.
+
+Giant tube worms have unusual hemoglobins that allow them to live in extraordinary environments. These hemoglobins also carry sulfides normally fatal in other animals.
+
+The coloring matter of blood (hemochrome) is largely due to the protein in the blood responsible for oxygen transport. Different groups of organisms use different proteins.
+
+Hemoglobin is the principal determinant of the color of blood in vertebrates. Each molecule has four heme groups, and their interaction with various molecules alters the exact color. In vertebrates and other hemoglobin-using creatures, arterial blood and capillary blood are bright red, as oxygen imparts a strong red color to the heme group. Deoxygenated blood is a darker shade of red; this is present in veins, and can be seen during blood donation and when venous blood samples are taken. This is because the spectrum of light absorbed by hemoglobin differs between the oxygenated and deoxygenated states.[27]
+
+Blood in carbon monoxide poisoning is bright red, because carbon monoxide causes the formation of carboxyhemoglobin. In cyanide poisoning, the body cannot utilize oxygen, so the venous blood remains oxygenated, increasing the redness. There are some conditions affecting the heme groups present in hemoglobin that can make the skin appear blue – a symptom called cyanosis. If the heme is oxidized, methemoglobin, which is more brownish and cannot transport oxygen, is formed. In the rare condition sulfhemoglobinemia, arterial hemoglobin is partially oxygenated, and appears dark red with a bluish hue.
+
+Veins close to the surface of the skin appear blue for a variety of reasons. However, the factors that contribute to this alteration of color perception are related to the light-scattering properties of the skin and the processing of visual input by the visual cortex, rather than the actual color of the venous blood.[28]
+
+Skinks in the genus Prasinohaema have green blood due to a buildup of the waste product biliverdin.[29]
+
+The blood of most mollusks – including cephalopods and gastropods – as well as some arthropods, such as horseshoe crabs, is blue, as it contains the copper-containing protein hemocyanin at concentrations of about 50 grams per liter.[30] Hemocyanin is colorless when deoxygenated and dark blue when oxygenated. The blood in the circulation of these creatures, which generally live in cold environments with low oxygen tensions, is grey-white to pale yellow,[30] and it turns dark blue when exposed to the oxygen in the air, as seen when they bleed.[30] This is due to change in color of hemocyanin when it is oxidized.[30] Hemocyanin carries oxygen in extracellular fluid, which is in contrast to the intracellular oxygen transport in mammals by hemoglobin in RBCs.[30]
+
+The blood of most annelid worms and some marine polychaetes use chlorocruorin to transport oxygen. It is green in color in dilute solutions.[31]
+
+Hemerythrin is used for oxygen transport in the marine invertebrates sipunculids, priapulids, brachiopods, and the annelid worm, magelona. Hemerythrin is violet-pink when oxygenated.[31]
+
+The blood of some species of ascidians and tunicates, also known as sea squirts, contains proteins called vanadins. These proteins are based on vanadium, and give the creatures a concentration of vanadium in their bodies 100 times higher than the surrounding sea water. Unlike hemocyanin and hemoglobin, hemovanadin is not an oxygen carrier. When exposed to oxygen, however, vanadins turn a mustard yellow.
+
+Substances other than oxygen can bind to hemoglobin; in some cases this can cause irreversible damage to the body. Carbon monoxide, for example, is extremely dangerous when carried to the blood via the lungs by inhalation, because carbon monoxide irreversibly binds to hemoglobin to form carboxyhemoglobin, so that less hemoglobin is free to bind oxygen, and fewer oxygen molecules can be transported throughout the blood. This can cause suffocation insidiously. A fire burning in an enclosed room with poor ventilation presents a very dangerous hazard, since it can create a build-up of carbon monoxide in the air. Some carbon monoxide binds to hemoglobin when smoking tobacco.[34]
+
+Blood for transfusion is obtained from human donors by blood donation and stored in a blood bank. There are many different blood types in humans, the ABO blood group system, and the Rhesus blood group system being the most important. Transfusion of blood of an incompatible blood group may cause severe, often fatal, complications, so crossmatching is done to ensure that a compatible blood product is transfused.
+
+Other blood products administered intravenously are platelets, blood plasma, cryoprecipitate, and specific coagulation factor concentrates.
+
+Many forms of medication (from antibiotics to chemotherapy) are administered intravenously, as they are not readily or adequately absorbed by the digestive tract.
+
+After severe acute blood loss, liquid preparations, generically known as plasma expanders, can be given intravenously, either solutions of salts (NaCl, KCl, CaCl2 etc.) at physiological concentrations, or colloidal solutions, such as dextrans, human serum albumin, or fresh frozen plasma. In these emergency situations, a plasma expander is a more effective life-saving procedure than a blood transfusion, because the metabolism of transfused red blood cells does not restart immediately after a transfusion.
+
+In modern evidence-based medicine, bloodletting is used in management of a few rare diseases, including hemochromatosis and polycythemia. However, bloodletting and leeching were common unvalidated interventions used until the 19th century, as many diseases were incorrectly thought to be due to an excess of blood, according to Hippocratic medicine.
+
+English blood (Old English blod) derives from Germanic and has cognates with a similar range of meanings in all other Germanic languages (e.g. German Blut, Swedish blod, Gothic blōþ). There is no accepted Indo-European etymology.[35]
+
+Robin Fåhræus [pl; sv] (a Swedish physician who devised the erythrocyte sedimentation rate) suggested that the Ancient Greek system of humorism, wherein the body was thought to contain four distinct bodily fluids (associated with different temperaments), were based upon the observation of blood clotting in a transparent container. When blood is drawn in a glass container and left undisturbed for about an hour, four different layers can be seen. A dark clot forms at the bottom (the "black bile"). Above the clot is a layer of red blood cells (the "blood"). Above this is a whitish layer of white blood cells (the "phlegm"). The top layer is clear yellow serum (the "yellow bile").[36]
+
+The ABO blood group system was discovered in the year 1900 by Karl Landsteiner. Jan Janský is credited with the first classification of blood into the four types (A, B, AB, and O) in 1907, which remains in use today. In 1907 the first blood transfusion was performed that used the ABO system to predict compatibility.[37] The first non-direct transfusion was performed on March 27, 1914. The Rhesus factor was discovered in 1937.
+
+Due to its importance to life, blood is associated with a large number of beliefs. One of the most basic is the use of blood as a symbol for family relationships through birth/parentage; to be "related by blood" is to be related by ancestry or descendence, rather than marriage. This bears closely to bloodlines, and sayings such as "blood is thicker than water" and "bad blood", as well as "Blood brother".
+
+Blood is given particular emphasis in the Jewish and Christian religions, because Leviticus 17:11 says "the life of a creature is in the blood." This phrase is part of the Levitical law forbidding the drinking of blood or eating meat with the blood still intact instead of being poured off.
+
+Mythic references to blood can sometimes be connected to the life-giving nature of blood, seen in such events as childbirth, as contrasted with the blood of injury or death.
+
+In many indigenous Australian Aboriginal peoples' traditions, ochre (particularly red) and blood, both high in iron content and considered Maban, are applied to the bodies of dancers for ritual. As Lawlor states:
+
+In many Aboriginal rituals and ceremonies, red ochre is rubbed all over the naked bodies of the dancers. In secret, sacred male ceremonies, blood extracted from the veins of the participant's arms is exchanged and rubbed on their bodies. Red ochre is used in similar ways in less-secret ceremonies. Blood is also used to fasten the feathers of birds onto people's bodies. Bird feathers contain a protein that is highly magnetically sensitive.[38]
+
+Lawlor comments that blood employed in this fashion is held by these peoples to attune the dancers to the invisible energetic realm of the Dreamtime. Lawlor then connects these invisible energetic realms and magnetic fields, because iron is magnetic.
+
+Among the Germanic tribes, blood was used during their sacrifices; the Blóts. The blood was considered to have the power of its originator, and, after the butchering, the blood was sprinkled on the walls, on the statues of the gods, and on the participants themselves. This act of sprinkling blood was called blóedsian in Old English, and the terminology was borrowed by the Roman Catholic Church becoming to bless and blessing. The Hittite word for blood, ishar was a cognate to words for "oath" and "bond", see Ishara.
+The Ancient Greeks believed that the blood of the gods, ichor, was a substance that was poisonous to mortals.
+
+As a relic of Germanic Law, the cruentation, an ordeal where the corpse of the victim was supposed to start bleeding in the presence of the murderer, was used until the early 17th century.
+
+In Genesis 9:4, God prohibited Noah and his sons from eating blood (see Noahide Law). This command continued to be observed by the Eastern Orthodox.
+
+It is also found in the Bible that when the Angel of Death came around to the Hebrew house that the first-born child would not die if the angel saw lamb's blood wiped across the doorway.
+
+At the Council of Jerusalem, the apostles prohibited certain Christians from consuming blood – this is documented in Acts 15:20 and 29. This chapter specifies a reason (especially in verses 19–21): It was to avoid offending Jews who had become Christians, because the Mosaic Law Code prohibited the practice.
+
+Christ's blood is the means for the atonement of sins. Also, ″... the blood of Jesus Christ his [God] Son cleanseth us from all sin." (1 John 1:7), “... Unto him [God] that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood." (Revelation 1:5), and "And they overcame him (Satan) by the blood
+of the Lamb [Jesus the Christ], and by the word of their testimony ...” (Revelation 12:11).
+
+Some Christian churches, including Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Assyrian Church of the East teach that, when consecrated, the Eucharistic wine actually becomes the blood of Jesus for worshippers to drink. Thus in the consecrated wine, Jesus becomes spiritually and physically present. This teaching is rooted in the Last Supper, as written in the four gospels of the Bible, in which Jesus stated to his disciples that the bread that they ate was his body, and the wine was his blood. "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you." (Luke 22:20).
+
+Most forms of Protestantism, especially those of a Methodist or Presbyterian lineage, teach that the wine is no more than a symbol of the blood of Christ, who is spiritually but not physically present. Lutheran theology teaches that the body and blood is present together "in, with, and under" the bread and wine of the Eucharistic feast.
+
+In Judaism, animal blood may not be consumed even in the smallest quantity (Leviticus 3:17 and elsewhere); this is reflected in Jewish dietary laws (Kashrut). Blood is purged from meat by rinsing and soaking in water (to loosen clots), salting and then rinsing with water again several times.[39] Eggs must also be checked and any blood spots removed before consumption.[40] Although blood from fish is biblically kosher, it is rabbinically forbidden to consume fish blood to avoid the appearance of breaking the Biblical prohibition.[41]
+
+Another ritual involving blood involves the covering of the blood of fowl and game after slaughtering (Leviticus 17:13); the reason given by the Torah is: "Because the life of the animal is [in] its blood" (ibid 17:14). In relation to human beings, Kabbalah expounds on this verse that the animal soul of a person is in the blood, and that physical desires stem from it.
+
+Likewise, the mystical reason for salting temple sacrifices and slaughtered meat is to remove the blood of animal-like passions from the person. By removing the animal's blood, the animal energies and life-force contained in the blood are removed, making the meat fit for human consumption.[42]
+
+Consumption of food containing blood is forbidden by Islamic dietary laws. This is derived from the statement in the Qur'an, sura Al-Ma'ida (5:3): "Forbidden to you (for food) are: dead meat, blood, the flesh of swine, and that on which has been invoked the name of other than Allah."
+
+Blood is considered unclean, hence there are specific methods to obtain physical and ritual status of cleanliness once bleeding has occurred. Specific rules and prohibitions apply to menstruation, postnatal bleeding and irregular vaginal bleeding. When an animal has been slaughtered, the animal's neck is cut in a way to ensure that the spine is not severed, hence the brain may send commands to the heart to pump blood to it for oxygen. In this way, blood is removed from the body, and the meat is generally now safe to cook and eat. In modern times, blood transfusions are generally not considered against the rules.
+
+Based on their interpretation of scriptures such as Acts 15:28, 29 ("Keep abstaining...from blood."), many Jehovah's Witnesses neither consume blood nor accept transfusions of whole blood or its major components: red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets (thrombocytes), and plasma. Members may personally decide whether they will accept medical procedures that involve their own blood or substances that are further fractionated from the four major components.[43]
+
+In south East Asian popular culture, it is often said that if a man's nose produces a small flow of blood, he is experiencing sexual desire. This often appears in Chinese-language and Hong Kong films as well as in Japanese and Korean culture parodied in anime, manga, and drama. Characters, mostly males, will often be shown with a nosebleed if they have just seen someone nude or in little clothing, or if they have had an erotic thought or fantasy; this is based on the idea that a male's blood pressure will spike dramatically when aroused.[44][unreliable source?]
+
+Vampires are mythical creatures that drink blood directly for sustenance, usually with a preference for human blood. Cultures all over the world have myths of this kind; for example the 'Nosferatu' legend, a human who achieves damnation and immortality by drinking the blood of others, originates from Eastern European folklore. Ticks, leeches, female mosquitoes, vampire bats, and an assortment of other natural creatures do consume the blood of other animals, but only bats are associated with vampires. This has no relation to vampire bats, which are new world creatures discovered well after the origins of the European myths.
+
+Blood residue can help forensic investigators identify weapons, reconstruct a criminal action, and link suspects to the crime. Through bloodstain pattern analysis, forensic information can also be gained from the spatial distribution of bloodstains.
+
+Blood residue analysis is also a technique used in archeology.
+
+Blood is one of the body fluids that has been used in art.[45] In particular, the performances of Viennese Actionist Hermann Nitsch, Istvan Kantor, Franko B, Lennie Lee, Ron Athey, Yang Zhichao, Lucas Abela and Kira O'Reilly, along with the photography of Andres Serrano, have incorporated blood as a prominent visual element. Marc Quinn has made sculptures using frozen blood, including a cast of his own head made using his own blood.
+
+The term blood is used in genealogical circles to refer to one's ancestry, origins, and ethnic background as in the word bloodline. Other terms where blood is used in a family history sense are blue-blood, royal blood, mixed-blood and blood relative.

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+
+
+
+
+The wild boar (Sus scrofa), also known as the "wild swine",[3] "common wild pig",[4] or simply "wild pig",[5] is a suid native to much of the Palearctic, as well as being introduced in the Nearctic, Neotropic, Oceania, the Caribbean islands, and Southeast Asia. Human intervention has spread it further, making the species one of the widest-ranging mammals in the world, as well as the most widespread suiform.[4] It has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List due to its wide range, high numbers, and adaptability to a diversity of habitats.[1] It has become an invasive species in part of its introduced range. Wild boars probably originated in Southeast Asia during the Early Pleistocene[6] and outcompeted other suid species as they spread throughout the Old World.[7]
+
+As of 1990, up to 16 subspecies are recognized, which are divided into four regional groupings based on skull height and lacrimal bone length.[2] The species lives in matriarchal societies consisting of interrelated females and their young (both male and female). Fully grown males are usually solitary outside the breeding season.[8] The grey wolf is the wild boar's main predator in most of its natural range except in the Far East and the Lesser Sunda Islands, where it is replaced by the tiger and Komodo dragon respectively.[9][10] The wild boar has a long history of association with humans, having been the ancestor of most domestic pig breeds and a big-game animal for millennia. Boars have also re-hybridized in recent decades with feral pigs; these boar–pig hybrids have become a serious pest wild animal in the Americas and Australia.
+
+As true wild boars became extinct in Great Britain before the development of Modern English, the same terms are often used for both true wild boar and pigs, especially large or semi-wild ones. The English 'boar' stems from the Old English bar, which is thought to be derived from the West Germanic *bairaz, of unknown origin.[11] Boar is sometimes used specifically to refer to males, and may also be used to refer to male domesticated pigs, especially breeding males that have not been castrated.
+
+'Sow', the traditional name for a female, again comes from Old English and Germanic; it stems from Proto-Indo-European, and is related to the Latin: sus and Greek hus, and more closely to the New High German Sau. The young may be called 'piglets'.
+
+The animals' specific name scrofa is Latin for 'sow'.[12]
+
+In hunting terminology, boars are given different designations according to their age:[13]
+
+MtDNA studies indicate that the wild boar originated from islands in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia and the Philippines, and subsequently spread onto mainland Eurasia and North Africa.[6] The earliest fossil finds of the species come from both Europe and Asia, and date back to the Early Pleistocene.[14] By the late Villafranchian, S. scrofa largely displaced the related S. strozzii, a large, possibly swamp-adapted suid ancestral to the modern S. verrucosus throughout the Eurasian mainland, restricting it to insular Asia.[7] Its closest wild relative is the bearded pig of Malacca and surrounding islands.[3]
+
+As of 2005[update],[2] 16 subspecies are recognised, which are divided into four regional groupings:
+
+sahariensis (Heim de Balzac, 1937)
+
+nipponicus (Heude, 1899)
+
+mediterraneus (Ulmansky, 1911)
+reiseri (Bolkay, 1925)
+
+sardous (Ströbel, 1882)
+
+With the exception of domestic pigs in Timor and Papua New Guinea (which appear to be of Sulawesi warty pig stock), the wild boar is the ancestor of most pig breeds.[16][24] Archaeological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated from wild boar as early as 13,000–12,700 BCE in the Near East in the Tigris Basin,[25] being managed in the wild in a way similar to the way they are managed by some modern New Guineans.[26] Remains of pigs have been dated to earlier than 11,400 BCE in Cyprus. Those animals must have been introduced from the mainland, which suggests domestication in the adjacent mainland by then.[27] There was also a separate domestication in China, which took place about 8,000 years ago.[28][29]
+
+DNA evidence from sub-fossil remains of teeth and jawbones of Neolithic pigs shows that the first domestic pigs in Europe had been brought from the Near East. This stimulated the domestication of local European wild boars, resulting in a third domestication event with the Near Eastern genes dying out in European pig stock. Modern domesticated pigs have involved complex exchanges, with European domesticated lines being exported in turn to the ancient Near East.[30][31] Historical records indicate that Asian pigs were introduced into Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries.[28] Domestic pigs tend to have much more developed hindquarters than their wild boar ancestors, to the point where 70% of their body weight is concentrated in the posterior, which is the opposite of wild boar, where most of the muscles are concentrated on the head and shoulders.[32]
+
+The wild boar is a bulky, massively built suid with short and relatively thin legs. The trunk is short and robust, while the hindquarters are comparatively underdeveloped. The region behind the shoulder blades rises into a hump and the neck is short and thick to the point of being nearly immobile. The animal's head is very large, taking up to one-third of the body's entire length.[3] The structure of the head is well suited for digging. The head acts as a plough, while the powerful neck muscles allow the animal to upturn considerable amounts of soil:[33] it is capable of digging 8–10 cm (3.1–3.9 in) into frozen ground and can upturn rocks weighing 40–50 kg (88–110 lb).[9] The eyes are small and deep-set and the ears long and broad. The species has well developed canine teeth, which protrude from the mouths of adult males. The middle hooves are larger and more elongated than the lateral ones and are capable of quick movements.[3] The animal can run at a maximum speed of 40 km/h (25 mph) and jump at a height of 140–150 cm (55–59 in).[9]
+
+Sexual dimorphism is very pronounced in the species, with males being typically 5–10% larger and 20–30% heavier than females. Males also sport a mane running down the back, which is particularly apparent during autumn and winter.[34] The canine teeth are also much more prominent in males and grow throughout life. The upper canines are relatively short and grow sideways early in life, though they gradually curve upwards. The lower canines are much sharper and longer, with the exposed parts measuring 10–12 cm (3.9–4.7 in) in length. In the breeding period, males develop a coating of subcutaneous tissue, which may be 2–3 cm (0.79–1.18 in) thick, extending from the shoulder blades to the rump, thus protecting vital organs during fights. Males sport a roughly egg-sized sack near the opening of the penis, which collects urine and emits a sharp odour. The function of this sack is not fully understood.[3]
+
+Adult size and weight is largely determined by environmental factors; boars living in arid areas with little productivity tend to attain smaller sizes than their counterparts inhabiting areas with abundant food and water. In most of Europe, males average 75–100 kg (165–220 lb) in weight, 75–80 cm (30–31 in) in shoulder height and 150 cm (59 in) in body length, whereas females average 60–80 kg (130–180 lb) in weight, 70 cm (28 in) in shoulder height and 140 cm (55 in) in body length. In Europe's Mediterranean regions, males may reach average weights as low as 50 kg (110 lb) and females 45 kg (99 lb), with shoulder heights of 63–65 cm (25–26 in). In the more productive areas of Eastern Europe, males average 110–130 kg (240–290 lb) in weight, 95 cm (37 in) in shoulder height and 160 cm (63 in) in body length, while females weigh 95 kg (209 lb), reach 85–90 cm (33–35 in) in shoulder height and 145 cm (57 in) in body length. In Western and Central Europe, the largest males weigh 200 kg (440 lb) and females 120 kg (260 lb). In Northeastern Asia, large males can reach brown bear-like sizes, weighing 270 kg (600 lb) and measuring 110–118 cm (43–46 in) in shoulder height. Some adult males in Ussuriland and Manchuria have been recorded to weigh 300–350 kg (660–770 lb) and measure 125 cm (49 in) in shoulder height. Adults of this size are generally immune from wolf predation.[35] Such giants are rare in modern times, due to past overhunting preventing animals from attaining their full growth.[3]
+
+The winter coat consists of long, coarse bristles underlaid with short brown downy fur. The length of these bristles varies along the body, with the shortest being around the face and limbs and the longest running along the back. These back bristles form the aforementioned mane prominent in males and stand erect when the animal is agitated. Colour is highly variable; specimens around Lake Balkhash are very lightly coloured, and can even be white, while some boars from Belarus and Ussuriland can be black. Some subspecies sport a light-coloured patch running backward from the corners of the mouth. Coat colour also varies with age, with piglets having light brown or rusty-brown fur with pale bands extending from the flanks and back.[3]
+
+The wild boar produces a number of different sounds which are divided into three categories:
+
+Its sense of smell is very well developed to the point that the animal is used for drug detection in Germany.[37] Its hearing is also acute, though its eyesight is comparatively weak,[3] lacking color vision[37] and being unable to recognise a standing human 10–15 metres (33–49 ft) away.[9]
+
+Pigs are one of four known mammalian species which possess mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that protect against snake venom. Mongooses, honey badgers, hedgehogs, and pigs all have modifications to the receptor pocket which prevents the snake venom α-neurotoxin from binding. These represent four separate, independent mutations.[38]
+
+Boars are typically social animals, living in female-dominated sounders consisting of barren sows and mothers with young led by an old matriarch. Male boars leave their sounder at the age of 8–15 months, while females either remain with their mothers or establish new territories nearby. Subadult males may live in loosely knit groups, while adult and elderly males tend to be solitary outside the breeding season.[8][a]
+
+The breeding period in most areas lasts from November to January, though most mating only lasts a month and a half. Prior to mating, the males develop their subcutaneous armour in preparation for confronting rivals. The testicles double in size and the glands secrete a foamy yellowish liquid. Once ready to reproduce, males travel long distances in search of a sounder of sows, eating little on the way. Once a sounder has been located, the male drives off all young animals and persistently chases the sows. At this point, the male fiercely fights potential rivals.[3] A single male can mate with 5–10 sows.[9] By the end of the rut, males are often badly mauled and have lost 20% of their body weight,[3] with bite-induced injuries to the penis being common.[40] The gestation period varies according to the age of the expecting mother. For first-time breeders, it lasts 114–130 days, while it lasts 133–140 days in older sows. Farrowing occurs between March and May, with litter sizes depending on the age and nutrition of the mother. The average litter consists of 4–6 piglets, with the maximum being 10–12.[3][b] The piglets are whelped in a nest constructed from twigs, grasses and leaves. Should the mother die prematurely, the piglets are adopted by the other sows in the sounder.[42]
+
+Newborn piglets weigh around 600–1,000 grams, lacking underfur and bearing a single milk incisor and canine on each half of the jaw.[3] There is intense competition between the piglets over the most milk-rich nipples, as the best-fed young grow faster and have stronger constitutions.[42] The piglets do not leave the lair for their first week of life. Should the mother be absent, the piglets lie closely pressed to each other. By two weeks of age, the piglets begin accompanying their mother on her journeys. Should danger be detected, the piglets take cover or stand immobile, relying on their camouflage to keep them hidden. The neonatal coat fades after three months, with adult colouration being attained at eight months. Although the lactation period lasts 2.5–3.5 months, the piglets begin displaying adult feeding behaviours at the age of 2–3 weeks. The permanent dentition is fully formed by 1–2 years. With the exception of the canines in males, the teeth stop growing during the middle of the fourth year. The canines in old males continue to grow throughout their lives, curving strongly as they age. Sows attain sexual maturity at the age of one year, with males attaining it a year later. However, estrus usually first occurs after two years in sows, while males begin participating in the rut after 4–5 years, as they are not permitted to mate by the older males.[3] The maximum lifespan in the wild is 10–14 years, though few specimens survive past 4–5 years.[43] Boars in captivity have lived for 20 years.[9]
+
+The wild boar inhabits a diverse array of habitats from boreal taigas to deserts.[3] In mountainous regions, it can even occupy alpine zones, occurring up to 1,900 m (6,200 ft) in the Carpathians, 2,600 m (8,500 ft) in the Caucasus and up to 3,600–4,000 m (11,800–13,100 ft) in the mountains in Central Asia and Kazakhstan.[3] In order to survive in a given area, wild boars require a habitat fulfilling three conditions: heavily brushed areas providing shelter from predators, water for drinking and bathing purposes and an absence of regular snowfall.[44]
+
+The main habitats favored by boars in Europe are deciduous and mixed forests, with the most favorable areas consisting of forest composed of oak and beech enclosing marshes and meadows. In the Białowieża Forest, the animal's primary habitat consists of well-developed broad-leaved and mixed forests, along with marshy mixed forests, with coniferous forests and undergrowths being of secondary importance. Forests made up entirely of oak groves and beeches are used only during the fruit-bearing season. This is in contrast to the Caucasian and Transcaucasian mountain areas, where boars will occupy such fruit-bearing forests year-round. In the mountainous areas of the Russian Far East, the species inhabits nutpine groves, hilly mixed forests where Mongolian oak and Korean pine are present, swampy mixed taiga and coastal oak forests. In Transbaikalia, boars are restricted to river valleys with nut pine and shrubs. Boars are regularly encountered in pistachio groves in winter in some areas of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, while in spring they migrate to open deserts; boar have also colonized deserts in several areas they have been introduced to.[3][44][45]
+
+On the islands of Komodo and Rinca, the boar mostly inhabits savanna or open monsoon forests, avoiding heavily forested areas unless pursued by humans.[10] Wild boar are known to be competent swimmers, capable of covering long distances. In 2013, one boar was reported to have completed the 11-kilometre (7 mi) swim from France to Alderney in the Channel Islands. Due to concerns about disease, it was shot and incinerated.[46]
+
+Wild boar rest in shelters, which contain insulating material like spruce branches and dry hay. These resting places are occupied by whole families (though males lie separately) and are often located in the vicinity of streams, in swamp forests and in tall grass or shrub thickets. Boars never defecate in their shelters and will cover themselves with soil and pine needles when irritated by insects.[9]
+
+The wild boar is a highly versatile omnivore, whose diversity in choice of food is comparable to that of humans.[33] Their foods can be divided into four categories:
+
+A 50 kg (110 lb) boar needs around 4,000–4,500 calories of food per day, though this required amount increases during winter and pregnancy,[33] with the majority of its diet consisting of food items dug from the ground, like underground plant material and burrowing animals.[3] Acorns and beechnuts are invariably its most important food items in temperate zones,[47] as they are rich in the carbohydrates necessary for the buildup of fat reserves needed to survive lean periods.[33] In Western Europe, underground plant material favoured by boars includes bracken, willow herb, bulbs, meadow herb roots and bulbs and the bulbs of cultivated crops. Such food is favoured in early spring and summer, but may also be eaten in autumn and winter during beechnut and acorn crop failures. Should regular wild foods become scarce, boars will eat tree bark and fungi, as well as visit cultivated potato and artichoke fields.[3] Boar soil disturbance and foraging have been shown to facilitate invasive plants.[48][49] Boars of the vittatus subspecies in Ujung Kulon National Park in Java differ from most other populations by their primarily frugivorous diet, which consists of 50 different fruit species, especially figs, thus making them important seed dispersers.[4] The wild boar can consume numerous genera of poisonous plants without ill effect, including Aconitum, Anemone, Calla, Caltha, Ferula and Pteridium.[9]
+
+Boars may occasionally prey on small vertebrates like newborn deer fawns, leporids and galliform chicks.[33] Boars inhabiting the Volga Delta and near some lakes and rivers of Kazakhstan have been recorded to feed extensively on fish like carp and Caspian roach. Boars in the former area will also feed on cormorant and heron chicks, bivalved molluscs, trapped muskrats and mice.[3] There is at least one record of a boar killing and eating a bonnet macaque in southern India's Bandipur National Park, though this may have been a case of intraguild predation, brought on by interspecific competition for human handouts.[50]
+
+Piglets are vulnerable to attack from medium-sized felids like Eurasian lynx, jungle cats and snow leopards and other carnivorans like brown bears and yellow-throated martens.[3]
+
+The grey wolf is the main predator of wild boar throughout most of its range. A single wolf can kill around 50 to 80 boars of differing ages in one year.[3] In Italy[51] and Belarus' Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park, boars are the wolf's primary prey, despite an abundance of alternative, less powerful ungulates.[51] Wolves are particularly threatening during the winter, when deep snow impedes the boars' movements. In the Baltic regions, heavy snowfall can allow wolves to eliminate boars from an area almost completely. Wolves primarily target piglets and subadults and only rarely attack adult sows. Adult males are usually avoided entirely.[3] Dholes may also prey on boars, to the point of keeping their numbers down in northwestern Bhutan, despite there being many more cattle in the area.[52]
+
+Leopards are predators of wild boar in the Caucasus (particularly Transcaucasia), the Russian Far East, India, China[53] and Iran. In most areas, boars constitute only a small part of the leopard's diet. However, in Iran's Sarigol National Park, boars are the second most frequently targeted prey species after mouflon, though adult individuals are generally avoided, as they are above the leopard's preferred weight range of 10–40 kg (22–88 lb).[54] This dependence on wild boar is largely due in part to the local leopard subspecies' large size.[55]
+
+Boars of all ages were once the primary prey of tigers in Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan, Middle Asia and the Far East up until the late 19th century. In modern times, tiger numbers are too low to have a limiting effect on boar populations. A single tiger can systematically destroy an entire sounder by preying on its members one by one, before moving on to another sounder. Tigers have been noted to chase boars for longer distances than with other prey. In two rare cases, boars were reported to gore a small tiger and a tigress to death in self-defense.[56] In the Amur region, wild boars are one of the two most important prey species for tigers alongside the Manchurian wapiti, with the two species collectively comprising roughly 80% of the felid's prey.[57] In Sikhote Alin, a tiger can kill 30–34 boars a year.[9] Studies of tigers in India indicate that boars are usually secondary in preference to various cervids and bovids,[58] though when boars are targeted, healthy adults are caught more frequently than young and sick specimens.[59]
+
+On the islands of Komodo, Rinca and Flores, the boar's main predator is the Komodo dragon.[10]
+
+The species originally occurred in North Africa and much of Eurasia; from the British Isles to Korea and the Sunda Islands. The northern limit of its range extended from southern Scandinavia to southern Siberia and Japan. Within this range, it was only absent in extremely dry deserts and alpine zones. It was once found in North Africa along the Nile valley up to Khartum and north of the Sahara. The species occurs on a few Ionian and Aegean Islands, sometimes swimming between islands.[60] The reconstructed northern boundary of the animal's Asian range ran from Lake Ladoga (at 60°N) through the area of Novgorod and Moscow into the southern Urals, where it reached 52°N. From there, the boundary passed Ishim and farther east the Irtysh at 56°N. In the eastern Baraba steppe (near Novosibirsk) the boundary turned steep south, encircled the Altai Mountains and went again eastward including the Tannu-Ola Mountains and Lake Baikal. From here, the boundary went slightly north of the Amur River eastward to its lower reaches at the Sea of Okhotsk. On Sakhalin, there are only fossil reports of wild boar. The southern boundaries in Europe and Asia were almost invariably identical to the seashores of these continents. It is absent in the dry regions of Mongolia from 44–46°N southward, in China westward of Sichuan and in India north of the Himalayas. It is absent in the higher elevations of the Pamir and the Tien Shan, though they do occur in the Tarim basin and on the lower slopes of the Tien Shan.[3]
+
+In recent centuries, the range of wild boar has changed dramatically, largely due to hunting by humans and more recently because of captive wild boar escaping into the wild. Prior to the 20th century, boar populations had declined in numerous areas, with British populations probably becoming extinct during the 13th century.[61] In the warm period after the ice age, wild boar lived in the southern parts of Sweden and Norway and north of Lake Ladoga in Karelia.[62] It was previously thought that the species did not live in Finland during prehistory because no prehistoric wild boar bones had been found within the borders of the country.[63][64] It was not until 2013, when a wild boar bone was found in Askola, that the species was found to have lived in Finland more than 8,000 years ago. It is believed, however, that man prevented its establishment by hunting.[65][66] In Denmark, the last boar was shot at the beginning of the 19th century, and by 1900 they were absent in Tunisia and Sudan and large areas of Germany, Austria and Italy. In Russia, they were extirpated in wide areas by the 1930s.[3] The last boar in Egypt reportedly died on 20 December 1912 in the Giza Zoo, with wild populations having disappeared by 1894–1902. Prince Kamal el Dine Hussein attempted to repopulate Wadi El Natrun with boars of Hungarian stock, but they were quickly exterminated by poachers.[67]
+
+A revival of boar populations began in the middle of the 20th century. By 1950, wild boar had once again reached their original northern boundary in many parts of their Asiatic range. By 1960, they reached Leningrad and Moscow and by 1975, they were to be found in Archangelsk and Astrakhan. In the 1970s they again occurred in Denmark and Sweden, where captive animals escaped and now survive in the wild. In England, wild boar populations re-established themselves in the 1990s, after escaping from specialist farms that had imported European stock.[61]
+
+Wild boars were apparently already becoming rare by the 11th century since a 1087 forestry law enacted by William the Conqueror punishes through blinding the unlawful killing of a boar. Charles I attempted to reintroduce the species into the New Forest, though this population was exterminated during the Civil War.
+
+Between their medieval extinction and the 1980s, when wild boar farming began, only a handful of captive wild boar, imported from the continent, were present in Britain. Occasional escapes of wild boar from wildlife parks have occurred as early as the 1970s, but since the early 1990s significant populations have re-established themselves after escapes from farms, the number of which has increased as the demand for meat from the species has grown. A 1998 MAFF (now DEFRA) study on wild boar living wild in Britain confirmed the presence of two populations of wild boar living in Britain; one in Kent/East Sussex and another in Dorset.[61] Another DEFRA report, in February 2008,[68] confirmed the existence of these two sites as 'established breeding areas' and identified a third in Gloucestershire/Herefordshire; in the Forest of Dean/Ross on Wye area. A 'new breeding population' was also identified in Devon. There is another significant population in Dumfries and Galloway. Populations estimates were as follows:
+
+Population estimates for the Forest of Dean are disputed as, at the time that the DEFRA population estimate was 100, a photo of a boar sounder in the forest near Staunton with over 33 animals visible was published and at about the same time over 30 boar were seen in a field near the original escape location of Weston under Penyard many kilometres or miles away. In early 2010 the Forestry Commission embarked on a cull,[70] with the aim of reducing the boar population from an estimated 150 animals to 100. By August it was stated that efforts were being made to reduce the population from 200 to 90, but that only 25 had been killed.[71] The failure to meet cull targets was confirmed in February 2011.[72]
+
+Wild boars have crossed the River Wye into Monmouthshire, Wales. Iolo Williams, the BBC Wales wildlife expert, attempted to film Welsh boar in late 2012.[73] Many other sightings, across the UK, have also been reported.[74] The effects of wild boar on the U.K.'s woodlands were discussed with Ralph Harmer of the Forestry Commission on the BBC Radio's Farming Today radio programme in 2011. The programme prompted activist writer George Monbiot to propose a thorough population study, followed by the introduction of permit-controlled culling.[75]
+
+Wild boars are an invasive species in the Americas and cause problems including out-competing native species for food, destroying the nests of ground-nesting species, killing fawns and young domestic livestock, destroying agricultural crops, eating tree seeds and seedlings, destroying native vegetation and wetlands through wallowing, damaging water quality, coming into violent conflict with humans and pets and carrying pig and human diseases including brucellosis, trichinosis and pseudorabies. In some jurisdictions, it is illegal to import, breed, release, possess, sell, distribute, trade, transport, hunt, or trap Eurasian boars. Hunting and trapping is done systematically, to increase the chance of eradication and to remove the incentive to illegally release boars, which have mostly been spread deliberately by sport hunters.[76]
+
+While domestic pigs, both captive and feral (popularly termed "razorbacks"), have been in North America since the earliest days of European colonization, pure wild boars were not introduced into the New World until the 19th century. The suids were released into the wild by wealthy landowners as big game animals. The initial introductions took place in fenced enclosures, though several escapes occurred, with the escapees sometimes intermixing with already established feral pig populations.
+
+The first of these introductions occurred in New Hampshire in 1890. Thirteen wild boars from Germany were purchased by Austin Corbin from Carl Hagenbeck and released into a 9,500-hectare (23,000-acre) game preserve in Sullivan County. Several of these boars escaped, though they were quickly hunted down by locals. Two further introductions were made from the original stocking, with several escapes taking place due to breaches in the game preserve's fencing. These escapees have ranged widely, with some specimens having been observed crossing into Vermont.[77]
+
+In 1902, 15–20 wild boar from Germany were released into a 3,200-hectare (7,900-acre) estate in Hamilton County, New York. Several specimens escaped six years later, dispersing into the William C. Whitney Wilderness Area, with their descendants surviving for at least 20 years.[77]
+
+The most extensive boar introduction in the US took place in western North Carolina in 1912, when 13 boars of undetermined European origin were released into two fenced enclosures in a game preserve in Hooper Bald, Graham County. Most of the specimens remained in the preserve for the next decade, until a large-scale hunt caused the remaining animals to break through their confines and escape. Some of the boars migrated to Tennessee, where they intermixed with both free-ranging and feral pigs in the area. In 1924, a dozen Hooper Bald wild pigs were shipped to California and released in a property between Carmel Valley and the Los Padres National Forest. These hybrid boar were later used as breeding stock on various private and public lands throughout the state, as well as in other states like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, West Virginia and Mississippi.[77]
+
+Several wild boars from Leon Springs and the San Antonio, Saint Louis and San Diego Zoos were released in the Powder Horn Ranch in Calhoun County, Texas, in 1939. These specimens escaped and established themselves in surrounding ranchlands and coastal areas, with some crossing the Espiritu Santo Bay and colonizing Matagorda Island. Descendants of the Powder Horn Ranch boars were later released onto San José Island and the coast of Chalmette, Louisiana.[77]
+
+Wild boar of unknown origin were stocked in a ranch in the Edwards Plateau in the 1940s, only to escape during a storm and hybridize with local feral pig populations, later spreading into neighboring counties.[77]
+
+Starting in the mid-1980s, several boars purchased from the San Diego Zoo and Tierpark Berlin were released into the United States. A decade later, more specimens from farms in Canada and Białowieża Forest were let loose. In recent years, wild pig populations have been reported in 44 states within the US, most of which are likely wild boar–feral hog hybrids. Pure wild boar populations may still be present, but are extremely localized.[77]
+
+Wild boars are known to host at least 20 different parasitic worm species, with maximum infections occurring in summer. Young animals are vulnerable to helminths like Metastrongylus, which are consumed by boars through earthworms and cause death by parasitising the lungs. Wild boar also carry parasites known to infect humans, including Gastrodiscoides, Trichinella spiralis, Taenia solium, Balantidium coli and Toxoplasma gondii.[78] Wild boar in southern regions are frequently infested with ticks (Dermacentor, Rhipicephalus, and Hyalomma) and hog lice. The species also suffers from blood-sucking flies, which it escapes by bathing frequently or hiding in dense shrubs.[3]
+
+Swine plague spreads very quickly in wild boar, with epizootics being recorded in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Belarus, the Caucasus, the Far East, Kazakhstan and other regions. Foot-and-mouth disease can also take on epidemic proportions in boar populations. The species occasionally, but rarely contracts Pasteurellosis, hemorrhagic sepsis, tularemia, and anthrax. Wild boar may on occasion contract swine erysipelas through rodents or hog lice and ticks.[3]
+
+The wild boar features prominently in the cultures of Indo-European people, many of which saw the animal as embodying warrior virtues. Cultures throughout Europe and Asia Minor saw the killing of a boar as proof of one's valor and strength. Neolithic hunter gatherers depicted reliefs of ferocious wild boars on their temple pillars at Göbekli Tepe some 11,600 years ago.[80][81] Virtually all heroes in Greek mythology fight or kill a boar at one point. The demigod Herakles' third labour involves the capture of the Erymanthian Boar, Theseus slays the wild sow Phaea, and a disguised Odysseus is recognised by his handmaiden Eurycleia by the scars inflicted on him by a boar during a hunt in his youth.[82] To the mythical Hyperboreans, the boar represented spiritual authority.[79] Several Greek myths use the boar as a symbol of darkness, death and winter. One example is the story of the youthful Adonis, who is killed by a boar and is permitted by Zeus to depart from Hades only during the spring and summer period. This theme also occurs in Irish and Egyptian mythology, where the animal is explicitly linked to the month of October, therefore autumn. This association likely arose from aspects of the boar's actual nature. Its dark colour was linked to the night, while its solitary habits, proclivity to consume crops and nocturnal nature were associated with evil.[83] The foundation myth of Ephesus has the city being built over the site where Prince Androklos of Athens killed a boar.[84] Boars were frequently depicted on Greek funerary monuments alongside lions, representing gallant losers who have finally met their match, as opposed to victorious hunters as lions are. The theme of the doomed, yet valorous boar warrior also occurred in Hittite culture, where it was traditional to sacrifice a boar alongside a dog and a prisoner of war after a military defeat.[82]
+
+The boar as a warrior also appears in Scandinavian, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon culture, with its image having been frequently engraved on helmets, shields and swords. According to Tacitus, the Baltic Aesti featured boars on their helmets and may have also worn boar masks (see for example the Guilden Morden boar). The boar and pig were held in particularly high esteem by the Celts, who considered them to be their most important sacred animal. Some Celtic deities linked to boars include Moccus and Veteris. It has been suggested that some early myths surrounding the Welsh hero Culhwch involved the character being the son of a boar god.[82] Nevertheless, the importance of the boar as a culinary item among Celtic tribes may have been exaggerated in popular culture by the Asterix series, as wild boar bones are rare among Celtic archaeological sites and the few that do occur show no signs of butchery, having probably been used in sacrificial rituals.[85]
+
+The boar also appears in Vedic mythology and Hindu mythology. A story present in the Brahmanas has the god Indra slaying an avaricious boar, who has stolen the treasure of the asuras, then giving its carcass to the god Vishnu, who offered it as a sacrifice to the gods. In the story's retelling in the Charaka Samhita, the boar is described as a form of Prajapati and is credited with having raised the Earth from the primeval waters. In the Ramayana and the Puranas, the same boar is portrayed as Varaha, an avatar of Vishnu.[86]
+
+In Japanese culture, the boar is widely seen as a fearsome and reckless animal, to the point that several words and expressions in Japanese referring to recklessness include references to boars. The boar is the last animal of the Oriental zodiac, with people born during the year of the Pig being said to embody the boar-like traits of determination and impetuosity. Among Japanese hunters, the boar's courage and defiance is a source of admiration and it is not uncommon for hunters and mountain people to name their sons after the animal inoshishi (猪). Boars are also seen as symbols of fertility and prosperity; in some regions, it is thought that boars are drawn to fields owned by families including pregnant women, and hunters with pregnant wives are thought to have greater chances of success when boar hunting. The animal's link to prosperity was illustrated by its inclusion on the ¥10 note during the Meiji period and it was once believed that a man could become wealthy by keeping a clump of boar hair in his wallet.[87]
+
+In the folklore of the Mongol Altai Uriankhai tribe, the wild boar was associated with the watery underworld, as it was thought that the spirits of the dead entered the animal's head, to be ultimately transported to the water.[88] Prior to the conversion to Islam, the Kyrgyz people believed that they were descended from boars and thus did not eat pork. In Buryat mythology, the forefathers of the Buryats descended from heaven and were nourished by a boar.[89] In China, the boar is the emblem of the Miao people.[79]
+
+The boar (sanglier) is frequently displayed in English, Scottish and Welsh heraldry. As with the lion, the boar is often shown as armed and langued. As with the bear, Scottish and Welsh heraldry displays the boar's head with the neck cropped, unlike the English version, which retains the neck.[90] The white boar served as the badge of King Richard III of England, who distributed it among his northern retainers during his tenure as Duke of Gloucester.[91]
+
+Humans have been hunting boar for millennia, the earliest artistic depictions of such activities dating back to the Upper Paleolithic.[82] The animal was seen as a source of food among the Ancient Greeks, as well as a sporting challenge and source of epic narratives. The Romans inherited this tradition, with one of its first practitioners being Scipio Aemilianus. Boar hunting became particularly popular among the young nobility during the 3rd century BC as preparation for manhood and battle. A typical Roman boar hunting tactic involved surrounding a given area with large nets, then flushing the boar with dogs and immobilizing it with smaller nets. The animal would then be dispatched with a venabulum, a short spear with a crossguard at the base of the blade. More than their Greek predecessors, the Romans extensively took inspiration from boar hunting in their art and sculpture. With the ascension of Constantine the Great, boar hunting took on Christian allegorical themes, with the animal being portrayed as a "black beast" analogous to the dragon of Saint George. Boar hunting continued after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, though the Germanic tribes considered the red deer to be a more noble and worthy quarry. The post-Roman nobility hunted boar as their predecessors did, but primarily as training for battle rather than sport. It was not uncommon for medieval hunters to deliberately hunt boars during the breeding season when the animals were more aggressive. During the Renaissance, when deforestation and the introduction of firearms reduced boar numbers, boar hunting became the sole prerogative of the nobility, one of many charges brought up against the rich during the German Peasants' War and the French Revolution.[92] During the mid-20th century, 7,000–8,000 boars were caught in the Caucasus, 6,000–7,000 in Kazakhstan and about 5,000 in Central Asia during the Soviet period, primarily through the use of dogs and beats.[3] In Nepal, farmers and poachers eliminate boars by baiting balls of wheat flour containing explosives with kerosene oil, with the animals' chewing motions triggering the devices.[93]
+
+Wild boar can thrive in captivity, though piglets grow slowly and poorly without their mothers. Products derived from wild boar include meat, hide and bristles.[3] Apicius devotes a whole chapter to the cooking of boar meat, providing 10 recipes involving roasting, boiling and what sauces to use. The Romans usually served boar meat with garum.[94] Boar's head was the centrepiece of most medieval Christmas celebrations among the nobility.[95] Although growing in popularity as a captive-bred source of food, the wild boar takes longer to mature than most domestic pigs and it is usually smaller and produces less meat. Nevertheless, wild boar meat is leaner and healthier than pork,[96] being of higher nutritional value and having a much higher concentration of essential amino acids.[97] Most meat-dressing organizations agree that a boar carcass should yield 50 kg (110 lb) of meat on average. Large specimens can yield 15–20 kg (33–44 lb) of fat, with some giants yielding 30 kg (66 lb) or more. A boar hide can measure 300 dm2 (4,700 sq in) and can yield 350–1,000 grams (12–35 oz) of bristle and 400 grams (14 oz) of underwool.[3]
+
+Roman relief of a dog confronting a boar, Cologne
+
+Southern Indian depiction of boar hunt, c. 1540
+
+Pig-sticking in British India
+
+Boar shot in Volgograd Oblast, Russia
+
+The Boar Hunt – Hans Wertinger, c. 1530, the Danube Valley
+
+Boars can be damaging to agriculture in situations where their natural habitat is sparse. Populations living on the outskirts of towns or farms can dig up potatoes and damage melons, watermelons and maize. However, they generally only encroach upon farms when natural food is scarce. In the Belovezh forest for example, 34–47% of the local boar population will enter fields in years of moderate availability of natural foods. While the role of boars in damaging crops is often exaggerated,[3] cases are known of boar depredations causing famines, as was the case in Hachinohe, Japan in 1749, where 3,000 people died of what became known as the "wild boar famine". Still, within Japanese culture, the boar's status as vermin is expressed through its title as "king of pests" and the popular saying (addressed to young men in rural areas) "When you get married, choose a place with no wild boar."[87][98]
+
+In Central Europe, farmers typically repel boars through distraction or fright, while in Kazakhstan it is usual to employ guard dogs in plantations. Although large boar populations can play an important role in limiting forest growth, they are also useful in keeping pest populations such as June bugs under control.[3] The growth of urban areas and the corresponding decline in natural boar habitats has led to some sounders entering human habitations in search of food. As in natural conditions, sounders in peri-urban areas are matriarchal, though males tend to be much less represented and adults of both sexes can be up to 35% heavier than their forest-dwelling counterparts. As of 2010, at least 44 cities in 15 countries have experienced problems of some kind relating to the presence of habituated wild boar.[99]
+
+Actual attacks on humans are rare, but can be serious, resulting in penetrating injuries to the lower part of the body. They generally occur during the boars' rutting season from November to January, in agricultural areas bordering forests or on paths leading through forests. The animal typically attacks by charging and pointing its tusks towards the intended victim, with most injuries occurring on the thigh region. Once the initial attack is over, the boar steps back, takes position and attacks again if the victim is still moving, only ending once the victim is completely incapacitated.[100][101]
+
+Boar attacks on humans have been documented since the Stone Age, with one of the oldest depictions being a cave painting in Bhimbetaka, India. The Romans and Ancient Greeks wrote of these attacks (Odysseus was wounded by a boar and Adonis was killed by one). A 2012 study compiling recorded attacks from 1825–2012 found accounts of 665 human victims of both wild boars and feral pigs, with the majority (19%) of attacks in the animal's native range occurring in India. Most of the attacks occurred in rural areas during the winter months in non-hunting contexts and were committed by solitary males.[102]
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+The wild boar (Sus scrofa), also known as the "wild swine",[3] "common wild pig",[4] or simply "wild pig",[5] is a suid native to much of the Palearctic, as well as being introduced in the Nearctic, Neotropic, Oceania, the Caribbean islands, and Southeast Asia. Human intervention has spread it further, making the species one of the widest-ranging mammals in the world, as well as the most widespread suiform.[4] It has been assessed as least concern on the IUCN Red List due to its wide range, high numbers, and adaptability to a diversity of habitats.[1] It has become an invasive species in part of its introduced range. Wild boars probably originated in Southeast Asia during the Early Pleistocene[6] and outcompeted other suid species as they spread throughout the Old World.[7]
+
+As of 1990, up to 16 subspecies are recognized, which are divided into four regional groupings based on skull height and lacrimal bone length.[2] The species lives in matriarchal societies consisting of interrelated females and their young (both male and female). Fully grown males are usually solitary outside the breeding season.[8] The grey wolf is the wild boar's main predator in most of its natural range except in the Far East and the Lesser Sunda Islands, where it is replaced by the tiger and Komodo dragon respectively.[9][10] The wild boar has a long history of association with humans, having been the ancestor of most domestic pig breeds and a big-game animal for millennia. Boars have also re-hybridized in recent decades with feral pigs; these boar–pig hybrids have become a serious pest wild animal in the Americas and Australia.
+
+As true wild boars became extinct in Great Britain before the development of Modern English, the same terms are often used for both true wild boar and pigs, especially large or semi-wild ones. The English 'boar' stems from the Old English bar, which is thought to be derived from the West Germanic *bairaz, of unknown origin.[11] Boar is sometimes used specifically to refer to males, and may also be used to refer to male domesticated pigs, especially breeding males that have not been castrated.
+
+'Sow', the traditional name for a female, again comes from Old English and Germanic; it stems from Proto-Indo-European, and is related to the Latin: sus and Greek hus, and more closely to the New High German Sau. The young may be called 'piglets'.
+
+The animals' specific name scrofa is Latin for 'sow'.[12]
+
+In hunting terminology, boars are given different designations according to their age:[13]
+
+MtDNA studies indicate that the wild boar originated from islands in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia and the Philippines, and subsequently spread onto mainland Eurasia and North Africa.[6] The earliest fossil finds of the species come from both Europe and Asia, and date back to the Early Pleistocene.[14] By the late Villafranchian, S. scrofa largely displaced the related S. strozzii, a large, possibly swamp-adapted suid ancestral to the modern S. verrucosus throughout the Eurasian mainland, restricting it to insular Asia.[7] Its closest wild relative is the bearded pig of Malacca and surrounding islands.[3]
+
+As of 2005[update],[2] 16 subspecies are recognised, which are divided into four regional groupings:
+
+sahariensis (Heim de Balzac, 1937)
+
+nipponicus (Heude, 1899)
+
+mediterraneus (Ulmansky, 1911)
+reiseri (Bolkay, 1925)
+
+sardous (Ströbel, 1882)
+
+With the exception of domestic pigs in Timor and Papua New Guinea (which appear to be of Sulawesi warty pig stock), the wild boar is the ancestor of most pig breeds.[16][24] Archaeological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated from wild boar as early as 13,000–12,700 BCE in the Near East in the Tigris Basin,[25] being managed in the wild in a way similar to the way they are managed by some modern New Guineans.[26] Remains of pigs have been dated to earlier than 11,400 BCE in Cyprus. Those animals must have been introduced from the mainland, which suggests domestication in the adjacent mainland by then.[27] There was also a separate domestication in China, which took place about 8,000 years ago.[28][29]
+
+DNA evidence from sub-fossil remains of teeth and jawbones of Neolithic pigs shows that the first domestic pigs in Europe had been brought from the Near East. This stimulated the domestication of local European wild boars, resulting in a third domestication event with the Near Eastern genes dying out in European pig stock. Modern domesticated pigs have involved complex exchanges, with European domesticated lines being exported in turn to the ancient Near East.[30][31] Historical records indicate that Asian pigs were introduced into Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries.[28] Domestic pigs tend to have much more developed hindquarters than their wild boar ancestors, to the point where 70% of their body weight is concentrated in the posterior, which is the opposite of wild boar, where most of the muscles are concentrated on the head and shoulders.[32]
+
+The wild boar is a bulky, massively built suid with short and relatively thin legs. The trunk is short and robust, while the hindquarters are comparatively underdeveloped. The region behind the shoulder blades rises into a hump and the neck is short and thick to the point of being nearly immobile. The animal's head is very large, taking up to one-third of the body's entire length.[3] The structure of the head is well suited for digging. The head acts as a plough, while the powerful neck muscles allow the animal to upturn considerable amounts of soil:[33] it is capable of digging 8–10 cm (3.1–3.9 in) into frozen ground and can upturn rocks weighing 40–50 kg (88–110 lb).[9] The eyes are small and deep-set and the ears long and broad. The species has well developed canine teeth, which protrude from the mouths of adult males. The middle hooves are larger and more elongated than the lateral ones and are capable of quick movements.[3] The animal can run at a maximum speed of 40 km/h (25 mph) and jump at a height of 140–150 cm (55–59 in).[9]
+
+Sexual dimorphism is very pronounced in the species, with males being typically 5–10% larger and 20–30% heavier than females. Males also sport a mane running down the back, which is particularly apparent during autumn and winter.[34] The canine teeth are also much more prominent in males and grow throughout life. The upper canines are relatively short and grow sideways early in life, though they gradually curve upwards. The lower canines are much sharper and longer, with the exposed parts measuring 10–12 cm (3.9–4.7 in) in length. In the breeding period, males develop a coating of subcutaneous tissue, which may be 2–3 cm (0.79–1.18 in) thick, extending from the shoulder blades to the rump, thus protecting vital organs during fights. Males sport a roughly egg-sized sack near the opening of the penis, which collects urine and emits a sharp odour. The function of this sack is not fully understood.[3]
+
+Adult size and weight is largely determined by environmental factors; boars living in arid areas with little productivity tend to attain smaller sizes than their counterparts inhabiting areas with abundant food and water. In most of Europe, males average 75–100 kg (165–220 lb) in weight, 75–80 cm (30–31 in) in shoulder height and 150 cm (59 in) in body length, whereas females average 60–80 kg (130–180 lb) in weight, 70 cm (28 in) in shoulder height and 140 cm (55 in) in body length. In Europe's Mediterranean regions, males may reach average weights as low as 50 kg (110 lb) and females 45 kg (99 lb), with shoulder heights of 63–65 cm (25–26 in). In the more productive areas of Eastern Europe, males average 110–130 kg (240–290 lb) in weight, 95 cm (37 in) in shoulder height and 160 cm (63 in) in body length, while females weigh 95 kg (209 lb), reach 85–90 cm (33–35 in) in shoulder height and 145 cm (57 in) in body length. In Western and Central Europe, the largest males weigh 200 kg (440 lb) and females 120 kg (260 lb). In Northeastern Asia, large males can reach brown bear-like sizes, weighing 270 kg (600 lb) and measuring 110–118 cm (43–46 in) in shoulder height. Some adult males in Ussuriland and Manchuria have been recorded to weigh 300–350 kg (660–770 lb) and measure 125 cm (49 in) in shoulder height. Adults of this size are generally immune from wolf predation.[35] Such giants are rare in modern times, due to past overhunting preventing animals from attaining their full growth.[3]
+
+The winter coat consists of long, coarse bristles underlaid with short brown downy fur. The length of these bristles varies along the body, with the shortest being around the face and limbs and the longest running along the back. These back bristles form the aforementioned mane prominent in males and stand erect when the animal is agitated. Colour is highly variable; specimens around Lake Balkhash are very lightly coloured, and can even be white, while some boars from Belarus and Ussuriland can be black. Some subspecies sport a light-coloured patch running backward from the corners of the mouth. Coat colour also varies with age, with piglets having light brown or rusty-brown fur with pale bands extending from the flanks and back.[3]
+
+The wild boar produces a number of different sounds which are divided into three categories:
+
+Its sense of smell is very well developed to the point that the animal is used for drug detection in Germany.[37] Its hearing is also acute, though its eyesight is comparatively weak,[3] lacking color vision[37] and being unable to recognise a standing human 10–15 metres (33–49 ft) away.[9]
+
+Pigs are one of four known mammalian species which possess mutations in the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor that protect against snake venom. Mongooses, honey badgers, hedgehogs, and pigs all have modifications to the receptor pocket which prevents the snake venom α-neurotoxin from binding. These represent four separate, independent mutations.[38]
+
+Boars are typically social animals, living in female-dominated sounders consisting of barren sows and mothers with young led by an old matriarch. Male boars leave their sounder at the age of 8–15 months, while females either remain with their mothers or establish new territories nearby. Subadult males may live in loosely knit groups, while adult and elderly males tend to be solitary outside the breeding season.[8][a]
+
+The breeding period in most areas lasts from November to January, though most mating only lasts a month and a half. Prior to mating, the males develop their subcutaneous armour in preparation for confronting rivals. The testicles double in size and the glands secrete a foamy yellowish liquid. Once ready to reproduce, males travel long distances in search of a sounder of sows, eating little on the way. Once a sounder has been located, the male drives off all young animals and persistently chases the sows. At this point, the male fiercely fights potential rivals.[3] A single male can mate with 5–10 sows.[9] By the end of the rut, males are often badly mauled and have lost 20% of their body weight,[3] with bite-induced injuries to the penis being common.[40] The gestation period varies according to the age of the expecting mother. For first-time breeders, it lasts 114–130 days, while it lasts 133–140 days in older sows. Farrowing occurs between March and May, with litter sizes depending on the age and nutrition of the mother. The average litter consists of 4–6 piglets, with the maximum being 10–12.[3][b] The piglets are whelped in a nest constructed from twigs, grasses and leaves. Should the mother die prematurely, the piglets are adopted by the other sows in the sounder.[42]
+
+Newborn piglets weigh around 600–1,000 grams, lacking underfur and bearing a single milk incisor and canine on each half of the jaw.[3] There is intense competition between the piglets over the most milk-rich nipples, as the best-fed young grow faster and have stronger constitutions.[42] The piglets do not leave the lair for their first week of life. Should the mother be absent, the piglets lie closely pressed to each other. By two weeks of age, the piglets begin accompanying their mother on her journeys. Should danger be detected, the piglets take cover or stand immobile, relying on their camouflage to keep them hidden. The neonatal coat fades after three months, with adult colouration being attained at eight months. Although the lactation period lasts 2.5–3.5 months, the piglets begin displaying adult feeding behaviours at the age of 2–3 weeks. The permanent dentition is fully formed by 1–2 years. With the exception of the canines in males, the teeth stop growing during the middle of the fourth year. The canines in old males continue to grow throughout their lives, curving strongly as they age. Sows attain sexual maturity at the age of one year, with males attaining it a year later. However, estrus usually first occurs after two years in sows, while males begin participating in the rut after 4–5 years, as they are not permitted to mate by the older males.[3] The maximum lifespan in the wild is 10–14 years, though few specimens survive past 4–5 years.[43] Boars in captivity have lived for 20 years.[9]
+
+The wild boar inhabits a diverse array of habitats from boreal taigas to deserts.[3] In mountainous regions, it can even occupy alpine zones, occurring up to 1,900 m (6,200 ft) in the Carpathians, 2,600 m (8,500 ft) in the Caucasus and up to 3,600–4,000 m (11,800–13,100 ft) in the mountains in Central Asia and Kazakhstan.[3] In order to survive in a given area, wild boars require a habitat fulfilling three conditions: heavily brushed areas providing shelter from predators, water for drinking and bathing purposes and an absence of regular snowfall.[44]
+
+The main habitats favored by boars in Europe are deciduous and mixed forests, with the most favorable areas consisting of forest composed of oak and beech enclosing marshes and meadows. In the Białowieża Forest, the animal's primary habitat consists of well-developed broad-leaved and mixed forests, along with marshy mixed forests, with coniferous forests and undergrowths being of secondary importance. Forests made up entirely of oak groves and beeches are used only during the fruit-bearing season. This is in contrast to the Caucasian and Transcaucasian mountain areas, where boars will occupy such fruit-bearing forests year-round. In the mountainous areas of the Russian Far East, the species inhabits nutpine groves, hilly mixed forests where Mongolian oak and Korean pine are present, swampy mixed taiga and coastal oak forests. In Transbaikalia, boars are restricted to river valleys with nut pine and shrubs. Boars are regularly encountered in pistachio groves in winter in some areas of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, while in spring they migrate to open deserts; boar have also colonized deserts in several areas they have been introduced to.[3][44][45]
+
+On the islands of Komodo and Rinca, the boar mostly inhabits savanna or open monsoon forests, avoiding heavily forested areas unless pursued by humans.[10] Wild boar are known to be competent swimmers, capable of covering long distances. In 2013, one boar was reported to have completed the 11-kilometre (7 mi) swim from France to Alderney in the Channel Islands. Due to concerns about disease, it was shot and incinerated.[46]
+
+Wild boar rest in shelters, which contain insulating material like spruce branches and dry hay. These resting places are occupied by whole families (though males lie separately) and are often located in the vicinity of streams, in swamp forests and in tall grass or shrub thickets. Boars never defecate in their shelters and will cover themselves with soil and pine needles when irritated by insects.[9]
+
+The wild boar is a highly versatile omnivore, whose diversity in choice of food is comparable to that of humans.[33] Their foods can be divided into four categories:
+
+A 50 kg (110 lb) boar needs around 4,000–4,500 calories of food per day, though this required amount increases during winter and pregnancy,[33] with the majority of its diet consisting of food items dug from the ground, like underground plant material and burrowing animals.[3] Acorns and beechnuts are invariably its most important food items in temperate zones,[47] as they are rich in the carbohydrates necessary for the buildup of fat reserves needed to survive lean periods.[33] In Western Europe, underground plant material favoured by boars includes bracken, willow herb, bulbs, meadow herb roots and bulbs and the bulbs of cultivated crops. Such food is favoured in early spring and summer, but may also be eaten in autumn and winter during beechnut and acorn crop failures. Should regular wild foods become scarce, boars will eat tree bark and fungi, as well as visit cultivated potato and artichoke fields.[3] Boar soil disturbance and foraging have been shown to facilitate invasive plants.[48][49] Boars of the vittatus subspecies in Ujung Kulon National Park in Java differ from most other populations by their primarily frugivorous diet, which consists of 50 different fruit species, especially figs, thus making them important seed dispersers.[4] The wild boar can consume numerous genera of poisonous plants without ill effect, including Aconitum, Anemone, Calla, Caltha, Ferula and Pteridium.[9]
+
+Boars may occasionally prey on small vertebrates like newborn deer fawns, leporids and galliform chicks.[33] Boars inhabiting the Volga Delta and near some lakes and rivers of Kazakhstan have been recorded to feed extensively on fish like carp and Caspian roach. Boars in the former area will also feed on cormorant and heron chicks, bivalved molluscs, trapped muskrats and mice.[3] There is at least one record of a boar killing and eating a bonnet macaque in southern India's Bandipur National Park, though this may have been a case of intraguild predation, brought on by interspecific competition for human handouts.[50]
+
+Piglets are vulnerable to attack from medium-sized felids like Eurasian lynx, jungle cats and snow leopards and other carnivorans like brown bears and yellow-throated martens.[3]
+
+The grey wolf is the main predator of wild boar throughout most of its range. A single wolf can kill around 50 to 80 boars of differing ages in one year.[3] In Italy[51] and Belarus' Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park, boars are the wolf's primary prey, despite an abundance of alternative, less powerful ungulates.[51] Wolves are particularly threatening during the winter, when deep snow impedes the boars' movements. In the Baltic regions, heavy snowfall can allow wolves to eliminate boars from an area almost completely. Wolves primarily target piglets and subadults and only rarely attack adult sows. Adult males are usually avoided entirely.[3] Dholes may also prey on boars, to the point of keeping their numbers down in northwestern Bhutan, despite there being many more cattle in the area.[52]
+
+Leopards are predators of wild boar in the Caucasus (particularly Transcaucasia), the Russian Far East, India, China[53] and Iran. In most areas, boars constitute only a small part of the leopard's diet. However, in Iran's Sarigol National Park, boars are the second most frequently targeted prey species after mouflon, though adult individuals are generally avoided, as they are above the leopard's preferred weight range of 10–40 kg (22–88 lb).[54] This dependence on wild boar is largely due in part to the local leopard subspecies' large size.[55]
+
+Boars of all ages were once the primary prey of tigers in Transcaucasia, Kazakhstan, Middle Asia and the Far East up until the late 19th century. In modern times, tiger numbers are too low to have a limiting effect on boar populations. A single tiger can systematically destroy an entire sounder by preying on its members one by one, before moving on to another sounder. Tigers have been noted to chase boars for longer distances than with other prey. In two rare cases, boars were reported to gore a small tiger and a tigress to death in self-defense.[56] In the Amur region, wild boars are one of the two most important prey species for tigers alongside the Manchurian wapiti, with the two species collectively comprising roughly 80% of the felid's prey.[57] In Sikhote Alin, a tiger can kill 30–34 boars a year.[9] Studies of tigers in India indicate that boars are usually secondary in preference to various cervids and bovids,[58] though when boars are targeted, healthy adults are caught more frequently than young and sick specimens.[59]
+
+On the islands of Komodo, Rinca and Flores, the boar's main predator is the Komodo dragon.[10]
+
+The species originally occurred in North Africa and much of Eurasia; from the British Isles to Korea and the Sunda Islands. The northern limit of its range extended from southern Scandinavia to southern Siberia and Japan. Within this range, it was only absent in extremely dry deserts and alpine zones. It was once found in North Africa along the Nile valley up to Khartum and north of the Sahara. The species occurs on a few Ionian and Aegean Islands, sometimes swimming between islands.[60] The reconstructed northern boundary of the animal's Asian range ran from Lake Ladoga (at 60°N) through the area of Novgorod and Moscow into the southern Urals, where it reached 52°N. From there, the boundary passed Ishim and farther east the Irtysh at 56°N. In the eastern Baraba steppe (near Novosibirsk) the boundary turned steep south, encircled the Altai Mountains and went again eastward including the Tannu-Ola Mountains and Lake Baikal. From here, the boundary went slightly north of the Amur River eastward to its lower reaches at the Sea of Okhotsk. On Sakhalin, there are only fossil reports of wild boar. The southern boundaries in Europe and Asia were almost invariably identical to the seashores of these continents. It is absent in the dry regions of Mongolia from 44–46°N southward, in China westward of Sichuan and in India north of the Himalayas. It is absent in the higher elevations of the Pamir and the Tien Shan, though they do occur in the Tarim basin and on the lower slopes of the Tien Shan.[3]
+
+In recent centuries, the range of wild boar has changed dramatically, largely due to hunting by humans and more recently because of captive wild boar escaping into the wild. Prior to the 20th century, boar populations had declined in numerous areas, with British populations probably becoming extinct during the 13th century.[61] In the warm period after the ice age, wild boar lived in the southern parts of Sweden and Norway and north of Lake Ladoga in Karelia.[62] It was previously thought that the species did not live in Finland during prehistory because no prehistoric wild boar bones had been found within the borders of the country.[63][64] It was not until 2013, when a wild boar bone was found in Askola, that the species was found to have lived in Finland more than 8,000 years ago. It is believed, however, that man prevented its establishment by hunting.[65][66] In Denmark, the last boar was shot at the beginning of the 19th century, and by 1900 they were absent in Tunisia and Sudan and large areas of Germany, Austria and Italy. In Russia, they were extirpated in wide areas by the 1930s.[3] The last boar in Egypt reportedly died on 20 December 1912 in the Giza Zoo, with wild populations having disappeared by 1894–1902. Prince Kamal el Dine Hussein attempted to repopulate Wadi El Natrun with boars of Hungarian stock, but they were quickly exterminated by poachers.[67]
+
+A revival of boar populations began in the middle of the 20th century. By 1950, wild boar had once again reached their original northern boundary in many parts of their Asiatic range. By 1960, they reached Leningrad and Moscow and by 1975, they were to be found in Archangelsk and Astrakhan. In the 1970s they again occurred in Denmark and Sweden, where captive animals escaped and now survive in the wild. In England, wild boar populations re-established themselves in the 1990s, after escaping from specialist farms that had imported European stock.[61]
+
+Wild boars were apparently already becoming rare by the 11th century since a 1087 forestry law enacted by William the Conqueror punishes through blinding the unlawful killing of a boar. Charles I attempted to reintroduce the species into the New Forest, though this population was exterminated during the Civil War.
+
+Between their medieval extinction and the 1980s, when wild boar farming began, only a handful of captive wild boar, imported from the continent, were present in Britain. Occasional escapes of wild boar from wildlife parks have occurred as early as the 1970s, but since the early 1990s significant populations have re-established themselves after escapes from farms, the number of which has increased as the demand for meat from the species has grown. A 1998 MAFF (now DEFRA) study on wild boar living wild in Britain confirmed the presence of two populations of wild boar living in Britain; one in Kent/East Sussex and another in Dorset.[61] Another DEFRA report, in February 2008,[68] confirmed the existence of these two sites as 'established breeding areas' and identified a third in Gloucestershire/Herefordshire; in the Forest of Dean/Ross on Wye area. A 'new breeding population' was also identified in Devon. There is another significant population in Dumfries and Galloway. Populations estimates were as follows:
+
+Population estimates for the Forest of Dean are disputed as, at the time that the DEFRA population estimate was 100, a photo of a boar sounder in the forest near Staunton with over 33 animals visible was published and at about the same time over 30 boar were seen in a field near the original escape location of Weston under Penyard many kilometres or miles away. In early 2010 the Forestry Commission embarked on a cull,[70] with the aim of reducing the boar population from an estimated 150 animals to 100. By August it was stated that efforts were being made to reduce the population from 200 to 90, but that only 25 had been killed.[71] The failure to meet cull targets was confirmed in February 2011.[72]
+
+Wild boars have crossed the River Wye into Monmouthshire, Wales. Iolo Williams, the BBC Wales wildlife expert, attempted to film Welsh boar in late 2012.[73] Many other sightings, across the UK, have also been reported.[74] The effects of wild boar on the U.K.'s woodlands were discussed with Ralph Harmer of the Forestry Commission on the BBC Radio's Farming Today radio programme in 2011. The programme prompted activist writer George Monbiot to propose a thorough population study, followed by the introduction of permit-controlled culling.[75]
+
+Wild boars are an invasive species in the Americas and cause problems including out-competing native species for food, destroying the nests of ground-nesting species, killing fawns and young domestic livestock, destroying agricultural crops, eating tree seeds and seedlings, destroying native vegetation and wetlands through wallowing, damaging water quality, coming into violent conflict with humans and pets and carrying pig and human diseases including brucellosis, trichinosis and pseudorabies. In some jurisdictions, it is illegal to import, breed, release, possess, sell, distribute, trade, transport, hunt, or trap Eurasian boars. Hunting and trapping is done systematically, to increase the chance of eradication and to remove the incentive to illegally release boars, which have mostly been spread deliberately by sport hunters.[76]
+
+While domestic pigs, both captive and feral (popularly termed "razorbacks"), have been in North America since the earliest days of European colonization, pure wild boars were not introduced into the New World until the 19th century. The suids were released into the wild by wealthy landowners as big game animals. The initial introductions took place in fenced enclosures, though several escapes occurred, with the escapees sometimes intermixing with already established feral pig populations.
+
+The first of these introductions occurred in New Hampshire in 1890. Thirteen wild boars from Germany were purchased by Austin Corbin from Carl Hagenbeck and released into a 9,500-hectare (23,000-acre) game preserve in Sullivan County. Several of these boars escaped, though they were quickly hunted down by locals. Two further introductions were made from the original stocking, with several escapes taking place due to breaches in the game preserve's fencing. These escapees have ranged widely, with some specimens having been observed crossing into Vermont.[77]
+
+In 1902, 15–20 wild boar from Germany were released into a 3,200-hectare (7,900-acre) estate in Hamilton County, New York. Several specimens escaped six years later, dispersing into the William C. Whitney Wilderness Area, with their descendants surviving for at least 20 years.[77]
+
+The most extensive boar introduction in the US took place in western North Carolina in 1912, when 13 boars of undetermined European origin were released into two fenced enclosures in a game preserve in Hooper Bald, Graham County. Most of the specimens remained in the preserve for the next decade, until a large-scale hunt caused the remaining animals to break through their confines and escape. Some of the boars migrated to Tennessee, where they intermixed with both free-ranging and feral pigs in the area. In 1924, a dozen Hooper Bald wild pigs were shipped to California and released in a property between Carmel Valley and the Los Padres National Forest. These hybrid boar were later used as breeding stock on various private and public lands throughout the state, as well as in other states like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, West Virginia and Mississippi.[77]
+
+Several wild boars from Leon Springs and the San Antonio, Saint Louis and San Diego Zoos were released in the Powder Horn Ranch in Calhoun County, Texas, in 1939. These specimens escaped and established themselves in surrounding ranchlands and coastal areas, with some crossing the Espiritu Santo Bay and colonizing Matagorda Island. Descendants of the Powder Horn Ranch boars were later released onto San José Island and the coast of Chalmette, Louisiana.[77]
+
+Wild boar of unknown origin were stocked in a ranch in the Edwards Plateau in the 1940s, only to escape during a storm and hybridize with local feral pig populations, later spreading into neighboring counties.[77]
+
+Starting in the mid-1980s, several boars purchased from the San Diego Zoo and Tierpark Berlin were released into the United States. A decade later, more specimens from farms in Canada and Białowieża Forest were let loose. In recent years, wild pig populations have been reported in 44 states within the US, most of which are likely wild boar–feral hog hybrids. Pure wild boar populations may still be present, but are extremely localized.[77]
+
+Wild boars are known to host at least 20 different parasitic worm species, with maximum infections occurring in summer. Young animals are vulnerable to helminths like Metastrongylus, which are consumed by boars through earthworms and cause death by parasitising the lungs. Wild boar also carry parasites known to infect humans, including Gastrodiscoides, Trichinella spiralis, Taenia solium, Balantidium coli and Toxoplasma gondii.[78] Wild boar in southern regions are frequently infested with ticks (Dermacentor, Rhipicephalus, and Hyalomma) and hog lice. The species also suffers from blood-sucking flies, which it escapes by bathing frequently or hiding in dense shrubs.[3]
+
+Swine plague spreads very quickly in wild boar, with epizootics being recorded in Germany, Poland, Hungary, Belarus, the Caucasus, the Far East, Kazakhstan and other regions. Foot-and-mouth disease can also take on epidemic proportions in boar populations. The species occasionally, but rarely contracts Pasteurellosis, hemorrhagic sepsis, tularemia, and anthrax. Wild boar may on occasion contract swine erysipelas through rodents or hog lice and ticks.[3]
+
+The wild boar features prominently in the cultures of Indo-European people, many of which saw the animal as embodying warrior virtues. Cultures throughout Europe and Asia Minor saw the killing of a boar as proof of one's valor and strength. Neolithic hunter gatherers depicted reliefs of ferocious wild boars on their temple pillars at Göbekli Tepe some 11,600 years ago.[80][81] Virtually all heroes in Greek mythology fight or kill a boar at one point. The demigod Herakles' third labour involves the capture of the Erymanthian Boar, Theseus slays the wild sow Phaea, and a disguised Odysseus is recognised by his handmaiden Eurycleia by the scars inflicted on him by a boar during a hunt in his youth.[82] To the mythical Hyperboreans, the boar represented spiritual authority.[79] Several Greek myths use the boar as a symbol of darkness, death and winter. One example is the story of the youthful Adonis, who is killed by a boar and is permitted by Zeus to depart from Hades only during the spring and summer period. This theme also occurs in Irish and Egyptian mythology, where the animal is explicitly linked to the month of October, therefore autumn. This association likely arose from aspects of the boar's actual nature. Its dark colour was linked to the night, while its solitary habits, proclivity to consume crops and nocturnal nature were associated with evil.[83] The foundation myth of Ephesus has the city being built over the site where Prince Androklos of Athens killed a boar.[84] Boars were frequently depicted on Greek funerary monuments alongside lions, representing gallant losers who have finally met their match, as opposed to victorious hunters as lions are. The theme of the doomed, yet valorous boar warrior also occurred in Hittite culture, where it was traditional to sacrifice a boar alongside a dog and a prisoner of war after a military defeat.[82]
+
+The boar as a warrior also appears in Scandinavian, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon culture, with its image having been frequently engraved on helmets, shields and swords. According to Tacitus, the Baltic Aesti featured boars on their helmets and may have also worn boar masks (see for example the Guilden Morden boar). The boar and pig were held in particularly high esteem by the Celts, who considered them to be their most important sacred animal. Some Celtic deities linked to boars include Moccus and Veteris. It has been suggested that some early myths surrounding the Welsh hero Culhwch involved the character being the son of a boar god.[82] Nevertheless, the importance of the boar as a culinary item among Celtic tribes may have been exaggerated in popular culture by the Asterix series, as wild boar bones are rare among Celtic archaeological sites and the few that do occur show no signs of butchery, having probably been used in sacrificial rituals.[85]
+
+The boar also appears in Vedic mythology and Hindu mythology. A story present in the Brahmanas has the god Indra slaying an avaricious boar, who has stolen the treasure of the asuras, then giving its carcass to the god Vishnu, who offered it as a sacrifice to the gods. In the story's retelling in the Charaka Samhita, the boar is described as a form of Prajapati and is credited with having raised the Earth from the primeval waters. In the Ramayana and the Puranas, the same boar is portrayed as Varaha, an avatar of Vishnu.[86]
+
+In Japanese culture, the boar is widely seen as a fearsome and reckless animal, to the point that several words and expressions in Japanese referring to recklessness include references to boars. The boar is the last animal of the Oriental zodiac, with people born during the year of the Pig being said to embody the boar-like traits of determination and impetuosity. Among Japanese hunters, the boar's courage and defiance is a source of admiration and it is not uncommon for hunters and mountain people to name their sons after the animal inoshishi (猪). Boars are also seen as symbols of fertility and prosperity; in some regions, it is thought that boars are drawn to fields owned by families including pregnant women, and hunters with pregnant wives are thought to have greater chances of success when boar hunting. The animal's link to prosperity was illustrated by its inclusion on the ¥10 note during the Meiji period and it was once believed that a man could become wealthy by keeping a clump of boar hair in his wallet.[87]
+
+In the folklore of the Mongol Altai Uriankhai tribe, the wild boar was associated with the watery underworld, as it was thought that the spirits of the dead entered the animal's head, to be ultimately transported to the water.[88] Prior to the conversion to Islam, the Kyrgyz people believed that they were descended from boars and thus did not eat pork. In Buryat mythology, the forefathers of the Buryats descended from heaven and were nourished by a boar.[89] In China, the boar is the emblem of the Miao people.[79]
+
+The boar (sanglier) is frequently displayed in English, Scottish and Welsh heraldry. As with the lion, the boar is often shown as armed and langued. As with the bear, Scottish and Welsh heraldry displays the boar's head with the neck cropped, unlike the English version, which retains the neck.[90] The white boar served as the badge of King Richard III of England, who distributed it among his northern retainers during his tenure as Duke of Gloucester.[91]
+
+Humans have been hunting boar for millennia, the earliest artistic depictions of such activities dating back to the Upper Paleolithic.[82] The animal was seen as a source of food among the Ancient Greeks, as well as a sporting challenge and source of epic narratives. The Romans inherited this tradition, with one of its first practitioners being Scipio Aemilianus. Boar hunting became particularly popular among the young nobility during the 3rd century BC as preparation for manhood and battle. A typical Roman boar hunting tactic involved surrounding a given area with large nets, then flushing the boar with dogs and immobilizing it with smaller nets. The animal would then be dispatched with a venabulum, a short spear with a crossguard at the base of the blade. More than their Greek predecessors, the Romans extensively took inspiration from boar hunting in their art and sculpture. With the ascension of Constantine the Great, boar hunting took on Christian allegorical themes, with the animal being portrayed as a "black beast" analogous to the dragon of Saint George. Boar hunting continued after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, though the Germanic tribes considered the red deer to be a more noble and worthy quarry. The post-Roman nobility hunted boar as their predecessors did, but primarily as training for battle rather than sport. It was not uncommon for medieval hunters to deliberately hunt boars during the breeding season when the animals were more aggressive. During the Renaissance, when deforestation and the introduction of firearms reduced boar numbers, boar hunting became the sole prerogative of the nobility, one of many charges brought up against the rich during the German Peasants' War and the French Revolution.[92] During the mid-20th century, 7,000–8,000 boars were caught in the Caucasus, 6,000–7,000 in Kazakhstan and about 5,000 in Central Asia during the Soviet period, primarily through the use of dogs and beats.[3] In Nepal, farmers and poachers eliminate boars by baiting balls of wheat flour containing explosives with kerosene oil, with the animals' chewing motions triggering the devices.[93]
+
+Wild boar can thrive in captivity, though piglets grow slowly and poorly without their mothers. Products derived from wild boar include meat, hide and bristles.[3] Apicius devotes a whole chapter to the cooking of boar meat, providing 10 recipes involving roasting, boiling and what sauces to use. The Romans usually served boar meat with garum.[94] Boar's head was the centrepiece of most medieval Christmas celebrations among the nobility.[95] Although growing in popularity as a captive-bred source of food, the wild boar takes longer to mature than most domestic pigs and it is usually smaller and produces less meat. Nevertheless, wild boar meat is leaner and healthier than pork,[96] being of higher nutritional value and having a much higher concentration of essential amino acids.[97] Most meat-dressing organizations agree that a boar carcass should yield 50 kg (110 lb) of meat on average. Large specimens can yield 15–20 kg (33–44 lb) of fat, with some giants yielding 30 kg (66 lb) or more. A boar hide can measure 300 dm2 (4,700 sq in) and can yield 350–1,000 grams (12–35 oz) of bristle and 400 grams (14 oz) of underwool.[3]
+
+Roman relief of a dog confronting a boar, Cologne
+
+Southern Indian depiction of boar hunt, c. 1540
+
+Pig-sticking in British India
+
+Boar shot in Volgograd Oblast, Russia
+
+The Boar Hunt – Hans Wertinger, c. 1530, the Danube Valley
+
+Boars can be damaging to agriculture in situations where their natural habitat is sparse. Populations living on the outskirts of towns or farms can dig up potatoes and damage melons, watermelons and maize. However, they generally only encroach upon farms when natural food is scarce. In the Belovezh forest for example, 34–47% of the local boar population will enter fields in years of moderate availability of natural foods. While the role of boars in damaging crops is often exaggerated,[3] cases are known of boar depredations causing famines, as was the case in Hachinohe, Japan in 1749, where 3,000 people died of what became known as the "wild boar famine". Still, within Japanese culture, the boar's status as vermin is expressed through its title as "king of pests" and the popular saying (addressed to young men in rural areas) "When you get married, choose a place with no wild boar."[87][98]
+
+In Central Europe, farmers typically repel boars through distraction or fright, while in Kazakhstan it is usual to employ guard dogs in plantations. Although large boar populations can play an important role in limiting forest growth, they are also useful in keeping pest populations such as June bugs under control.[3] The growth of urban areas and the corresponding decline in natural boar habitats has led to some sounders entering human habitations in search of food. As in natural conditions, sounders in peri-urban areas are matriarchal, though males tend to be much less represented and adults of both sexes can be up to 35% heavier than their forest-dwelling counterparts. As of 2010, at least 44 cities in 15 countries have experienced problems of some kind relating to the presence of habituated wild boar.[99]
+
+Actual attacks on humans are rare, but can be serious, resulting in penetrating injuries to the lower part of the body. They generally occur during the boars' rutting season from November to January, in agricultural areas bordering forests or on paths leading through forests. The animal typically attacks by charging and pointing its tusks towards the intended victim, with most injuries occurring on the thigh region. Once the initial attack is over, the boar steps back, takes position and attacks again if the victim is still moving, only ending once the victim is completely incapacitated.[100][101]
+
+Boar attacks on humans have been documented since the Stone Age, with one of the oldest depictions being a cave painting in Bhimbetaka, India. The Romans and Ancient Greeks wrote of these attacks (Odysseus was wounded by a boar and Adonis was killed by one). A 2012 study compiling recorded attacks from 1825–2012 found accounts of 665 human victims of both wild boars and feral pigs, with the majority (19%) of attacks in the animal's native range occurring in India. Most of the attacks occurred in rural areas during the winter months in non-hunting contexts and were committed by solitary males.[102]
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+in Europe (agate grey)  –  [Legend]
+
+San Marino (/ˌsæn məˈriːnoʊ/ (listen), Italian: [sam maˈriːno]), officially the Republic of San Marino[1][2] (Italian: Repubblica di San Marino; Romagnol: Ripóbblica d' San Marein), also known as the Most Serene Republic of San Marino[2] (Italian: Serenissima Repubblica di San Marino), is a microstate in Southern Europe completely enclosed by Italy.[6]
+
+Located on the northeastern side of the Apennine Mountains, San Marino covers a land area of just over 61 km2 (24 sq mi), and has a population of 33,562.[7] Its capital is the City of San Marino and its largest settlement is Dogana. San Marino's official language is Italian.
+
+The country derives its name from Saint Marinus, a stonemason from the then Roman island of Rab, in modern-day Croatia. Born in AD 275, Marinus participated in the reconstruction of Rimini's city walls after their destruction by Liburnian pirates. Marinus then went on to found an independent monastic community on Monte Titano in AD 301; thus, San Marino lays claim to being the oldest extant sovereign state, as well as the oldest constitutional republic.[8]
+
+San Marino's politics are ruled by its constitution, which dictates that every six months San Marino's parliament must elect two Captains Regent. The Captain Regents have equal powers, and are free to exercise them within the limits of the constitution and parliamentary legislation until their term expires.
+
+The country's economy is mainly based on finance, industry, services and tourism. It is one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita, with a figure comparable to the most developed European regions. San Marino is considered to have a highly stable economy, with one of the lowest unemployment rates in Europe, no national debt and a budget surplus.[1]
+
+Saint Marinus left the island of Rab in present-day Croatia with his lifelong friend Leo, and went to the city of Rimini as a stonemason. After the Diocletianic Persecution following his Christian sermons, he escaped to the nearby Monte Titano, where he built a small church and thus founded what is now the city and state of San Marino.
+
+The official founding date is 3 September 301. In 1320 the community of Chiesanuova chose to join the country.[9] In 1463 San Marino was extended with the communities of Faetano, Fiorentino, Montegiardino, and Serravalle, after which the country's borders have remained unchanged.[10]
+
+In 1503, Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI occupied the Republic for six months until his father's successor, Pope Julius II, intervened and restored the country's independence.[11]
+
+On June 4, 1543 Fabiano di Monte San Savino, nephew of the later Pope Julius III, attempted to conquer the republic, but his infantry and cavalry failed as they got lost in a dense fog, which the Sammarinese attributed to Saint Quirinus, whose feast day it was.[12]
+
+After the Duchy of Urbino was annexed by the Papal States in 1625, San Marino became an enclave within the Papal States, something which led to its seeking the formal protection of the Papal States in 1631, but this never equalled a de facto Papal control of the republic.[13]
+
+The country was occupied on October 17, 1739 by the legate (Papal governor) of Ravenna, Cardinal Giulio Alberoni, but the independence was restored by Pope Clement XII on February 5, 1740, the feast day of Saint Agatha, after which she became a patron saint of the republic.[14]
+
+The advance of Napoleon's army in 1797 presented a brief threat to the independence of San Marino, but the country was saved from losing its liberty thanks to one of its regents, Antonio Onofri, who managed to gain the respect and friendship of Napoleon. Thanks to his intervention, Napoleon, in a letter delivered to Gaspard Monge, scientist and commissary of the French Government for Science and Art, promised to guarantee and protect the independence of the Republic, even offering to extend its territory according to its needs. The offer was declined by the regents, fearing future retaliation from other states' revanchism.[15][16]
+
+During the later phase of the Italian unification process in the 19th century, San Marino served as a refuge for many people persecuted because of their support for unification, including Giuseppe Garibaldi and his wife Anita.
+
+The government of San Marino made United States President Abraham Lincoln an honorary citizen. He wrote in reply, saying that the republic proved that "government founded on republican principles is capable of being so administered as to be secure and enduring."[17][18]
+
+During World War I, when Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915, San Marino remained neutral and Italy adopted a hostile view of Sammarinese neutrality, suspecting that San Marino could harbour Austrian spies who could be given access to its new radiotelegraph station. Italy tried to forcibly establish a detachment of Carabinieri in the republic and then cut the republic's telephone lines when it did not comply. Two groups of ten volunteers joined Italian forces in the fighting on the Italian front, the first as combatants and the second as a medical corps operating a Red Cross field hospital. The existence of this hospital later caused Austria-Hungary to suspend diplomatic relations with San Marino.[19]
+
+After the war, San Marino suffered from high rates of unemployment and inflation, leading to increased tensions between the lower and middle classes. The latter, fearing that the moderate government of San Marino would make concessions to the lower class majority, began to show support for the Sammarinese Fascist Party (Partito Fascista Sammarinese, PFS), founded in 1922 and styled largely on their Italian counterpart. PFS rule lasted from 1923 to 1943, and during this time they often sought support from Benito Mussolini's fascist government in Italy.[20]
+
+During World War II, San Marino remained neutral, although it was wrongly reported in an article from The New York Times that it had declared war on the United Kingdom on 17 September 1940.[21] The Sammarinese government later transmitted a message to the British government stating that they had not declared war on the United Kingdom.[22]
+
+Three days after the fall of Benito Mussolini in Italy, PFS rule collapsed and the new government declared neutrality in the conflict. The Fascists regained power on 1 April 1944 but kept neutrality intact. Despite that, on 26 June 1944, San Marino was bombed by the Royal Air Force, in the belief that San Marino had been overrun by German forces and was being used to amass stores and ammunition. The Sammarinese government declared on the same day that no military installations or equipment were located on its territory, and that no belligerent forces had been allowed to enter.[23] San Marino accepted thousands of civilian refugees when Allied forces went over the Gothic Line.[24] In September 1944, it was briefly occupied by German forces, who were defeated by Allied forces in the Battle of San Marino.
+
+San Marino had the world's first democratically elected communist government – a coalition between the Sammarinese Communist Party and the Sammarinese Socialist Party, which held office between 1945 and 1957.[25][26]
+
+San Marino is the world's smallest republic, although when Nauru gained independence in 1968 it challenged that claim, Nauru's land mass being only 21 km2 (8.1 sq mi). However Nauru's jurisdiction over its surrounding waters covers 431,000 km2 (166,000 sq mi), an area thousands of times greater than the territory of San Marino.[27] San Marino became a member of the Council of Europe in 1988 and of the United Nations in 1992. It is neither a member of the European Union nor of the Eurozone, although it uses the euro as its currency.
+
+During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, as of June 2020, San Marino had the highest death rate per capita of any country.[28]
+
+San Marino is an enclave (landlocked) surrounded by Italy in Southern Europe, on the border between the regions of Emilia Romagna and Marche and about 10 km (6.21 mi) from the Adriatic coast at Rimini. Its hilly topography, with no flat ground, is part of the Apennine mountain range. The highest point in the country, the summit of Monte Titano, is 749 m (2,457 feet) above sea level. San Marino has no still or contained bodies of water of any significant size.
+
+It is one of only three countries in the world to be completely enclosed by another country (the others being Vatican City, also enclosed by Italy, and Lesotho, enclosed by South Africa). It is the third smallest country in Europe, after Vatican City and Monaco, and the fifth smallest country in the world.[29]
+
+The climate of San Marino is a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfa), with continental influences, having warm summers and cool winters that are typical of inland areas of the central Italian peninsula. Snowfalls are common and heavy almost every winter, especially above 400–500 m (1,300–1,600 feet) of altitude.
+
+San Marino has the political framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic: the captains regent are both heads of state and heads of government, and there is a pluriform multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Grand and General Council. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
+
+San Marino is considered to have the earliest written governing documents still in effect, as the Statues of 1600 are still at the core of its constitutional framework.[31]
+
+San Marino was originally led by the Arengo, initially formed from the heads of each family. In the 13th century, power was given to the Grand and General Council. In 1243, the first two captains regent were nominated by the Council. Still today, Captains Regent are elected every six months by the Council.
+
+The legislature of the republic is the Grand and General Council (Consiglio grande e generale). The Council is a unicameral legislature with 60 members. There are elections every five years by proportional representation in all nine administrative districts. These districts (townships) correspond to the old parishes of the republic. All citizens 18 years or older are eligible to vote.
+
+Besides general legislation, the Grand and General Council approves the budget and elects the captains regent, the State Congress (composed of ten secretaries with executive power), the Council of Twelve (which forms the judicial branch during the period of legislature of the Council), the Advising Commissions, and the Government Unions. The council also has the power to ratify treaties with other countries. The council is divided into five different Advising Commissions consisting of fifteen councilors who examine, propose, and discuss the implementation of new laws that are on their way to being presented on the floor of the council.
+
+Every six months, the council elects two captains regents to be the heads of state. The regents are chosen from opposing parties so that there is a balance of power. They serve a six-month term. The investiture of the captains regent takes place on 1 April and 1 October in every year. Once this term is over, citizens have three days in which to file complaints about the captains' activities. If they warrant it, judicial proceedings against the ex-head(s) of state can be initiated.
+
+The practice of having two heads of state, like Roman consuls, chosen in frequent elections, is derived directly from the customs of the Roman Republic. The Council is equivalent to the Roman Senate; the captains regent, to the consuls of ancient Rome. It is thought the inhabitants of the area came together as Roman rule collapsed to form a rudimentary government for their own protection from foreign rule.
+
+San Marino is a multi-party democratic republic. A new election law in 2008 raised the threshold for small parties entering Parliament, causing political parties to organise themselves into two alliances: the right-wing Pact for San Marino, led by the San Marinese Christian Democratic Party; and the left-wing Reforms and Freedom, led by the Party of Socialists and Democrats, a merger of the Socialist Party of San Marino and the former communist Party of Democrats. The 2008 general election was won by the Pact for San Marino with 35 seats in the Grand and General Council against Reforms and Freedom's 25.
+
+On 1 October 2007, Mirko Tomassoni was elected as among the heads of state, making him the first disabled person ever to have been elected as captain regent.[32]
+
+San Marino has had more female heads of state than any other country: 15 as of October 2014, including three who served twice. With regard to the legal profession, while the Order of Lawyers and Notaries of the Republic of San Marino [Ordine degli Avvocati e Notai della Repubblica di San Marino] exists, there is no clear indication as to how demographic groups have fared in the legal field.
+
+San Marino is divided into the following nine municipalities, known locally as castelli (meaning "castles"):
+
+There are also eight minor municipalities:
+
+The largest settlement of the Republic is Dogana, which is not an autonomous castello, but rather belongs to the Castello of Serravalle.
+
+In a similar way to an Italian comune, each castello includes a main settlement, called capoluogo, which is the seat of the castello, and some even smaller localities known as frazioni.
+
+The republic is made up of 43 parishes[33] named curacies (It: curazie):
+Cà Berlone, Cà Chiavello, Cà Giannino, Cà Melone, Cà Ragni, Cà Rigo, Cailungo, Caladino, Calligaria, Canepa, Capanne, Casole, Castellaro, Cerbaiola, Cinque Vie, Confine, Corianino, Crociale, Dogana, Falciano, Fiorina, Galavotto, Gualdicciolo, La Serra, Lesignano, Molarini, Montalbo, Monte Pulito, Murata, Pianacci, Piandivello, Poggio Casalino, Poggio Chiesanuova, Ponte Mellini, Rovereta, San Giovanni sotto le Penne, Santa Mustiola, Spaccio Giannoni, Teglio, Torraccia, Valdragone, Valgiurata and Ventoso.
+
+San Marino's military forces are among the smallest in the world. National defence is, by arrangement, the responsibility of Italy's armed forces. Different branches have varied functions, including: performing ceremonial duties; patrolling borders; mounting guard at government buildings; and assisting police in major criminal cases. The police are not included in the military of San Marino.
+
+Once at the heart of San Marino's army, the Crossbow Corps is now a ceremonial force of approximately 80 volunteers. Since 1295, the Crossbow Corps has provided demonstrations of crossbow shooting at festivals. Its uniform design is medieval. While still a statutory military unit, the Crossbow Corps has no military function today.
+
+The Guard of the Rock is a front-line military unit in the San Marino armed forces, a state border patrol, with responsibility for patrolling borders and defending them.[34] In their role as Fortress Guards they are responsible for guarding the Palazzo Pubblico in San Marino City, the seat of national government.
+
+In this role they are the forces most visible to tourists, and are known for their colourful ceremony of Changing the Guard.[34] Under the 1987 statute the Guard of the Rock are all enrolled as "Criminal Police Officers" (in addition to their military role) and assist the police in investigating major crime. The uniform of the Guard of the Rock is a distinctive red and green.[34]
+
+The Guard of the Grand and General Council commonly known as The Guard of the Council or locally as the "Guard of Nobles", formed in 1741,[34] is a volunteer unit with ceremonial duties. Due to its striking blue, white, and gold uniform, it is perhaps the best-known part of the Sammarinese military, and appears on countless postcard views of the republic. The functions of the Guard of the Council are to protect the captains regent, and to defend the Grand and General Council during its formal sessions. They also act as ceremonial bodyguards to government officials at both state and church festivals.
+
+In former times, all families with two or more adult male members were required to enroll half of them in the Company of Uniformed Militia. This unit remains the basic fighting force of the armed forces of San Marino, but is largely ceremonial. It is a matter of civic pride for many Sammarinese to belong to the force, and all citizens with at least six years residence in the republic are entitled to enroll.
+
+The uniform is dark blue, with a kepi bearing a blue and white plume. The ceremonial form of the uniform includes a white cross-strap, and white and blue sash, white epaulets, and white decorated cuffs.
+
+Formally this is part of the Army Militia,[34] and is the ceremonial military band of San Marino. It consists of approximately 60 musicians.[35] The uniform is similar to that of the Army Militia. Military Ensemble music accompanies most state occasions in the republic.
+
+Established in 1842, the Gendarmerie of San Marino is a militarised law enforcement agency.[34] Its members are full-time and have responsibility for the protection of citizens and property, and the preservation of law and order.
+
+The entire military corps of San Marino depends upon the co-operation of full-time forces and their retained (volunteer) colleagues, known as the Corpi Militari Volontari, or Voluntary Military Force.
+
+San Marino is a developed country[36] and although it is not a European Union member, it is allowed to use the euro as its currency by arrangement with the Council of the European Union; it is also granted the right to use its own designs on the national side of the euro coins. Before the euro, the Sammarinese lira was pegged to, and exchangeable with, the Italian lira. The small number of Sammarinese euro coins, as was the case with the lira before it, are primarily of interest to coin collectors.
+
+San Marino's per capita GDP and standard of living are comparable to that of Italy. Key industries include banking, electronics, and ceramics. The main agricultural products are wine and cheese. San Marino imports mainly staple goods from Italy.
+
+San Marino's postage stamps, which are valid for mail posted in the country, are mostly sold to philatelists and are an important source of income. San Marino is no longer a member of the Small European Postal Administration Cooperation.[37]
+
+It has the world's highest rate of car ownership, being the only country with more vehicles than people.
+
+The corporate profits tax rate in San Marino is 17%, capital gains are subject to a five percent tax, and active interest is subject to a 11% withholding tax. Several benefits apply to new businesses, which can strongly reduced the amount of taxes to be paid.
+
+The personal income tax (IGR, Italian: Imposta Generale sui Redditi) was introduced in 1984 and it was heavily reformed in 2013 with the goal of increasing fiscal revenue. The nominal tax rate ranges from 9% for an annual revenue below €10,000 to 35% for revenues above €80,000.
+
+In 1972, a value-added tax (VAT) system was introduced in Italy, and an equivalent tax was introduced also in San Marino, in accordance with the 1939 friendship treaty. However, this tax is not a standard value-added tax, but rather it is an import tax, thus, it is levied only on imported goods and raw resources. For this reason it is locally best known as single stage tax (Italian: imposta monofase), as it is only applied one time during importation, while VAT is applied at every exchange. Furthermore, while VAT also applies to services, the import tax only applies on physical goods. Another important difference is that while VAT is computed on the final price paid by the consumer, the import tax is levied on the importation cost paid by the company, which is generally much lower.
+
+Under the European Union customs agreement, San Marino import tax is considered equivalent to the European VAT system. A separate tax on services, with a rate of 3%, has been introduced in 2011. The introduction of a true VAT system, not dissimilar from the European one, is under development.
+
+The tourism sector contributes over 22% of San Marino's GDP,[38] with approximately 2 million tourists having visited in 2014.[39]
+
+San Marino and Italy have engaged in conventions since 1862,[40] dictating some economic activities in San Marino's territory.
+Cultivation of tobacco and production of goods which are subject to Italy's government monopoly are forbidden in San Marino. Direct import is forbidden; all goods coming from a third party have to travel through Italy before reaching the country. Although it is allowed to print its own postal stamps, San Marino is not allowed to coin its own currency and is obliged to use Italy's mint; the agreement does not affect the right of the Republic of San Marino to continue to issue gold coins denominated in Scudi[41] (legal value of 1 gold Scudo is 37.50 euros). Gambling is legal and regulated; however, casinos were outlawed prior to 2007. There is one legally operating casino.
+
+In exchange for these limitations, Italy provides San Marino with an annual stipend, and at cost, sea salt (not more than 250 tonnes per year), tobacco (40 tonnes), cigarettes (20 tonnes) and matches (unlimited amount).[42]
+
+At the border there are no formalities with Italy. However, at the tourist office visitors can purchase officially cancelled souvenir stamps for their passports.
+
+San Marino has a population of approximately 33,000, with 4,800 foreign residents, most of whom are Italian citizens. Another 12,000 Sammarinese live abroad (5,700 in Italy, 3,000 in the US, 1,900 in France and 1,600 in Argentina).
+
+The first census since 1976 was conducted in 2010. Results were expected by the end of 2011; however, 13% of families did not return their forms.
+
+The primary language spoken is Italian; Romagnol is also widely spoken.
+
+San Marino is a predominantly Catholic state[1]—over 97% of the population profess the Roman Catholic faith, but Catholicism is not an established religion. Approximately half of those who profess to be Catholic practice the faith.[43] There is no episcopal see in San Marino, although its name is part of the present diocesan title. Historically, the various parishes in San Marino were divided between two Italian dioceses, mostly in the Diocese of Montefeltro, and partly in the Diocese of Rimini. In 1977, the border between Montefeltro and Rimini was readjusted so that all of San Marino fell within the diocese of Montefeltro. The bishop of Montefeltro-San Marino resides in Pennabilli, in Italy's province of Pesaro e Urbino.
+
+There is a provision under the income tax rules that the taxpayers have the right to request for allocation of 0.3% of their income tax to the Catholic Church or to charities. The churches include the two religious groups of the Waldensian Church and Jehovah's Witnesses.
+
+The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro was until 1977 the historic diocese of Montefeltro. It is a suffragan of the archdiocese of Ravenna-Cervia.[44] The diocese includes all the parishes of San Marino. The earliest mention of Montefeltro, as Mona Feretri, is in the diplomas by which Charlemagne confirmed the donation of Pepin. The first known bishop of Montefeltro was Agatho (826), whose residence was at San Leo. Under Bishop Flaminios Dondi (1724) the see was again transferred to San Leo, but later it returned to Pennabilli. The historic diocese was a suffragan of the archdiocese of Urbino.[45] Since 1988, there is formally an apostolic nunciature to the republic, but it is vested in the nuncio to Italy.
+
+There has been a Jewish presence in San Marino for at least 600 years.[46] The first mention of Jews in San Marino dates to the late 14th century, in official documents recording the business transactions of Jews. There are many documents throughout the 15th to 17th centuries describing Jewish dealings and verifying the presence of a Jewish community in San Marino.[47] Jews were permitted official protection by the government.
+
+During World War II, San Marino provided a haven for more than 100,000 Italians and Jews (approximately 10 times the Sammarinese population at the time) from Nazi persecution. As of 2012[update], few Jews remain.[48] In 2019 it has been inaugurated the 'Chapel of three religions', the first ever building of its kind devoted to interfaith dialogue.[49]
+
+There are 220 km (140 mi) of roads in the country, the main road being the San Marino Highway. Authorities license private vehicles with distinctive Sammarinese license plates, which are white with blue figures and the coat of arms, usually a letter followed by up to four numbers. Many vehicles also carry the international vehicle identification code (in black on a white oval sticker), which is "RSM".
+
+There are no public airports in San Marino, but there is a small private airstrip located in Torraccia and an international heliport located in Borgo Maggiore. Most tourists who arrive by air land at Federico Fellini International Airport close to the city of Rimini, then make the transfer by bus.
+
+Two rivers flow through San Marino, but there is no major water transport, and no port or harbour.
+
+San Marino has limited public transport facilities. There is a regular bus service between Rimini and the city of San Marino that is popular with both tourists and workers commuting to San Marino from Italy. This service stops at approximately 20 locations in Rimini and within San Marino, with its two terminus stops at Rimini railway station and San Marino coach station.
+
+A limited licensed taxi service operates nationwide. There are seven licensed taxi companies operating in the republic,[50] and Italian taxis regularly operate within San Marino when carrying passengers picked up in Italian territory.
+
+There is a 1.5 km (0.93 mi) aerial tramway connecting the City of San Marino on top of Monte Titano with Borgo Maggiore, a major town in the republic, with the second largest population of any Sammarinese settlement. From here a further connection is available to the nation's largest settlement, Dogana, via the local bus service.
+
+Two aerial tramway cars (gondolas) operate, with service provided at roughly 15-minute intervals throughout the day. A third vehicle is available on the system, a service car for the use of engineers maintaining the tramway.
+
+Today, there is no railway in San Marino, but for a short period before World War II, it had a single narrow-gauge line called the Ferrovia Rimini–San Marino which connected the country with the Italian rail network at Rimini. Because of the difficulties in accessing the capital, City of San Marino, with its mountain-top location, the terminus station was planned to be located in the village of Valdragone, but was extended to reach the capital through a steep and winding track comprising many tunnels. The railway was opened on 12 June 1932.[51]
+An advanced system for its time, it was an electric railway, powered from overhead cables. It was well built and had a high frequency of passengers, but was almost completely destroyed during World War II. Many facilities such as bridges, tunnels, and stations remain visible today, and some have been converted to parks, public footpaths, or traffic routes.
+
+The Three Towers of San Marino are located on the three peaks of Monte Titano in the capital. They are depicted on both the flag of San Marino and its coat of arms. The three towers are: Guaita, the oldest of the three (it was constructed in the 11th century); the 13th-century Cesta, located on the highest of Monte Titano's summits; and the 14th-century Montale, on the smallest of Monte Titano's summits, still privately owned.
+
+The Università degli Studi della Repubblica di San Marino (University of the Republic of San Marino)[52] is the main university, which includes the Scuola Superiore di Studi Storici di San Marino (Graduate School of Historical Studies), a distinguished research and advanced international study centre governed by an international Scientific Committee coordinated by the emeritus historian Luciano Canfora. Other important institutes are the Istituto Musicale Sammarinese (Sammarinese Musical Institute)[53] and the Akademio Internacia de la Sciencoj San Marino or Accademia Internazionale delle Scienze San Marino (International Academy of Sciences San Marino).[54] The latter is known for adopting Esperanto as the language for teaching and for scientific publications; further, it makes wide use of electronic educational technology (also called e-learning).
+
+Italian author Umberto Eco had attempted to create a "university without physical structures" in San Marino.[55]
+
+In San Marino football is the most popular sport. Basketball and volleyball are also popular. The three sports have their own federations, the San Marino Football Federation, the San Marino Basketball Federation and the San Marino Volleyball Federation.
+
+The San Marino national football team has had little success, being made up of part-timers, never qualifying for a major tournament, and recording only one win in over 25 years of its history, a 1–0 victory in 2004 against Liechtenstein.[56] They have drawn four more, with their most notable result being a 1993 0–0 draw with Turkey during the European qualifiers for the 1994 FIFA World Cup.[57] In the same qualifying competition Davide Gualtieri scored a goal 8.3 seconds into a match against England; this goal held the record for the fastest in international football until 2016.[58][59]
+
+A Formula One race, the San Marino Grand Prix, was named after the state, although it did not take place there. Instead, it was held at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in the Italian town of Imola, about 100 km (60 mi) northwest of San Marino. Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna suffered fatal accidents a day apart during the 1994 Grand Prix. This international event was removed from the calendar in 2007.
+
+The San Marino and Rimini's Coast motorcycle Grand Prix was reinstated in the schedule in 2007 and takes place at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli, as does San Marino's round of the World Superbike Championship.
+
+San Marino has a professional baseball team which plays in Italy's top division. It has participated in the European Cup tournament for the continent's top club sides several times, hosting the event in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2007. It won the championship in 2006 and was a runner-up in 2010.[60]
+
+Together with Italy, San Marino held the 2019 UEFA European Under-21 Championship, with teams playing at the Stadio Olimpico in Serravalle.
+
+San Marino has had little success at the Olympic Games, winning no medals.
+
+The cuisine of San Marino is extremely similar to Italian, especially that of the adjoining Emilia-Romagna and Marche regions, but it has a number of its own unique dishes and products. Its best known is probably the Torta Tre Monti ("Cake of the Three Mountains" or "Cake of the Three Towers"), a wafer layered cake covered in chocolate depicting the Three Towers of San Marino. The country also has a small wine industry.
+
+The site San Marino: Historic Centre and Mount Titano became part of the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008. The decision was taken during the 32nd Session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee composed of 21 Countries convened in Québec, Canada.
+
+The country has a long and rich musical tradition, closely linked to that of Italy, but which is also highly independent in itself. A well-known 17th-century composer is Francesco Maria Marini. The pop singer Little Tony achieved considerable success in the United Kingdom and Italy in the 1950s and 1960s.
+
+San Marino has taken part in the Eurovision Song Contest ten times, achieving two final qualifications to date (with then-three, eventually four-time contestant and San Marino native Valentina Monetta with "Maybe" in 2014 and Turkish singer Serhat with "Say Na Na Na" who achieved 19th place in the final in 2019).
+
+Coordinates: 43°56′30″N 12°27′30″E / 43.94167°N 12.45833°E / 43.94167; 12.45833

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+
+
+Sanskrit (/ˈsænskrɪt/;[7] Sanskrit: संस्कृतम्, romanized: saṃskṛtam, IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] (listen)) is an Indo-Aryan or Indic[8] language of the ancient Indian subcontinent with a 3,500-year history.[9][10][11] It is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and the predominant language of most works of Hindu philosophy as well as some of the principal texts of Buddhism and Jainism. Sanskrit, in its variants and numerous dialects, was the lingua franca of ancient and medieval India.[12][13][14] In the early 1st millennium AD, along with Buddhism and Hinduism, Sanskrit migrated to Southeast Asia,[15] parts of East Asia[16] and Central Asia,[17] emerging as a language of high culture and of local ruling elites in these regions.[18][19]
+
+Sanskrit is an Old Indo-Aryan language.[9] As one of the oldest documented members of the Indo-European family of languages,[20][note 1][note 2] Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies.[23] It is related to Greek and Latin,[9] as well as Hittite, Luwian, Old Avestan and many other living and extinct languages with historical significance to Europe, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. It traces its linguistic ancestry to the Proto-Indo-Aryan, Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-European languages.[24]
+
+Sanskrit is traceable to the 2nd millennium BCE in a form known as Vedic Sanskrit,[25] with the Rigveda as the earliest-known composition. A more refined and standardized grammatical form called Classical Sanskrit emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE with the Aṣṭādhyāyī treatise of Pāṇini.[9] Sanskrit, though not necessarily Classical Sanskrit, is the root language of many Prakrit languages.[26] Examples include numerous, modern, North Indian, subcontinental daughter languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Kumaoni, Garhwali, Urdu, Dogri, Maithili, Konkani, Assamese, Odia, and Nepali.[27][28][29] Sanskrit has significantly influenced the grammar, phonology and vocabulary of the Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam languages of South India.[30][31][32]
+
+The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama, scientific, technical and other texts. In the ancient era, Sanskrit compositions were orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity.[33][34] The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the few discovered in Ayodhya and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh).[35][note 3] Sanskrit texts dated to the 1st millennium CE were written in the Brahmi script, the Nāgarī script, the historic South Indian scripts and their derivative scripts.[39][40][41] Sanskrit is one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since India's independence in 1947.[42] Sanskrit is a living language and spoken as a primary language in some villages in India.  It is taught in a large number of schools in India. It also continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hinduism and some Buddhist practices such as recitation of hymns and chants.
+
+In Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sam (together, good, well, perfected) and krta- (made, formed, work).[43][44] It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred".[45][46][47] According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined the alphabet, the structure of words and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold", states Biderman, as an integral language they called Sanskrit.[44] From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that weaved all ideas and inspirations became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit.[48][49]
+
+Sanskrit as a language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages (prākṛta-). The term prakrta literally means "original, natural, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth.[50] The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patañjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and later leads to the problems of interpretation and misunderstanding. The purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Daṇḍin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit, but involve "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar". Daṇḍin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view is found in the writing of Bharata Muni, the author of the ancient Nāṭyaśāstra text. The early Jain scholar Namisādhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisādhu stated that the Prakrit language was the pūrvam (came before, origin) and that it came naturally to children, while Sanskrit was a refinement of Prakrit through "purification by grammar".[51]
+
+Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It is one of three ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European language:[21][52][53]
+
+Other Indo-European languages related to Sanskrit include archaic and classical Latin (c. 600 BCE – 100 CE, old Italian), Gothic (archaic Germanic language, c. 350 CE), Old Norse (c. 200 CE and after), Old Avestan (c. late 2nd millennium BCE[55]) and Younger Avestan (c. 900 BCE).[52][53] The closest ancient relatives of Vedic Sanskrit in the Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of the northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas,[53][56][57] as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian—both Iranian languages.[58][59][60] Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages.
+
+Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of the Sanskrit language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe.[note 4] It suggested a common root and historical links between some of the major distant ancient languages of the world.[note 5]
+
+In order to explain the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages, the Indo-Aryan migration theory states that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in the Indian subcontinent from the north-west sometime during the early second millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes the close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages, vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages, and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna.[63] The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on the relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia.[64] The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into the Indian subcontinent in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India, the Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language.[65]
+
+The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit. The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda, a Hindu scripture, from the mid-to-late second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive if they ever existed. However, scholars are confident that the oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they were ceremonial literature where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition.[66][67][68]
+
+The Rigveda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors from distant parts of ancient India. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest.[69][70] Yet, the Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Rigveda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou—an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Rigveda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE.[71] Beyond the Rigveda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into the modern age include the Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas, Aranyakas and the early Upanishads.[66] These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern and eastern Indian subcontinent.[9][72]
+
+Vedic Sanskrit was both a spoken and literary language of ancient India. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of the semi-nomadic Aryas who temporarily settled in one place, maintained cattle herds, practiced limited agriculture and after some time moved by wagon trains they called grama.[73][11] The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the "Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that are now parts of Syria and Turkey.[74][note 6] Parts of this treaty such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes the gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature.[74][76]
+
+O Brihaspati, when in giving names
+   they first set forth the beginning of Language,
+Their most excellent and spotless secret
+   was laid bare through love,
+When the wise ones formed Language with their mind,
+   purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan,
+Then friends knew friendships –
+   an auspicious mark placed on their language.
+
+— Rigveda 10.71.1–4Translated by Roger Woodard[77]
+
+The Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.[78] According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton—Indologists known for their translation of the Rigveda—, the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times, the social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations and some of the poetic meters.[79][note 7] While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the Rigveda, the Old Avestan Gathas lack simile entirely, and it is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Rigvedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different.[81]
+
+The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous, and it evolved over time into a more structured and homogeneous language, ultimately into the Classical Sanskrit by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. The language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages, states Gombrich.[82]
+
+The formalization of the Sanskrit language is credited to Pāṇini, along with Patanjali's Mahabhasya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patanjali's work.[83] Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ("Eight-Chapter Grammar"). The century in which he lived is unclear and debated, but his work is generally accepted to be from sometime between 6th and 4th centuries BCE.[84][85][86]
+
+The Aṣṭādhyāyī was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full. Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as the variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India.[87] The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Apisali, Kashyapa, Gargya, Galava, Cakravarmana, Bharadvaja, Sakatayana, Sakalya, Senaka and Sphotayana.[88] The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Panini became the foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedanga.[89] In the Aṣṭādhyāyī, language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, defines the linguistic expression and a classic that set the standard for the Sanskrit language.[90] Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced.[91]
+
+Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit.[92] His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia.[93] It is unclear whether Pāṇini wrote his treatise on Sanskrit language or he orally created the detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as lipi ("script") and lipikara ("scribe") in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī.[94][95][96][note 8]
+
+The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and a restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded".[103] The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond the Vedic Sanskrit's bahulam framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language.[104]
+
+The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit are negligible when compared to the intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between Indo-Aryan language and the Vedic Sanskrit.[105] The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax.[106] There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as the sandhi rules, both internal and external.[106] Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature.[106]
+
+Arthur Macdonell was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of the differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit.[106][107] Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir.[108]
+
+The earliest known use of the word Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit), in the context of a language, is found in verses 3.16.14 and 5.28.17–19 of the Ramayana.[110][note 9]. Outside the learned sphere of written Classical Sanskrit, vernacular colloquial dialects (Prakrits) continued to evolve. Sanskrit co-existed with numerous other Prakrit languages of ancient India. The Prakrit languages of India also have ancient roots and some Sanskrit scholars have called these Apabhramsa, literally "spoiled".[112][113] The Vedic literature includes words whose phonetic equivalent are not found in other Indo-European languages but which are found in the regional Prakrit languages, which makes it likely that the interaction, the sharing of words and ideas began early in the Indian history. As the Indian thought diversified and challenged earlier beliefs of Hinduism, particularly in the form of Buddhism and Jainism, the Prakrit languages such as Pali in Theravada Buddhism and Ardhamagadhi in Jainism competed with Sanskrit in the ancient times.[114][115][116] However, states Paul Dundas, a scholar of Jainism, these ancient Prakrit languages had "roughly the same relationship to Sanskrit as medieval Italian does to Latin."[116] The Indian tradition states that the Buddha and the Mahavira preferred the Prakrit language so that everyone could understand it. However, scholars such as Dundas have questioned this hypothesis. They state that there is no evidence for this and whatever evidence is available suggests that by the start of the common era, hardly anybody other than learned monks had the capacity to understand the old Prakrit languages such as Ardhamagadhi.[116][note 10]
+
+Colonial era scholars questioned whether Sanskrit was ever a spoken language, or just a literary language.[118] Scholars disagree in their answers. A section of Western scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language, while others and particularly most Indian scholars state the opposite.[119] Those who affirm Sanskrit to have been a vernacular language point to the necessity of Sanskrit being a spoken language for the oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. Secondly, they state that the textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini and Patanajali affirms that the Classical Sanskrit in their era was a language that is spoken (bhasha) by the cultured and educated. Some sutras expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit.[119] The 7th-century Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region.[119]
+
+According to Sanskrit linguist Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit.[13] This, states Deshpande, is true for modern languages where colloquial incorrect approximations and dialects of a language are spoken and understood, along with more "refined, sophisticated and grammatically accurate" forms of the same language being found in the literary works.[13] The Indian tradition, states Moriz Winternitz, has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata Purana, the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language.[120] The Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was thus the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants of it as well as other natural Indian languages.[13] Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside the vernacular Prakrits.[13] Many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits. Centres in Varanasi, Paithan, Pune and Kanchipuram were centers of classical Sanskrit learning and public debates until the arrival of the colonial era.[121]
+
+According to Étienne Lamotte—an Indologist and Buddhism scholar, Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied so did its spread and influence.[122] Sanskrit was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms as "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE.[123]
+
+— Foreword of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics (2009), Gérard Huet, Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf[124][125][note 11]
+
+Sanskrit has been the predominant language of Hindu texts encompassing a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama, scientific, technical and others.[127][128] It is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the Ayodhya Inscription of Dhana and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh).[35]
+
+Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism.[129][130] The structure and capabilities of the Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language?[129][131] They speculated on the role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other.[131][note 12] These speculations became particularly important to the Mimamsa and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal—a scholar of Linguistics with a focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit.[129] Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship ;[134] for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts.[135] According to Renou, Sanskrit had a limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature.[136] Sanskrit was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the Tattvartha Sutra by Umaswati.[137][138]
+
+The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE.[38] Xuanzang, another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in the 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong.[142][143] By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia,[15] parts of the East Asia[16] and the Central Asia.[17] It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions.[144] According to the Dalai Lama, the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called legjar lhai-ka or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet.[145]
+
+The Sanskrit language created a pan-Indic accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally.[121][148] It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent.[148] As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language.[148] It connected scholars from distant parts of the Indian subcontinent such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given the first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indic people together, particularly its elite scholars.[121] Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to the more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as "namah".[121]
+
+Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE.[149] Its position in the cultures of Greater India is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent, particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent.[27][28][29]
+
+Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century.[123][150] This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of the Indian subcontinent to create, and thereafter expand the Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire.[151] With the fall of Kashmir around the 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared,[152] perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Sheldon Pollock.[153]:397–398 The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century.[153]:398 As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and the South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire, so did Sanskrit.[152] There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar.[154] Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with the Muslim rulers.[155] Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire, reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity.[155][156][157] After Islamic rule disintegrated in the Indian subcontinent and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support the historic Sanskrit literary culture.[152]
+
+Scholars are divided on whether or when Sanskrit died. Western authors such as John Snelling state that Sanskrit and Pali are both dead Indian languages.[158] Indian authors such as M Ramakrishnan Nair state that Sanskrit was a dead language by the 1st millennium BCE.[159] Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead".[153]:393 After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with the previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock.[153]:398
+
+Other scholars state that Sanskrit language did not die, only declined. Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes a negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder,[160]
+
+On a more public level the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages and the fact that it is spoken, written and read will probably convince most people that it cannot be a dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollock's notion of the "death of Sanskrit" remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says that "most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead."[152]
+
+The Sanskrit language scholar Moriz Winternitz states, Sanskrit was never a dead language and it is still alive though its prevalence is lesser than ancient and medieval times. Sanskrit remains an integral part of Hindu journals, festivals, Ramlila plays, drama, rituals and the rites-of-passage.[161] Similarly, Brian Hatcher states that the "metaphors of historical rupture" by Pollock are not valid, that there is ample proof that Sanskrit was very much alive in the narrow confines of surviving Hindu kingdoms between the 13th and 18th centuries, and its reverence and tradition continues.[162]
+
+Hanneder states that modern works in Sanskrit are either ignored or their "modernity" contested.[163]
+
+According to Robert Goldman and Sally Sutherland, Sanskrit is neither "dead" nor "living" in the conventional sense. It is a special, timeless language that lives in the numerous manuscripts, daily chants and ceremonial recitations, a heritage language that Indians contextually prize and some practice.[164]
+
+When the British introduced English to India in the 19th century, knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient literature continued to flourish as the study of Sanskrit changed from a more traditional style into a form of analytical and comparative scholarship mirroring that of Europe.[165]
+
+The relationship of Sanskrit to the Prakrit languages, particularly the modern form of Indian languages, is complex and spans about 3,500 years, states Colin Masica—a linguist specializing in South Asian languages. A part of the difficulty is the lack of sufficient textual, archaeological and epigraphical evidence for the ancient Prakrit languages with rare exceptions such as Pali, leading to a tendency of anachronistic errors.[166] Sanskrit and Prakrit languages may be divided into Old Indo-Aryan (1500 BCE–600 BCE), Middle Indo-Aryan (600 BCE–1000 CE) and New Indo-Aryan (1000 CE–current), each can further be subdivided in early, middle or second, and late evolutionary substages.[166]
+
+Vedic Sanskrit belongs to the early Old Indo-Aryan while Classical Sanskrit to the later Old Indo-Aryan stage. The evidence for Prakrits such as Pali (Theravada Buddhism) and Ardhamagadhi (Jainism), along with Magadhi, Maharashtri, Sinhala, Sauraseni and Niya (Gandhari), emerge in the Middle Indo-Aryan stage in two versions—archaic and more formalized—that may be placed in early and middle substages of the 600 BCE–1000 CE period.[166] Two literary Indic languages can be traced to the late Middle Indo-Aryan stage and these are Apabhramsa and Elu (a form of literary Sinhalese). Numerous North, Central, Eastern and Western Indian languages, such as Hindi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Nepali, Braj, Awadhi, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, and others belong to the New Indo-Aryan stage.[166]
+
+There is an extensive overlap in the vocabulary, phonetics and other aspects of these New Indo-Aryan languages with Sanskrit, but it is neither universal nor identical across the languages. They likely emerged from a synthesis of the ancient Sanskrit language traditions and an admixture of various regional dialects. Each language has some unique and regionally creative aspects, with unclear origins. Prakrit languages do have a grammatical structure, but like the Vedic Sanskrit, it is far less rigorous than Classical Sanskrit. The roots of all Prakrit languages may be in the Vedic Sanskrit and ultimately the Indo-Aryan language, their structural details vary from the Classical Sanskrit.[26][166] It is generally accepted by scholars and widely believed in India that the modern Indic languages, such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi and Punjabi are descendants of the Sanskrit language.[167][168][169] Sanskrit, states Burjor Avari, can be described as "the mother language of almost all the languages of north India".[170]
+
+The Sanskrit language's historic presence is attested across a wide geography beyond the Indian subcontinent. Inscriptions and literary evidence suggests that Sanskrit language was already being adopted in Southeast Asia and Central Asia in the 1st millennium CE, through monks, religious pilgrims and merchants.[171][172][173]
+
+The Indian subcontinent has been the geographic range of the largest collection of the ancient and pre-18th-century Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions.[126] Beyond ancient India, significant collections of Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions have been found in China (particularly the Tibetan monasteries),[174][175] Myanmar,[176] Indonesia,[177] Cambodia,[178] Laos,[179] Vietnam,[180] Thailand,[181] and Malaysia.[179] Sanskrit inscriptions, manuscripts or its remnants, including some of the oldest known Sanskrit written texts, have been discovered in dry high deserts and mountainous terrains such as in Nepal,[182][183][note 13] Tibet,[175][184] Afghanistan,[185][186] Mongolia,[187] Uzbekistan,[188] Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,[188] and Kazakhstan.[189] Some Sanskrit texts and inscriptions have also been discovered in Korea and Japan.[190][191][192]
+
+In India, Sanskrit is among the 22 official languages of India in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution.[193] In 2010, Uttarakhand became the first state in India to make Sanskrit its second official language.[194] In 2019, Himachal Pradesh made Sanskrit its second official language, becoming the second state in India to do so.[195]
+
+Sanskrit shares many Proto-Indo-European phonological features, although it features a larger inventory of distinct phonemes. The consonantal system is the same, though it systematically enlarged the inventory of distinct sounds. For example, Sanskrit added a voiceless aspirated "tʰ", to the voiceless "t", voiced "d" and voiced aspirated "dʰ" found in PIE languages.[196]
+
+The most significant and distinctive phonological development in Sanskrit is vowel-merger, states Stephanie Jamison—an Indo-European linguist specializing in Sanskrit literature.[196] The short *e, *o and *a, all merge as a (अ) in Sanskrit, while long *ē, *ō and *ā, all merge as long ā (आ). These mergers occurred very early and significantly impacted Sanskrit's morphological system.[196] Some phonological developments in it mirror those in other PIE languages. For example, the labiovelars merged with the plain velars as in other satem languages. The secondary palatalization of the resulting segments is more thorough and systematic within Sanskrit, states Jamison.[196] A series of retroflex dental stops were innovated in Sanskrit to more thoroughly articulate sounds for clarity. For example, unlike the loss of the morphological clarity from vowel contraction that is found in early Greek and related southeast European languages, Sanskrit deployed *y, *w, and *s intervocalically to provide morphological clarity.[196]
+
+The cardinal vowels (svaras) i (इ), u (उ), a (अ) distinguish length in Sanskrit, states Jamison.[197][198] The short a (अ) in Sanskrit is a closer vowel than ā, equivalent to schwa. The mid-vowels ē (ए) and ō (ओ) in Sanskrit are monophthongizations of the Indo-Iranian diphthongs *ai and *au. The Old Iranian language preserved *ai and *au.[197] The Sanskrit vowels are inherently long, though often transcribed e and o without the diacritic. The vocalic liquid r̥ in Sanskrit is a merger of PIE *r̥ and *l̥. The long r̥ is an innovation and it is used in a few analogically generated morphological categories.[197][199][200]
+
+According to Masica, Sanskrit has four traditional semivowels, with which were classed, "for morphophonemic reasons, the liquids: y, r, l, and v; that is, as y and v were the non-syllabics corresponding to i, u, so were r, l in relation to r̥ and l̥".[205] The northwestern, the central and the eastern Sanskrit dialects have had a historic confusion between "r" and "l". The Paninian system that followed the central dialect preserved the distinction, likely out of reverence for the Vedic Sanskrit that distinguished the "r" and "l". However, the northwestern dialect only had "r", while the eastern dialect probably only had "l", states Masica. Thus literary works from different parts of ancient India appear inconsistent in their use of "r" and "l", resulting in doublets that is occasionally semantically differentiated.[205]
+
+Sanskrit possesses a symmetric consonantal phoneme structure based on how the sound is articulated, though the actual usage of these sounds conceals the lack of parallelism in the apparent symmetry possibly from historical changes within the language.[206]
+
+/t͡ɕ/
+
+/t͡ɕʰ/
+
+/d͡ʑ/
+
+/d͡ʑʱ/
+
+Sanskrit had a series of retroflex stops. All the retroflexes in Sanskrit are in "origin conditioned alternants of dentals, though from the beginning of the language they have a qualified independence", states Jamison.[206]
+
+Regarding the palatal plosives, the pronunciation is a matter of debate. In contemporary attestation, the palatal plosives are a regular series of palatal stops, supported by most Sanskrit sandhi rules.  However, the reflexes in descendant languages, as well as a few of the sandhi rules regarding ch, could suggest an affricate pronunciation.
+
+jh was a marginal phoneme in Sanskrit, hence its phonology is more difficult to reconstruct; it was more commonly employed in the Middle Indo-Aryan languages as a result of phonological processes resulting in the phoneme.
+
+The palatal nasal is a conditioned variant of n occurring next to palatal obstruents.[206] The anusvara that Sanskrit deploys is a conditioned alternant of postvocalic nasals, under certain sandhi conditions.[207] Its visarga is a word-final or morpheme-final conditioned alternant of s and r under certain sandhi conditions.[207]
+
+— A. M. Ruppel, The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit[208]
+
+The voiceless aspirated series is also an innovation in Sanskrit but is significantly rarer than the other three series.[206]
+
+While the Sanskrit language organizes sounds for expression beyond those found in the PIE language, it retained many features found in the Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages. An example of a similar process in all three, states Jamison, is the retroflex sibilant ʂ being the automatic product of dental s following i, u, r, and k (mnemonically "ruki").[207]
+
+Sanskrit deploys extensive phonological alternations on different linguistic levels through sandhi rules (literally, the rules of "putting together, union, connection, alliance"). This is similar to the English alteration of "going to" as gonna, states Jamison.[209] The Sanskrit language accepts such alterations within it, but offers formal rules for the sandhi of any two words next to each other in the same sentence or linking two sentences. The external sandhi rules state that similar short vowels coalesce into a single long vowel, while dissimilar vowels form glides or undergo diphthongization.[209] Among the consonants, most external sandhi rules recommend regressive assimilation for clarity when they are voiced. According to Jamison, these rules ordinarily apply at compound seams and morpheme boundaries.[209] In Vedic Sanskrit, the external sandhi rules are more variable than in Classical Sanskrit.[210]
+
+The internal sandhi rules are more intricate and account for the root and the canonical structure of the Sanskrit word. These rules anticipate what are now known as the Bartholomae's law and Grassmann's law. For example, states Jamison, the "voiceless, voiced, and voiced aspirated obstruents of a positional series regularly alternate with each other (p ≈ b ≈ bʰ; t ≈ d ≈ dʰ, etc.; note, however, c ≈ j ≈ h), such that, for example, a morpheme with an underlying voiced aspirate final may show alternants[clarification needed] with all three stops under differing internal sandhi conditions".[211] The velar series (k, g, gʰ) alternate with the palatal series (c, j, h), while the structural position of the palatal series is modified into a retroflex cluster when followed by dental. This rule create two morphophonemically distinct series from a single palatal series.[211]
+
+Vocalic alternations in the Sanskrit morphological system is termed "strengthening", and called guna and vriddhi in the preconsonantal versions. There is an equivalence to terms deployed in Indo-European descriptive grammars, wherein Sanskrit's unstrengthened state is same as the zero-grade, guna corresponds to normal-grade, while vriddhi is same as the lengthened-state.[212] The qualitative ablaut is not found in Sanskrit just like it is absent in Iranian, but Sanskrit retains quantitative ablaut through vowel strengthening.[212] The transformations between unstrengthened to guna is prominent in the morphological system, states Jamison, while vriddhi is a particularly significant rule when adjectives of origin and appurtenance are derived. The manner in which this is done slightly differs between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit.[212][213]
+
+Sanskrit grants a very flexible syllable structure, where they may begin or end with vowels, be single consonants or clusters. Similarly, the syllable may have an internal vowel of any weight. The Vedic Sanskrit shows traces of following the Sievers-Edgerton Law, but Classical Sanskrit doesn't. Vedic Sanskrit has a pitch accent system, states Jamison, which were acknowledged by Panini, but in his Classical Sanskrit the accents disappear.[214] Most Vedic Sanskrit words have one accent. However, this accent is not phonologically predictable, states Jamison.[214] It can fall anywhere in the word and its position often conveys morphological and syntactic information.[214] According to Masica, the presence of an accent system in Vedic Sanskrit is evidenced from the markings in the Vedic texts. This is important because of Sanskrit's connection to the PIE languages and comparative Indo-European linguistics.[215]
+
+Sanskrit, like most early Indo-European languages, lost the so-called "laryngeal consonants (cover-symbol *H) present in the Proto-Indo-European", states Jamison.[214] This significantly impacted the evolutionary path of the Sanskrit phonology and morphology, particularly in the variant forms of roots.[216]
+
+Because Sanskrit is not anyone's native language, it does not have a fixed pronunciation. People tend to pronounce it as they do their native language. The articles on Hindustani, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya and Bengali phonology will give some indication of the variation that is encountered. When Sanskrit was a spoken language, its pronunciation varied regionally and also over time. Nonetheless, Panini described the sound system of Sanskrit well enough that people have a fairly good idea of what he intended.
+
+The basis of Sanskrit morphology is the root, states Jamison, "a morpheme bearing lexical meaning".[226] The verbal and nominal stems of Sanskrit words are derived from this root through the phonological vowel-gradation processes, the addition of affixes, verbal and nominal stems. It then adds an ending to establish the grammatical and syntactic identity of the stem. According to Jamison, the "three major formal elements of the morphology are (i) root, (ii) affix, and (iii) ending; and they are roughly responsible for (i) lexical meaning, (ii) derivation, and (iii) inflection respectively".[227]
+
+A Sanskrit word has the following canonical structure:[226]
+
+The root structure has certain phonological constraints. Two of the most important constraints of a "root" is that it does not end in a short "a" (अ) and that it is monosyllabic.[226] In contrast, the affixes and endings commonly do. The affixes in Sanskrit are almost always suffixes, with exceptions such as the augment "a-" added as prefix to past tense verb forms and the "-na/n-" infix in single verbal present class, states Jamison.[226]
+
+A verb in Sanskrit has the following canonical structure:[228]
+
+According to Ruppel, verbs in Sanskrit express the same information as other Indo-European languages such as English.[229] Sanskrit verbs describe an action or occurrence or state, its embedded morphology informs as to "who is doing it" (person or persons), "when it is done" (tense) and "how it is done" (mood, voice). The Indo-European languages differ in the detail. For example, the Sanskrit language attaches the affixes and ending to the verb root, while the English language adds small independent words before the verb. In Sanskrit, these elements co-exist within the word.[229][note 16]
+
+Both verbs and nouns in Sanskrit are either thematic or athematic, states Jamison.[231] Guna (strengthened) forms in the active singular regularly alternate in athematic verbs. The finite verbs of Classical Sanskrit have the following grammatical categories: person, number, voice, tense-aspect, and mood. According to Jamison, a portmanteau morpheme generally expresses the person-number-voice in Sanskrit, and sometimes also the ending or only the ending. The mood of the word is embedded in the affix.[231]
+
+These elements of word architecture are the typical building blocks in Classical Sanskrit, but in Vedic Sanskrit these elements fluctuate and are unclear. For example, in the Rigveda preverbs regularly occur in tmesis, states Jamison, which means they are "separated from the finite verb".[226] This indecisiveness is likely linked to Vedic Sanskrit's attempt to incorporate accent. With nonfinite forms of the verb and with nominal derivatives thereof, states Jamison, "preverbs show much clearer univerbation in Vedic, both by position and by accent, and by Classical Sanskrit, tmesis is no longer possible even with finite forms".[226]
+
+While roots are typical in Sanskrit, some words do not follow the canonical structure.[227] A few forms lack both inflection and root. Many words are inflected (and can enter into derivation) but lack a recognizable root. Examples from the basic vocabulary include kinship terms such as mātar- (mother), nas- (nose), śvan- (dog). According to Jamison, pronouns and some words outside the semantic categories also lack roots, as do the numerals. Similarly, the Sanskrit language is flexible enough to not mandate inflection.[227]
+
+The Sanskrit words can contain more than one affix that interact with each other. Affixes in Sanskrit can be athematic as well as thematic, according to Jamison.[232] Athematic affixes can be alternating. Sanskrit deploys eight cases, namely nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, vocative.[232]
+
+Stems, that is "root + affix", appear in two categories in Sanskrit: vowel stems and consonant stems. Unlike some Indo-European languages such as Latin or Greek, according to Jamison, "Sanskrit has no closed set of conventionally denoted noun declensions". Sanskrit includes a fairly large set of stem-types.[233] The linguistic interaction of the roots, the phonological segments, lexical items and the grammar for the Classical Sanskrit consist of four Paninian components. These, states Paul Kiparsky, are the Astadhyaayi, a comprehensive system of 4,000 grammatical rules, of which a small set are frequently used; Sivasutras, an inventory of anubandhas (markers) that partition phonological segments for efficient abbreviations through the pratyharas technique; Dhatupatha, a list of 2,000 verbal roots classified by their morphology and syntactic properties using diacritic markers, a structure that guides its writing systems; and, the Ganapatha, an inventory of word groups, classes of lexical systems.[234] There are peripheral adjuncts to these four, such as the Unadisutras, which focus on irregularly formed derivatives from the roots.[234]
+
+Sanskrit morphology is generally studied in two broad fundamental categories: the nominal forms and the verbal forms. These differ in the types of endings and what these endings mark in the grammatical context.[227] Pronouns and nouns share the same grammatical categories, though they may differ in inflection. Verb-based adjectives and participles are not formally distinct from nouns. Adverbs are typically frozen case forms of adjectives, states Jamison, and "nonfinite verbal forms such as infinitives and gerunds also clearly show frozen nominal case endings".[227]
+
+The Sanskrit language includes five tenses: present, future, past imperfect, past aorist and past perfect.[230] It outlines three types of voices: active, passive and the middle.[230] The middle is also referred to as the mediopassive, or more formally in Sanskrit as parasmaipada (word for another) and atmanepada (word for oneself).[228]
+
+The paradigm for the tense-aspect system in Sanskrit is the three-way contrast between the "present", the "aorist" and the "perfect" architecture.[235] Vedic Sanskrit is more elaborate and had several additional tenses. For example, the Rigveda includes perfect and a marginal pluperfect. Classical Sanskrit simplifies the "present" system down to two tenses, the perfect and the imperfect, while the "aorist" stems retain the aorist tense and the "perfect" stems retain the perfect and marginal pluperfect.[235] The classical version of the language has elaborate rules for both voice and the tense-aspect system to emphasize clarity, and this is more elaborate than in other Indo-European languages. The evolution of these systems can be seen from the earliest layers of the Vedic literature to the late Vedic literature.[236]
+
+Sanskrit recognizes three numbers—singular, dual, and plural.[232] The dual is a fully functioning category, used beyond naturally paired objects such as hands or eyes, extending to any collection of two. The elliptical dual is notable in the Vedic Sanskrit, according to Jamison, where a noun in the dual signals a paired opposition.[232] Illustrations include dyāvā (literally, "the two heavens" for heaven-and-earth), mātarā (literally, "the two mothers" for mother-and-father).[232] A verb may be singular, dual or plural, while the person recognized in the language are forms of "I", "you", "he/she/it", "we" and "they".[230]
+
+There are three persons in Sanskrit: first, second and third.[228] Sanskrit uses the 3×3 grid formed by the three numbers and the three persons parameters as the paradigm and the basic building block of its verbal system.[236]
+
+The Sanskrit language incorporates three genders: feminine, masculine and neuter.[232] All nouns have inherent gender, but with some exceptions, personal pronouns have no gender. Exceptions include demonstrative and anaphoric pronouns.[232] Derivation of a word is used to express the feminine. Two most common derivations come from feminine-forming suffixes, the -ā- (आ, Rādhā) and -ī- (ई, Rukmīnī). The masculine and neuter are much simpler, and the difference between them is primarily inflectional.[232][237] Similar affixes for the feminine are found in many Indo-European languages, states Burrow, suggesting links of the Sanskrit to its PIE heritage.[238]
+
+Pronouns in Sanskrit include the personal pronouns of the first and second persons, unmarked for gender, and a larger number of gender-distinguishing pronouns and adjectives.[231] Examples of the former include ahám (first singular), vayám (first plural) and yūyám (second plural). The latter can be demonstrative, deictic or anaphoric.[231] Both the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit share the sá/tám pronominal stem, and this is the closest element to a third person pronoun and an article in the Sanskrit language, states Jamison.[231]
+
+Indicative, potential and imperative are the three mood forms in Sanskrit.[230]
+
+The Sanskrit language formally incorporates poetic metres.[239] By the late Vedic era, this developed into a field of study and it was central to the composition of the Hindu literature including the later Vedic texts. This study of Sanskrit prosody is called chandas and considered as one of the six Vedangas, or limbs of Vedic studies.[239][240]
+
+Sanskrit prosody includes linear and non-linear systems.[241] The system started off with seven major metres, according to Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, called the "seven birds" or "seven mouths of Brihaspati", and each had its own rhythm, movements and aesthetics wherein a non-linear structure (aperiodicity) was mapped into a four verse polymorphic linear sequence.[242] A syllable in Sanskrit is classified as either laghu (light) or guru (heavy). This classification is based on a matra (literally, "count, measure, duration"), and typically a syllable that ends in a short vowel is a light syllable, while those that end in consonant, anusvara or visarga are heavy. The classical Sanskrit found in Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita and many texts are so arranged that the light and heavy syllables in them follow a rhythm, though not necessarily a rhyme.[243][244][note 19]
+
+Sanskrit metres include those based on a fixed number of syllables per verse, and those based on fixed number of morae per verse.[246] The Vedic Sanskrit employs fifteen metres, of which seven are common, and the most frequent are three (8-, 11- and 12-syllable lines).[247] The Classical Sanskrit deploys both linear and non-linear metres, many of which are based on syllables and others based on diligently crafted verses based on repeating numbers of morae (matra per foot).[247]
+
+There is no word without meter,
+nor is there any meter without words.
+
+—Natya Shastra[248]
+
+Meter and rhythm is an important part of the Sanskrit language. It may have played a role in helping preserve the integrity of the message and Sanskrit texts. The verse perfection in the Vedic texts such as the verse Upanishads[note 20] and post-Vedic Smriti texts are rich in prosody. This feature of the Sanskrit language led some Indologists from the 19th century onwards to identify suspected portions of texts where a line or sections are off the expected metre.[249][250][note 21]
+
+The meter-feature of the Sanskrit language embeds another layer of communication to the listener or reader. A change in metres has been a tool of literary architecture and an embedded code to inform the reciter and audience that it marks the end of a section or chapter.[254] Each section or chapter of these texts uses identical metres, rhythmically presenting their ideas and making it easier to remember, recall and check for accuracy.[254] Authors coded a hymn's end by frequently using a verse of a metre different than that used in the hymn's body.[254] However, Hindu tradition does not use the Gayatri metre to end a hymn or composition, possibly because it has enjoyed a special level of reverence in Hinduism.[254]
+
+The early history of writing Sanskrit and other languages in ancient India is a problematic topic despite a century of scholarship, states Richard Salomon—an epigraphist and Indologist specializing in Sanskrit and Pali literature.[255] The earliest possible script from the Indian subcontinent is from the Indus Valley Civilization (3rd/2nd millennium BCE), but this script – if it is a script – remains undeciphered. If any scripts existed in the Vedic period, they have not survived. Scholars generally accept that Sanskrit was spoken in an oral society, and that an oral tradition preserved the extensive Vedic and Classical Sanskrit literature.[256] Other scholars such as Jack Goody state that the Vedic Sanskrit texts are not the product of an oral society, basing this view by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as the Greek, Serbian, and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across generations, without being written down.[257][258]
+
+Lipi is the term in Sanskrit which means "writing, letters, alphabet". It contextually refers to scripts, the art or any manner of writing or drawing.[94] The term, in the sense of a writing system, appears in some of the earliest Buddhist, Hindu, and Jaina texts. Pāṇini's Astadhyayi, composed sometime around the 5th or 4th century BCE, for example, mentions lipi in the context of a writing script and education system in his times, but he does not name the script.[94][95][259] Several early Buddhist and Jaina texts, such as the Lalitavistara Sūtra and Pannavana Sutta include lists of numerous writing scripts in ancient India.[note 22] The Buddhist texts list the sixty four lipi that the Buddha knew as a child, with the Brahmi script topping the list. "The historical value of this list is however limited by several factors", states Salomon. The list may be a later interpolation.[261][note 23] The Jain canonical texts such as the Pannavana Sutta—probably older than the Buddhist texts—list eighteen writing systems, with the Brahmi topping the list and Kharotthi (Kharoshthi) listed as fourth. The Jaina text elsewhere states that the "Brahmi is written in 18 different forms", but the details are lacking.[263] However, the reliability of these lists has been questioned and the empirical evidence of writing systems in the form of Sanskrit or Prakrit inscriptions dated prior to the 3rd century BCE has not been found. If the ancient surface for writing Sanskrit was palm leaves, tree bark and cloth—the same as those in later times, these have not survived.[264][note 24] According to Salomon, many find it difficult to explain the "evidently high level of political organization and cultural complexity" of ancient India without a writing system for Sanskrit and other languages.[264][note 25]
+
+The oldest datable writing systems for Sanskrit are the Brāhmī script, the related Kharoṣṭhī script and the Brahmi derivatives.[267][268] The Kharosthi was used in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and it became extinct, while the Brahmi was used in all over the subcontinent along with regional scripts such as Old Tamil.[269] Of these, the earliest records in the Sanskrit language are in Brahmi, a script that later evolved into numerous related Indic scripts for Sanskrit, along with Southeast Asian scripts (Burmese, Thai, Lao, Khmer, others) and many extinct Central Asian scripts such as those discovered along with the Kharosthi in the Tarim Basin of western China and in Uzbekistan.[270] The most extensive inscriptions that have survived into the modern era are the rock edicts and pillar inscriptions of the 3rd-century BCE Mauryan emperor Ashoka, but these are not in Sanskrit.[271][note 26]
+
+Over the centuries, and across countries, a number of scripts have been used to write Sanskrit.
+
+The Brahmi script for writing Sanskrit is a "modified consonant-syllabic" script. The graphic syllable is its basic unit, and this consists of a consonant with or without diacritic modifications.[273] Since the vowel is an integral part of the consonants, and given the efficiently compacted, fused consonant cluster morphology for Sanskrit words and grammar, the Brahmi and its derivative writing systems deploy ligatures, diacritics and relative positioning of the vowel to inform the reader how the vowel is related to the consonant and how it is expected to be pronounced for clarity.[268][274][note 28] This feature of Brahmi and its modern Indic script derivatives makes it difficult to classify it under the main script types used for the writing systems for most of the world's languages, namely logographic, syllabic and alphabetic.[268]
+
+The Brahmi script evolved into "a vast number of forms and derivatives", states Richard Salomon, and in theory, Sanskrit "can be represented in virtually any of the main Brahmi-based scripts and in practice it often is".[275] Sanskrit does not have a native script. Being a phonetic language, it can be written in any precise script that efficiently maps unique human sounds to unique symbols.[clarification needed] From the ancient times, it has been written in numerous regional scripts in South and Southeast Asia. Most of these are descendants of the Brahmi script.[276] The earliest datable varnamala Brahmi alphabet system, found in later Sanskrit texts, is from the 2nd century BCE, in the form of a terracotta plaque found in Sughana, Haryana. It shows a "schoolboy's writing lessons", states Salomon.[277][278]
+
+Many modern era manuscripts are written and available in the Nagari script, whose form is attestable to the 1st millennium CE.[279] The Nagari script is the ancestor of Devanagari (north India), Nandinagari (south India) and other variants. The Nāgarī script was in regular use by 7th century CE, and had fully evolved into Devanagari and Nandinagari[280] scripts by about the end of the first millennium of the common era.[281][282] The Devanagari script, states Banerji, became more popular for Sanskrit in India since about the 18th century.[283] However, Sanskrit does have special historical connection to the Nagari script as attested by the epigraphical evidence.[284]
+
+The Nagari script has been thought as a north Indian script for Sanskrit as well as the regional languages such as Hindi, Marathi and Nepali. However, it has had a "supra-local" status as evidenced by 1st-millennium CE epigraphy and manuscripts discovered all over India and as far as Sri Lanka, Burma, Indonesia and in its parent form called the Siddhamatrka script found in manuscripts of East Asia.[285] The Sanskrit and Balinese languages Sanur inscription on Belanjong pillar of Bali (Indonesia), dated to about 914 CE, is in part in the Nagari script.[286]
+
+The Nagari script used for Classical Sanskrit has the fullest repertoire of characters consisting of fourteen vowels and thirty three consonants. For the Vedic Sanskrit, it has two more allophonic consonantal characters (the intervocalic ळ ḷa, and ळ्ह ḷha).[285] To communicate phonetic accuracy, it also includes several modifiers such as the anusvara dot and the visarga double dot, punctuation symbols and others such as the halanta sign.[285]
+
+Other scripts such as Gujarati, Bangla, Odia and major south Indian scripts, states Salomon, "have been and often still are used in their proper territories for writing Sanskrit".[279] These and many Indian scripts look different to the untrained eye, but the differences between Indic scripts is "mostly superficial and they share the same phonetic repertoire and systemic features", states Salomon.[287] They all have essentially the same set of eleven to fourteen vowels and thirty-three consonants as established by the Sanskrit language and attestable in the Brahmi script. Further, a closer examination reveals that they all have the similar basic graphic principles, the same varnamala (literally, "garland of letters") alphabetic ordering following the same logical phonetic order, easing the work of historic skilled scribes writing or reproducing Sanskrit works across the Indian subcontinent.[288][note 29] The Sanskrit language written in some Indic scripts exaggerate angles or round shapes, but this serves only to mask the underlying similarities. Nagari script favours symmetry set with squared outlines and right angles. In contrast, Sanskrit written in the Bangla script emphasizes the acute angles while the neighbouring Odia script emphasizes rounded shapes and uses cosmetically appealing "umbrella-like curves" above the script symbols.[290]
+
+In the south, where Dravidian languages predominate, scripts used for Sanskrit include the Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Grantha alphabets.
+
+Since the late 18th century, Sanskrit has been transliterated using the Latin alphabet. The system most commonly used today is the IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration), which has been the academic standard since 1888. ASCII-based transliteration schemes have also evolved because of difficulties representing Sanskrit characters in computer systems. These include Harvard-Kyoto and ITRANS, a transliteration scheme that is used widely on the Internet, especially in Usenet and in email, for considerations of speed of entry as well as rendering issues. With the wide availability of Unicode-aware web browsers, IAST has become common online. It is also possible to type using an alphanumeric keyboard and transliterate to Devanagari using software like Mac OS X's international support.
+
+European scholars in the 19th century generally preferred Devanagari for the transcription and reproduction of whole texts and lengthy excerpts. However, references to individual words and names in texts composed in European Languages were usually represented with Roman transliteration. From the 20th century onwards, because of production costs, textual editions edited by Western scholars have mostly been in Romanised transliteration.[291]
+
+The earliest known stone inscriptions in Sanskrit are in the Brahmi script from the first century BCE.[35][note 30][note 31] These include the Ayodhyā (Uttar Pradesh) and Hāthībādā-Ghosuṇḍī (near Chittorgarh, Rajasthan) inscriptions.[35][294] Both of these, states Salomon, are "essentially standard" and "correct Sanskrit", with a few exceptions reflecting an "informal Sanskrit usage".[35] Other important Hindu inscriptions dated to the 1st century BCE, in relatively accurate classical Sanskrit and Brahmi script are the Yavanarajya inscription on a red sandstone slab and the long Naneghat inscription on the wall of a cave rest stop in the Western Ghats.[295]
+
+Besides these few examples from the 1st century BCE, the earliest Sanskrit and hybrid dialect inscriptions are found in Mathura (Uttar Pradesh).[296] These date to the 1st and 2nd century CE, states Salomon, from the time of the Indo-Scythian Northern Satraps and the subsequent Kushan Empire.[note 32] These are also in the Brahmi script.[298] The earliest of these, states Salomon, are attributed to Ksatrapa Sodasa from the early years of 1st century CE. Of the Mathura inscriptions, the most significant is the Mora Well Inscription.[298] In a manner similar to the Hathibada inscription, the Mora well inscription is a dedicatory inscription and is linked to the cult of the Vrishni heroes: it mentions a stone shrine (temple), pratima (murti, images) and calls the five Vrishnis as bhagavatam.[298][299] There are many other Mathura Sanskrit inscriptions in Brahmi script overlapping the era of Indo-Scythian Northern Satraps and early Kushanas.[300] Other significant 1st-century inscriptions in reasonably good classical Sanskrit in the Brahmi script include the Vasu Doorjamb Inscription and the Mountain Temple inscription.[301] The early ones are related to the Brahmanical, except for the inscription from Kankali Tila which may be Jaina, but none are Buddhist.[302][303] A few of the later inscriptions from the 2nd century CE include Buddhist Sanskrit, while others are in "more or less" standard Sanskrit and related to the Brahmanical tradition.[304]
+
+In Maharashtra and Gujarat, Brahmi script Sanskrit inscriptions from the early centuries of the common era exist at the Nasik Caves site, near the Girnar mountain of Junagadh and elsewhere such as at Kanakhera, Kanheri, and Gunda.[305] The Nasik inscription dates to the mid-1st century CE, is a fair approximation of standard Sanskrit and has hybrid features.[305] The Junagadh rock inscription of Western Satraps ruler Rudradaman I (c. 150 CE, Gujarat) is the first long poetic-style inscription in "more or less" standard Sanskrit that has survived into the modern era. It represents a turning point in the history of Sanskrit epigraphy, states Salomon.[306][note 33] Though no similar inscriptions are found for about two hundred years after the Rudradaman reign, it is important because its style is the prototype of the eulogy-style Sanskrit inscriptions found in the Gupta Empire era.[306] These inscriptions are also in the Brahmi script.[307]
+
+The Nagarjunakonda inscriptions are the earliest known substantial South Indian Sanskrit inscriptions, probably from the late 3rd century or early 4th century CE, or both.[308] These inscriptions are related to Buddhism and the Shaivism tradition of Hinduism.[309] A few of these inscriptions from both traditions are verse-style in the classical Sanskrit language, while some such as the pillar inscription is written in prose and a hybridized Sanskrit language.[308] An earlier hybrid Sanskrit inscription found on Amaravati slab is dated to the late 2nd century, while a few later ones include Sanskrit inscriptions along with Prakrit inscriptions related to Hinduism and Buddhism.[310] After the 3rd century CE, Sanskrit inscriptions dominate and many have survived.[311] Between the 4th and 7th centuries CE, south Indian inscriptions are exclusively in the Sanskrit language.[312] In the eastern regions of the Indian subcontinent, scholars report minor Sanskrit inscriptions from the 2nd century, these being fragments and scattered. The earliest substantial true Sanskrit language inscription of Susuniya (West Bengal) is dated to the 4th century.[313] Elsewhere, such as Dehradun (Uttarakhand), inscriptions in more or less correct classical Sanskrit inscriptions are dated to the 3rd century.[313]
+
+According to Salomon, the 4th-century reign of Samudragupta was the turning point when the classical Sanskrit language became established as the "epigraphic language par excellence" of the Indian world.[314] These Sanskrit language inscriptions are either "donative" or "panegyric" records. Generally in accurate classical Sanskrit, they deploy a wide range of regional Indic writing systems extant at the time.[315] They record the donation of a temple or stupa, images, land, monasteries, pilgrim's travel record, public infrastructure such as water reservoir and irrigation measures to prevent famine. Others praise the king or the donor in lofty poetic terms.[316] The Sanskrit language of these inscriptions is written on stone, various metals, terracotta, wood, crystal, ivory, shell and cloth.[317][note 34]
+
+The evidence of the use of the Sanskrit language in Indic writing systems appears in southeast Asia in the first half of the 1st millennium CE.[320] A few of these in Vietnam are bilingual where both the Sanskrit and the local language is written in the Indian alphabet. Early Sanskrit language inscriptions in Indic writing systems are dated to the 4th century in Malaysia, 5th to 6th centuries in Thailand near Si Thep and the Sak River, early 5th century in Kutai (east Borneo) and mid-5th century in west Java (Indonesia).[320] Both major writing systems for Sanskrit, the North Indian and South Indian scripts, have been discovered in southeast Asia, but the Southern variety with its rounded shapes are far more common.[321] The Indic scripts, particularly the Pallava script prototype,[322] spread and ultimately evolved into Mon-Burmese, Khmer, Thai, Laos, Sumatran, Celebes, Javanese and Balinese scripts.[323][324] From about the 5th century, Sanskrit inscriptions become common in many parts of South Asia and Southeast Asia, with significant discoveries in Nepal, Vietnam and Cambodia.[314]
+
+Sanskrit has been written in various scripts on a variety of media such as palm leaves, cloth, paper, rock and metal sheets, from ancient times.[325]
+
+For nearly 2,000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia.[153] A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian.[358] Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa (आर्ष), meaning 'of the ṛṣis', the traditional title for the ancient authors. In some contexts, there are also more "prakritisms" (borrowings from common speech) than in Classical Sanskrit proper. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is a literary language heavily influenced by the Middle Indo-Aryan languages, based on early Buddhist Prakrit texts which subsequently assimilated to the Classical Sanskrit standard in varying degrees.[359]
+
+Sanskrit has greatly influenced the languages of India that grew from its vocabulary and grammatical base; for instance, Hindi is a "Sanskritised register" of Hindustani. All modern Indo-Aryan languages, as well as Munda and Dravidian languages have borrowed many words either directly from Sanskrit (tatsama words), or indirectly via middle Indo-Aryan languages (tadbhava words). Words originating in Sanskrit are estimated at roughly fifty percent of the vocabulary of modern Indo-Aryan languages, as well as the literary forms of Malayalam and Kannada.[360] Literary texts in Telugu are lexically Sanskrit or Sanskritised to an enormous extent, perhaps seventy percent or more.[361] Marathi is another prominent language in Western India, that derives most of its words and Marathi grammar from Sanskrit.[362] Sanskrit words are often preferred in the literary texts in Marathi over corresponding colloquial Marathi word.[363]
+
+Buddhist Sanskrit has had a considerable influence on East Asian languages such as Chinese, state William Wang and Chaofen Sun.[364] Many words have been adopted from Sanskrit into the Chinese, both in its historic religious discourse and everyday use.[364][note 36] This process likely started about 200 CE and continued through about 1400 CE, with the efforts of monks such as Yuezhi, Anxi, Kangju, Tianzhu, Yan Fodiao, Faxian, Xuanzang and Yijing.[364] Further, as the Chinese language and culture influenced the rest of East Asia, the ideas in Sanskrit texts and some of its linguistic elements migrated further.[365][366]
+
+Sanskrit has also influenced Sino-Tibetan languages, mostly through translations of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. Many terms were transliterated directly and added to the Chinese vocabulary. Chinese words like 剎那 chànà (Devanagari: क्षण kṣaṇa 'instantaneous period') were borrowed from Sanskrit. Many Sanskrit texts survive only in Tibetan collections of commentaries to the Buddhist teachings, the Tengyur.[367]
+
+Sanskrit was a language for religious purposes and for the political elite in parts of medieval era Southeast Asia, Central Asia and East Asia.[144] In Southeast Asia, languages such as Thai and Lao contain many loanwords from Sanskrit, as does Khmer. Many Sanskrit loanwords are also found in Austronesian languages, such as Javanese, particularly the older form in which nearly half the vocabulary is borrowed.[368] Other Austronesian languages, such as traditional Malay and modern Indonesian, also derive much of their vocabulary from Sanskrit. Similarly, Philippine languages such as Tagalog have some Sanskrit loanwords, although more are derived from Spanish. A Sanskrit loanword encountered in many Southeast Asian languages is the word bhāṣā, or spoken language, which is used to refer to the names of many languages.[369] English also has words of Sanskrit origin.
+
+Sanskrit has also influenced the religious register of Japanese mostly through transliterations. These were borrowed from Chinese transliterations.[370] In particular, the Shingon (lit. '"True Words"') sect of esoteric Buddhism has been relying on Sanskrit and original Sanskrit mantras and writings, as a means of realizing Buddhahood.[371]
+
+Sanskrit is the sacred language of various Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. It is used during worship in Hindu temples. In Newar Buddhism, it is used in all monasteries, while Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhist religious texts and sutras are in Sanskrit as well as vernacular languages. Some of the revered texts of Jainism including the Tattvartha sutra, Ratnakaranda śrāvakācāra, the Bhaktamara Stotra and the Agamas are in Sanskrit. Further, states Paul Dundas, Sanskrit mantras and Sanskrit as a ritual language was commonplace among Jains throughout their medieval history.[372]
+
+Many Hindu rituals and rites-of-passage such as the "giving away the bride" and mutual vows at weddings, a baby's naming or first solid food ceremony and the goodbye during a cremation invoke and chant Sanskrit hymns.[373] Major festivals such as the Durga Puja ritually recite entire Sanskrit texts such as the Devi Mahatmya every year particularly amongst the numerous communities of eastern India.[374][375] In the south, Sanskrit texts are recited at many major Hindu temples such as the Meenakshi Temple.[376] According to Richard H. Davis, a scholar of Religion and South Asian studies, the breadth and variety of oral recitations of the Sanskrit text Bhagavad Gita is remarkable. In India and beyond, its recitations include "simple private household readings, to family and neighborhood recitation sessions, to holy men reciting in temples or at pilgrimage places for passersby, to public Gita discourses held almost nightly at halls and auditoriums in every Indian city".[377]
+
+More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since India's independence in 1947.[378] Much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages.[379][380]
+
+The Sahitya Akademi has given an award for the best creative work in Sanskrit every year since 1967. In 2009, Satya Vrat Shastri became the first Sanskrit author to win the Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary award.[381]
+
+Sanskrit is used extensively in the Carnatic and Hindustani branches of classical music. Kirtanas, bhajans, stotras, and shlokas of Sanskrit are popular throughout India. The samaveda uses musical notations in several of its recessions.[382]
+
+In Mainland China, musicians such as Sa Dingding have written pop songs in Sanskrit.[383]
+
+Numerous loan Sanskrit words are found in other major Asian languages. For example, Filipino,[384] Cebuano,[385] Lao, Khmer[386] Thai and its alphabets, Malay, Indonesian (old Javanese-English dictionary by P.J. Zoetmulder contains over 25,500 entries), and even in English.
+
+Since 1974, there has been a short daily news broadcast on state-run All India Radio.[387] These broadcasts are also made available on the internet on AIR's website.[388][389] Sanskrit news is broadcast on TV and on the internet through the DD National channel at 6:55 AM IST.[390]
+
+Over 90 weeklies, fortnightlies and quarterlies are published in Sanskrit. Sudharma, a daily printed newspaper in Sanskrit, has been published out of Mysore, India, since 1970. It was started by K.N. Varadaraja Iyengar, a sanskrit scholar from Mysore. Sanskrit Vartman Patram and Vishwasya Vrittantam started in Gujarat during the last five years.[387]
+
+Sanskrit has been taught in schools from time immemorial in India. In modern times, the first Sanskrit University was Sampurnanand Sanskrit University, established in 1791 in the Indian city of Varanasi. Sanskrit is taught in 5,000 traditional schools (Pathashalas), and 14,000 schools[391] in India, where there are also 22 colleges and universities dedicated to the exclusive study of the language.[citation needed] Sanskrit is one the 22 scheduled languages of India.[266] Despite it being a studied school subject in contemporary India, Sanskrit is scarce as a first language. In the 2001 Census of India, 14,135 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue,[392] while in the 2011 census, 24,821 people out of about 1.21 billion reported this to be the case.[393][note 37][note 38]
+According to the 2011 national census of Nepal, 1,669 people use Sanskrit as their first language.[3]
+
+The Central Board of Secondary Education of India (CBSE), along with several other state education boards, has made Sanskrit an alternative option to the state's own official language as a second or third language choice in the schools it governs. In such schools, learning Sanskrit is an option for grades 5 to 8 (Classes V to VIII). This is true of most schools affiliated with the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) board, especially in states where the official language is Hindi. Sanskrit is also taught in traditional gurukulas throughout India.[398]
+
+A number of colleges and universities in India have dedicated departments for Sanskrit studies.
+
+St James Junior School in London, England, offers Sanskrit as part of the curriculum.[399] Since September 2009, US high school students have been able to receive credits as Independent Study or toward Foreign Language requirements by studying Sanskrit as part of the "SAFL: Samskritam as a Foreign Language" program coordinated by Samskrita Bharati.[400] In Australia, the private boys' high school Sydney Grammar School offers Sanskrit from years 7 through to 12, including for the Higher School Certificate.[401] Other schools that offer Sanskrit include the Ficino School in Auckland, New Zealand; St James Preparatory Schools in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, South Africa; John Colet School, Sydney, Australia; Erasmus School, Melbourne, Australia.[402][403][404]
+
+European scholarship in Sanskrit, begun by Heinrich Roth (1620–1668) and Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681–1731), is considered responsible for the discovery of an Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones (1746–1794). This research played an important role in the development of Western philology, or historical linguistics.[405]
+
+The 18th- and 19th-century speculations about the possible links of Sanskrit to ancient Egyptian language were later proven to be wrong, but it fed an orientalist discourse both in the form Indophobia and Indophilia, states Trautmann.[406] Sanskrit writings, when first discovered, were imagined by Indophiles to potentially be "repositories of the primitive experiences and religion of the human race, and as such confirmatory of the truth of Christian scripture", as well as a key to "universal ethnological narrative".[407] The Indophobes imagined the opposite, making the counterclaim that there is little of any value in Sanskrit, portraying it as "a language fabricated by artful [Brahmin] priests", with little original thought, possibly copied from the Greeks who came with Alexander or perhaps the Persians.[408]
+
+Scholars such as William Jones and his colleagues felt the need for systematic studies of Sanskrit language and literature. This launched the Asiatic Society, an idea that was soon transplanted to Europe starting with the efforts of Henry Thomas Colebrooke in Britain, then Alexander Hamilton who helped expand its studies to Paris and thereafter his student Friedrich Schlegel who introduced Sanskrit to the universities of Germany. Schlegel nurtured his own students into influential European Sanskrit scholars, particularly through Franz Bopp and Friedrich Max Muller. As these scholars translated the Sanskrit manuscripts, the enthusiasm for Sanskrit grew rapidly among European scholars, states Trautmann, and chairs for Sanskrit "were established in the universities of nearly every German statelet" creating a competition for Sanskrit experts.[409]
+
+In India, Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, Sanskrit phrases are widely used as mottoes for various national, educational and social organisations:
+
+The song My Sweet Lord by George Harrison includes The Hare Krishna mantra, also referred to reverentially as the Maha Mantra, is a 16-word Vaishnava mantra which is mentioned in the Kali-Santarana Upanishad.Satyagraha, an opera by Philip Glass, uses texts from the Bhagavad Gita, sung in Sanskrit.[415][416] The closing credits of The Matrix Revolutions has a prayer from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The song "Cyber-raga" from Madonna's album Music includes Sanskrit chants,[417] and Shanti/Ashtangi from her 1998 album Ray of Light, which won a Grammy, is the ashtanga vinyasa yoga chant.[418] The lyrics include the mantra Om shanti.[419] Composer John Williams featured choirs singing in Sanskrit for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.[420][421][better source needed] The theme song of Battlestar Galactica 2004 is the Gayatri Mantra, taken from the Rigveda.[422] The lyrics of "The Child in Us" by Enigma also contains Sanskrit verses.[423][better source needed] In 2006, Mexican singer Paulina Rubio was influenced in Sanskrit for her concept album Ananda.[424]
+
+Contrary to popular belief, there is an astonishing quality of creative upsurge of writing in Sanskrit today. Modern Sanskrit writing is qualitatively of such high order that it can easily be treated on par with the best of Classical Sanskrit literature, It can also easily compete with the writings in other Indian languages.
+
+The latter half of the nineteenth century marks the beginning of a new era in Sanskrit literature. Many of the modern Sanskrit writings are qualitatively of such high order that they can easily be treated at par with the best of classical Sanskrit works, and they can also be judged in contrast to the contemporary literature in other languages.

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+Heterodox
+
+Unemployment, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is persons above a specified age (usually above 15)[2] not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the reference period.[3]
+
+Unemployment is measured by the unemployment rate as the number of people who are unemployed as a percentage of the labour force (the total number of people employed added to those unemployed).[4]
+
+Unemployment can have many sources, such as the following:
+
+Unemployment and the status of the economy can be influenced by a country through, for example, fiscal policy. Furthermore, the monetary authority of a country, such as the central bank, can influence the availability and cost for money through its monetary policy.
+
+In addition to theories of unemployment, a few categorisations of unemployment are used for more precisely modelling the effects of unemployment within the economic system. Some of the main types of unemployment include structural unemployment, frictional unemployment, cyclical unemployment, involuntary unemployment and classical unemployment. Structural unemployment focuses on foundational problems in the economy and inefficiencies inherent in labor markets, including a mismatch between the supply and demand of laborers with necessary skill sets. Structural arguments emphasize causes and solutions related to disruptive technologies and globalization. Discussions of frictional unemployment focus on voluntary decisions to work based on individuals' valuation of their own work and how that compares to current wage rates added to the time and effort required to find a job. Causes and solutions for frictional unemployment often address job entry threshold and wage rates.
+
+Globally, 172 million people globally or 5% of the reported workforce of the world were without a job in 2018, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).[5]
+
+Because of the difficulty to measure the unemployment rate by for example using surveys like in the United States or through registered unemployed citizens like in some countries in Europe countries, statistical figures such as the employment-to-population ratio could be better suited to evaluate the status of the workforce and the economy if they would be based on people who are registered as, for example, taxpayer.[6]
+
+The state of being without any work yet looking for work is called unemployment. Economists distinguish between various overlapping types of and theories of unemployment, including cyclical or Keynesian unemployment, frictional unemployment, structural unemployment and classical unemployment. Some additional types of unemployment that are occasionally mentioned are seasonal unemployment, hardcore unemployment, and hidden unemployment.
+
+Though there have been several definitions of "voluntary" and "involuntary unemployment" in the economics literature, a simple distinction is often applied. Voluntary unemployment is attributed to the individual's decisions, but involuntary unemployment exists because of the socio-economic environment (including the market structure, government intervention, and the level of aggregate demand) in which individuals operate. In these terms, much or most of frictional unemployment is voluntary since it reflects individual search behavior. Voluntary unemployment includes workers who reject low-wage jobs, but involuntary unemployment includes workers fired because of an economic crisis, industrial decline, company bankruptcy, or organizational restructuring.
+
+On the other hand, cyclical unemployment, structural unemployment, and classical unemployment are largely involuntary in nature. However, the existence of structural unemployment may reflect choices made by the unemployed in the past, and classical (natural) unemployment may result from the legislative and economic choices made by labour unions or political parties.
+
+The clearest cases of involuntary unemployment are those with fewer job vacancies than unemployed workers even when wages are allowed to adjust and so even if all vacancies were to be filled, some unemployed workers would still remain. That happens with cyclical unemployment, as macroeconomic forces cause microeconomic unemployment, which can boomerang back and exacerbate those macroeconomic forces.
+
+Classical, or real-wage, unemployment, occurs when real wages for a job are set above the market-clearing level, causing the number of job-seekers to exceed the number of vacancies. On the other hand, most economists argue that as wages fall below a livable wage, many choose to drop out of the labor market and no longer seek employment. That is especially true in countries in which low-income families are supported through public welfare systems. In such cases, wages would have to be high enough to motivate people to choose employment over what they receive through public welfare. Wages below a livable wage are likely to result in lower labor market participation in the above-stated scenario. In addition, consumption of goods and services is the primary driver of increased demand for labor. Higher wages lead to workers having more income available to consume goods and services. Therefore, higher wages increase general consumption and as a result demand for labor increases and unemployment decreases.
+
+Many economists have argued that unemployment increases with increased governmental regulation. For example, minimum wage laws raise the cost of some low-skill laborers above market equilibrium, resulting in increased unemployment as people who wish to work at the going rate cannot (as the new and higher enforced wage is now greater than the value of their labour).[7][8] Laws restricting layoffs may make businesses less likely to hire in the first place, as hiring becomes more risky.[8]
+
+However, that argument overly simplifies the relationship between wage rates and unemployment by ignoring numerous factors that contribute to unemployment.[9][10][11][12][13] Some, such as Murray Rothbard, suggest that even social taboos can prevent wages from falling to the market-clearing level.[14]
+
+In Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in the Twentieth-Century America, economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway argue that the empirical record of wages rates, productivity, and unemployment in America validates classical unemployment theory. Their data shows a strong correlation between adjusted real wage and unemployment in the United States from 1900 to 1990. However, they maintain that their data does not take into account exogenous events.[15]
+
+Cyclical, deficient-demand, or Keynesian unemployment occurs when there is not enough aggregate demand in the economy to provide jobs for everyone who wants to work. Demand for most goods and services falls, less production is needed and consequently fewer workers are needed, wages are sticky and do not fall to meet the equilibrium level, and unemployment results.[16] Its name is derived from the frequent ups and downs in the business cycle, but unemployment can also be persistent, such as during the Great Depression.
+
+With cyclical unemployment, the number of unemployed workers exceeds the number of job vacancies and so even if all open jobs were filled, some workers would still remain unemployed. Some associate cyclical unemployment with frictional unemployment because the factors that cause the friction are partially caused by cyclical variables. For example, a surprise decrease in the money supply may suddenly inhibit aggregate demand and thus inhibit labor demand.
+
+Keynesian economists, on the other hand, see the lack of supply of jobs as potentially resolvable by government intervention. One suggested intervention involves deficit spending to boost employment and goods demand. Another intervention involves an expansionary monetary policy to increase  the supply of money, which should reduce interest rates, which, in turn, should lead to an increase in non-governmental spending.[17]
+
+In demand-based theory, it is possible to abolish cyclical unemployment by increasing the aggregate demand for products and workers. However, the economy eventually hits an "inflation barrier" that is imposed by the four other kinds of unemployment to the extent that they exist. Historical experience suggests that low unemployment affects inflation in the short term but not the long term.[18] In the long term, the velocity of money supply measures such as the MZM ("money zero maturity", representing cash and equivalent demand deposits) velocity is far more predictive of inflation than low unemployment.[19][20]
+
+Some demand theory economists see the inflation barrier as corresponding to the natural rate of unemployment. The "natural" rate of unemployment is defined as the rate of unemployment that exists when the labour market is in equilibrium, and there is pressure for neither rising inflation rates nor falling inflation rates. An alternative technical term for that rate is the NAIRU, the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment. Whatever its name, demand theory holds that if the unemployment rate gets "too low," inflation will accelerate in the absence of wage and price controls (incomes policies).
+
+One of the major problems with the NAIRU theory is that no one knows exactly what the NAIRU is, and it clearly changes over time.[18] The margin of error can be quite high relative to the actual unemployment rate, making it hard to use the NAIRU in policy-making.[19]
+
+Another, normative, definition of full employment might be called the ideal unemployment rate. It would exclude all types of unemployment that represent forms of inefficiency. This type of "full employment" unemployment would correspond to only frictional unemployment (excluding that part encouraging the McJobs management strategy) and so would be very low. However, it would be impossible to attain this full-employment target using only demand-side Keynesian stimulus without getting below the NAIRU and causing accelerating inflation (absent incomes policies). Training programs aimed at fighting structural unemployment would help here.
+
+To the extent that hidden unemployment exists, it implies that official unemployment statistics provide a poor guide to what unemployment rate coincides with "full employment."[18]
+
+Structural unemployment occurs when a labour market is unable to provide jobs for everyone who wants one because there is a mismatch between the skills of the unemployed workers and the skills needed for the available jobs. Structural unemployment is hard to separate empirically from frictional unemployment except that it lasts longer. As with frictional unemployment, simple demand-side stimulus will not work to abolish this type of unemployment easily.
+
+Structural unemployment may also be encouraged to rise by persistent cyclical unemployment: if an economy suffers from longlasting low aggregate demand, it means that many of the unemployed become disheartened, and their skills (including job-searching skills) become "rusty" and obsolete. Problems with debt may lead to homelessness and a fall into the vicious circle of poverty.
+
+That means that they may not fit the job vacancies that are created when the economy recovers. The implication is that sustained high demand may lower structural unemployment. This theory of persistence in structural unemployment has been referred to as an example of path dependence or "hysteresis."
+
+Much technological unemployment,[21] caused by the replacement of workers by machines might be counted as structural unemployment. Alternatively, technological unemployment might refer to the way in which steady increases in labour productivity mean that fewer workers are needed to produce the same level of output every year. The fact that aggregate demand can be raised to deal with the problem suggests that the problem is instead one of cyclical unemployment. As indicated by Okun's law, the demand side must grow sufficiently quickly to absorb not only the growing labour force but also the workers who are made redundant by the increased labour productivity.
+
+Seasonal unemployment may be seen as a kind of structural unemployment since it is linked to certain kinds of jobs (construction and migratory farm work). The most-cited official unemployment measures erase this kind of unemployment from the statistics using "seasonal adjustment" techniques. That results in substantial and permanent structural unemployment.
+
+Frictional unemployment is the time period between jobs in which a worker searches for or transitions from one job to another. It is sometimes called search unemployment and can be voluntary, based on the circumstances of the unemployed individual. Frictional unemployment exists because both jobs and workers are heterogeneous, and a mismatch can result between the characteristics of supply and demand. Such a mismatch can be related to skills, payment, work-time, location, seasonal industries, attitude, taste, and a multitude of other factors. New entrants (such as graduating students) and re-entrants (such as former homemakers) can also suffer a spell of frictional unemployment.
+
+Workers and employers accept a certain level of imperfection, risk or compromise, but usually not right away. They will invest some time and effort to find a better match. That is, in fact, beneficial to the economy since it results in a better allocation of resources. However, if the search takes too long and mismatches are too frequent, the economy suffers since some work will not get done. Therefore, governments will seek ways to reduce unnecessary frictional unemployment by multiple means including providing education, advice, training, and assistance such as daycare centers.
+
+The frictions in the labour market are sometimes illustrated graphically with a Beveridge curve, a downward-sloping, convex curve that shows a correlation between the unemployment rate on one axis and the vacancy rate on the other. Changes in the supply of or demand for labour cause movements along the curve. An increase or decrease in labour market frictions will shift the curve outwards or inwards.
+
+Official statistics often underestimate unemployment rates because of hidden, or covered, unemployment. That is the unemployment of potential workers that are not reflected in official unemployment statistics because of how the statistics are collected. In many countries, only those who have no work but are actively looking for work and/or qualifying for social security benefits are counted as unemployed. Those who have given up looking for work and sometimes those who are on government "retraining" programs are not officially counted among the unemployed even though they are not employed.
+
+Hidden unemployment often is caused by the state's deliberate manipulations to make statistics about the country look better especially for international propaganda purposes, as was a common practice in the Soviet Union and its satellite states under the Warsaw Pact. Especially in those countries, it is often referred to as agrarian unemployment since it often occurred in agricultural sectors, mostly in rural areas.[22] It was commonly done in a form of early retirement because of lack of vacant jobs for those who had not reached the retirement age or often a situation in which increasing the number of employees did not increase the production (creating fake vacancies on paper for people with whom they did not know what to do, how to use their potential workforce but not admitting to that inability and paying out the diminutive wages for them to pretend to work and remain silent), thus rendering the overall productivity close to zero. It was a very common problem and one of the main reasons for the economic crisis leading to the common people's strikes that later on led to governments responding with martial law state in places like Poland, and the eventual downfall of USSR and Soviet occupation over the rest of the subjugated states under the Warsaw Pact.
+
+The statistic also does not count the "underemployed", those working fewer hours than they would prefer or in a job that fails to make good use of their capabilities. In addition, those who are of working age but are currently in full-time education are usually not considered unemployed in government statistics. Traditional unemployed native societies who survive by gathering, hunting, herding, and farming in wilderness areas may or may not be counted in unemployment statistics.
+
+Long-term unemployment (LTU) is defined in European Union statistics as unemployment lasting for longer than one year (while unemployment lasting over two years is defined as very long-term unemployment). The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which reports current long-term unemployment rate at 1.9 percent, defines this as unemployment lasting 27 weeks or longer. Long-term unemployment is a component of structural unemployment, which results in long-term unemployment existing in every social group, industry, occupation, and all levels of education.[23]
+
+In 2015 the European Commission published recommendations on how to reduce long-term unemployment.[24] These advised governments to:
+
+In 2017–2019 it implemented the Long-Term Unemployment project to research solutions implemented by EU member states and produce a toolkit[25] to guide government action. Progress was evaluated[26] in 2019.
+
+It is in the very nature of the capitalist mode of production to overwork some workers while keeping the rest as a reserve army of unemployed paupers.
+
+Marxists share the Keynesian viewpoint of the relationship between economic demand and employment, but with the caveat that the market system's propensity to slash wages and reduce labor participation on an enterprise level causes a requisite decrease in aggregate demand in the economy as a whole, causing crises of unemployment and periods of low economic activity before the capital accumulation (investment) phase of economic growth can continue. According to Karl Marx, unemployment is inherent within the unstable capitalist system and periodic crises of mass unemployment are to be expected. He theorized that unemployment was inevitable and even a necessary part of the capitalist system, with recovery and regrowth also part of the process.[28] The function of the proletariat within the capitalist system is to provide a "reserve army of labour" that creates downward pressure on wages. This is accomplished by dividing the proletariat into surplus labour (employees) and under-employment (unemployed).[29] This reserve army of labour fight among themselves for scarce jobs at lower and lower wages. At first glance, unemployment seems inefficient since unemployed workers do not increase profits, but unemployment is profitable within the global capitalist system because unemployment lowers wages which are costs from the perspective of the owners. From this perspective low wages benefit the system by reducing economic rents. Yet, it does not benefit workers; according to Karl Marx, the workers (proletariat) work to benefit the bourgeoisie through their production of capital.[30] Capitalist systems unfairly manipulate the market for labour by perpetuating unemployment which lowers laborers' demands for fair wages. Workers are pitted against one another at the service of increasing profits for owners. As a result of the capitalist mode of production, Marx argued that workers experienced alienation and estrangement through their economic identity.[31] According to Marx, the only way to permanently eliminate unemployment would be to abolish capitalism and the system of forced competition for wages and then shift to a socialist or communist economic system. For contemporary Marxists, the existence of persistent unemployment is proof of the inability of capitalism to ensure full employment.[32]
+
+There are also different ways national statistical agencies measure unemployment. The differences may limit the validity of international comparisons of unemployment data.[33] To some degree, the differences remain despite national statistical agencies increasingly adopting the definition of unemployment of the International Labour Organization.[34] To facilitate international comparisons, some organizations, such as the OECD, Eurostat, and International Labor Comparisons Program, adjust data on unemployment for comparability across countries.
+
+Though many people care about the number of unemployed individuals, economists typically focus on the unemployment rate, which corrects for the normal increase in the number of people employed caused by increases in population and increases in the labour force relative to the population. The unemployment rate is expressed as a percentage and calculated as follows:
+
+As defined by the International Labour Organization, "unemployed workers" are those who are currently not working but are willing and able to work for pay, currently available to work, and have actively searched for work.[35]
+Individuals who are actively seeking job placement must make the effort to be in contact with an employer, have job interviews, contact job placement agencies, send out resumes, submit applications, respond to advertisements, or some other means of active job searching within the prior four weeks. Simply looking at advertisements and not responding will not count as actively seeking job placement. Since not all unemployment may be "open" and counted by government agencies, official statistics on unemployment may not be accurate.[36] In the United States, for example, the unemployment rate does not take into consideration those individuals who are not actively looking for employment, such as those who are still attending college.[37]
+
+According to the OECD, Eurostat, and the US Bureau of Labor Statistics the unemployment rate is the number of unemployed people as a percentage of the labour force.
+
+"An unemployed person is defined by Eurostat, according to the guidelines of the International Labour Organization, as:
+
+The labour force, or workforce, includes both employed (employees and self-employed) and unemployed people but not the economically inactive, such as pre-school children, school children, students and pensioners.[39]
+
+The unemployment rate of an individual country is usually calculated and reported on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis by the National Agency of Statistics. Organisations like the OECD report statistics for all of its member states.[40]
+
+Certain countries provide unemployment compensation for a certain period of time for unemployed citizens who are registered as unemployed at the government employment agency. Furthermore, pension receivables or claims could depend on the registration at the government employment agency.[41][42]
+
+In many countries like in Germany, the unemployment rate is based on the number of people who are registered as unemployed.[43] Other countries like the United States use a labour force survey to calculate the unemployment rate.[44][45]
+
+The ILO describes four different methods to calculate the unemployment rate:[46]
+
+The primary measure of unemployment, U3, allows for comparisons between countries. Unemployment differs from country to country and across different time periods. For example, in the 1990s and 2000s, the United States had lower unemployment levels than many countries in the European Union,[47] which had significant internal variation, with countries like the United Kingdom and Denmark outperforming Italy and France. However, large economic events like the Great Depression can lead to similar unemployment rates across the globe.
+
+In 2013, the ILO adopted a resolution to introduce new indicators to measure the unemployment rate.[48]
+
+x 100
+
+labour force) / (extended labour force)] × 100
+
+Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, defines unemployed as those persons between age 15 and 74 who are not working, have looked for work in the last four weeks, and are ready to start work within two weeks; this definition conforms to ILO standards. Both the actual count and the unemployment rate are reported. Statistical data are available by member state for the European Union as a whole (EU28) as well as for the eurozone (EA19). Eurostat also includes a long-term unemployment rate, which is defined as part of the unemployed who have been unemployed for more than one year.[49]
+
+The main source used is the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS). It collects data on all member states each quarter. For monthly calculations, national surveys or national registers from employment offices are used in conjunction with quarterly EU-LFS data. The exact calculation for individual countries, resulting in harmonized monthly data, depends on the availability of the data.[50]
+
+The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures employment and unemployment (of those over 17 years of age) by using two different labor force surveys[52] conducted by the United States Census Bureau (within the United States Department of Commerce) and/or the Bureau of Labor Statistics (within the United States Department of Labor) that gather employment statistics monthly. The Current Population Survey (CPS), or "Household Survey," conducts a survey based on a sample of 60,000 households. The survey measures the unemployment rate based on the ILO definition.[53]
+
+The Current Employment Statistics survey (CES), or "Payroll Survey," conducts a survey based on a sample of 160,000 businesses and government agencies, which represent 400,000 individual employers.[54] Since the survey measures only civilian nonagricultural employment, it does not calculate an unemployment rate, and it differs from the ILO unemployment rate definition. Both sources have different classification criteria and usually produce differing results. Additional data are also available from the government, such as the unemployment insurance weekly claims report available from the Office of Workforce Security, within the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration.[55] The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides up-to-date numbers via a PDF linked here.[56] The BLS also provides a readable concise current Employment Situation Summary, updated monthly.[57]
+
+The Bureau of Labor Statistics also calculates six alternate measures of unemployment, U1 to U6, which measure different aspects of unemployment:[58]
+
+Note: "Marginally attached workers" are added to the total labour force for unemployment rate calculation for U4, U5, and U6. The BLS revised the CPS in 1994 and among the changes the measure representing the official unemployment rate was renamed U3 instead of U5.[61] In 2013, Representative Hunter proposed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics use the U5 rate instead of the current U3 rate.[62]
+
+Statistics for the US economy as a whole hide variations among groups. For example, in January 2008, the US unemployment rates were 4.4% for adult men, 4.2% for adult women, 4.4% for Caucasians, 6.3% for Hispanics or Latinos (all races), 9.2% for African Americans, 3.2% for Asian Americans, and 18.0% for teenagers.[54] Also, the US unemployment rate would be at least 2% higher if prisoners and jail inmates were counted.[63][64]
+
+The unemployment rate is included in a number of major economic indices including the US Conference Board's Index of Leading Indicators a macroeconomic measure of the state of the economy.
+
+Some critics believe that current methods of measuring unemployment are inaccurate in terms of the impact of unemployment on people as these methods do not take into account the 1.5% of the available working population incarcerated in US prisons (who may or may not be working while they are incarcerated); those who have lost their jobs and have become discouraged over time from actively looking for work; those who are self-employed or wish to become self-employed, such as tradesmen or building contractors or information technology consultants; those who have retired before the official retirement age but would still like to work (involuntary early retirees); those on disability pensions who do not possess full health but still wish to work in occupations that suitable for their medical conditions; or those who work for payment for as little as one hour per week but would like to work full time.[70]
+
+The last people are "involuntary part-time" workers, those who are underemployed, such as a computer programmer who is working in a retail store until he can find a permanent job, involuntary stay-at-home mothers who would prefer to work, and graduate and professional school students who are unable to find worthwhile jobs after they graduated with their bachelor's degrees.
+
+Internationally, some nations' unemployment rates are sometimes muted or appear less severe because of the number of self-employed individuals working in agriculture.[65] Small independent farmers are often considered self-employed and so cannot be unemployed. That can impact non-industrialized economies, such as the United States and Europe in the early 19th century, since overall unemployment was approximately 3% because so many individuals were self-employed, independent farmers; however, non-agricultural unemployment was as high as 80%.[65]
+
+Many economies industrialize and so experience increasing numbers of non-agricultural workers. For example, the United States' non-agricultural labour force increased from 20% in 1800 to 50% in 1850 and  97% in 2000.[65] The shift away from self-employment increases the percentage of the population that is included in unemployment rates. When unemployment rates between countries or time periods are compared, it is best to consider differences in their levels of industrialization and self-employment.
+
+Additionally, the measures of employment and unemployment may be "too high." In some countries, the availability of unemployment benefits can inflate statistics by giving an incentive to register as unemployed. People who do not seek work may choose to declare themselves unemployed to get benefits; people with undeclared paid occupations may try to get unemployment benefits in addition to the money that they earn from their work.[71]
+
+However, in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, and the European Union, unemployment is measured using a sample survey (akin to a Gallup poll).[34] According to the BLS, a number of Eastern European nations have instituted labour force surveys as well. The sample survey has its own problems because the total number of workers in the economy is calculated based on a sample, rather than a census.
+
+It is possible to be neither employed nor unemployed by ILO definitions by being outside of the "labour force."[36] Such people have no job and are not looking for one. Many of them go to school or are retired. Family responsibilities keep others out of the labour force. Still others have a physical or mental disability that prevents them from participating in the labour force. Some people simply elect not to work and prefer to be dependent on others for sustenance.
+
+Typically, employment and the labour force include only work that is done for monetary gain. Hence, a homemaker is neither part of the labour force nor unemployed. Also, full-time students and prisoners are considered to be neither part of the labour force nor unemployed.[70] The number of prisoners can be important. In 1999, economists Lawrence F. Katz and Alan B. Krueger estimated that increased incarceration lowered measured unemployment in the United States by 0.17% between 1985 and the late 1990s.[70]
+
+In particular, as of 2005, roughly 0.7% of the US population is incarcerated (1.5% of the available working population). Additionally, children, the elderly, and some individuals with disabilities are typically not counted as part of the labour force and so are not included in the unemployment statistics. However, some elderly and many disabled individuals are active in the labour market.
+
+In the early stages of an economic boom, unemployment often rises.[16] That is because people join the labour market (give up studying, start a job hunt, etc.) as a result of the improving job market, but until they have actually found a position, they are counted as unemployed. Similarly, during a recession, the increase in the unemployment rate is moderated by people leaving the labour force or being otherwise discounted from the labour force, such as with the self-employed.
+
+For the fourth quarter of 2004, according to OECD (Employment Outlook 2005 ISBN 92-64-01045-9), normalized unemployment for men aged 25 to 54 was 4.6% in the US and 7.4% in France. At the same time and for the same population, the employment rate (number of workers divided by population) was 86.3% in the US and 86.7% in France. That example shows that the unemployment rate was 60% higher in France than in the US, but more people in that demographic were working in France than in the US, which is counterintuitive if it is expected that the unemployment rate reflects the health of the labour market.[72][73]
+
+Those deficiencies make many labour market economists prefer to look at a range of economic statistics such as labour market participation rate, the percentage of people between 15 and 64 who are currently employed or searching for employment, the total number of full-time jobs in an economy, the number of people seeking work as a raw number and not a percentage, and the total number of person-hours worked in a month compared to the total number of person-hours people would like to work. In particular, the National Bureau of Economic Research does not use the unemployment rate but prefers various employment rates to date recessions.[74]
+
+The labor force participation rate is the ratio between the labor force and the overall size of their cohort (national population of the same age range). In the West, during the later half of the 20th century, the labor force participation rate increased significantly because of an increase in the number of women entering the workplace.
+
+In the United States, there have been four significant stages of women's participation in the labour force: increases in the 20th century and decreases in the 21st century. Male labor force participation decreased from 1953 to 2013. Since October 2013, men have been increasingly joining the labour force.
+
+From the late 19th century to the 1920s, very few women worked outside the home. They were young single women who typically withdrew from the labor force at marriage unless family needed two incomes. Such women worked primarily in the textile manufacturing industry or as domestic workers. That profession empowered women and allowed them to earn a living wage. At times, they were a financial help to their families.
+
+Between 1930 and 1950, female labor force participation increased primarily because of the increased demand for office workers, women's participation in the high school movement, and electrification, which reduced the time that was spent on household chores. From the 1950s to the early 1970s, most women were secondary earners working mainly as secretaries, teachers, nurses, and librarians (pink-collar jobs).
+
+From the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, there was a period of revolution of women in the labor force brought on by various factors, many of which arose from the second-wave feminism movement. Women more accurately planned for their future in the work force by investing in more applicable majors in college that prepared them to enter and compete in the labor market. In the United States, the female labor force participation rate rose from approximately 33% in 1948 to a peak of 60.3% in 2000. As of April 2015, the female labor force participation is at 56.6%, the male labor force participation rate is at 69.4%, and the total is 62.8%.[75]
+
+A common theory in modern economics claims that the rise of women participating in the US labor force in the 1950s to the 1990s was caused by the introduction of a new contraceptive technology, birth control pills, as well as the adjustment of age of majority laws. The use of birth control gave women the flexibility of opting to invest and to advance their career while they maintained a relationship. By having control over the timing of their fertility, they were not running a risk of thwarting their career choices. However, only 40% of the population actually used the birth control pill.
+
+That implies that other factors may have contributed to women choosing to invest in advancing their careers. One factor may be that an increasing number of men delayed the age of marriage, which allowed women to marry later in life without them worrying about the quality of older men. Other factors include the changing nature of work, with machines replacing physical labor, thus eliminating many traditional male occupations, and the rise of the service sector in which many jobs are gender neutral.
+
+Another factor that may have contributed to the trend was the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex. Such legislation diminished sexual discrimination and encouraged more women to enter the labor market by receiving fair remuneration to help raising families and children.
+
+At the turn of the 21st century, the labor force participation began to reverse its long period of increase. Reasons for the change include a rising share of older workers, an increase in school enrollment rates among young workers, and a decrease in female labor force participation.[76]
+
+The labor force participation rate can decrease when the rate of growth of the population outweighs that of the employed and the unemployed together. The labor force participation rate is a key component in long-term economic growth, almost as important as productivity.
+
+A historic shift began around the end of the Great Recession as women began leaving the labor force in the United States and other developed countries. The female labor force participation rate in the United States has steadily decreased since 2009, and as of April 2015, the female labor force participation rate has gone back down to 1988 levels of 56.6%.[75]
+
+Participation rates are defined as follows:
+
+The labor force participation rate explains how an increase in the unemployment rate can occur simultaneously with an increase in employment. If a large number of new workers enter the labor force but only a small fraction become employed, then the increase in the number of unemployed workers can outpace the growth in employment.[77]
+
+The unemployment ratio calculates the share of unemployed for the whole population. Particularly, many young people between 15 and 24 are studying full-time and so are neither working nor looking for a job. That means that they are not part of the labor force, which is used as the denominator when the unemployment rate is calculated.[78] The youth unemployment ratios in the European Union range from 5.2 (Austria) to 20.6 percent (Spain). They are considerably lower than the standard youth unemployment rates, ranging from 7.9 (Germany) to 57.9 percent (Greece).[79]
+
+High and the persistent unemployment, in which economic inequality increases, has a negative effect on subsequent long-run economic growth. Unemployment can harm growth because it is a waste of resources; generates redistributive pressures and subsequent distortions; drives people to poverty; constrains liquidity limiting labor mobility; and erodes self-esteem promoting social dislocation, unrest, and conflict.[80] The 2013 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Robert J. Shiller, said that rising inequality in the United States and elsewhere is the most important problem.[81]
+
+Unemployed individuals are unable to earn money to meet financial obligations. Failure to pay mortgage payments or to pay rent may lead to homelessness through foreclosure or eviction.[82] Across the United States the growing ranks of people made homeless in the foreclosure crisis are generating tent cities.[83]
+
+Unemployment increases susceptibility to cardiovascular disease, somatization, anxiety disorders, depression, and suicide. In addition, unemployed people have higher rates of medication use, poor diet, physician visits, tobacco smoking, alcoholic beverage consumption, drug use, and lower rates of exercise.[84] According to a study published in Social Indicator Research, even those who tend to be optimistic find it difficult to look on the bright side of things when unemployed. Using interviews and data from German participants aged 16 to 94, including individuals coping with the stresses of real life and not just a volunteering student population, the researchers determined that even optimists struggled with being unemployed.[85]
+
+In 1979, M. Harvey Brenner found that for every 10% increase in the number of unemployed, there is an increase of 1.2% in total mortality, a 1.7% increase in cardiovascular disease, 1.3% more cirrhosis cases, 1.7% more suicides, 4.0% more arrests, and 0.8% more assaults reported to the police.[86][87]
+
+A study by Christopher Ruhm in 2000 on the effect of recessions on health found that several measures of health actually improve during recessions.[88] As for the impact of an economic downturn on crime, during the Great Depression, the crime rate did not decrease. The unemployed in the US often use welfare programs such as food stamps or accumulating debt because unemployment insurance in the US generally does not replace most of the income that was received on the job, and one cannot receive such aid indefinitely.
+
+Not everyone suffers equally from unemployment. In a prospective study of 9,570 individuals over four years, highly-conscientious people suffered more than twice as much if they became unemployed.[89] The authors suggested that may because of conscientious people making different attributions about why they became unemployed or through experiencing stronger reactions following failure. There is also the possibility of reverse causality from poor health to unemployment.[90]
+
+Some researchers hold that many of the low-income jobs are not really a better option than unemployment with a welfare state, with its unemployment insurance benefits. However, since it is difficult or impossible to get unemployment insurance benefits without having worked in the past, those jobs and unemployment are more complementary than they are substitutes. (They are often held short-term, either by students or by those trying to gain experience; turnover in most low-paying jobs is high.)
+
+Another cost for the unemployed is that the combination of unemployment, lack of financial resources, and social responsibilities may push unemployed workers to take jobs that do not fit their skills or allow them to use their talents. Unemployment can cause underemployment, and fear of job loss can spur psychological anxiety. As well as anxiety, it can cause depression, lack of confidence, and huge amounts of stress, which is increased when the unemployed are faced with health issues, poverty, and lack of relational support.[91]
+
+Another personal cost of unemployment is its impact on relationships. A 2008 study from Covizzi, which examined the relationship between unemployment and divorce, found that the rate of divorce is greater for couples when one partner is unemployed.[92] However, a more recent study has found that some couples often stick together in "unhappy" or "unhealthy" marriages when they are unemployed to buffer financial costs.[93] A 2014 study by Van der Meer found that the stigma that comes from being unemployed affects personal well-being, especially for men, who often feel as though their masculine identities are threatened by unemployment.[94]
+
+Unemployment can also bring personal costs in relation to gender. One study found that women are more likely to experience unemployment than men and that they are less likely to move from temporary positions to permanent positions.[95] Another study on gender and unemployment found that men, however, are more likely to experience greater stress, depression, and adverse effects from unemployment, largely stemming from the perceived threat to their role as breadwinner.[96] The study found that men expect themselves to be viewed as "less manly" after a job loss than they actually are and so they engage in compensating behaviors, such as financial risk-taking and increased assertiveness. Unemployment has been linked to extremely adverse effects on men's mental health.[97] Professor Ian Hickie of the University of Sydney said that evidence showed that men have more restricted social networks than women and that men have are heavily work-based. Therefore, the loss of a job for men means the loss of a whole set of social connections as well. That loss can then lead to men becoming socially isolated very quickly.[98]
+
+Costs of unemployment also vary depending on age. The young and the old are the two largest age groups currently experiencing unemployment.[99] A 2007 study from Jacob and Kleinert found that young people (ages 18 to 24) who have fewer resources and limited work experiences are more likely to be unemployed.[100] Other researchers have found that today's high school seniors place a lower value on work than those in the past, which is likely because they recognize the limited availability of jobs.[101] At the other end of the age spectrum, studies have found that older individuals have more barriers than younger workers to employment, require stronger social networks to acquire work, and are also less likely to move from temporary to permanent positions.[95][99] Additionally, some older people see age discrimination as the reason for them not getting hired.[102]
+
+An economy with high unemployment is not using all of the resources, specifically labour, available to it. Since it is operating below its production possibility frontier, it could have higher output if all of the workforce were usefully employed. However, there is a tradeoff between economic efficiency and unemployment: if all frictionally unemployed accepted the first job that they were offered, they would be likely to be operating at below their skill level, reducing the economy's efficiency.[103]
+
+During a long period of unemployment, workers can lose their skills, causing a loss of human capital. Being unemployed can also reduce the life expectancy of workers by about seven years.[8]
+
+High unemployment can encourage xenophobia and protectionism since workers fear that foreigners are stealing their jobs.[104] Efforts to preserve existing jobs of domestic and native workers include legal barriers against "outsiders" who want jobs, obstacles to immigration, and/or tariffs and similar trade barriers against foreign competitors.
+
+High unemployment can also cause social problems such as crime. If people have less disposable income than before, it is very likely that crime levels within the economy will increase.
+
+A 2015 study published in The Lancet, estimates that unemployment causes 45,000 suicides a year globally.[105]
+
+High levels of unemployment can be causes of civil unrest,[106] in some cases leading to revolution, particularly totalitarianism. The fall of the Weimar Republic in 1933 and Adolf Hitler's rise to power, which culminated in World War II and the deaths of tens of millions and the destruction of much of the physical capital of Europe, is attributed to the poor economic conditions in Germany at the time, notably a high unemployment rate[107] of above 20%; see Great Depression in Central Europe for details.
+
+However the hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic is not directly blamed for the Nazi rise. Hyperinflation occurred primarily in 1921 to 1923, the year of Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch. Although hyperinflation has been blamed for damaging the credibility of democratic institutions, the Nazis did not assume government until 1933, ten years after the hyperinflation but in the midst of high unemployment.
+
+Rising unemployment has traditionally been regarded by the public and the media in any country as a key guarantor of electoral defeat for any government that oversees it. That was very much the consensus in the United Kingdom until 1983, when Thatcher's Conservative government won a landslide in the general election, despite overseeing a rise in unemployment from 1.5 million to 3.2 million since the 1979 election.[108]
+
+The primary benefit of unemployment is that people are available for hire, without being headhunted away from their existing employers. That permits both new and old businesses to take on staff.
+
+Unemployment is argued to be "beneficial" to the people who are not unemployed in the sense that it averts inflation, which itself has damaging effects, by providing (in Marxian terms) a reserve army of labour, which keeps wages in check.[109] However, the direct connection between full local employment and local inflation has been disputed by some because of the recent increase in international trade that supplies low-priced goods even while local employment rates rise to full employment.[110]
+
+Full employment cannot be achieved because workers would shirk if they were not threatened with the possibility of unemployment.[111] The curve for the no-shirking condition (labelled NSC) thus goes to infinity at full employment. The inflation-fighting benefits to the entire economy arising from a presumed optimum level of unemployment have been studied extensively.[112] The Shapiro–Stiglitz model suggests that wages never bid down sufficiently to reach 0% unemployment.[113] That occurs because employers know that when wages decrease, workers will shirk and expend less effort. Employers avoid shirking by preventing wages from decreasing so low that workers give up and become unproductive. The higher wages perpetuate unemployment, but the threat of unemployment reduces shirking.
+
+Before current levels of world trade were developed, unemployment was shown to reduce inflation, following the Phillips curve, or to decelerate inflation, following the NAIRU/natural rate of unemployment theory since it is relatively easy to seek a new job without losing a current job. When more jobs are available for fewer workers (lower unemployment), that may allow workers to find the jobs that better fit their tastes, talents and needs.
+
+As in the Marxian theory of unemployment, special interests may also benefit. Some employers may expect that employees with no fear of losing their jobs will not work as hard or will demand increased wages and benefit. According to that theory, unemployment may promote general labour productivity and profitability by increasing employers' rationale for their monopsony-like power (and profits).[27]
+
+Optimal unemployment has also been defended as an environmental tool to brake the constantly-accelerated growth of the GDP to maintain levels that are sustainable in the context of resource constraints and environmental impacts.[114] However, the tool of denying jobs to willing workers seems a blunt instrument for conserving resources and the environment. It reduces the consumption of the unemployed across the board and only in the short term. Full employment of the unemployed workforce, all focused toward the goal of developing more environmentally-efficient methods for production and consumption, might provide a more significant and lasting cumulative environmental benefit and reduced resource consumption.[115]
+
+Some critics of the "culture of work" such as the anarchist Bob Black see employment as culturallly overemphasized in modern countries. Such critics often propose quitting jobs when possible, working less, reassessing the cost of living to that end, creation of jobs that are "fun" as opposed to "work," and creating cultural norms in which work is seen as unhealthy. These people advocate an "anti-work" ethic for life.[116]
+
+As a result of productivity, the work week declined considerably during the 19th century.[117][118] By the 1920s, the average workweek in the US was 49 hours, but it was reduced to 40 hours (after which overtime premium was applied) as part of the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act. During the Great Depression, the enormous productivity gains caused by electrification, mass production, and agricultural mechanization were believed to have ended the need for a large number of previously-employed workers.[21][119]
+
+Societies try a number of different measures to get as many people as possible into work, and various societies have experienced close to full employment for extended periods, particularly during the post-World War II economic expansion. The United Kingdom in the 1950s and 1960s averaged 1.6% unemployment,[121] and in Australia, the 1945 White Paper on Full Employment in Australia established a government policy of full employment, which lasted until the 1970s.[122]
+
+However, mainstream economic discussions of full employment since the 1970s suggest that attempts to reduce the level of unemployment below the natural rate of unemployment will fail but result only in less output and more inflation.
+
+Increases in the demand for labour move the economy along the demand curve, increasing wages and employment. The demand for labour in an economy is derived from the demand for goods and services. As such, if the demand for goods and services in the economy increases, the demand for labour will increase, increasing employment and wages.
+
+There are many ways to stimulate demand for goods and services. Increasing wages to the working class (those more likely to spend the increased funds on goods and services, rather than various types of savings or commodity purchases) is one theory that is proposed. Increased wages are believed to be more effective in boosting demand for goods and services than central banking strategies, which put the increased money supply mostly into the hands of wealthy persons and institutions. Monetarists suggest that increasing money supply in general increases short-term demand. As for the long-term demand, the increased demand is negated by inflation. A rise in fiscal expenditures is another strategy for boosting aggregate demand.
+
+Providing aid to the unemployed is a strategy that is used to prevent cutbacks in consumption of goods and services, which can lead to a vicious cycle of further job losses and further decreases in consumption and demand. Many countries aid the unemployed through social welfare programs. Such unemployment benefits include unemployment insurance, unemployment compensation, welfare, and subsidies to aid in retraining. The main goal of such programs is to alleviate short-term hardships and, more importantly, to allow workers more time to search for a job.
+
+A direct demand-side solution to unemployment is government-funded employment of the able-bodied poor. This was notably implemented in Britain from the 17th century until 1948 in the institution of the workhouse, which provided jobs for the unemployed with harsh conditions and poor wages to dissuade their use. A modern alternative is a job guarantee in which the government guarantees work at a living wage.
+
+Temporary measures can include public works programs such as the Works Progress Administration. Government-funded employment is not widely advocated as a solution to unemployment except in times of crisis. That is attributed to the public sector jobs' existence depending directly on the tax receipts from private sector employment.
+
+In the US, the unemployment insurance allowance is based solely on previous income (not time worked, family size, etc.) and usually compensates for one third of previous income. To qualify, people must reside in their respective state for at least a year and work. The system was established by the Social Security Act of 1935. Although 90% of citizens are covered by unemployment insurance, less than 40% apply for and receive benefits.[123] However, the number applying for and receiving benefits increases during recessions. For highly-seasonal industries, the system provides income to workers during the off-season, thus encouraging them to stay attached to the industry.
+
+According to classical economic theory, markets reach equilibrium where supply equals demand; everyone who wants to sell at the market price can do so. Those who do not want to sell at that price do not; in the labour market, this is classical unemployment. Monetary policy and fiscal policy can both be used to increase short-term growth in the economy, increasing the demand for labour and decreasing unemployment.
+
+However, the labor market is not 100% efficient although it may be more efficient than the bureaucracy. Some argue that minimum wages and union activity keep wages from falling, which means that too many people want to sell their labour at the going price but cannot. That assumes perfect competition exists in the labour market, specifically that no single entity is large enough to affect wage levels and that employees are similar in ability.
+
+Advocates of supply-side policies believe those policies can solve the problem by making the labour market more flexible. These include removing the minimum wage and reducing the power of unions. Supply-siders argue that their reforms increase long-term growth by reducing labour costs. The increased supply of goods and services requires more workers, increasing employment. It is argued that supply-side policies, which include cutting taxes on businesses and reducing regulation, create jobs, reduce unemployment, and decrease labor's share of national income. Other supply-side policies include education to make workers more attractive to employers.
+
+There are relatively limited historical records on unemployment because it has not always been acknowledged or measured systematically. Industrialization involves economies of scale, which often prevent individuals from having the capital to create their own jobs to be self-employed. An individual who cannot join an enterprise or create a job is unemployed. As individual farmers, ranchers, spinners, doctors and merchants are organized into large enterprises, those who cannot join or compete become unemployed.
+
+Recognition of unemployment occurred slowly as economies across the world industrialized and bureaucratized. Before then, traditional self-sufficient native societies have no concept of unemployment. The recognition of the concept of "unemployment" is best exemplified through the well documented historical records in England. For example, in 16th-century England no distinction was made between vagrants and the jobless; both were simply categorized as "sturdy beggars", who were to be punished and moved on.[125]
+
+The closing of the monasteries in the 1530s increased poverty, as the Roman Catholic Church had helped the poor. In addition, there was a significant rise in enclosures during the Tudor period. Also, the population was rising. Those unable to find work had a stark choice: starve or break the law. In 1535, a bill was drawn up calling for the creation of a system of public works to deal with the problem of unemployment, which were to be funded by a tax on income and capital. A law that was passed a year later allowed vagabonds to be whipped and hanged.[126]
+
+In 1547, a bill was passed that subjected vagrants to some of the more extreme provisions of the criminal law: two years' servitude and branding with a "V" as the penalty for the first offense and death for the second.[127] During the reign of Henry VIII, as many as 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed.[128] In the 1576 Act, each town was required to provide work for the unemployed.[129]
+
+The Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, one of the world's first government-sponsored welfare programs, made a clear distinction between those who were unable to work and those able-bodied people who refused employment.[130] Under the Poor Law systems of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland, a workhouse was a place For people unable to support themselves could go to live and work.[131]
+
+Poverty was a highly visible problem in the eighteenth century, both in cities and in the countryside. In France and Britain by the end of the century, an estimated 10 percent of the people depended on charity or begging for their food.
+
+By 1776, some 1,912 parish and corporation workhouses had been established in England and Wales and housed almost 100,000 paupers.
+
+A description of the miserable living standards of the mill workers in England in 1844 was given by Fredrick Engels in The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.[132] In the preface to the 1892 edition, Engels noted that the extreme poverty he had written about in 1844 had largely disappeared. David Ames Wells also noted that living conditions in England had improved near the end of the 19th century and that unemployment was low.
+
+The scarcity and the high price of labor in the US in the 19th century was well documented by contemporary accounts, as in the following:
+
+"The laboring classes are comparatively few in number, but this is counterbalanced by, and indeed, may be one of the causes of the eagerness by which they call in the use of machinery in almost every department of industry. Wherever it can be applied as a substitute for manual labor, it is universally and willingly resorted to.... It is this condition of the labor market, and this eager resort to machinery wherever it can be applied, to which, under the guidance of superior education and intelligence, the remarkable prosperity of the United States is due."[133] Joseph Whitworth, 1854
+
+Scarcity of labor was a factor in the economics of slavery in the United States.
+
+As new territories were opened and federal land sales were conducted, land had to be cleared and new homesteads established. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants annually came to the US and found jobs digging canals and building railroads. Almost all work during most of the 19th century was done by hand or with horses, mules, or oxen since there was very little mechanization. The workweek during most of the 19th century was 60 hours. Unemployment at times was between one and two percent.
+
+The tight labor market was a factor in productivity gains by allowing workers to maintain or to increase their nominal wages during the secular deflation that caused real wages to rise at various times in the 19th century, especially in its final decades.[134]
+
+There were labor shortages during World War I.[21] Ford Motor Co. doubled wages to reduce turnover. After 1925, unemployment gradually began to rise.[135]
+
+The 1930s saw the Great Depression impact unemployment across the globe. One Soviet trading corporation in New York averaged 350 applications a day from Americans seeking jobs in the Soviet Union.[136] In Germany, the unemployment rate reached nearly 25% in 1932.[137]
+
+In some towns and cities in the northeast of England, unemployment reached as high as 70%; the national unemployment level peaked at more than 22% in 1932.[138] Unemployment in Canada reached 27% at the depth of the Depression in 1933.[139] In 1929, the U.S. unemployment rate averaged 3%.[140]
+
+In the US, the Works Progress Administration (1935–43) was the largest make-work program. It hired men (and some women) off the relief roles ("dole") typically for unskilled labor.[141]
+
+In Cleveland, Ohio, the unemployment rate was 60%; in Toledo, Ohio, it was 80%.[142] There were two million homeless people migrating across the United States.[142] Over three million unemployed young men were taken out of the cities and placed into more than 2600 work camps managed by the Civilian Conservation Corps.[143]
+
+Unemployment in the United Kingdom fell later in the 1930s as the Depression eased, and it remained low (in six figures) after World War II.
+
+Fredrick Mills found that in the US, 51% of the decline in work hours was due to the fall in production and 49% was from increased productivity.[144]
+
+By 1972, unemployment in the United Kingdom had crept back up above 1,000,000, and it was even higher by the end of the decade, with inflation also being high. Although the monetarist economic policies of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government saw inflation reduced after 1979, unemployment soared in the early 1980s and in 1982, it exceeded 3,000,000, a level that had not not seen for some 50 years. That represented one in eight of the workforce, with unemployment exceeding 20% in some places that had relied on declining industries such as coal mining.[145]
+
+However, it was a time of high unemployment in all other major industrialised nations as well.[146] By the spring of 1983, unemployment had risen by 6% in the previous 12 months, compared to 10% in Japan, 23% in the US, and 34% in West Germany (seven years before Reunification).[147]
+
+Unemployment in the United Kingdom remained above 3,000,000 until the spring of 1987, when the economy enjoyed a boom.[145] By the end of 1989, unemployment had fallen to 1,600,000. However, inflation had reached 7.8%, and the following year, it reached a nine-year high of 9.5%; leading to increased interest rates.[148]
+
+Another recession occurred from 1990 to 1992. Unemployment began to increase, and by the end of 1992, nearly 3,000,000 in the United Kingdom were unemployed, a number that was soon lowered by a strong economic recovery.[145] With inflation down to 1.6% by 1993, unemployment then began to fall rapidly and stood at 1,800,000 by early 1997.[149]
+
+The official unemployment rate in the 16 European Union (EU) countries that use the euro rose to 10% in December 2009 as a result of another recession.[150] Latvia had the highest unemployment rate in the EU, at 22.3% for November 2009.[151] Europe's young workers have been especially hard hit.[152] In November 2009, the unemployment rate in the EU27 for those aged 15–24 was 18.3%. For those under 25, the unemployment rate in Spain was 43.8%.[153] Unemployment has risen in two thirds of European countries since 2010.[154]
+
+Into the 21st century, unemployment in the United Kingdom remained low and the economy remaining strong, and several other European economies, such as France and Germany, experienced a minor recession and a substantial rise in unemployment.[155]
+
+In 2008, when the recession brought on another increase in the United Kingdom, after 15 years of economic growth and no major rises in unemployment.[156] In early 2009, unemployment passed the 2 million mark, and economists were predicting it would soon reach 3 million.[157] However, the end of the recession was declared in January 2010[158] and unemployment peaked at nearly 2.7 million in 2011,[159] appearing to ease fears of unemployment reaching 3 million.[160] The unemployment rate of Britain's young black people was 47.4% in 2011.[161] 2013/2014 has seen the employment rate increase from 1,935,836 to 2,173,012 as supported by[162] showing the UK is creating more job opportunities and forecasts the rate of increase in 2014/2015 will be another 7.2%.[163]
+
+The 2008–2012 global recession has been called a "mancession" because of the disproportionate number of men who lost their jobs as compared to women. The gender gap became wide in the United States in 2009, when 10.5% of men in the labor force were unemployed, compared with 8% of women.[164][165] Three quarters of the jobs that were lost in the recession in the US were held by men.[166][167]
+
+A 26 April 2005 Asia Times article noted, "In regional giant South Africa, some 300,000 textile workers have lost their jobs in the past two years due to the influx of Chinese goods".[168] The increasing US trade deficit with China cost 2.4 million American jobs between 2001–2008, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).[169] From 2000–2007, the United States lost a total of 3.2 million manufacturing jobs.[170] 12.1% of US military veterans who had served after the September 11 attacks in 2001 were unemployed as of 2011; 29.1% of male veterans aged 18–24 were unemployed.[84] As of September 2016, the total veteran unemployment rate was 4.3 percent. By September 2017, that figure had dropped to 3 percent.[171]
+
+About 25,000,000 people in the world's 30 richest countries lost their jobs between the end of 2007 and the end of 2010, as the economic downturn pushed most countries into recession.[172] In April 2010, the US unemployment rate was 9.9%, but the government's broader U-6 unemployment rate was 17.1%.[173] In April 2012, the unemployment rate was 4.6% in Japan.[174] In a 2012 story, the Financial Post reported, "Nearly 75 million youth are unemployed around the world, an increase of more than 4 million since 2007. In the European Union, where a debt crisis followed the financial crisis, the youth unemployment rate rose to 18% last year from 12.5% in 2007, the ILO report shows."[175] In March 2018, according to US Unemployment Rate Statistics, the unemployment rate was 4.1%, below the 4.5–5.0% norm.[176]
+
+Quotations related to unemployment at Wikiquote
+ The dictionary definition of unemployment at Wiktionary
+
+
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+Sanskrit (/ˈsænskrɪt/;[7] Sanskrit: संस्कृतम्, romanized: saṃskṛtam, IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] (listen)) is an Indo-Aryan or Indic[8] language of the ancient Indian subcontinent with a 3,500-year history.[9][10][11] It is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and the predominant language of most works of Hindu philosophy as well as some of the principal texts of Buddhism and Jainism. Sanskrit, in its variants and numerous dialects, was the lingua franca of ancient and medieval India.[12][13][14] In the early 1st millennium AD, along with Buddhism and Hinduism, Sanskrit migrated to Southeast Asia,[15] parts of East Asia[16] and Central Asia,[17] emerging as a language of high culture and of local ruling elites in these regions.[18][19]
+
+Sanskrit is an Old Indo-Aryan language.[9] As one of the oldest documented members of the Indo-European family of languages,[20][note 1][note 2] Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies.[23] It is related to Greek and Latin,[9] as well as Hittite, Luwian, Old Avestan and many other living and extinct languages with historical significance to Europe, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. It traces its linguistic ancestry to the Proto-Indo-Aryan, Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-European languages.[24]
+
+Sanskrit is traceable to the 2nd millennium BCE in a form known as Vedic Sanskrit,[25] with the Rigveda as the earliest-known composition. A more refined and standardized grammatical form called Classical Sanskrit emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE with the Aṣṭādhyāyī treatise of Pāṇini.[9] Sanskrit, though not necessarily Classical Sanskrit, is the root language of many Prakrit languages.[26] Examples include numerous, modern, North Indian, subcontinental daughter languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Kumaoni, Garhwali, Urdu, Dogri, Maithili, Konkani, Assamese, Odia, and Nepali.[27][28][29] Sanskrit has significantly influenced the grammar, phonology and vocabulary of the Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam languages of South India.[30][31][32]
+
+The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama, scientific, technical and other texts. In the ancient era, Sanskrit compositions were orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity.[33][34] The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the few discovered in Ayodhya and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh).[35][note 3] Sanskrit texts dated to the 1st millennium CE were written in the Brahmi script, the Nāgarī script, the historic South Indian scripts and their derivative scripts.[39][40][41] Sanskrit is one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since India's independence in 1947.[42] Sanskrit is a living language and spoken as a primary language in some villages in India.  It is taught in a large number of schools in India. It also continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hinduism and some Buddhist practices such as recitation of hymns and chants.
+
+In Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sam (together, good, well, perfected) and krta- (made, formed, work).[43][44] It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred".[45][46][47] According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined the alphabet, the structure of words and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold", states Biderman, as an integral language they called Sanskrit.[44] From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that weaved all ideas and inspirations became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit.[48][49]
+
+Sanskrit as a language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages (prākṛta-). The term prakrta literally means "original, natural, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth.[50] The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patañjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and later leads to the problems of interpretation and misunderstanding. The purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Daṇḍin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit, but involve "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar". Daṇḍin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view is found in the writing of Bharata Muni, the author of the ancient Nāṭyaśāstra text. The early Jain scholar Namisādhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisādhu stated that the Prakrit language was the pūrvam (came before, origin) and that it came naturally to children, while Sanskrit was a refinement of Prakrit through "purification by grammar".[51]
+
+Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It is one of three ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European language:[21][52][53]
+
+Other Indo-European languages related to Sanskrit include archaic and classical Latin (c. 600 BCE – 100 CE, old Italian), Gothic (archaic Germanic language, c. 350 CE), Old Norse (c. 200 CE and after), Old Avestan (c. late 2nd millennium BCE[55]) and Younger Avestan (c. 900 BCE).[52][53] The closest ancient relatives of Vedic Sanskrit in the Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of the northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas,[53][56][57] as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian—both Iranian languages.[58][59][60] Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages.
+
+Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of the Sanskrit language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe.[note 4] It suggested a common root and historical links between some of the major distant ancient languages of the world.[note 5]
+
+In order to explain the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages, the Indo-Aryan migration theory states that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in the Indian subcontinent from the north-west sometime during the early second millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes the close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages, vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages, and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna.[63] The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on the relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia.[64] The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into the Indian subcontinent in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India, the Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language.[65]
+
+The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit. The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda, a Hindu scripture, from the mid-to-late second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive if they ever existed. However, scholars are confident that the oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they were ceremonial literature where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition.[66][67][68]
+
+The Rigveda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors from distant parts of ancient India. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest.[69][70] Yet, the Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Rigveda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou—an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Rigveda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE.[71] Beyond the Rigveda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into the modern age include the Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas, Aranyakas and the early Upanishads.[66] These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern and eastern Indian subcontinent.[9][72]
+
+Vedic Sanskrit was both a spoken and literary language of ancient India. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of the semi-nomadic Aryas who temporarily settled in one place, maintained cattle herds, practiced limited agriculture and after some time moved by wagon trains they called grama.[73][11] The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the "Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that are now parts of Syria and Turkey.[74][note 6] Parts of this treaty such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes the gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature.[74][76]
+
+O Brihaspati, when in giving names
+   they first set forth the beginning of Language,
+Their most excellent and spotless secret
+   was laid bare through love,
+When the wise ones formed Language with their mind,
+   purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan,
+Then friends knew friendships –
+   an auspicious mark placed on their language.
+
+— Rigveda 10.71.1–4Translated by Roger Woodard[77]
+
+The Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.[78] According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton—Indologists known for their translation of the Rigveda—, the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times, the social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations and some of the poetic meters.[79][note 7] While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the Rigveda, the Old Avestan Gathas lack simile entirely, and it is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Rigvedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different.[81]
+
+The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous, and it evolved over time into a more structured and homogeneous language, ultimately into the Classical Sanskrit by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. The language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages, states Gombrich.[82]
+
+The formalization of the Sanskrit language is credited to Pāṇini, along with Patanjali's Mahabhasya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patanjali's work.[83] Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ("Eight-Chapter Grammar"). The century in which he lived is unclear and debated, but his work is generally accepted to be from sometime between 6th and 4th centuries BCE.[84][85][86]
+
+The Aṣṭādhyāyī was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full. Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as the variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India.[87] The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Apisali, Kashyapa, Gargya, Galava, Cakravarmana, Bharadvaja, Sakatayana, Sakalya, Senaka and Sphotayana.[88] The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Panini became the foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedanga.[89] In the Aṣṭādhyāyī, language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, defines the linguistic expression and a classic that set the standard for the Sanskrit language.[90] Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced.[91]
+
+Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit.[92] His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia.[93] It is unclear whether Pāṇini wrote his treatise on Sanskrit language or he orally created the detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as lipi ("script") and lipikara ("scribe") in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī.[94][95][96][note 8]
+
+The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and a restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded".[103] The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond the Vedic Sanskrit's bahulam framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language.[104]
+
+The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit are negligible when compared to the intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between Indo-Aryan language and the Vedic Sanskrit.[105] The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax.[106] There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as the sandhi rules, both internal and external.[106] Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature.[106]
+
+Arthur Macdonell was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of the differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit.[106][107] Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir.[108]
+
+The earliest known use of the word Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit), in the context of a language, is found in verses 3.16.14 and 5.28.17–19 of the Ramayana.[110][note 9]. Outside the learned sphere of written Classical Sanskrit, vernacular colloquial dialects (Prakrits) continued to evolve. Sanskrit co-existed with numerous other Prakrit languages of ancient India. The Prakrit languages of India also have ancient roots and some Sanskrit scholars have called these Apabhramsa, literally "spoiled".[112][113] The Vedic literature includes words whose phonetic equivalent are not found in other Indo-European languages but which are found in the regional Prakrit languages, which makes it likely that the interaction, the sharing of words and ideas began early in the Indian history. As the Indian thought diversified and challenged earlier beliefs of Hinduism, particularly in the form of Buddhism and Jainism, the Prakrit languages such as Pali in Theravada Buddhism and Ardhamagadhi in Jainism competed with Sanskrit in the ancient times.[114][115][116] However, states Paul Dundas, a scholar of Jainism, these ancient Prakrit languages had "roughly the same relationship to Sanskrit as medieval Italian does to Latin."[116] The Indian tradition states that the Buddha and the Mahavira preferred the Prakrit language so that everyone could understand it. However, scholars such as Dundas have questioned this hypothesis. They state that there is no evidence for this and whatever evidence is available suggests that by the start of the common era, hardly anybody other than learned monks had the capacity to understand the old Prakrit languages such as Ardhamagadhi.[116][note 10]
+
+Colonial era scholars questioned whether Sanskrit was ever a spoken language, or just a literary language.[118] Scholars disagree in their answers. A section of Western scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language, while others and particularly most Indian scholars state the opposite.[119] Those who affirm Sanskrit to have been a vernacular language point to the necessity of Sanskrit being a spoken language for the oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. Secondly, they state that the textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini and Patanajali affirms that the Classical Sanskrit in their era was a language that is spoken (bhasha) by the cultured and educated. Some sutras expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit.[119] The 7th-century Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region.[119]
+
+According to Sanskrit linguist Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit.[13] This, states Deshpande, is true for modern languages where colloquial incorrect approximations and dialects of a language are spoken and understood, along with more "refined, sophisticated and grammatically accurate" forms of the same language being found in the literary works.[13] The Indian tradition, states Moriz Winternitz, has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata Purana, the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language.[120] The Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was thus the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants of it as well as other natural Indian languages.[13] Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside the vernacular Prakrits.[13] Many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits. Centres in Varanasi, Paithan, Pune and Kanchipuram were centers of classical Sanskrit learning and public debates until the arrival of the colonial era.[121]
+
+According to Étienne Lamotte—an Indologist and Buddhism scholar, Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied so did its spread and influence.[122] Sanskrit was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms as "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE.[123]
+
+— Foreword of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics (2009), Gérard Huet, Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf[124][125][note 11]
+
+Sanskrit has been the predominant language of Hindu texts encompassing a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama, scientific, technical and others.[127][128] It is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the Ayodhya Inscription of Dhana and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh).[35]
+
+Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism.[129][130] The structure and capabilities of the Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language?[129][131] They speculated on the role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other.[131][note 12] These speculations became particularly important to the Mimamsa and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal—a scholar of Linguistics with a focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit.[129] Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship ;[134] for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts.[135] According to Renou, Sanskrit had a limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature.[136] Sanskrit was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the Tattvartha Sutra by Umaswati.[137][138]
+
+The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE.[38] Xuanzang, another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in the 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong.[142][143] By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia,[15] parts of the East Asia[16] and the Central Asia.[17] It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions.[144] According to the Dalai Lama, the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called legjar lhai-ka or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet.[145]
+
+The Sanskrit language created a pan-Indic accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally.[121][148] It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent.[148] As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language.[148] It connected scholars from distant parts of the Indian subcontinent such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given the first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indic people together, particularly its elite scholars.[121] Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to the more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as "namah".[121]
+
+Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE.[149] Its position in the cultures of Greater India is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent, particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent.[27][28][29]
+
+Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century.[123][150] This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of the Indian subcontinent to create, and thereafter expand the Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire.[151] With the fall of Kashmir around the 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared,[152] perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Sheldon Pollock.[153]:397–398 The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century.[153]:398 As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and the South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire, so did Sanskrit.[152] There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar.[154] Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with the Muslim rulers.[155] Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire, reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity.[155][156][157] After Islamic rule disintegrated in the Indian subcontinent and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support the historic Sanskrit literary culture.[152]
+
+Scholars are divided on whether or when Sanskrit died. Western authors such as John Snelling state that Sanskrit and Pali are both dead Indian languages.[158] Indian authors such as M Ramakrishnan Nair state that Sanskrit was a dead language by the 1st millennium BCE.[159] Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead".[153]:393 After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with the previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock.[153]:398
+
+Other scholars state that Sanskrit language did not die, only declined. Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes a negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder,[160]
+
+On a more public level the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages and the fact that it is spoken, written and read will probably convince most people that it cannot be a dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollock's notion of the "death of Sanskrit" remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says that "most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead."[152]
+
+The Sanskrit language scholar Moriz Winternitz states, Sanskrit was never a dead language and it is still alive though its prevalence is lesser than ancient and medieval times. Sanskrit remains an integral part of Hindu journals, festivals, Ramlila plays, drama, rituals and the rites-of-passage.[161] Similarly, Brian Hatcher states that the "metaphors of historical rupture" by Pollock are not valid, that there is ample proof that Sanskrit was very much alive in the narrow confines of surviving Hindu kingdoms between the 13th and 18th centuries, and its reverence and tradition continues.[162]
+
+Hanneder states that modern works in Sanskrit are either ignored or their "modernity" contested.[163]
+
+According to Robert Goldman and Sally Sutherland, Sanskrit is neither "dead" nor "living" in the conventional sense. It is a special, timeless language that lives in the numerous manuscripts, daily chants and ceremonial recitations, a heritage language that Indians contextually prize and some practice.[164]
+
+When the British introduced English to India in the 19th century, knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient literature continued to flourish as the study of Sanskrit changed from a more traditional style into a form of analytical and comparative scholarship mirroring that of Europe.[165]
+
+The relationship of Sanskrit to the Prakrit languages, particularly the modern form of Indian languages, is complex and spans about 3,500 years, states Colin Masica—a linguist specializing in South Asian languages. A part of the difficulty is the lack of sufficient textual, archaeological and epigraphical evidence for the ancient Prakrit languages with rare exceptions such as Pali, leading to a tendency of anachronistic errors.[166] Sanskrit and Prakrit languages may be divided into Old Indo-Aryan (1500 BCE–600 BCE), Middle Indo-Aryan (600 BCE–1000 CE) and New Indo-Aryan (1000 CE–current), each can further be subdivided in early, middle or second, and late evolutionary substages.[166]
+
+Vedic Sanskrit belongs to the early Old Indo-Aryan while Classical Sanskrit to the later Old Indo-Aryan stage. The evidence for Prakrits such as Pali (Theravada Buddhism) and Ardhamagadhi (Jainism), along with Magadhi, Maharashtri, Sinhala, Sauraseni and Niya (Gandhari), emerge in the Middle Indo-Aryan stage in two versions—archaic and more formalized—that may be placed in early and middle substages of the 600 BCE–1000 CE period.[166] Two literary Indic languages can be traced to the late Middle Indo-Aryan stage and these are Apabhramsa and Elu (a form of literary Sinhalese). Numerous North, Central, Eastern and Western Indian languages, such as Hindi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Nepali, Braj, Awadhi, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, and others belong to the New Indo-Aryan stage.[166]
+
+There is an extensive overlap in the vocabulary, phonetics and other aspects of these New Indo-Aryan languages with Sanskrit, but it is neither universal nor identical across the languages. They likely emerged from a synthesis of the ancient Sanskrit language traditions and an admixture of various regional dialects. Each language has some unique and regionally creative aspects, with unclear origins. Prakrit languages do have a grammatical structure, but like the Vedic Sanskrit, it is far less rigorous than Classical Sanskrit. The roots of all Prakrit languages may be in the Vedic Sanskrit and ultimately the Indo-Aryan language, their structural details vary from the Classical Sanskrit.[26][166] It is generally accepted by scholars and widely believed in India that the modern Indic languages, such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi and Punjabi are descendants of the Sanskrit language.[167][168][169] Sanskrit, states Burjor Avari, can be described as "the mother language of almost all the languages of north India".[170]
+
+The Sanskrit language's historic presence is attested across a wide geography beyond the Indian subcontinent. Inscriptions and literary evidence suggests that Sanskrit language was already being adopted in Southeast Asia and Central Asia in the 1st millennium CE, through monks, religious pilgrims and merchants.[171][172][173]
+
+The Indian subcontinent has been the geographic range of the largest collection of the ancient and pre-18th-century Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions.[126] Beyond ancient India, significant collections of Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions have been found in China (particularly the Tibetan monasteries),[174][175] Myanmar,[176] Indonesia,[177] Cambodia,[178] Laos,[179] Vietnam,[180] Thailand,[181] and Malaysia.[179] Sanskrit inscriptions, manuscripts or its remnants, including some of the oldest known Sanskrit written texts, have been discovered in dry high deserts and mountainous terrains such as in Nepal,[182][183][note 13] Tibet,[175][184] Afghanistan,[185][186] Mongolia,[187] Uzbekistan,[188] Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,[188] and Kazakhstan.[189] Some Sanskrit texts and inscriptions have also been discovered in Korea and Japan.[190][191][192]
+
+In India, Sanskrit is among the 22 official languages of India in the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution.[193] In 2010, Uttarakhand became the first state in India to make Sanskrit its second official language.[194] In 2019, Himachal Pradesh made Sanskrit its second official language, becoming the second state in India to do so.[195]
+
+Sanskrit shares many Proto-Indo-European phonological features, although it features a larger inventory of distinct phonemes. The consonantal system is the same, though it systematically enlarged the inventory of distinct sounds. For example, Sanskrit added a voiceless aspirated "tʰ", to the voiceless "t", voiced "d" and voiced aspirated "dʰ" found in PIE languages.[196]
+
+The most significant and distinctive phonological development in Sanskrit is vowel-merger, states Stephanie Jamison—an Indo-European linguist specializing in Sanskrit literature.[196] The short *e, *o and *a, all merge as a (अ) in Sanskrit, while long *ē, *ō and *ā, all merge as long ā (आ). These mergers occurred very early and significantly impacted Sanskrit's morphological system.[196] Some phonological developments in it mirror those in other PIE languages. For example, the labiovelars merged with the plain velars as in other satem languages. The secondary palatalization of the resulting segments is more thorough and systematic within Sanskrit, states Jamison.[196] A series of retroflex dental stops were innovated in Sanskrit to more thoroughly articulate sounds for clarity. For example, unlike the loss of the morphological clarity from vowel contraction that is found in early Greek and related southeast European languages, Sanskrit deployed *y, *w, and *s intervocalically to provide morphological clarity.[196]
+
+The cardinal vowels (svaras) i (इ), u (उ), a (अ) distinguish length in Sanskrit, states Jamison.[197][198] The short a (अ) in Sanskrit is a closer vowel than ā, equivalent to schwa. The mid-vowels ē (ए) and ō (ओ) in Sanskrit are monophthongizations of the Indo-Iranian diphthongs *ai and *au. The Old Iranian language preserved *ai and *au.[197] The Sanskrit vowels are inherently long, though often transcribed e and o without the diacritic. The vocalic liquid r̥ in Sanskrit is a merger of PIE *r̥ and *l̥. The long r̥ is an innovation and it is used in a few analogically generated morphological categories.[197][199][200]
+
+According to Masica, Sanskrit has four traditional semivowels, with which were classed, "for morphophonemic reasons, the liquids: y, r, l, and v; that is, as y and v were the non-syllabics corresponding to i, u, so were r, l in relation to r̥ and l̥".[205] The northwestern, the central and the eastern Sanskrit dialects have had a historic confusion between "r" and "l". The Paninian system that followed the central dialect preserved the distinction, likely out of reverence for the Vedic Sanskrit that distinguished the "r" and "l". However, the northwestern dialect only had "r", while the eastern dialect probably only had "l", states Masica. Thus literary works from different parts of ancient India appear inconsistent in their use of "r" and "l", resulting in doublets that is occasionally semantically differentiated.[205]
+
+Sanskrit possesses a symmetric consonantal phoneme structure based on how the sound is articulated, though the actual usage of these sounds conceals the lack of parallelism in the apparent symmetry possibly from historical changes within the language.[206]
+
+/t͡ɕ/
+
+/t͡ɕʰ/
+
+/d͡ʑ/
+
+/d͡ʑʱ/
+
+Sanskrit had a series of retroflex stops. All the retroflexes in Sanskrit are in "origin conditioned alternants of dentals, though from the beginning of the language they have a qualified independence", states Jamison.[206]
+
+Regarding the palatal plosives, the pronunciation is a matter of debate. In contemporary attestation, the palatal plosives are a regular series of palatal stops, supported by most Sanskrit sandhi rules.  However, the reflexes in descendant languages, as well as a few of the sandhi rules regarding ch, could suggest an affricate pronunciation.
+
+jh was a marginal phoneme in Sanskrit, hence its phonology is more difficult to reconstruct; it was more commonly employed in the Middle Indo-Aryan languages as a result of phonological processes resulting in the phoneme.
+
+The palatal nasal is a conditioned variant of n occurring next to palatal obstruents.[206] The anusvara that Sanskrit deploys is a conditioned alternant of postvocalic nasals, under certain sandhi conditions.[207] Its visarga is a word-final or morpheme-final conditioned alternant of s and r under certain sandhi conditions.[207]
+
+— A. M. Ruppel, The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit[208]
+
+The voiceless aspirated series is also an innovation in Sanskrit but is significantly rarer than the other three series.[206]
+
+While the Sanskrit language organizes sounds for expression beyond those found in the PIE language, it retained many features found in the Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages. An example of a similar process in all three, states Jamison, is the retroflex sibilant ʂ being the automatic product of dental s following i, u, r, and k (mnemonically "ruki").[207]
+
+Sanskrit deploys extensive phonological alternations on different linguistic levels through sandhi rules (literally, the rules of "putting together, union, connection, alliance"). This is similar to the English alteration of "going to" as gonna, states Jamison.[209] The Sanskrit language accepts such alterations within it, but offers formal rules for the sandhi of any two words next to each other in the same sentence or linking two sentences. The external sandhi rules state that similar short vowels coalesce into a single long vowel, while dissimilar vowels form glides or undergo diphthongization.[209] Among the consonants, most external sandhi rules recommend regressive assimilation for clarity when they are voiced. According to Jamison, these rules ordinarily apply at compound seams and morpheme boundaries.[209] In Vedic Sanskrit, the external sandhi rules are more variable than in Classical Sanskrit.[210]
+
+The internal sandhi rules are more intricate and account for the root and the canonical structure of the Sanskrit word. These rules anticipate what are now known as the Bartholomae's law and Grassmann's law. For example, states Jamison, the "voiceless, voiced, and voiced aspirated obstruents of a positional series regularly alternate with each other (p ≈ b ≈ bʰ; t ≈ d ≈ dʰ, etc.; note, however, c ≈ j ≈ h), such that, for example, a morpheme with an underlying voiced aspirate final may show alternants[clarification needed] with all three stops under differing internal sandhi conditions".[211] The velar series (k, g, gʰ) alternate with the palatal series (c, j, h), while the structural position of the palatal series is modified into a retroflex cluster when followed by dental. This rule create two morphophonemically distinct series from a single palatal series.[211]
+
+Vocalic alternations in the Sanskrit morphological system is termed "strengthening", and called guna and vriddhi in the preconsonantal versions. There is an equivalence to terms deployed in Indo-European descriptive grammars, wherein Sanskrit's unstrengthened state is same as the zero-grade, guna corresponds to normal-grade, while vriddhi is same as the lengthened-state.[212] The qualitative ablaut is not found in Sanskrit just like it is absent in Iranian, but Sanskrit retains quantitative ablaut through vowel strengthening.[212] The transformations between unstrengthened to guna is prominent in the morphological system, states Jamison, while vriddhi is a particularly significant rule when adjectives of origin and appurtenance are derived. The manner in which this is done slightly differs between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit.[212][213]
+
+Sanskrit grants a very flexible syllable structure, where they may begin or end with vowels, be single consonants or clusters. Similarly, the syllable may have an internal vowel of any weight. The Vedic Sanskrit shows traces of following the Sievers-Edgerton Law, but Classical Sanskrit doesn't. Vedic Sanskrit has a pitch accent system, states Jamison, which were acknowledged by Panini, but in his Classical Sanskrit the accents disappear.[214] Most Vedic Sanskrit words have one accent. However, this accent is not phonologically predictable, states Jamison.[214] It can fall anywhere in the word and its position often conveys morphological and syntactic information.[214] According to Masica, the presence of an accent system in Vedic Sanskrit is evidenced from the markings in the Vedic texts. This is important because of Sanskrit's connection to the PIE languages and comparative Indo-European linguistics.[215]
+
+Sanskrit, like most early Indo-European languages, lost the so-called "laryngeal consonants (cover-symbol *H) present in the Proto-Indo-European", states Jamison.[214] This significantly impacted the evolutionary path of the Sanskrit phonology and morphology, particularly in the variant forms of roots.[216]
+
+Because Sanskrit is not anyone's native language, it does not have a fixed pronunciation. People tend to pronounce it as they do their native language. The articles on Hindustani, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya and Bengali phonology will give some indication of the variation that is encountered. When Sanskrit was a spoken language, its pronunciation varied regionally and also over time. Nonetheless, Panini described the sound system of Sanskrit well enough that people have a fairly good idea of what he intended.
+
+The basis of Sanskrit morphology is the root, states Jamison, "a morpheme bearing lexical meaning".[226] The verbal and nominal stems of Sanskrit words are derived from this root through the phonological vowel-gradation processes, the addition of affixes, verbal and nominal stems. It then adds an ending to establish the grammatical and syntactic identity of the stem. According to Jamison, the "three major formal elements of the morphology are (i) root, (ii) affix, and (iii) ending; and they are roughly responsible for (i) lexical meaning, (ii) derivation, and (iii) inflection respectively".[227]
+
+A Sanskrit word has the following canonical structure:[226]
+
+The root structure has certain phonological constraints. Two of the most important constraints of a "root" is that it does not end in a short "a" (अ) and that it is monosyllabic.[226] In contrast, the affixes and endings commonly do. The affixes in Sanskrit are almost always suffixes, with exceptions such as the augment "a-" added as prefix to past tense verb forms and the "-na/n-" infix in single verbal present class, states Jamison.[226]
+
+A verb in Sanskrit has the following canonical structure:[228]
+
+According to Ruppel, verbs in Sanskrit express the same information as other Indo-European languages such as English.[229] Sanskrit verbs describe an action or occurrence or state, its embedded morphology informs as to "who is doing it" (person or persons), "when it is done" (tense) and "how it is done" (mood, voice). The Indo-European languages differ in the detail. For example, the Sanskrit language attaches the affixes and ending to the verb root, while the English language adds small independent words before the verb. In Sanskrit, these elements co-exist within the word.[229][note 16]
+
+Both verbs and nouns in Sanskrit are either thematic or athematic, states Jamison.[231] Guna (strengthened) forms in the active singular regularly alternate in athematic verbs. The finite verbs of Classical Sanskrit have the following grammatical categories: person, number, voice, tense-aspect, and mood. According to Jamison, a portmanteau morpheme generally expresses the person-number-voice in Sanskrit, and sometimes also the ending or only the ending. The mood of the word is embedded in the affix.[231]
+
+These elements of word architecture are the typical building blocks in Classical Sanskrit, but in Vedic Sanskrit these elements fluctuate and are unclear. For example, in the Rigveda preverbs regularly occur in tmesis, states Jamison, which means they are "separated from the finite verb".[226] This indecisiveness is likely linked to Vedic Sanskrit's attempt to incorporate accent. With nonfinite forms of the verb and with nominal derivatives thereof, states Jamison, "preverbs show much clearer univerbation in Vedic, both by position and by accent, and by Classical Sanskrit, tmesis is no longer possible even with finite forms".[226]
+
+While roots are typical in Sanskrit, some words do not follow the canonical structure.[227] A few forms lack both inflection and root. Many words are inflected (and can enter into derivation) but lack a recognizable root. Examples from the basic vocabulary include kinship terms such as mātar- (mother), nas- (nose), śvan- (dog). According to Jamison, pronouns and some words outside the semantic categories also lack roots, as do the numerals. Similarly, the Sanskrit language is flexible enough to not mandate inflection.[227]
+
+The Sanskrit words can contain more than one affix that interact with each other. Affixes in Sanskrit can be athematic as well as thematic, according to Jamison.[232] Athematic affixes can be alternating. Sanskrit deploys eight cases, namely nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, vocative.[232]
+
+Stems, that is "root + affix", appear in two categories in Sanskrit: vowel stems and consonant stems. Unlike some Indo-European languages such as Latin or Greek, according to Jamison, "Sanskrit has no closed set of conventionally denoted noun declensions". Sanskrit includes a fairly large set of stem-types.[233] The linguistic interaction of the roots, the phonological segments, lexical items and the grammar for the Classical Sanskrit consist of four Paninian components. These, states Paul Kiparsky, are the Astadhyaayi, a comprehensive system of 4,000 grammatical rules, of which a small set are frequently used; Sivasutras, an inventory of anubandhas (markers) that partition phonological segments for efficient abbreviations through the pratyharas technique; Dhatupatha, a list of 2,000 verbal roots classified by their morphology and syntactic properties using diacritic markers, a structure that guides its writing systems; and, the Ganapatha, an inventory of word groups, classes of lexical systems.[234] There are peripheral adjuncts to these four, such as the Unadisutras, which focus on irregularly formed derivatives from the roots.[234]
+
+Sanskrit morphology is generally studied in two broad fundamental categories: the nominal forms and the verbal forms. These differ in the types of endings and what these endings mark in the grammatical context.[227] Pronouns and nouns share the same grammatical categories, though they may differ in inflection. Verb-based adjectives and participles are not formally distinct from nouns. Adverbs are typically frozen case forms of adjectives, states Jamison, and "nonfinite verbal forms such as infinitives and gerunds also clearly show frozen nominal case endings".[227]
+
+The Sanskrit language includes five tenses: present, future, past imperfect, past aorist and past perfect.[230] It outlines three types of voices: active, passive and the middle.[230] The middle is also referred to as the mediopassive, or more formally in Sanskrit as parasmaipada (word for another) and atmanepada (word for oneself).[228]
+
+The paradigm for the tense-aspect system in Sanskrit is the three-way contrast between the "present", the "aorist" and the "perfect" architecture.[235] Vedic Sanskrit is more elaborate and had several additional tenses. For example, the Rigveda includes perfect and a marginal pluperfect. Classical Sanskrit simplifies the "present" system down to two tenses, the perfect and the imperfect, while the "aorist" stems retain the aorist tense and the "perfect" stems retain the perfect and marginal pluperfect.[235] The classical version of the language has elaborate rules for both voice and the tense-aspect system to emphasize clarity, and this is more elaborate than in other Indo-European languages. The evolution of these systems can be seen from the earliest layers of the Vedic literature to the late Vedic literature.[236]
+
+Sanskrit recognizes three numbers—singular, dual, and plural.[232] The dual is a fully functioning category, used beyond naturally paired objects such as hands or eyes, extending to any collection of two. The elliptical dual is notable in the Vedic Sanskrit, according to Jamison, where a noun in the dual signals a paired opposition.[232] Illustrations include dyāvā (literally, "the two heavens" for heaven-and-earth), mātarā (literally, "the two mothers" for mother-and-father).[232] A verb may be singular, dual or plural, while the person recognized in the language are forms of "I", "you", "he/she/it", "we" and "they".[230]
+
+There are three persons in Sanskrit: first, second and third.[228] Sanskrit uses the 3×3 grid formed by the three numbers and the three persons parameters as the paradigm and the basic building block of its verbal system.[236]
+
+The Sanskrit language incorporates three genders: feminine, masculine and neuter.[232] All nouns have inherent gender, but with some exceptions, personal pronouns have no gender. Exceptions include demonstrative and anaphoric pronouns.[232] Derivation of a word is used to express the feminine. Two most common derivations come from feminine-forming suffixes, the -ā- (आ, Rādhā) and -ī- (ई, Rukmīnī). The masculine and neuter are much simpler, and the difference between them is primarily inflectional.[232][237] Similar affixes for the feminine are found in many Indo-European languages, states Burrow, suggesting links of the Sanskrit to its PIE heritage.[238]
+
+Pronouns in Sanskrit include the personal pronouns of the first and second persons, unmarked for gender, and a larger number of gender-distinguishing pronouns and adjectives.[231] Examples of the former include ahám (first singular), vayám (first plural) and yūyám (second plural). The latter can be demonstrative, deictic or anaphoric.[231] Both the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit share the sá/tám pronominal stem, and this is the closest element to a third person pronoun and an article in the Sanskrit language, states Jamison.[231]
+
+Indicative, potential and imperative are the three mood forms in Sanskrit.[230]
+
+The Sanskrit language formally incorporates poetic metres.[239] By the late Vedic era, this developed into a field of study and it was central to the composition of the Hindu literature including the later Vedic texts. This study of Sanskrit prosody is called chandas and considered as one of the six Vedangas, or limbs of Vedic studies.[239][240]
+
+Sanskrit prosody includes linear and non-linear systems.[241] The system started off with seven major metres, according to Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, called the "seven birds" or "seven mouths of Brihaspati", and each had its own rhythm, movements and aesthetics wherein a non-linear structure (aperiodicity) was mapped into a four verse polymorphic linear sequence.[242] A syllable in Sanskrit is classified as either laghu (light) or guru (heavy). This classification is based on a matra (literally, "count, measure, duration"), and typically a syllable that ends in a short vowel is a light syllable, while those that end in consonant, anusvara or visarga are heavy. The classical Sanskrit found in Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita and many texts are so arranged that the light and heavy syllables in them follow a rhythm, though not necessarily a rhyme.[243][244][note 19]
+
+Sanskrit metres include those based on a fixed number of syllables per verse, and those based on fixed number of morae per verse.[246] The Vedic Sanskrit employs fifteen metres, of which seven are common, and the most frequent are three (8-, 11- and 12-syllable lines).[247] The Classical Sanskrit deploys both linear and non-linear metres, many of which are based on syllables and others based on diligently crafted verses based on repeating numbers of morae (matra per foot).[247]
+
+There is no word without meter,
+nor is there any meter without words.
+
+—Natya Shastra[248]
+
+Meter and rhythm is an important part of the Sanskrit language. It may have played a role in helping preserve the integrity of the message and Sanskrit texts. The verse perfection in the Vedic texts such as the verse Upanishads[note 20] and post-Vedic Smriti texts are rich in prosody. This feature of the Sanskrit language led some Indologists from the 19th century onwards to identify suspected portions of texts where a line or sections are off the expected metre.[249][250][note 21]
+
+The meter-feature of the Sanskrit language embeds another layer of communication to the listener or reader. A change in metres has been a tool of literary architecture and an embedded code to inform the reciter and audience that it marks the end of a section or chapter.[254] Each section or chapter of these texts uses identical metres, rhythmically presenting their ideas and making it easier to remember, recall and check for accuracy.[254] Authors coded a hymn's end by frequently using a verse of a metre different than that used in the hymn's body.[254] However, Hindu tradition does not use the Gayatri metre to end a hymn or composition, possibly because it has enjoyed a special level of reverence in Hinduism.[254]
+
+The early history of writing Sanskrit and other languages in ancient India is a problematic topic despite a century of scholarship, states Richard Salomon—an epigraphist and Indologist specializing in Sanskrit and Pali literature.[255] The earliest possible script from the Indian subcontinent is from the Indus Valley Civilization (3rd/2nd millennium BCE), but this script – if it is a script – remains undeciphered. If any scripts existed in the Vedic period, they have not survived. Scholars generally accept that Sanskrit was spoken in an oral society, and that an oral tradition preserved the extensive Vedic and Classical Sanskrit literature.[256] Other scholars such as Jack Goody state that the Vedic Sanskrit texts are not the product of an oral society, basing this view by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as the Greek, Serbian, and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across generations, without being written down.[257][258]
+
+Lipi is the term in Sanskrit which means "writing, letters, alphabet". It contextually refers to scripts, the art or any manner of writing or drawing.[94] The term, in the sense of a writing system, appears in some of the earliest Buddhist, Hindu, and Jaina texts. Pāṇini's Astadhyayi, composed sometime around the 5th or 4th century BCE, for example, mentions lipi in the context of a writing script and education system in his times, but he does not name the script.[94][95][259] Several early Buddhist and Jaina texts, such as the Lalitavistara Sūtra and Pannavana Sutta include lists of numerous writing scripts in ancient India.[note 22] The Buddhist texts list the sixty four lipi that the Buddha knew as a child, with the Brahmi script topping the list. "The historical value of this list is however limited by several factors", states Salomon. The list may be a later interpolation.[261][note 23] The Jain canonical texts such as the Pannavana Sutta—probably older than the Buddhist texts—list eighteen writing systems, with the Brahmi topping the list and Kharotthi (Kharoshthi) listed as fourth. The Jaina text elsewhere states that the "Brahmi is written in 18 different forms", but the details are lacking.[263] However, the reliability of these lists has been questioned and the empirical evidence of writing systems in the form of Sanskrit or Prakrit inscriptions dated prior to the 3rd century BCE has not been found. If the ancient surface for writing Sanskrit was palm leaves, tree bark and cloth—the same as those in later times, these have not survived.[264][note 24] According to Salomon, many find it difficult to explain the "evidently high level of political organization and cultural complexity" of ancient India without a writing system for Sanskrit and other languages.[264][note 25]
+
+The oldest datable writing systems for Sanskrit are the Brāhmī script, the related Kharoṣṭhī script and the Brahmi derivatives.[267][268] The Kharosthi was used in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent and it became extinct, while the Brahmi was used in all over the subcontinent along with regional scripts such as Old Tamil.[269] Of these, the earliest records in the Sanskrit language are in Brahmi, a script that later evolved into numerous related Indic scripts for Sanskrit, along with Southeast Asian scripts (Burmese, Thai, Lao, Khmer, others) and many extinct Central Asian scripts such as those discovered along with the Kharosthi in the Tarim Basin of western China and in Uzbekistan.[270] The most extensive inscriptions that have survived into the modern era are the rock edicts and pillar inscriptions of the 3rd-century BCE Mauryan emperor Ashoka, but these are not in Sanskrit.[271][note 26]
+
+Over the centuries, and across countries, a number of scripts have been used to write Sanskrit.
+
+The Brahmi script for writing Sanskrit is a "modified consonant-syllabic" script. The graphic syllable is its basic unit, and this consists of a consonant with or without diacritic modifications.[273] Since the vowel is an integral part of the consonants, and given the efficiently compacted, fused consonant cluster morphology for Sanskrit words and grammar, the Brahmi and its derivative writing systems deploy ligatures, diacritics and relative positioning of the vowel to inform the reader how the vowel is related to the consonant and how it is expected to be pronounced for clarity.[268][274][note 28] This feature of Brahmi and its modern Indic script derivatives makes it difficult to classify it under the main script types used for the writing systems for most of the world's languages, namely logographic, syllabic and alphabetic.[268]
+
+The Brahmi script evolved into "a vast number of forms and derivatives", states Richard Salomon, and in theory, Sanskrit "can be represented in virtually any of the main Brahmi-based scripts and in practice it often is".[275] Sanskrit does not have a native script. Being a phonetic language, it can be written in any precise script that efficiently maps unique human sounds to unique symbols.[clarification needed] From the ancient times, it has been written in numerous regional scripts in South and Southeast Asia. Most of these are descendants of the Brahmi script.[276] The earliest datable varnamala Brahmi alphabet system, found in later Sanskrit texts, is from the 2nd century BCE, in the form of a terracotta plaque found in Sughana, Haryana. It shows a "schoolboy's writing lessons", states Salomon.[277][278]
+
+Many modern era manuscripts are written and available in the Nagari script, whose form is attestable to the 1st millennium CE.[279] The Nagari script is the ancestor of Devanagari (north India), Nandinagari (south India) and other variants. The Nāgarī script was in regular use by 7th century CE, and had fully evolved into Devanagari and Nandinagari[280] scripts by about the end of the first millennium of the common era.[281][282] The Devanagari script, states Banerji, became more popular for Sanskrit in India since about the 18th century.[283] However, Sanskrit does have special historical connection to the Nagari script as attested by the epigraphical evidence.[284]
+
+The Nagari script has been thought as a north Indian script for Sanskrit as well as the regional languages such as Hindi, Marathi and Nepali. However, it has had a "supra-local" status as evidenced by 1st-millennium CE epigraphy and manuscripts discovered all over India and as far as Sri Lanka, Burma, Indonesia and in its parent form called the Siddhamatrka script found in manuscripts of East Asia.[285] The Sanskrit and Balinese languages Sanur inscription on Belanjong pillar of Bali (Indonesia), dated to about 914 CE, is in part in the Nagari script.[286]
+
+The Nagari script used for Classical Sanskrit has the fullest repertoire of characters consisting of fourteen vowels and thirty three consonants. For the Vedic Sanskrit, it has two more allophonic consonantal characters (the intervocalic ळ ḷa, and ळ्ह ḷha).[285] To communicate phonetic accuracy, it also includes several modifiers such as the anusvara dot and the visarga double dot, punctuation symbols and others such as the halanta sign.[285]
+
+Other scripts such as Gujarati, Bangla, Odia and major south Indian scripts, states Salomon, "have been and often still are used in their proper territories for writing Sanskrit".[279] These and many Indian scripts look different to the untrained eye, but the differences between Indic scripts is "mostly superficial and they share the same phonetic repertoire and systemic features", states Salomon.[287] They all have essentially the same set of eleven to fourteen vowels and thirty-three consonants as established by the Sanskrit language and attestable in the Brahmi script. Further, a closer examination reveals that they all have the similar basic graphic principles, the same varnamala (literally, "garland of letters") alphabetic ordering following the same logical phonetic order, easing the work of historic skilled scribes writing or reproducing Sanskrit works across the Indian subcontinent.[288][note 29] The Sanskrit language written in some Indic scripts exaggerate angles or round shapes, but this serves only to mask the underlying similarities. Nagari script favours symmetry set with squared outlines and right angles. In contrast, Sanskrit written in the Bangla script emphasizes the acute angles while the neighbouring Odia script emphasizes rounded shapes and uses cosmetically appealing "umbrella-like curves" above the script symbols.[290]
+
+In the south, where Dravidian languages predominate, scripts used for Sanskrit include the Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Grantha alphabets.
+
+Since the late 18th century, Sanskrit has been transliterated using the Latin alphabet. The system most commonly used today is the IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration), which has been the academic standard since 1888. ASCII-based transliteration schemes have also evolved because of difficulties representing Sanskrit characters in computer systems. These include Harvard-Kyoto and ITRANS, a transliteration scheme that is used widely on the Internet, especially in Usenet and in email, for considerations of speed of entry as well as rendering issues. With the wide availability of Unicode-aware web browsers, IAST has become common online. It is also possible to type using an alphanumeric keyboard and transliterate to Devanagari using software like Mac OS X's international support.
+
+European scholars in the 19th century generally preferred Devanagari for the transcription and reproduction of whole texts and lengthy excerpts. However, references to individual words and names in texts composed in European Languages were usually represented with Roman transliteration. From the 20th century onwards, because of production costs, textual editions edited by Western scholars have mostly been in Romanised transliteration.[291]
+
+The earliest known stone inscriptions in Sanskrit are in the Brahmi script from the first century BCE.[35][note 30][note 31] These include the Ayodhyā (Uttar Pradesh) and Hāthībādā-Ghosuṇḍī (near Chittorgarh, Rajasthan) inscriptions.[35][294] Both of these, states Salomon, are "essentially standard" and "correct Sanskrit", with a few exceptions reflecting an "informal Sanskrit usage".[35] Other important Hindu inscriptions dated to the 1st century BCE, in relatively accurate classical Sanskrit and Brahmi script are the Yavanarajya inscription on a red sandstone slab and the long Naneghat inscription on the wall of a cave rest stop in the Western Ghats.[295]
+
+Besides these few examples from the 1st century BCE, the earliest Sanskrit and hybrid dialect inscriptions are found in Mathura (Uttar Pradesh).[296] These date to the 1st and 2nd century CE, states Salomon, from the time of the Indo-Scythian Northern Satraps and the subsequent Kushan Empire.[note 32] These are also in the Brahmi script.[298] The earliest of these, states Salomon, are attributed to Ksatrapa Sodasa from the early years of 1st century CE. Of the Mathura inscriptions, the most significant is the Mora Well Inscription.[298] In a manner similar to the Hathibada inscription, the Mora well inscription is a dedicatory inscription and is linked to the cult of the Vrishni heroes: it mentions a stone shrine (temple), pratima (murti, images) and calls the five Vrishnis as bhagavatam.[298][299] There are many other Mathura Sanskrit inscriptions in Brahmi script overlapping the era of Indo-Scythian Northern Satraps and early Kushanas.[300] Other significant 1st-century inscriptions in reasonably good classical Sanskrit in the Brahmi script include the Vasu Doorjamb Inscription and the Mountain Temple inscription.[301] The early ones are related to the Brahmanical, except for the inscription from Kankali Tila which may be Jaina, but none are Buddhist.[302][303] A few of the later inscriptions from the 2nd century CE include Buddhist Sanskrit, while others are in "more or less" standard Sanskrit and related to the Brahmanical tradition.[304]
+
+In Maharashtra and Gujarat, Brahmi script Sanskrit inscriptions from the early centuries of the common era exist at the Nasik Caves site, near the Girnar mountain of Junagadh and elsewhere such as at Kanakhera, Kanheri, and Gunda.[305] The Nasik inscription dates to the mid-1st century CE, is a fair approximation of standard Sanskrit and has hybrid features.[305] The Junagadh rock inscription of Western Satraps ruler Rudradaman I (c. 150 CE, Gujarat) is the first long poetic-style inscription in "more or less" standard Sanskrit that has survived into the modern era. It represents a turning point in the history of Sanskrit epigraphy, states Salomon.[306][note 33] Though no similar inscriptions are found for about two hundred years after the Rudradaman reign, it is important because its style is the prototype of the eulogy-style Sanskrit inscriptions found in the Gupta Empire era.[306] These inscriptions are also in the Brahmi script.[307]
+
+The Nagarjunakonda inscriptions are the earliest known substantial South Indian Sanskrit inscriptions, probably from the late 3rd century or early 4th century CE, or both.[308] These inscriptions are related to Buddhism and the Shaivism tradition of Hinduism.[309] A few of these inscriptions from both traditions are verse-style in the classical Sanskrit language, while some such as the pillar inscription is written in prose and a hybridized Sanskrit language.[308] An earlier hybrid Sanskrit inscription found on Amaravati slab is dated to the late 2nd century, while a few later ones include Sanskrit inscriptions along with Prakrit inscriptions related to Hinduism and Buddhism.[310] After the 3rd century CE, Sanskrit inscriptions dominate and many have survived.[311] Between the 4th and 7th centuries CE, south Indian inscriptions are exclusively in the Sanskrit language.[312] In the eastern regions of the Indian subcontinent, scholars report minor Sanskrit inscriptions from the 2nd century, these being fragments and scattered. The earliest substantial true Sanskrit language inscription of Susuniya (West Bengal) is dated to the 4th century.[313] Elsewhere, such as Dehradun (Uttarakhand), inscriptions in more or less correct classical Sanskrit inscriptions are dated to the 3rd century.[313]
+
+According to Salomon, the 4th-century reign of Samudragupta was the turning point when the classical Sanskrit language became established as the "epigraphic language par excellence" of the Indian world.[314] These Sanskrit language inscriptions are either "donative" or "panegyric" records. Generally in accurate classical Sanskrit, they deploy a wide range of regional Indic writing systems extant at the time.[315] They record the donation of a temple or stupa, images, land, monasteries, pilgrim's travel record, public infrastructure such as water reservoir and irrigation measures to prevent famine. Others praise the king or the donor in lofty poetic terms.[316] The Sanskrit language of these inscriptions is written on stone, various metals, terracotta, wood, crystal, ivory, shell and cloth.[317][note 34]
+
+The evidence of the use of the Sanskrit language in Indic writing systems appears in southeast Asia in the first half of the 1st millennium CE.[320] A few of these in Vietnam are bilingual where both the Sanskrit and the local language is written in the Indian alphabet. Early Sanskrit language inscriptions in Indic writing systems are dated to the 4th century in Malaysia, 5th to 6th centuries in Thailand near Si Thep and the Sak River, early 5th century in Kutai (east Borneo) and mid-5th century in west Java (Indonesia).[320] Both major writing systems for Sanskrit, the North Indian and South Indian scripts, have been discovered in southeast Asia, but the Southern variety with its rounded shapes are far more common.[321] The Indic scripts, particularly the Pallava script prototype,[322] spread and ultimately evolved into Mon-Burmese, Khmer, Thai, Laos, Sumatran, Celebes, Javanese and Balinese scripts.[323][324] From about the 5th century, Sanskrit inscriptions become common in many parts of South Asia and Southeast Asia, with significant discoveries in Nepal, Vietnam and Cambodia.[314]
+
+Sanskrit has been written in various scripts on a variety of media such as palm leaves, cloth, paper, rock and metal sheets, from ancient times.[325]
+
+For nearly 2,000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia.[153] A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian.[358] Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa (आर्ष), meaning 'of the ṛṣis', the traditional title for the ancient authors. In some contexts, there are also more "prakritisms" (borrowings from common speech) than in Classical Sanskrit proper. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is a literary language heavily influenced by the Middle Indo-Aryan languages, based on early Buddhist Prakrit texts which subsequently assimilated to the Classical Sanskrit standard in varying degrees.[359]
+
+Sanskrit has greatly influenced the languages of India that grew from its vocabulary and grammatical base; for instance, Hindi is a "Sanskritised register" of Hindustani. All modern Indo-Aryan languages, as well as Munda and Dravidian languages have borrowed many words either directly from Sanskrit (tatsama words), or indirectly via middle Indo-Aryan languages (tadbhava words). Words originating in Sanskrit are estimated at roughly fifty percent of the vocabulary of modern Indo-Aryan languages, as well as the literary forms of Malayalam and Kannada.[360] Literary texts in Telugu are lexically Sanskrit or Sanskritised to an enormous extent, perhaps seventy percent or more.[361] Marathi is another prominent language in Western India, that derives most of its words and Marathi grammar from Sanskrit.[362] Sanskrit words are often preferred in the literary texts in Marathi over corresponding colloquial Marathi word.[363]
+
+Buddhist Sanskrit has had a considerable influence on East Asian languages such as Chinese, state William Wang and Chaofen Sun.[364] Many words have been adopted from Sanskrit into the Chinese, both in its historic religious discourse and everyday use.[364][note 36] This process likely started about 200 CE and continued through about 1400 CE, with the efforts of monks such as Yuezhi, Anxi, Kangju, Tianzhu, Yan Fodiao, Faxian, Xuanzang and Yijing.[364] Further, as the Chinese language and culture influenced the rest of East Asia, the ideas in Sanskrit texts and some of its linguistic elements migrated further.[365][366]
+
+Sanskrit has also influenced Sino-Tibetan languages, mostly through translations of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. Many terms were transliterated directly and added to the Chinese vocabulary. Chinese words like 剎那 chànà (Devanagari: क्षण kṣaṇa 'instantaneous period') were borrowed from Sanskrit. Many Sanskrit texts survive only in Tibetan collections of commentaries to the Buddhist teachings, the Tengyur.[367]
+
+Sanskrit was a language for religious purposes and for the political elite in parts of medieval era Southeast Asia, Central Asia and East Asia.[144] In Southeast Asia, languages such as Thai and Lao contain many loanwords from Sanskrit, as does Khmer. Many Sanskrit loanwords are also found in Austronesian languages, such as Javanese, particularly the older form in which nearly half the vocabulary is borrowed.[368] Other Austronesian languages, such as traditional Malay and modern Indonesian, also derive much of their vocabulary from Sanskrit. Similarly, Philippine languages such as Tagalog have some Sanskrit loanwords, although more are derived from Spanish. A Sanskrit loanword encountered in many Southeast Asian languages is the word bhāṣā, or spoken language, which is used to refer to the names of many languages.[369] English also has words of Sanskrit origin.
+
+Sanskrit has also influenced the religious register of Japanese mostly through transliterations. These were borrowed from Chinese transliterations.[370] In particular, the Shingon (lit. '"True Words"') sect of esoteric Buddhism has been relying on Sanskrit and original Sanskrit mantras and writings, as a means of realizing Buddhahood.[371]
+
+Sanskrit is the sacred language of various Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions. It is used during worship in Hindu temples. In Newar Buddhism, it is used in all monasteries, while Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhist religious texts and sutras are in Sanskrit as well as vernacular languages. Some of the revered texts of Jainism including the Tattvartha sutra, Ratnakaranda śrāvakācāra, the Bhaktamara Stotra and the Agamas are in Sanskrit. Further, states Paul Dundas, Sanskrit mantras and Sanskrit as a ritual language was commonplace among Jains throughout their medieval history.[372]
+
+Many Hindu rituals and rites-of-passage such as the "giving away the bride" and mutual vows at weddings, a baby's naming or first solid food ceremony and the goodbye during a cremation invoke and chant Sanskrit hymns.[373] Major festivals such as the Durga Puja ritually recite entire Sanskrit texts such as the Devi Mahatmya every year particularly amongst the numerous communities of eastern India.[374][375] In the south, Sanskrit texts are recited at many major Hindu temples such as the Meenakshi Temple.[376] According to Richard H. Davis, a scholar of Religion and South Asian studies, the breadth and variety of oral recitations of the Sanskrit text Bhagavad Gita is remarkable. In India and beyond, its recitations include "simple private household readings, to family and neighborhood recitation sessions, to holy men reciting in temples or at pilgrimage places for passersby, to public Gita discourses held almost nightly at halls and auditoriums in every Indian city".[377]
+
+More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since India's independence in 1947.[378] Much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages.[379][380]
+
+The Sahitya Akademi has given an award for the best creative work in Sanskrit every year since 1967. In 2009, Satya Vrat Shastri became the first Sanskrit author to win the Jnanpith Award, India's highest literary award.[381]
+
+Sanskrit is used extensively in the Carnatic and Hindustani branches of classical music. Kirtanas, bhajans, stotras, and shlokas of Sanskrit are popular throughout India. The samaveda uses musical notations in several of its recessions.[382]
+
+In Mainland China, musicians such as Sa Dingding have written pop songs in Sanskrit.[383]
+
+Numerous loan Sanskrit words are found in other major Asian languages. For example, Filipino,[384] Cebuano,[385] Lao, Khmer[386] Thai and its alphabets, Malay, Indonesian (old Javanese-English dictionary by P.J. Zoetmulder contains over 25,500 entries), and even in English.
+
+Since 1974, there has been a short daily news broadcast on state-run All India Radio.[387] These broadcasts are also made available on the internet on AIR's website.[388][389] Sanskrit news is broadcast on TV and on the internet through the DD National channel at 6:55 AM IST.[390]
+
+Over 90 weeklies, fortnightlies and quarterlies are published in Sanskrit. Sudharma, a daily printed newspaper in Sanskrit, has been published out of Mysore, India, since 1970. It was started by K.N. Varadaraja Iyengar, a sanskrit scholar from Mysore. Sanskrit Vartman Patram and Vishwasya Vrittantam started in Gujarat during the last five years.[387]
+
+Sanskrit has been taught in schools from time immemorial in India. In modern times, the first Sanskrit University was Sampurnanand Sanskrit University, established in 1791 in the Indian city of Varanasi. Sanskrit is taught in 5,000 traditional schools (Pathashalas), and 14,000 schools[391] in India, where there are also 22 colleges and universities dedicated to the exclusive study of the language.[citation needed] Sanskrit is one the 22 scheduled languages of India.[266] Despite it being a studied school subject in contemporary India, Sanskrit is scarce as a first language. In the 2001 Census of India, 14,135 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue,[392] while in the 2011 census, 24,821 people out of about 1.21 billion reported this to be the case.[393][note 37][note 38]
+According to the 2011 national census of Nepal, 1,669 people use Sanskrit as their first language.[3]
+
+The Central Board of Secondary Education of India (CBSE), along with several other state education boards, has made Sanskrit an alternative option to the state's own official language as a second or third language choice in the schools it governs. In such schools, learning Sanskrit is an option for grades 5 to 8 (Classes V to VIII). This is true of most schools affiliated with the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) board, especially in states where the official language is Hindi. Sanskrit is also taught in traditional gurukulas throughout India.[398]
+
+A number of colleges and universities in India have dedicated departments for Sanskrit studies.
+
+St James Junior School in London, England, offers Sanskrit as part of the curriculum.[399] Since September 2009, US high school students have been able to receive credits as Independent Study or toward Foreign Language requirements by studying Sanskrit as part of the "SAFL: Samskritam as a Foreign Language" program coordinated by Samskrita Bharati.[400] In Australia, the private boys' high school Sydney Grammar School offers Sanskrit from years 7 through to 12, including for the Higher School Certificate.[401] Other schools that offer Sanskrit include the Ficino School in Auckland, New Zealand; St James Preparatory Schools in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, South Africa; John Colet School, Sydney, Australia; Erasmus School, Melbourne, Australia.[402][403][404]
+
+European scholarship in Sanskrit, begun by Heinrich Roth (1620–1668) and Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681–1731), is considered responsible for the discovery of an Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones (1746–1794). This research played an important role in the development of Western philology, or historical linguistics.[405]
+
+The 18th- and 19th-century speculations about the possible links of Sanskrit to ancient Egyptian language were later proven to be wrong, but it fed an orientalist discourse both in the form Indophobia and Indophilia, states Trautmann.[406] Sanskrit writings, when first discovered, were imagined by Indophiles to potentially be "repositories of the primitive experiences and religion of the human race, and as such confirmatory of the truth of Christian scripture", as well as a key to "universal ethnological narrative".[407] The Indophobes imagined the opposite, making the counterclaim that there is little of any value in Sanskrit, portraying it as "a language fabricated by artful [Brahmin] priests", with little original thought, possibly copied from the Greeks who came with Alexander or perhaps the Persians.[408]
+
+Scholars such as William Jones and his colleagues felt the need for systematic studies of Sanskrit language and literature. This launched the Asiatic Society, an idea that was soon transplanted to Europe starting with the efforts of Henry Thomas Colebrooke in Britain, then Alexander Hamilton who helped expand its studies to Paris and thereafter his student Friedrich Schlegel who introduced Sanskrit to the universities of Germany. Schlegel nurtured his own students into influential European Sanskrit scholars, particularly through Franz Bopp and Friedrich Max Muller. As these scholars translated the Sanskrit manuscripts, the enthusiasm for Sanskrit grew rapidly among European scholars, states Trautmann, and chairs for Sanskrit "were established in the universities of nearly every German statelet" creating a competition for Sanskrit experts.[409]
+
+In India, Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia, Sanskrit phrases are widely used as mottoes for various national, educational and social organisations:
+
+The song My Sweet Lord by George Harrison includes The Hare Krishna mantra, also referred to reverentially as the Maha Mantra, is a 16-word Vaishnava mantra which is mentioned in the Kali-Santarana Upanishad.Satyagraha, an opera by Philip Glass, uses texts from the Bhagavad Gita, sung in Sanskrit.[415][416] The closing credits of The Matrix Revolutions has a prayer from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The song "Cyber-raga" from Madonna's album Music includes Sanskrit chants,[417] and Shanti/Ashtangi from her 1998 album Ray of Light, which won a Grammy, is the ashtanga vinyasa yoga chant.[418] The lyrics include the mantra Om shanti.[419] Composer John Williams featured choirs singing in Sanskrit for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.[420][421][better source needed] The theme song of Battlestar Galactica 2004 is the Gayatri Mantra, taken from the Rigveda.[422] The lyrics of "The Child in Us" by Enigma also contains Sanskrit verses.[423][better source needed] In 2006, Mexican singer Paulina Rubio was influenced in Sanskrit for her concept album Ananda.[424]
+
+Contrary to popular belief, there is an astonishing quality of creative upsurge of writing in Sanskrit today. Modern Sanskrit writing is qualitatively of such high order that it can easily be treated on par with the best of Classical Sanskrit literature, It can also easily compete with the writings in other Indian languages.
+
+The latter half of the nineteenth century marks the beginning of a new era in Sanskrit literature. Many of the modern Sanskrit writings are qualitatively of such high order that they can easily be treated at par with the best of classical Sanskrit works, and they can also be judged in contrast to the contemporary literature in other languages.

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+Florence (/ˈflɔːrəns/ FLORR-ənss; Italian: Firenze [fiˈrɛntse] (listen))[a] is a city in central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,084 inhabitants in 2013, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.[4]
+
+Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era.[5] It is considered by many academics[6] to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages".[7] Its turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions.[8] From 1865 to 1871 the city served as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy (established in 1861). The Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throughout Italy[9] due to the prestige of the masterpieces by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini.
+
+The city attracts millions of tourists each year, and UNESCO declared the Historic Centre of Florence a World Heritage Site in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments.[10] The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics.[11] Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, Forbes has ranked it as one of the most beautiful cities in the world.[12]
+
+Florence plays an important role in Italian fashion,[11] and is ranked in the top 15 fashion capitals of the world by Global Language Monitor;[13] furthermore, it is a major national economic centre,[11] as well as a tourist and industrial hub. In 2008 the city had the 17th-highest average income in Italy.[14]
+
+Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a long period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune, it was the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. It was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe and the world from the 14th to 16th centuries.[10]
+
+The language spoken in the city during the 14th century came to be accepted as the model for what would become the Italian language. Thanks especially to the works of the Tuscans Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, Florentine dialect, above all the local dialects, was adopted as the basis for a national literary language.[15]
+
+Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of industry all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon and Hungary. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War. They similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome.
+
+Florence was home to the Medici, one of European history's most important noble families. Lorenzo de' Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century: Leo X and Clement VII. Catherine de Medici married King Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de' Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future King Louis XIII. The Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de' Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici in 1737.
+
+Roman Empire 27 BC–AD 285 
+ Western Roman Empire 285–476 
+ Kingdom of Odoacer 476–493 
+ Ostrogothic Kingdom 493–553 
+ Eastern Roman Empire 553–568 
+ Lombard Kingdom 570–773 
+ Carolingian Empire 774–797 
+ Regnum Italiae 797–1001 
+ March of Tuscany 1002–1115 
+ Republic of Florence 1115–1532 
+ Duchy of Florence 1532–1569 
+ Grand Duchy of Tuscany 1569–1801 
+ Kingdom of Etruria 1801–1807 
+ First French Empire 1807–1815 
+ Grand Duchy of Tuscany 1815–1859 
+ United Provinces of Central Italy 1859–1860 
+ Kingdom of Italy 1861–1946
+
+The Etruscans initially formed in the 9th–8th century BC  the small settlement of Fiesole (Faesulae in Latin),[16] which was destroyed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 80 BC in reprisal for supporting the populares faction in Rome.[citation needed] The present city of Florence was established by Julius Caesar in 59 BC as a settlement for his veteran soldiers and was named originally Fluentia, owing to the fact that it was built between two rivers, which was later changed to Florentia ("flowering").[17] It was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the main route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre.
+
+In centuries to come, the city experienced turbulent periods of Ostrogothic rule, during which the city was often troubled by warfare between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines, which may have caused the population to fall to as few as 1,000 people. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century. Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to grow again and commerce prospered. In 854, Florence and Fiesole were united in one county.[18]
+
+Margrave Hugo chose Florence as his residency instead of Lucca at about 1000 AD. The Golden Age of Florentine art began around this time. In 1013, construction began on the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. The exterior of the church was reworked in Romanesque style between 1059 and 1128. In 1100, Florence was a "Commune", meaning a city state. The city's primary resource was the Arno river, providing power and access for the industry (mainly textile industry), and access to the Mediterranean sea for international trade. Another great source of strength was its industrious merchant community. The Florentine merchant banking skills became recognised in Europe after they brought decisive financial innovation (e.g. bills of exchange,[19] double-entry bookkeeping system) to medieval fairs. This period also saw the eclipse of Florence's formerly powerful rival Pisa (defeated by Genoa in 1284 and subjugated by Florence in 1406), and the exercise of power by the mercantile elite following an anti-aristocratic movement, led by Giano della Bella, that resulted in a set of laws called the Ordinances of Justice (1293).[20]
+
+At the height of demographic expansion around 1325, the urban population may have been as great as 120,000, and the rural population around the city was probably close to 300,000.[21] The Black Death of 1348 reduced it by over half,[22][23] about 25,000 are said to have been supported by the city's wool industry: in 1345 Florence was the scene of an attempted strike by wool combers (ciompi), who in 1378 rose up in a brief revolt against oligarchic rule in the Revolt of the Ciompi. After their suppression, Florence came under the sway (1382–1434) of the Albizzi family, who became bitter rivals of the Medici.
+
+In the 15th century, Florence was among the largest cities in Europe with a population of 60,000 and was considered rich and economically successful.[24] Cosimo de' Medici was the first Medici family member to essentially control the city from behind the scenes. Although the city was technically a democracy of sorts, his power came from a vast patronage network along with his alliance to the new immigrants, the gente nuova (new people). The fact that the Medici were bankers to the pope also contributed to their ascendancy. Cosimo was succeeded by his son Piero, who was, soon after, succeeded by Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo in 1469. Lorenzo was a great patron of the arts, commissioning works by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. Lorenzo was an accomplished poet and musician and brought composers and singers to Florence, including Alexander Agricola, Johannes Ghiselin, and Heinrich Isaac. By contemporary Florentines (and since), he was known as "Lorenzo the Magnificent" (Lorenzo il Magnifico).
+
+Following Lorenzo de' Medici's death in 1492, he was succeeded by his son Piero II. When the French king Charles VIII invaded northern Italy, Piero II chose to resist his army. But when he realised the size of the French army at the gates of Pisa, he had to accept the humiliating conditions of the French king. These made the Florentines rebel, and they expelled Piero II. With his exile in 1494, the first period of Medici rule ended with the restoration of a republican government.
+
+During this period, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola had become prior of the San Marco monastery in 1490. He was famed for his penitential sermons, lambasting what he viewed as widespread immorality and attachment to material riches. He praised the exile of the Medici as the work of God, punishing them for their decadence. He seized the opportunity to carry through political reforms leading to a more democratic rule. But when Savonarola publicly accused Pope Alexander VI of corruption, he was banned from speaking in public. When he broke this ban, he was excommunicated. The Florentines, tired of his extreme teachings, turned against him and arrested him. He was convicted as a heretic and burned at the stake on the Piazza della Signoria on 23 May 1498.
+
+A second individual of unusually acute insight was Niccolò Machiavelli, whose prescriptions for Florence's regeneration under strong leadership have often been seen as a legitimisation of political expediency and even malpractice. In other words, Machiavelli was a political thinker, perhaps most renowned for his political handbook, titled The Prince, which is about ruling and the exercise of power. Commissioned by the Medici, Machiavelli also wrote the Florentine Histories, the history of the city. Florentines drove out the Medici for a second time and re-established a republic on 16 May 1527. Restored twice with the support of both Emperor Charles V and Pope Clement VII (Giulio de Medici), the Medici in 1532 became hereditary dukes of Florence, and in 1569 Grand Dukes of Tuscany, ruling for two centuries. In all Tuscany, only the Republic of Lucca (later a Duchy) and the Principality of Piombino were independent from Florence.
+
+The extinction of the Medici dynasty and the accession in 1737 of Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine and husband of Maria Theresa of Austria, led to Tuscany's temporary inclusion in the territories of the Austrian crown. It became a secundogeniture of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, who were deposed for the House of Bourbon-Parma in 1801. From 1801 to 1807 Florence was the capital of the Napoleonic client state Kingdom of Etruria. The Bourbon-Parma were deposed in December 1807 when Tuscany was annexed by France. Florence was the prefecture of the French département of Arno from 1808 to the fall of Napoleon in 1814. The Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty was restored on the throne of Tuscany at the Congress of Vienna but finally deposed in 1859. Tuscany became a region of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
+
+Florence replaced Turin as Italy's capital in 1865 and, in an effort to modernise the city, the old market in the Piazza del Mercato Vecchio and many medieval houses were pulled down and replaced by a more formal street plan with newer houses. The Piazza (first renamed Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, then Piazza della Repubblica, the present name) was significantly widened and a large triumphal arch was constructed at the west end. This development was unpopular and was prevented from continuing by the efforts of several British and American people living in the city.[citation needed] A museum recording the destruction stands nearby today.
+
+The country's second capital city was superseded by Rome six years later, after the withdrawal of the French troops allowed the capture of Rome.
+
+During World War II the city experienced a year-long German occupation (1943–1944) being part of the Italian Social Republic. Hitler declared it an open city on July 3, 1944 as troops of the British 8th Army closed in.[25] In early August, the retreating Germans decided to demolish all the bridges along the Arno linking the district of Oltrarno to the rest of the city, making it difficult for troops of the 8th Army to cross. However, at the last moment Charles Steinhauslin, at the time consul of 26 countries in Florence, convinced the German general in Italy that the Ponte Vecchio was not to be destroyed due to its historical value.[citation needed] Instead, an equally historic area of streets directly to the south of the bridge, including part of the Corridoio Vasariano, was destroyed using mines. Since then the bridges have been restored to their original forms using as many of the remaining materials as possible, but the buildings surrounding the Ponte Vecchio have been rebuilt in a style combining the old with modern design. Shortly before leaving Florence, as they knew that they would soon have to retreat, the Germans executed many freedom fighters and political opponents publicly, in streets and squares including the Piazza Santo Spirito.[citation needed]
+
+Florence was liberated by New Zealand, South African and British troops on 4 August 1944 alongside partisans from the Tuscan Committee of National Liberation (CTLN). The Allied soldiers who died driving the Germans from Tuscany are buried in cemeteries outside the city (Americans about nine kilometres (5.6 miles) south of the city, British and Commonwealth soldiers a few kilometres east of the centre on the right bank of the Arno).
+
+At the end of World War II in May 1945, the US Army's Information and Educational Branch was ordered to establish an overseas university campus for demobilised American service men and women in Florence, Italy. The first American University for service personnel was established in June 1945 at the School of Aeronautics in Florence, Italy. Some 7,500 soldier-students were to pass through the University during its four one-month sessions (see G. I. American Universities).[26]
+
+In November 1966, the Arno flooded parts of the centre, damaging many art treasures. Around the city there are tiny placards on the walls noting where the flood waters reached at their highest point.
+
+Florence lies in a basin formed by the hills of Careggi, Fiesole, Settignano, Arcetri, Poggio Imperiale and Bellosguardo (Florence). The Arno river, three other minor rivers (Mugnone,[27] Ema and Greve) and some streams flow through it.[28]
+
+Florence has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), tending to Mediterranean (Csa).[29] It has hot summers with moderate or light rainfall and cool, damp winters. As Florence lacks a prevailing wind, summer temperatures are higher than along the coast. Rainfall in summer is convectional, while relief rainfall dominates in the winter. Snow flurries happen almost every year,[30] but often result in no accumulation.[31] The highest officially recorded temperature was 42.6 °C (108.7 °F) on 26 July 1983 and the lowest was −23.2 °C (−9.8 °F) on 12 January 1985.[32]
+
+The traditional boroughs of the whole comune of Florence
+
+The 5 administrative boroughs of the whole comune of Florence
+
+The legislative body of the municipality is the City Council (Consiglio Comunale), which is composed of 36 councillors elected every five years with a proportional system, contextually to the mayoral elections. The executive body is the City Committee (Giunta Comunale), composed by 7 assessors, that is nominated and presieded over by a directly elected Mayor. The current mayor of Florence is Dario Nardella.
+
+The municipality of Florence is subdivided into five administrative Boroughs (Quartieri). Each Borough is governed by a Council (Consiglio) and a President, elected contextually to the city Mayor. The urban organisation is governed by the Italian Constitution (art. 114). The Boroughs have the power to advise the Mayor with nonbinding opinions on a large spectrum of topics (environment, construction, public health, local markets) and exercise the functions delegated to them by the City Council; in addition they are supplied with an autonomous founding in order to finance local activities. The Boroughs are:
+
+All of the five boroughs are governed by the Democratic Party.
+
+The former Italian Prime Minister (2014–2016), Matteo Renzi, served as mayor from 2009 to 2014.
+
+Florence is known as the "cradle of the Renaissance" (la culla del Rinascimento) for its monuments, churches, and buildings. The best-known site of Florence is the domed cathedral of the city, Santa Maria del Fiore, known as The Duomo, whose dome was built by Filippo Brunelleschi. The nearby Campanile (partly designed by Giotto) and the Baptistery buildings are also highlights. The dome, 600 years after its completion, is still the largest dome built in brick and mortar in the world.[37] In 1982, the historic centre of Florence (Italian: centro storico di Firenze) was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO.[38] The centre of the city is contained in medieval walls that were built in the 14th century to defend the city. At the heart of the city, in Piazza della Signoria, is Bartolomeo Ammannati's Fountain of Neptune (1563–1565), which is a masterpiece of marble sculpture at the terminus of a still functioning Roman aqueduct.
+
+The layout and structure of Florence in many ways harkens back to the Roman era, where it was designed as a garrison settlement.[10] Nevertheless, the majority of the city was built during the Renaissance.[10] Despite the strong presence of Renaissance architecture within the city, traces of medieval, Baroque, Neoclassical and modern architecture can be found. The Palazzo Vecchio as well as the Duomo, or the city's Cathedral, are the two buildings which dominate Florence's skyline.[10]
+
+The river Arno, which cuts through the old part of the city, is as much a character in Florentine history as many of the people who lived there. Historically, the locals have had a love-hate relationship with the Arno – which alternated between nourishing the city with commerce, and destroying it by flood.
+
+One of the bridges in particular stands out — the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge), whose most striking feature is the multitude of shops built upon its edges, held up by stilts. The bridge also carries Vasari's elevated corridor linking the Uffizi to the Medici residence (Palazzo Pitti). Although the original bridge was constructed by the Etruscans, the current bridge was rebuilt in the 14th century. It is the only bridge in the city to have survived World War II intact. It is the first example in the western world of a bridge built using segmental arches, that is, arches less than a semicircle, to reduce both span-to-rise ratio and the numbers of pillars to allow lesser encumbrance in the riverbed (being in this much more successful than the Roman Alconétar Bridge).
+
+The church of San Lorenzo contains the Medici Chapel, the mausoleum of the Medici family—the most powerful family in Florence from the 15th to the 18th century. Nearby is the Uffizi Gallery, one of the finest art museums in the world – founded on a large bequest from the last member of the Medici family.
+
+The Uffizi is located at the corner of Piazza della Signoria, a site important for being the centre of Florence's civil life and government for centuries. The Palazzo della Signoria facing it is still home of the municipal government. Many significant episodes in the history of art and political changes were staged here, such as:
+
+The Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria is the location of a number of statues by other sculptors such as Donatello, Giambologna, Ammannati and Cellini, although some have been replaced with copies to preserve the originals.
+
+Florence contains several palaces and buildings from various eras. The Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence and also an art museum. This large Romanesque crenellated fortress-palace overlooks the Piazza della Signoria with its copy of Michelangelo's David statue as well as the gallery of statues in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi. Originally called the Palazzo della Signoria, after the Signoria of Florence, the ruling body of the Republic of Florence, it was also given several other names: Palazzo del Popolo, Palazzo dei Priori, and Palazzo Ducale, in accordance with the varying use of the palace during its long history. The building acquired its current name when the Medici duke's residence was moved across the Arno to the Palazzo Pitti. It is linked to the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti through the Corridoio Vasariano.
+
+Palazzo Medici Riccardi, designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo for Cosimo il Vecchio, of the Medici family, is another major edifice, and was built between 1445 and 1460. It was well known for its stone masonry that includes rustication and ashlar. Today it is the head office of the Metropolitan City of Florence and hosts museums and the Riccardiana Library. The Palazzo Strozzi, an example of civil architecture with its rusticated stone, was inspired by the Palazzo Medici, but with more harmonious proportions. Today the palace is used for international expositions like the annual antique show (founded as the Biennale dell'Antiquariato in 1959), fashion shows and other cultural and artistic events. Here also is the seat of the Istituto Nazionale del Rinascimento and the noted Gabinetto Vieusseux, with the library and reading room.
+There are several other notable places, including the Palazzo Rucellai, designed by Leon Battista Alberti between 1446 and 1451 and executed, at least in part, by Bernardo Rossellino; the Palazzo Davanzati, which houses the museum of the Old Florentine House; the Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali, designed in the Neo-Renaissance style in 1871; the Palazzo Spini Feroni, in Piazza Santa Trinita, a historic 13th-century private palace, owned since the 1920s by shoe-designer Salvatore Ferragamo; as well as various others, including the Palazzo Borghese, the Palazzo di Bianca Cappello, the Palazzo Antinori, and the Royal building of Santa Maria Novella.
+
+Florence contains numerous museums and art galleries where some of the world's most important works of art are held. The city is one of the best preserved Renaissance centres of art and architecture in the world and has a high concentration of art, architecture and culture.[39] In the ranking list of the 15 most visited Italian art museums, ⅔ are represented by Florentine museums.[40] The Uffizi is one of these, having a very large collection of international and Florentine art. The gallery is articulated in many halls, catalogued by schools and chronological order. Engendered by the Medici family's artistic collections through the centuries, it houses works of art by various painters and artists. The Vasari Corridor is another gallery, built connecting the Palazzo Vecchio with the Pitti Palace passing by the Uffizi and over the Ponte Vecchio. The Galleria dell'Accademia houses a Michelangelo collection, including the David. It has a collection of Russian icons and works by various artists and painters. Other museums and galleries include the Bargello, which concentrates on sculpture works by artists including Donatello, Giambologna and Michelangelo; the Palazzo Pitti, containing part of the Medici family's former private collection. In addition to the Medici collection, the palace's galleries contain many Renaissance works, including several by Raphael and Titian, large collections of costumes, ceremonial carriages, silver, porcelain and a gallery of modern art dating from the 18th century. Adjoining the palace are the Boboli Gardens, elaborately landscaped and with numerous sculptures.
+
+There are several different churches and religious buildings in Florence. The cathedral is Santa Maria del Fiore. The San Giovanni Baptistery located in front of the cathedral, is decorated by numerous artists, notably by Lorenzo Ghiberti with the Gates of Paradise. Other churches in Florence include the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, located in Santa Maria Novella square (near the Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station) which contains works by Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Filippino Lippi and Domenico Ghirlandaio; the Basilica of Santa Croce, the principal Franciscan church in the city, which is situated on the Piazza di Santa Croce, about 800 metres (2,600 feet) south east of the Duomo, and is the burial place of some of the most illustrious Italians, such as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Foscolo, Rossini, thus it is known also as the Temple of the Italian Glories (Tempio dell'Itale Glorie); the Basilica of San Lorenzo, which is one of the largest churches in the city, situated at the centre of Florence's main market district, and the burial place of all the principal members of the Medici family from Cosimo il Vecchio to Cosimo III; Santo Spirito, in the Oltrarno quarter, facing the square with the same name; Orsanmichele, whose building was constructed on the site of the kitchen garden of the monastery of San Michele, now demolished; Santissima Annunziata, a Roman Catholic basilica and the mother church of the Servite order; Ognissanti, which was founded by the lay order of the Umiliati, and is among the first examples of Baroque architecture built in the city; the Santa Maria del Carmine, in the Oltrarno district of Florence, which is the location of the Brancacci Chapel, housing outstanding Renaissance frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino da Panicale, later finished by Filippino Lippi; the Medici Chapel with statues by Michelangelo, in the San Lorenzo; as well as several others, including Santa Trinita, San Marco, Santa Felicita, Badia Fiorentina, San Gaetano, San Miniato al Monte, Florence Charterhouse, and Santa Maria del Carmine. The city additionally contains the Orthodox Russian church of Nativity, and the Great Synagogue of Florence, built in the 19th century.
+
+Florence contains various theatres and cinemas. The Odeon Cinema of the Palazzo dello Strozzino is one of the oldest cinemas in the city. Established from 1920 to 1922[41] in a wing of the Palazzo dello Strozzino, it used to be called the Cinema Teatro Savoia (Savoy Cinema-Theatre), yet was later called Odeon. The Teatro della Pergola, located in the centre of the city on the eponymous street, is an opera house built in the 17th century. Another theatre is the Teatro Comunale (or Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), originally built as the open-air amphitheatre, the Politeama Fiorentino Vittorio Emanuele, which was inaugurated on 17 May 1862 with a production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and which seated 6,000 people. There are several other theatres, such as the Saloncino Castinelli, the Teatro Puccini, the Teatro Verdi, the Teatro Goldoni and the Teatro Niccolini.
+
+Florence Cathedral, formally the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, is the cathedral of Florence, Italy. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi.
+
+Aside from such monuments, Florence contains numerous major squares (piazze) and streets. The Piazza della Repubblica is a square in the city centre, location of the cultural cafés and bourgeois palaces. Among the square's cafés (like Caffè Gilli, Paszkowski or the Hard Rock Cafè), the Giubbe Rosse café has long been a meeting place for artists and writers, notably those of Futurism. The Piazza Santa Croce is another; dominated by the Basilica of Santa Croce, it is a rectangular square in the centre of the city where the Calcio Fiorentino is played every year. Furthermore, there is the Piazza Santa Trinita, a square near the Arno that mark the end of the Via de' Tornabuoni street.
+
+Other squares include the Piazza San Marco, the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, the Piazza Beccaria and the Piazza della Libertà. The centre additionally contains several streets. Such include the Via Camillo Cavour, one of the main roads of the northern area of the historic centre; the Via Ghibellina, one of central Florence's longest streets; the Via dei Calzaiuoli, one of the most central streets of the historic centre  which links Piazza del Duomo to Piazza della Signoria, winding parallel to via Roma and Piazza della Repubblica; the Via de' Tornabuoni, a luxurious street in the city centre that goes from Antinori square to ponte Santa Trinita, across Piazza Santa Trinita, characterised by the presence of fashion boutiques; the Viali di Circonvallazione, 6-lane boulevards surrounding the northern part of the historic centre; as well as others, such as Via Roma, Via degli Speziali, Via de' Cerretani, and the Viale dei Colli.
+
+Florence also contains various parks and gardens. Such include the Boboli Gardens, the Parco delle Cascine, the Giardino Bardini and the Giardino dei Semplici, amongst others.
+
+In 1200 the city was home to 50,000 people.[42] By 1300 the population of the city proper was 120,000, with an additional 300,000 living in the Contado.[43] Between 1500 and 1650 the population was around 70,000.[44][45]
+
+As of 31 October 2010[update], the population of the city proper is 370,702, while Eurostat estimates that 696,767 people live in the urban area of Florence. The Metropolitan Area of Florence, Prato and Pistoia, constituted in 2000 over an area of roughly 4,800 square kilometres (1,853 sq mi), is home to 1.5 million people. Within Florence proper, 46.8% of the population was male in 2007 and 53.2% were female. Minors (children aged 18 and less) totalled 14.10 percent of the population compared to pensioners, who numbered 25.95 percent. This compares with the Italian average of 18.06 percent (minors) and 19.94 percent (pensioners). The average age of Florence resident is 49 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Florence grew by 3.22 percent, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.56 percent.[46] The birth rate of Florence is 7.66 births per 1,000 inhabitants compared to the Italian average of 9.45 births.
+
+As of 2009[update], 87.46% of the population was Italian. An estimated 6,000 Chinese live in the city.[47] The largest immigrant group came from other European countries (mostly Romanians and Albanians): 3.52%, East Asia (mostly Chinese and Filipino): 2.17%, the Americas: 1.41%, and North Africa (mostly Moroccan): 0.9%.[48]
+
+Much like the rest of Italy most of the people in Florence are Roman Catholic, with more than 90% of the population belonging to the Archdiocese of Florence.[49][50]
+
+Tourism is, by far, the most important of all industries and most of the Florentine economy relies on the money generated by international arrivals and students studying in the city.[10] The value tourism to the city totalled some €2.5 billion in 2015 and the number of visitors had increased by 5.5% from the previous year.[51]
+
+In 2013, Florence was listed as the second best world city by Condé Nast Traveler.[52]
+
+Manufacturing and commerce, however, still remain highly important. Florence is also Italy's 17th richest city in terms of average workers' earnings, with the figure being €23,265 (the overall city's income is €6,531,204,473), coming after Mantua, yet surpassing Bolzano.[53]
+
+Florence is a major production and commercial centre in Italy, where the Florentine industrial complexes in the suburbs produce all sorts of goods, from furniture, rubber goods, chemicals, and food.[10] However, traditional and local products, such as antiques, handicrafts, glassware, leatherwork, art reproductions, jewellery, souvenirs, elaborate metal and iron-work, shoes, accessories and high fashion clothes also dominate a fair sector of Florence's economy.[10] The city's income relies partially on services and commercial and cultural interests, such as annual fairs, theatrical and lyrical productions, art exhibitions, festivals and fashion shows, such as the Calcio Fiorentino. Heavy industry and machinery also take their part in providing an income. In Nuovo Pignone, numerous factories are still present, and small-to medium industrial businesses are dominant. The Florence-Prato-Pistoia industrial districts and areas were known as the 'Third Italy' in the 1990s, due to the exports of high-quality goods and automobile (especially the Vespa) and the prosperity and productivity of the Florentine entrepreneurs. Some of these industries even rivalled the traditional industrial districts in Emilia-Romagna and Veneto due to high profits and productivity.[10]
+
+In the fourth quarter of 2015, manufacturing increased by 2.4% and exports increased by 7.2%. Leading sectors included mechanical engineering, fashion, pharmaceutics, food and wine. During 2015, permanent employment contracts increased by 48.8 percent, boosted by nationwide tax break.[51]
+
+Tourism is the most significant industry in central Florence. From April to October, tourists outnumber local population. Tickets to the Uffizi and Accademia museums are regularly sold out and large groups regularly fill the basilicas of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, both of which charge for entry. Tickets for The Uffizi and Accademia can be purchased online prior to visiting.[54] In 2010, readers of Travel + Leisure magazine ranked the city as their third favourite tourist destination.[55] In 2015, Condé Nast Travel readers voted Florence as the best city in Europe.[56]
+
+Studies by Euromonitor International have concluded that cultural and history-oriented tourism is generating significantly increased spending throughout Europe.[57]
+
+Florence is believed to have the greatest concentration of art (in proportion to its size) in the world.[58] Thus, cultural tourism is particularly strong, with world-renowned museums such as the Uffizi selling over 1.93 million tickets in 2014.[59] The city's convention centre facilities were restructured during the 1990s and host exhibitions, conferences, meetings, social forums, concerts and other events all year.
+
+In 2016, Florence had 20,588 hotel rooms in 570 facilities. International visitors use 75% of the rooms; some 18% of those were from the U.S.[60] In 2014, the city had 8.5 million overnight stays.[61] A Euromonitor report indicates that in 2015 the city ranked as the world's 36th most visited in the world, with over 4.95 million arrivals for the year.[62]
+
+Tourism brings revenue to Florence, but it creates certain problems. The Ponte Vecchio, The San Lorenzo Market and Santa Maria Novella are plagued by pickpockets.[63] The province of Florence receives roughly 13 million visitors per year[64] and in peak seasons, that can lead to over crowding at popular locations.[65] Mayor Dario Nardella is particularly concerned about visitors who arrive on buses, stay only a few hours, spend little money but contribute significantly to overcrowding. "No museum visit, just a photo from the square, the bus back and then on to Venice... We don’t want tourists like that," he said.[66]
+
+Some tourists are less than respectful of the city's cultural heritage, according to Nardella. In June 2017, he instituted a programme of spraying church steps with water to prevent tourists from using such areas as picnic spots. While he values the benefits of tourism, there has been "an increase among those who  sit down on church steps, eat their food and leave rubbish strewn on them," he explained.[67] To boost the sale of traditional foods, the mayor had introduced legislation (enacted in 2016) that requires restaurants to use typical Tuscan products and rejected McDonald's application to open a location in the  Piazza del Duomo.[68]
+
+Food and wine have long been an important staple of the economy. The Chianti region is just south of the city, and its Sangiovese grapes figure prominently not only in its Chianti Classico wines but also in many of the more recently developed Supertuscan blends. Within 32 km (20 mi) to the west is the Carmignano area, also home to flavourful sangiovese-based reds. The celebrated Chianti Rufina district, geographically and historically separated from the main Chianti region, is also few kilometres east of Florence. More recently, the Bolgheri region (about 150 km (93 mi) southwest of Florence) has become celebrated for its "Super Tuscan" reds such as Sassicaia and Ornellaia.[69]
+
+Florence was the birthplace of High Renaissance art, which lasted from 1450–1527. While Medieval art focused on basic story telling of the Bible, Renaissance art focused on naturalism and human emotion.[70] Medieval art was abstract, formulaic, and largely produced by monks whereas Renaissance art was rational, mathematical, individualistic, consisted of linear perspective and shading (Chiaroscuro)[70] and produced by specialists (Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael). Religion was important, but with this new age came the humanization[71][72] of religious figures in art, such as Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Ecce Homo (Bosch, 1470s), and Madonna Della Seggiola; People of this age began to understand themselves as human beings, which reflected in art.[72] The Renaissance marked the rebirth of classical values in art and society as people studied the ancient masters of the Greco-Roman world;[71] Art became focused on realism as opposed to idealism.[72]
+
+Cimabue and Giotto, the fathers of Italian painting, lived in Florence as well as Arnolfo and Andrea Pisano, renewers of architecture and sculpture; Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, forefathers of the Renaissance, Ghiberti and the Della Robbias, Filippo Lippi and Angelico; Botticelli, Paolo Uccello and the universal genius of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.[73][74]
+
+Their works, together with those of many other generations of artists, are gathered in the several museums of the town: the Uffizi Gallery, the Palatina gallery with the paintings of the "Golden Ages",[75] the Bargello with the sculptures of the Renaissance, the museum of San Marco with Fra Angelico's works, the Academy, the chapels of the Medicis[76] Buonarroti's house with the sculptures of Michelangelo, the following museums: Bardini, Horne, Stibbert, Romano, Corsini, The Gallery of Modern Art, the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, the museum of Silverware and the museum of Precious Stones.[77]
+Several monuments are located in Florence: the Florence Baptistery with its mosaics; the Cathedral with its sculptures, the medieval churches with bands of frescoes; public as well as private palaces: Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Pitti, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Palazzo Davanzati; monasteries, cloisters, refectories; the "Certosa". In the archaeological museum includes documents of Etruscan civilisation.[78] In fact the city is so rich in art that some first time visitors experience the Stendhal syndrome as they encounter its art for the first time.[79]
+
+Florentine architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1466) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) were among the fathers of both Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture.[80]
+
+The cathedral, topped by Brunelleschi's dome, dominates the Florentine skyline. The Florentines decided to start building it – late in the 13th century, without a design for the dome. The project proposed by Brunelleschi in the 14th century was the largest ever built at the time, and the first major dome built in Europe since the two great domes of Roman times – the Pantheon in Rome, and Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore remains the largest brick construction of its kind in the world.[81][82] In front of it is the medieval Baptistery. The two buildings incorporate in their decoration the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. In recent years, most of the important works of art from the two buildings – and from the nearby Giotto's Campanile, have been removed and replaced by copies. The originals are now housed in the Museum dell'Opera del Duomo, just to the east of the Cathedral.
+
+Florence has large numbers of art-filled churches, such as San Miniato al Monte, San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Trinita, Santa Maria del Carmine, Santa Croce, Santo Spirito, the Annunziata, Ognissanti and numerous others.[10]
+
+Artists associated with Florence range from Arnolfo di Cambio and Cimabue to Giotto, Nanni di Banco, and Paolo Uccello; through Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Donatello and Massaccio and the della Robbia family; through Fra Angelico and Botticelli and Piero della Francesca, and on to Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Others include Benvenuto Cellini, Andrea del Sarto, Benozzo Gozzoli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Filippo Lippi, Bernardo Buontalenti, Orcagna, Pollaiuolo, Filippino Lippi, Verrocchio, Bronzino, Desiderio da Settignano, Michelozzo, the Rossellis, the Sangallos, and Pontormo. Artists from other regions who worked in Florence include Raphael, Andrea Pisano, Giambologna, Il Sodoma and Peter Paul Rubens.
+
+Picture galleries in Florence include the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. Two superb collections of sculpture are in the Bargello and the Museum of the Works of the Duomo. They are filled with the creations of Donatello, Verrochio, Desiderio da Settignano, Michelangelo and others. The Galleria dell'Accademia has Michelangelo's David – perhaps the best-known work of art anywhere, plus the unfinished statues of the slaves Michelangelo created for the tomb of Pope Julius II.[83][84] Other sights include the medieval city hall, the Palazzo della Signoria (also known as the Palazzo Vecchio), the Archeological Museum, the Museum of the History of Science, the Garden of Archimedes, the Palazzo Davanzatti, the Stibbert Museum, St. Marks, the Medici Chapels, the Museum of the Works of Santa Croce, the Museum of the Cloister of Santa Maria Novella, the Zoological Museum ("La Specola"), the Bardini, and the Museo Horne. There is also a collection of works by the modern sculptor, Marino Marini, in a museum named after him. The Strozzi Palace is the site of special exhibits.[85]
+
+Florentine (fiorentino), spoken by inhabitants of Florence and its environs, is a Tuscan dialect and the immediate parent language to modern Italian.
+
+Although its vocabulary and pronunciation are largely identical to standard Italian, differences do exist. The Vocabolario del fiorentino contemporaneo (Dictionary of Modern Florentine) reveals lexical distinctions from all walks of life.[86] Florentines have a highly recognisable accent in phonetic terms due to the so-called gorgia toscana): "hard c" /k/ between two vowels is pronounced as a fricative [h] similar to an English h, so that dico 'I say' is phonetically [ˈdiːho], i cani 'the dogs' is [iˈhaːni]. Similarly, t between vowels is pronounced [θ] as in English thin, and p in the same position is the bilabial fricative [ɸ]. Other traits include using a form of the subjunctive mood last commonly used in medieval times,[citation needed] a frequent usage in everyday speech of the modern subjunctive, and a shortened pronunciation of the definite article, [i] instead of "il", causing doubling of the consonant that follows, so that il cane 'the dog', for example, is pronounced [ikˈkaːne].
+
+Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio pioneered the use of the vernacular[87] instead of the Latin used for most literary works at the time.
+
+Despite Latin being the main language of the courts and the Church in the Middle Ages, writers such as Dante Alighieri[87] and many others used their own language, the Florentine vernacular descended from Latin, in composing their greatest works. The oldest literary pieces written in Florentine go as far back as the 13th century. Florence's literature fully blossomed in the 14th century, when not only Dante with his Divine Comedy (1306–1321) and Petrarch, but also poets such as Guido Cavalcanti and Lapo Gianni composed their most important works.[87] Dante's masterpiece is the Divine Comedy, which mainly deals with the poet himself taking an allegoric and moral tour of Hell, Purgatory and finally Heaven, during which he meets numerous mythological or real characters of his age or before. He is first guided by the Roman poet Virgil, whose non-Christian beliefs damned him to Hell. Later on he is joined by Beatrice, who guides him through Heaven.[87]
+
+In the 14th century, Petrarch[88] and Giovanni Boccaccio[88] led the literary scene in Florence after Dante's death in 1321. Petrarch was an all-rounder writer, author and poet, but was particularly known for his Canzoniere, or the Book of Songs, where he conveyed his unremitting love for Laura.[88] His style of writing has since become known as Petrarchism.[88] Boccaccio was better known for his Decameron, a slightly grim story of Florence during the 1350s bubonic plague, known as the Black Death, when some people fled the ravaged city to an isolated country mansion, and spent their time there recounting stories and novellas taken from the medieval and contemporary tradition. All of this is written in a series of 100 distinct novellas.[88]
+
+In the 16th century, during the Renaissance, Florence was the home town of political writer and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, whose ideas on how rulers should govern the land, detailed in The Prince, spread across European courts and enjoyed enduring popularity for centuries. These principles became known as Machiavellianism.
+
+Florence became a musical centre during the Middle Ages and music and the performing arts remain an important part of its culture. The growth of Northern Italian Cities in the 1500s likely contributed to its increased prominence. During the Renaissance, there were four kinds of musical patronage in the city with respect to both sacred and secular music: state, corporate, church, and private. It was here that the Florentine Camerata convened in the mid-16th century and experimented with setting tales of Greek mythology to music and staging the result—in other words, the first operas, setting the wheels in motion not just for the further development of the operatic form, but for later developments of separate "classical" forms such as the symphony and concerto.  After the year 1600, Italian trends prevailed across Europe, by 1750 it was the primary musical language. The genre of the Madrigal, born in Italy, gained popularity in Britain and elsewhere. Several Italian cities were "larger on the musical map than their real-size for power suggested. Florence, was once such city which experienced a fantastic period in the early seventeenth Century of musico-theatrical innovation, including the beginning and flourishing of opera.[89]
+
+Opera was invented in Florence in the late 16th century when Jacobo Peri's Dafne an opera in the style of monody, was premiered.  Opera spread from Florence throughout Italy and eventually Europe.  Vocal Music in the choir setting was also taking new identity at this time.  At the beginning of the 17th century, two practices for writing music were devised, one the first practice or Stile Antico/Prima Prattica the other the Stile Moderno/Seconda Prattica.  The Stile Antico was more prevalent in Northern Europe and Stile Moderno was practiced more by the Italian Composers of the time.[90]
+
+Composers and musicians who have lived in Florence include Piero Strozzi (1550 – after 1608), Giulio Caccini (1551–1618) and Mike Francis (1961–2009). Giulio Caccini's book Le Nuove Musiche was significant in performance practice technique instruction at the time.[89]  The book specified a new term, in use by the 1630s, called monody which indicated the combination of voice and basso continuo and connoted a practice of stating text in a free, lyrical, yet speech-like manner.  This would occur while an instrument, usually a keyboard type such as harpsichord, played and held chords while the singer sang/spoke the monodic line.[91]
+
+Florence has been a setting for numerous works of fiction and movies, including the novels and associated films, such as Light in the Piazza, The Girl Who Couldn't Say No, Calmi Cuori Appassionati, Hannibal, A Room with a View, Tea with Mussolini, Virgin Territory and Inferno. The city is home to renowned Italian actors and actresses, such as Roberto Benigni, Leonardo Pieraccioni and Vittoria Puccini.
+
+Florence has appeared as a location in video games such as Assassins Creed II.[92] The Republic of Florence also appears as a playable nation in Paradox Interactive's grand strategy game Europa Universalis IV.
+
+16th century Florence is the setting of the Japanese manga and anime series Arte.
+
+Florentine food grows out of a tradition of peasant eating rather than rarefied high cooking. The majority of dishes are based on meat. The whole animal was traditionally eaten; tripe (trippa) and stomach (lampredotto) were once regularly on the menu and still are sold at the food carts stationed throughout the city. Antipasti include crostini toscani, sliced bread rounds topped with a chicken liver-based pâté, and sliced meats (mainly prosciutto and salame, often served with melon when in season). The typically saltless Tuscan bread, obtained with natural levain frequently features in Florentine courses, especially in its soups, ribollita and pappa al pomodoro, or in the salad of bread and fresh vegetables called panzanella that is served in summer. The bistecca alla fiorentina is a large (the customary size should weigh around 1.2 to 1.5 kg [40 to 50 oz]) – the "date" steak – T-bone steak of Chianina beef cooked over hot charcoal and served very rare with its more recently derived version, the tagliata, sliced rare beef served on a bed of arugula, often with slices of Parmesan cheese on top. Most of these courses are generally served with local olive oil, also a prime product enjoying a worldwide reputation.[93] Among the desserts, schiacciata alla fiorentina, a white flatbread cake, is one of the most popular; it is a very soft cake, prepared with extremely simple ingredients, typical of Florentine cuisine, and is especially eaten at Carnival.
+
+Research institutes and university departments are located within the Florence area and within two campuses at
+Polo di Novoli and Polo Scientifico di Sesto Fiorentino[94] as well as in the Research Area of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.[95]
+
+Florence has been an important scientific centre for centuries, notably during the Renaissance with scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci.
+
+Florentines were one of the driving forces behind the Age of Discovery. Florentine bankers financed Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese explorers who pioneered the route around Africa to India and the Far East. It was a map drawn by the Florentine Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, a student of Brunelleschi, that Christopher Columbus used to sell his "enterprise" to the Spanish monarchs, and which he used on his first voyage. Mercator's "Projection" is a refined version of Toscanelli's – taking into account the Americas, of which the Florentine was, obviously, ignorant.
+
+Galileo and other scientists pioneered the study of optics, ballistics, astronomy, anatomy, and so on. Pico della Mirandola, Leonardo Bruni, Machiavelli, and many others laid the groundwork for our understanding of science.
+
+By the year 1300 Florence had become a centre of textile production in Europe. Many of the rich families in Renaissance Florence were major purchasers of locally produced fine clothing, and the specialists of fashion in the economy and culture of Florence during that period is often underestimated.[96] Florence is regarded by some as the birthplace and earliest centre of the modern (post World War Two) fashion industry in Italy. The Florentine "soirées" of the early 1950s organised by Giovanni Battista Giorgini were events where several Italian designers participated in group shows and first garnered international attention.[97] Florence has served as the home of the Italian fashion company Salvatore Ferragamo since 1928. Gucci, Roberto Cavalli, and Emilio Pucci are also headquartered in Florence. Other major players in the fashion industry such as Prada and Chanel have large offices and stores in Florence or its outskirts. Florence's main upscale shopping street is Via de' Tornabuoni, where major luxury fashion houses and jewellery labels, such as Armani and Bulgari, have their elegant boutiques. Via del Parione and Via Roma are other streets that are also well known for their high-end fashion stores.[98]
+
+The Scoppio del Carro ("Explosion of the Cart") is a celebration of the First Crusade. During the day of Easter, a cart, which the Florentines call the Brindellone and which is led by four white oxen, is taken to the Piazza del Duomo between the Baptistery of St. John the Baptist (Battistero di San Giovanni) and the Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore). The cart is connected by a rope to the interior of the church. Near the cart there is a model of a dove, which, according to legend, is a symbol of good luck for the city: at the end of the Easter mass, the dove emerges from the nave of the Duomo and ignites the fireworks on the cart.
+
+Calcio Storico Fiorentino ("Historic Florentine Football"), sometimes called Calcio in costume, is a traditional sport, regarded as a forerunner of soccer, though the actual gameplay most closely resembles rugby. The event originates from the Middle Ages, when the most important Florentine nobles amused themselves playing while wearing bright costumes. The most important match was played on 17 February 1530, during the siege of Florence. That day Papal troops besieged the city while the Florentines, with contempt of the enemies, decided to play the game notwithstanding the situation. The game is played in the Piazza di Santa Croce. A temporary arena is constructed, with bleachers and a sand-covered playing field. A series of matches are held between four teams representing each quartiere (quarter) of Florence during late June and early July.[99] There are four teams: Azzurri (light blue), Bianchi (white), Rossi (red) and Verdi (green). The Azzurri are from the quarter of Santa Croce, Bianchi from the quarter of Santo Spirito, Verdi are from San Giovanni and Rossi from Santa Maria Novella.
+
+In association football Florence is represented by ACF Fiorentina, which plays in Serie A, the top league of Italian league system.
+ACF Fiorentina has won two Italian Championships, in 1956 and 1969, and 6 Italian cup,[100]  since their formation in 1926. They play their games at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, which holds 47,282.
+The female squad of ACF Fiorentina have won the women's association football Italian Championship of the 2016–17 season.
+
+The city is home of the Centro Tecnico Federale di Coverciano, in Coverciano, Florence, the main training ground of the Italian national team, and the technical department of the Italian Football Federation.
+
+Florence was selected to host the 2013 UCI World Road Cycling Championships.
+
+Since 2017 Florence is also represented in Eccellenza, the top tier of rugby union league system in Italy, by I Medicei, which is a club established in 2015 by the merging of the senior squads of I Cavalieri (of Prato) and Firenze Rugby 1931.
+I Medicei won the Serie A Championship in 2016–17 and were promoted to Eccellenza for the 2017–18 season.
+
+Rari Nantes Florentia is a successful water polo club based in Florence; both its male and female squads have won several Italian championships and the female squad has also European titles in their palmarès.
+
+The University of Florence was first founded in 1321, and was recognized by Pope Clement VI in 1349. In 2019, over 50,000 students were enrolled at the university.
+
+Several American universities host a campus in Florence. Including New York University, Marist College, Pepperdine, Stanford, Florida State and James Madison. Over 8,000 American students are enrolled for study in Florence.[101]
+
+The private school, Centro Machiavelli which teaches Italian language and culture to foreigners, is located in Piazza Santo Spirito in Florence.
+
+The centre of Florence is closed to through-traffic, although buses, taxis and residents with appropriate permits are allowed in. This area is commonly referred to as the ZTL (Zona Traffico Limitato), which is divided into several subsections.[102] Residents of one section, therefore, will only be able to drive in their district and perhaps some surrounding ones. Cars without permits are allowed to enter after 7.30 pm, or before 7.30 am. The rules shift during the tourist-filled summers, putting more restrictions on where one can get in and out.[103]
+
+The principal public transit network in the city is run by the ATAF and Li-nea bus company. Individual tickets, or a pass called Carta Agile with multiple rides, should be purchased in advance and are available at local tobacconists, bars and newspaper stalls and must be validated once on board. These tickets may be used on ATAF and Li-nea buses, Tramvia and second-class local trains only within city railway stations. Train tickets must be validated before boarding. The main bus station is next to Santa Maria Novella railway station. Trenitalia runs trains between the railway stations within the city, and to other destinations around Italy and Europe. The central railway station, Santa Maria Novella, is about 500 m (1,600 ft) northwest of the Piazza del Duomo. There are two other important stations: Campo di Marte and Rifredi. Most bundled routes are Firenze—Pisa, Firenze—Viareggio and Firenze-Arezzo (along the main line to Rome). Other local railways connect Florence with Borgo San Lorenzo in the Mugello area (Faentina railway) and Siena.
+
+Long distance 10 km (6.21 mi) buses are run by the SITA, Copit, CAP companies. The transit companies also accommodate travellers from the Amerigo Vespucci Airport, which is 5 km (3.1 mi) west of the city centre, and which has scheduled services run by major European carriers.
+
+In an effort to reduce air pollution and car traffic in the city, a multi-line tram network called Tramvia is under construction. The first line began operation on 14 February 2010 and connects Florence's primary intercity railway station (Santa Maria Novella) with the southwestern suburb of Scandicci. This line is 7.4 km (4.6 mi) long and has 14 stops. The construction of a second line began on 5 November 2011, construction was stopped due to contractors' difficulties and restarted in 2014 with the new line opening on February 11, 2019. This second line connects Florence's airport with the city centre. A third line (from Santa Maria Novella to the Careggi area, where the most important hospitals of Florence are located) is also under construction.[104][105][106]
+
+The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Firenze, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 59 min. 13% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 14 min, while 22% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 4.1 km, while 3% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.[107]
+
+Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station is the main national and international railway station in Florence and is used by 59 million people every year.[108] The building, designed by Giovanni Michelucci, was built in the Italian Rationalism style and it is one of the major rationalist buildings in Italy. It is located in Piazza della Stazione, near the Fortezza da Basso (a masterpiece of the military Renaissance architecture[109]) and the Viali di Circonvallazione, and in front of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella's apse from which it takes its name. As well as numerous high speed trains to major Italian cities Florence is served by international overnight sleeper services to Munich and Vienna operated by Austrian railways ÖBB.
+
+A new high-speed rail station is under construction and is contracted to be operational by 2015.[110] It is planned to be connected to Vespucci airport, Santa Maria Novella railway station, and to the city centre by the second line of Tramvia.[111] The architectural firms Foster + Partners and Lancietti Passaleva Giordo and Associates designed this new rail station.[112]
+
+The Florence Airport, Peretola, is one of two main airports in the Tuscany region though it is not widely used by popular airlines. The other airport in the Tuscany region is the Galileo Galilei International Airport in Pisa.
+
+Mobike, a Chinese dockless bike sharing company, has been operating in Florence since July 2017. As of 2019, the company operates 4,000 bikes in Florence. The users scan the QR code on the bike using the Mobike app, and end the ride by parking curbside. The bikes have a fixed rate of €1 every 20 minutes. Since Mobike is a dock-less bike-sharing system, it does not provide stations, therefore the bikes can be left almost anywhere.
+
+Florence is twinned with:[113]
+
+
+
+L'Aquila, AbruzzoAosta, Aosta ValleyBari, ApuliaPotenza, Basilicata
+
+Catanzaro, CalabriaNaples, CampaniaBologna, Emilia-RomagnaTrieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia
+
+Rome, LazioGenoa, LiguriaMilan, LombardyAncona, Marche
+
+Campobasso, MoliseTurin, PiedmontCagliari, SardiniaPalermo, Sicily
+
+Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolFlorence, TuscanyPerugia, UmbriaVenice, Veneto
+

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+Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. They are an informal grouping within the infraorder Cetacea, usually excluding dolphins and porpoises. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, which consists of even-toed ungulates. Their closest living relatives are the hippopotamuses, having diverged about 40 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have split apart around 34 million years ago.  Whales consist of eight extant families: Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), Balaenidae (right whales), Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale), Eschrichtiidae (the grey whale), Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals), Physeteridae (the sperm whale), Kogiidae (the dwarf and pygmy sperm whale), and Ziphiidae (the beaked whales).
+
+Whales are creatures of the open ocean; they feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. So extreme is their adaptation to life underwater that they are unable to survive on land. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) and 135 kilograms (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 29.9 metres (98 ft) and 190 metric tons (210 short tons) blue whale, which is the largest known creature that has ever lived. The sperm whale is the largest toothed predator on earth. Several species exhibit sexual dimorphism, in that the females are larger than males. Baleen whales have no teeth; instead they have plates of baleen, a fringe-like structure used to expel water while retaining the krill and plankton which they feed on. They use their throat pleats to expand the mouth to take in huge gulps of water. Balaenids have heads that can make up 40% of their body mass to take in water. Toothed whales, on the other hand, have conical teeth adapted to catching fish or squid. Baleen whales have a well developed sense of "smell", whereas toothed whales have well-developed hearing − their hearing, that is adapted for both air and water, is so well developed that some can survive even if they are blind. Some species, such as sperm whales, are well adapted for diving to great depths to catch squid and other favoured prey.
+
+Whales have evolved from land-living mammals. As such, whales must breathe air regularly, although they can remain submerged under water for long periods of time. Some species such as the sperm whale are able to stay submerged for as much as 90 minutes.[1] They have blowholes (modified nostrils) located on top of their heads, through which air is taken in and expelled. They are warm-blooded, and have a layer of fat, or blubber, under the skin. With streamlined fusiform bodies and two limbs that are modified into flippers, whales can travel at up to 20 knots, though they are not as flexible or agile as seals. Whales produce a great variety of vocalizations, notably the extended songs of the humpback whale. Although whales are widespread, most species prefer the colder waters of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and migrate to the equator to give birth. Species such as humpbacks and blue whales are capable of travelling thousands of miles without feeding. Males typically mate with multiple females every year, but females only mate every two to three years. Calves are typically born in the spring and summer months and females bear all the responsibility for raising them. Mothers of some species fast and nurse their young for one to two years.
+
+Once relentlessly hunted for their products, whales are now protected by international law. The North Atlantic right whales nearly became extinct in the twentieth century, with a population low of 450, and the North Pacific grey whale population is ranked Critically Endangered by the IUCN. Besides whaling, they also face threats from bycatch and marine pollution. The meat, blubber and baleen of whales have traditionally been used by indigenous peoples of the Arctic. Whales have been depicted in various cultures worldwide, notably by the Inuit and the coastal peoples of Vietnam and Ghana, who sometimes hold whale funerals. Whales occasionally feature in literature and film, as in the great white whale of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Small whales, such as belugas, are sometimes kept in captivity and trained to perform tricks, but breeding success has been poor and the animals often die within a few months of capture. Whale watching has become a form of tourism around the world.
+
+The word "whale" comes from the Old English hwæl, from Proto-Germanic *hwalaz, from Proto Indo European *(s)kwal-o-, meaning "large sea fish".[2][3] The Proto-Germanic *hwalaz is also the source of Old Saxon hwal, Old Norse hvalr, hvalfiskr, Swedish val, Middle Dutch wal, walvisc, Dutch walvis, Old High German wal, and German Wal.[2] The obsolete "whalefish" has a similar derivation, indicating a time when whales were thought to be fish.[citation needed] Other archaic English forms include wal, wale, whal, whalle, whaille, wheal, etc.[4]
+
+The term "whale" is sometimes used interchangeably with dolphins and porpoises, acting as a synonym for Cetacea. Six species of dolphins have the word "whale" in their name, collectively known as blackfish: the killer whale, the melon-headed whale, the pygmy killer whale, the false killer whale, and the two species of pilot whales, all of which are classified under the family Delphinidae (oceanic dolphins).[5] Each species has a different reason for it, for example, the killer whale was named "Ballena asesina" 'killer whale' by Spanish sailors.[6]
+
+The term "Great Whales" covers those currently regulated by the International Whaling Commission:[7]
+the Odontoceti family Physeteridae (sperm whales); and the Mysticeti families Balaenidae (right and bowhead whales), Eschrichtiidae (grey whales), and some of the Balaenopteridae (Minke, Bryde's, Sei, Blue and Fin; not Eden's and Omura's whales).[8]
+
+The whales are part of the largely terrestrial mammalian clade Laurasiatheria. Whales do not form a clade or order; the infraorder Cetacea includes dolphins and porpoises, which are not considered whales.[citation needed] The phylogenetic tree shows the relationships of whales and other mammals, with whale groups[citation needed]  marked in green.
+
+(carnivorans and allies)
+
+(horses, rhinos, tapirs)
+
+(camelids)
+
+Pigs
+
+Ruminants (cattle, sheep, antelopes)
+
+Hippopotamuses
+
+Archaeocetes (Ambulocetus, Protocetus, Basilosaurus)
+
+(right, grey, rorquals)
+
+Delphinoidea (dolphins, porpoises, beluga whales, narwhals)
+
+Lipotoidea (river dolphins)
+
+Physeteroidea (sperm whales)
+
+Ziphoidea (beaked whales)
+
+Cetaceans are divided into two parvorders: the largest parvorder, Mysticeti (baleen whales), is characterized by the presence of baleen, a sieve-like structure in the upper jaw made of keratin, which it uses to filter plankton, among others, from the water; Odontocetes (toothed whales) are characterized by bearing sharp teeth for hunting, as opposed to their counterparts' baleen.[9]
+
+Cetaceans and artiodactyls now are classified under the order Cetartiodactyla, often still referred to as Artiodactyla, which includes both whales and hippopotamuses. The hippopotamus and pygmy hippopotamus are the whale's closest terrestrial living relatives.[10]
+
+Mysticetes are also known as baleen whales. They have a pair of blowholes side-by-side and lack teeth; instead they have baleen plates which form a sieve-like structure in the upper jaw made of keratin, which they use to filter plankton from the water. Some whales, such as the humpback, reside in the polar regions where they feed on a reliable source of schooling fish and krill.[11] These animals rely on their well-developed flippers and tail fin to propel themselves through the water; they swim by moving their fore-flippers and tail fin up and down. Whale ribs loosely articulate with their thoracic vertebrae at the proximal end, but do not form a rigid rib cage. This adaptation allows the chest to compress during deep dives as the pressure increases.[12]  Mysticetes consist of four families: rorquals (balaenopterids), cetotheriids, right whales (balaenids), and grey whales (eschrichtiids).
+
+The main difference between each family of mysticete is in their feeding adaptations and subsequent behaviour.
+Balaenopterids are the rorquals. These animals, along with the cetotheriids, rely on their throat pleats to gulp large amounts of water while feeding. The throat pleats extend from the mouth to the navel and allow the mouth to expand to a large volume for more efficient capture of the small animals they feed on. Balaenopterids consist of two genera and eight species.[13]
+Balaenids are the right whales. These animals have very large heads, which can make up as much as 40% of their body mass, and much of the head is the mouth. This allows them to take in large amounts of water into their mouths, letting them feed more effectively.[14]
+Eschrichtiids have one living member: the grey whale. They are bottom feeders, mainly eating crustaceans and benthic invertebrates. They feed by turning on their sides and taking in water mixed with sediment, which is then expelled through the baleen, leaving their prey trapped inside. This is an efficient method of hunting, in which the whale has no major competitors.[15]
+
+Odontocetes are known as toothed whales; they have teeth and only one blowhole. They rely on their well-developed sonar to find their way in the water. Toothed whales send out ultrasonic clicks using the melon. Sound waves travel through the water. Upon striking an object in the water, the sound waves bounce back at the whale. These vibrations are received through fatty tissues in the jaw, which is then rerouted into the ear-bone and into the brain where the vibrations are interpreted.[16] All toothed whales are opportunistic, meaning they will eat anything they can fit in their throat because they are unable to chew. These animals rely on their well-developed flippers and tail fin to propel themselves through the water; they swim by moving their fore-flippers and tail fin up and down. Whale ribs loosely articulate with their thoracic vertebrae at the proximal end, but they do not form a rigid rib cage. This adaptation allows the chest to compress during deep dives as opposed to resisting the force of water pressure.[12] Excluding dolphins and porpoises, odontocetes consist of four families: belugas and narwhals (monodontids), sperm whales (physeterids), dwarf and pygmy sperm whales (kogiids), and beaked whales (ziphiids). There are six species, sometimes referred to as "blackfish", that are dolphins commonly misconceived as whales: the killer whale, the melon-headed whale, the pygmy killer whale, the false killer whale, and the two species of pilot whales, all of which are classified under the family Delphinidae (oceanic dolphins).[5]
+
+The differences between families of odontocetes include size, feeding adaptations and distribution.
+Monodontids consist of two species: the beluga and the narwhal. They both reside in the frigid arctic and both have large amounts of blubber. Belugas, being white, hunt in large pods near the surface and around pack ice, their coloration acting as camouflage. Narwhals, being black, hunt in large pods in the aphotic zone, but their underbelly still remains white to remain camouflaged when something is looking directly up or down at them. They have no dorsal fin to prevent collision with pack ice.[17]
+Physeterids and Kogiids consist of sperm whales. Sperm whales consist the largest and smallest odontocetes, and spend a large portion of their life hunting squid. P. macrocephalus spends most of its life in search of squid in the depths; these animals do not require any degree of light at all, in fact, blind sperm whales have been caught in perfect health. The behaviour of Kogiids remains largely unknown, but, due to their small lungs, they are thought to hunt in the photic zone.[18]
+Ziphiids consist of 22 species of beaked whale. These vary from size, to coloration, to distribution, but they all share a similar hunting style. They use a suction technique, aided by a pair of grooves on the underside of their head, not unlike the throat pleats on the rorquals, to feed.[19]
+
+Whales are descendants of land-dwelling mammals of the artiodactyl order (even-toed ungulates). They are related to the Indohyus, an extinct chevrotain-like ungulate, from which they split approximately 48 million years ago.[20][21] Primitive cetaceans, or archaeocetes, first took to the sea approximately 49 million years ago and became fully aquatic 5–10 million years later. What defines an archaeocete is the presence of anatomical features exclusive to cetaceans, alongside other primitive features not found in modern cetaceans, such as visible legs or asymmetrical teeth.[22][23][24][10] Their features became adapted for living in the marine environment. Major anatomical changes included their hearing set-up that channeled vibrations from the jaw to the earbone (Ambulocetus 49 mya), a streamlined body and the growth of flukes on the tail (Protocetus 43 mya), the migration of the nostrils toward the top of the cranium (blowholes), and the modification of the forelimbs into flippers (Basilosaurus 35 mya), and the shrinking and eventual disappearance of the hind limbs (the first odontocetes and mysticetes 34 mya).[25][26][27]
+
+Whale morphology shows a number of examples of convergent evolution, the most obvious being the streamlined fish-like body shape.[28] Other examples include the use of echolocation for hunting in low light conditions — which is the same hearing adaptation used by bats — and, in the rorqual whales, jaw adaptations, similar to those found in pelicans, that enable engulfment feeding.[29]
+
+Today, the closest living relatives of cetaceans are the hippopotamuses; these share a semi-aquatic ancestor that branched off from other artiodactyls some 60 mya.[10] Around 40 mya, a common ancestor between the two branched off into cetacea and anthracotheres; nearly all anthracotheres became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene 2.5 mya, eventually leaving only one surviving lineage – the hippopotamus.[30]
+
+Whales split into two separate parvorders around 34 mya – the baleen whales (Mysticetes) and the toothed whales (Odontocetes).[31][32][33]
+
+Whales have torpedo shaped bodies with non-flexible necks, limbs modified into flippers, non-existent external ear flaps, a large tail fin, and flat heads (with the exception of monodontids and ziphiids). Whale skulls have small eye orbits, long snouts (with the exception of monodontids and ziphiids) and eyes placed on the sides of its head. Whales range in size from the 2.6-metre (8.5 ft) and 135-kilogram (298 lb) dwarf sperm whale to the 34-metre (112 ft) and 190-metric-ton (210-short-ton) blue whale. Overall, they tend to dwarf other cetartiodactyls; the blue whale is the largest creature on earth. Several species have female-biased sexual dimorphism, with the females being larger than the males. One exception is with the sperm whale, which has males larger than the females.[34][35]
+
+Odontocetes, such as the sperm whale, possess teeth with cementum cells overlying dentine cells. Unlike human teeth, which are composed mostly of enamel on the portion of the tooth outside of the gum, whale teeth have cementum outside the gum. Only in larger whales, where the cementum is worn away on the tip of the tooth, does enamel show. Mysticetes have large whalebone, as opposed to teeth, made of keratin. Mysticetes have two blowholes, whereas Odontocetes contain only one.[36]
+
+Breathing involves expelling stale air from the blowhole, forming an upward, steamy spout, followed by inhaling fresh air into the lungs; a humpback whale's lungs can hold about 5,000 litres of air. Spout shapes differ among species, which facilitates identification.[37][38]
+
+All whales have a thick layer of blubber. In species that live near the poles, the blubber can be as thick as 11 inches. This blubber can help with buoyancy (which is helpful for a 100-ton whale), protection to some extent as predators would have a hard time getting through a thick layer of fat, and energy for fasting when migrating to the equator; the primary usage for blubber is insulation from the harsh climate. It can constitute as much as 50% of a whale's body weight. Calves are born with only a thin layer of blubber, but some species compensate for this with thick lanugos.[39][40]
+
+Whales have a two- to three-chambered stomach that is similar in structure to terrestrial carnivores. Mysticetes contain a proventriculus as an extension of the oesophagus; this contains stones that grind up food. They also have fundic and pyloric chambers.[41]
+
+Whales have two flippers on the front, and a tail fin. These flippers contain four digits. Although whales do not possess fully developed hind limbs, some, such as the sperm whale and bowhead whale, possess discrete rudimentary appendages, which may contain feet and digits. Whales are fast swimmers in comparison to seals, which typically cruise at 5–15 kn, or 9–28 kilometres per hour (5.6–17.4 mph); the fin whale, in comparison, can travel at speeds up to 47 kilometres per hour (29 mph) and the sperm whale can reach speeds of 35 kilometres per hour (22 mph). The fusing of the neck vertebrae, while increasing stability when swimming at high speeds, decreases flexibility; whales are unable to turn their heads. When swimming, whales rely on their tail fin propel them through the water. Flipper movement is continuous. Whales swim by moving their tail fin and lower body up and down, propelling themselves through vertical movement, while their flippers are mainly used for steering. Some species log out of the water, which may allow them to travel faster. Their skeletal anatomy allows them to be fast swimmers. Most species have a dorsal fin.[42][43]
+
+Whales are adapted for diving to great depths. In addition to their streamlined bodies, they can slow their heart rate to conserve oxygen; blood is rerouted from tissue tolerant of water pressure to the heart and brain among other organs; haemoglobin and myoglobin store oxygen in body tissue; and they have twice the concentration of myoglobin than haemoglobin. Before going on long dives, many whales exhibit a behaviour known as sounding; they  stay close to the surface for a series of short, shallow dives while building their oxygen reserves, and then make a sounding dive.[12][44]
+
+The whale ear has specific adaptations to the marine environment. In humans, the middle ear works as an impedance equalizer between the outside air's low impedance and the cochlear fluid's high impedance. In whales, and other marine mammals, there is no great difference between the outer and inner environments. Instead of sound passing through the outer ear to the middle ear, whales receive sound through the throat, from which it passes through a low-impedance fat-filled cavity to the inner ear.[45] The whale ear is acoustically isolated from the skull by air-filled sinus pockets, which allow for greater directional hearing underwater.[46] Odontocetes send out high frequency clicks from an organ known as a melon. This melon consists of fat, and the skull of any such creature containing a melon will have a large depression. The melon size varies between species, the bigger the more dependent they are of it. A beaked whale for example has a small bulge sitting on top of its skull, whereas a sperm whale's head is filled up mainly with the melon.[47][48][49][50]
+
+The whale eye is relatively small for its size, yet they do retain a good degree of eyesight. As well as this, the eyes of a whale are placed on the sides of its head, so their vision consists of two fields, rather than a binocular view like humans have. When belugas surface, their lens and cornea correct the nearsightedness that results from the refraction of light; they contain both rod and cone cells, meaning they can see in both dim and bright light, but they have far more rod cells than they do cone cells. Whales do, however, lack short wavelength sensitive visual pigments in their cone cells indicating a more limited capacity for colour vision than most mammals.[51] Most whales have slightly flattened eyeballs, enlarged pupils (which shrink as they surface to prevent damage), slightly flattened corneas and a  tapetum lucidum; these adaptations allow for large amounts of light to pass through the eye and, therefore, a very clear image of the surrounding area. They also have glands on the eyelids and outer corneal layer that act as protection for the cornea.[52][53]
+
+The olfactory lobes are absent in toothed whales, suggesting that they have no sense of smell. Some whales, such as the bowhead whale, possess a vomeronasal organ, which does mean that they can "sniff out" krill.[54]
+
+Whales are not thought to have a good sense of taste, as their taste buds are atrophied or missing altogether.  However, some toothed whales have preferences between different kinds of fish, indicating some sort of attachment to taste. The presence of the Jacobson's organ indicates that whales can smell food once inside their mouth, which might be similar to the sensation of taste.[55]
+
+Whale vocalization is likely to serve several purposes. Some species, such as the humpback whale, communicate using melodic sounds, known as whale song. These sounds may be extremely loud, depending on the species. Humpback whales only have been heard making clicks, while toothed whales use sonar that may generate up to 20,000 watts of sound (+73 dBm or +43 dBw)[56] and be heard for many miles.
+
+Captive whales have occasionally been known to mimic human speech. Scientists have suggested this indicates a strong desire on behalf of the whales to communicate with humans, as whales have a very different vocal mechanism, so imitating human speech likely takes considerable effort.[57]
+
+Whales emit two distinct kinds of acoustic signals, which are called whistles and clicks:[58]
+Clicks are quick broadband burst pulses, used for sonar, although some lower-frequency broadband vocalizations may serve a non-echolocative purpose such as communication; for example, the pulsed calls of belugas. Pulses in a click train are emitted at intervals of ≈35–50 milliseconds, and in general these inter-click intervals are slightly greater than the round-trip time of sound to the target.
+Whistles are narrow-band frequency modulated (FM) signals, used for communicative purposes, such as contact calls.
+
+Whales are known to teach, learn, cooperate, scheme, and grieve.[59] The neocortex of many species of whale is home to elongated spindle neurons that, prior to 2007, were known only in hominids.[60] In humans, these cells are involved in social conduct, emotions,  judgement, and theory of mind. Whale spindle neurons are found in areas of the brain that are homologous to where they are found in humans, suggesting that they perform a similar function.[61]
+
+Brain size was previously considered a major indicator of the intelligence of an animal. Since most of the brain is used for maintaining bodily functions, greater ratios of brain to body mass may increase the amount of brain mass available for more complex cognitive tasks. Allometric analysis indicates that mammalian brain size scales at approximately the ⅔ or ¾ exponent of the body mass. Comparison of a particular animal's brain size with the expected brain size based on such allometric analysis provides an encephalisation quotient that can be used as another indication of animal intelligence. Sperm whales have the largest brain mass of any animal on earth, averaging 8,000 cubic centimetres (490 in3) and 7.8 kilograms (17 lb) in mature males, in comparison to the average human brain which averages 1,450 cubic centimetres (88 in3) in mature males.[62] The brain to body mass ratio in some odontocetes, such as belugas and narwhals, is second only to humans.[63]
+
+Small whales are known to engage in complex play behaviour, which includes such things as producing stable underwater toroidal air-core vortex rings or "bubble rings". There are two main methods of bubble ring production: rapid puffing of a burst of air into the water and allowing it to rise to the surface, forming a ring, or swimming repeatedly in a circle and then stopping to inject air into the helical vortex currents thus formed. They also appear to enjoy biting the vortex-rings, so that they burst into many separate bubbles and then rise quickly to the surface.[64] Some believe this is a means of communication.[65] Whales are also known to produce bubble-nets for the purpose of foraging.[66]
+
+Larger whales are also thought, to some degree, to engage in play. The southern right whale, for example, elevates their tail fluke above the water, remaining in the same position for a considerable amount of time. This is known as "sailing". It appears to be a form of play and is most commonly seen off the coast of Argentina and South Africa. Humpback whales, among others, are also known to display this behaviour.[67]
+
+Whales are fully aquatic creatures, which means that birth and courtship behaviours are very different from terrestrial and semi-aquatic creatures. Since they are unable to go onto land to calve, they deliver the baby with the  fetus positioned for tail-first delivery. This prevents the baby from drowning either upon or during delivery. To feed the new-born, whales, being aquatic, must squirt the milk into the mouth of the calf. Being mammals, they have mammary glands used for nursing calves; they are weaned off at about 11 months of age. This milk contains high amounts of fat which is meant to hasten the development of blubber; it contains so much fat that it has the consistency of toothpaste.[68] Females deliver a single calf with gestation lasting about a year, dependency until one to two years, and maturity around seven to ten years, all varying between the species.[69] This mode of reproduction produces few offspring, but increases the survival probability of each one. Females, referred to as "cows", carry the responsibility of childcare as males, referred to as "bulls", play no part in raising calves.
+
+Most mysticetes reside at the poles. So, to prevent the unborn calf from dying of frostbite, they migrate to calving/mating grounds. They will then stay there for a matter of months until the calf has developed enough blubber to survive the bitter temperatures of the poles. Until then, the calves will feed on the mother's fatty milk.[70] With the exception of the humpback whale, it is largely unknown when whales migrate. Most will travel from the Arctic or Antarctic into the tropics to mate, calve, and raise during the winter and spring; they will migrate back to the poles in the warmer summer months so the calf can continue growing while the mother can continue eating, as they fast in the breeding grounds. One exception to this is the southern right whale, which migrates to Patagonia and western New Zealand to calve; both are well out of the tropic zone.[71]
+
+Unlike most animals, whales are conscious breathers. All mammals sleep, but whales cannot afford to become unconscious for long because they may drown. While knowledge of sleep in wild cetaceans is limited, toothed cetaceans in captivity have been recorded to sleep with one side of their brain at a time, so that they may swim, breathe consciously, and avoid both predators and social contact during their period of rest.[72]
+
+A 2008 study found that sperm whales sleep in vertical postures just under the surface in passive shallow 'drift-dives', generally during the day, during which whales do not respond to passing vessels unless they are in contact, leading to the suggestion that whales possibly sleep during such dives.[72]
+
+All whales are carnivorous and predatory. Odontocetes, as a whole, mostly feed on fish and cephalopods, and then followed by crustaceans and bivalves. All species are generalist and opportunistic feeders. Mysticetes, as a whole, mostly feed on krill and plankton, followed by crustaceans and other invertebrates. A few are specialists. Examples include the blue whale, which eats almost exclusively krill, the minke whale, which eats mainly schooling fish, the sperm whale, which specialize on squid, and the grey whale which feed on bottom-dwelling invertebrates.[13][73][74] The elaborate baleen "teeth" of filter-feeding species, mysticetes, allow them to remove water before they swallow their planktonic food by using the teeth as a sieve.[68] Usually whales hunt solitarily, but they do sometimes hunt cooperatively in small groups. The former behaviour is typical when hunting non-schooling fish, slow-moving or immobile invertebrates or endothermic prey. When large amounts of prey are available, whales such as certain mysticetes hunt cooperatively in small groups.[75] Some cetaceans may forage with other kinds of animals, such as other species of whales or certain species of pinnipeds.[76][77]
+
+Large whales, such as mysticetes, are not usually subject to predation, but smaller whales, such as monodontids or ziphiids, are. These species are preyed on by the killer whale or orca. To subdue and kill whales, orcas continuously ram them with their heads; this can sometimes kill bowhead whales, or severely injure them. Other times they corral the narwhals or belugas before striking. They are typically hunted by groups of 10 or fewer orcas, but they are seldom attacked by an individual. Calves are more commonly taken by orcas, but adults can be targeted as well.[78]
+
+These small whales are also targeted by terrestrial and pagophilic predators. The polar bear is well adapted for hunting Arctic whales and calves. Bears are known to use sit-and-wait tactics as well as active stalking and pursuit of prey on ice or water. Whales lessen the chance of predation by gathering in groups. This however means less room around the breathing hole as the ice slowly closes the gap. When out at sea, whales dive out of the reach of surface-hunting orcas. Polar bear attacks on belugas and narwhals are usually successful in winter, but rarely inflict any damage in summer.[79]
+
+A 2010 study considered whales to be a positive influence to the productivity of ocean fisheries, in what has been termed a "whale pump." Whales carry nutrients such as nitrogen from the depths back to the surface. This functions as an upward biological pump, reversing an earlier presumption that whales accelerate the loss of nutrients to the bottom. This nitrogen input in the Gulf of Maine is "more than the input of all rivers combined" emptying into the gulf, some 23,000 metric tons (25,000 short tons) each year.[81][82]
+Whales defecate at the ocean's surface; their excrement is important for fisheries because it is rich in iron and nitrogen. The whale faeces are liquid and instead of sinking, they stay at the surface where phytoplankton feed off it.[82][83][84]
+
+Upon death, whale carcasses fall to the deep ocean and provide a substantial habitat for marine life. Evidence of whale falls in present-day and fossil records shows that deep sea whale falls support a rich assemblage of creatures, with a global diversity of 407 species, comparable to other neritic biodiversity hotspots, such as cold seeps and hydrothermal vents.[85]
+
+Deterioration of whale carcasses happens though a series of three stages. Initially, moving organisms such as sharks and hagfish, scavenge the soft tissues at a rapid rate over a period of months, and as long as two years. This is followed by the colonization of bones and surrounding sediments (which contain organic matter) by enrichment opportunists, such as crustaceans and polychaetes, throughout a period of years. Finally, sulfophilic bacteria reduce the bones releasing hydrogen sulfide enabling the growth of chemoautotrophic organisms, which in turn, support other organisms such as mussels, clams, limpets, and sea snails. This stage may last for decades and supports a rich assemblage of species, averaging 185 species per site.[85][86]
+
+Whaling by humans has existed since the Stone Age. Ancient whalers used harpoons to spear the  bigger animals from boats out at sea.[87] People from Norway and Japan started hunting whales around 2000 B.C.[88] Whales are typically hunted for their meat and blubber by aboriginal groups; they used baleen for baskets or roofing, and made tools and masks out of bones.[88] The Inuit hunted whales in the Arctic Ocean.[88] The Basques started whaling as early as the 11th century, sailing as far as Newfoundland in the 16th century in search of right whales.[89][90] 18th- and 19th-century whalers hunted whales mainly for their oil, which was used as lamp fuel and a lubricant, baleen or whalebone, which was used for items such as corsets and skirt hoops,[88] and ambergris, which was used as a fixative for perfumes. The most successful whaling nations at this time were the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States.[91]
+
+Commercial whaling was historically important as an industry well throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Whaling was at that time a sizeable European industry with ships from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany, sometimes collaborating to hunt whales in the Arctic, sometimes in competition leading even to war.[92] By the early 1790s, whalers, namely the Americans and Australians, focused efforts in the South Pacific where they mainly hunted sperm whales and right whales, with catches of up to 39,000 right whales by Americans alone.[89][93] By 1853, US profits reached US$11,000,000 (UK£6.5m), equivalent to US$348,000,000 (UK£230m) today, the most profitable year for the American whaling industry.[94] Commonly exploited species included North Atlantic right whales, sperm whales, which were mainly hunted by Americans, bowhead whales, which were mainly hunted by the Dutch, common minke whales, blue whales, and grey whales. The scale of whale harvesting decreased substantially after 1982 when the International Whaling Commission (IWC) placed a moratorium which set a catch limit for each country, excluding aboriginal groups until 2004.[95]
+
+Current whaling nations are Norway, Iceland, and Japan, despite their joining to the IWC, as well as the aboriginal communities of Siberia, Alaska, and northern Canada.[96] Subsistence hunters typically use whale products for themselves and depend on them for survival. National and international authorities have given special treatment to aboriginal hunters since their methods of hunting are seen as less destructive and wasteful. This distinction is being questioned as these aboriginal groups are using more modern weaponry and mechanized transport to hunt with, and are selling whale products in the marketplace. Some anthropologists argue that the term "subsistence" should also apply to these cash-based exchanges as long as they take place within local production and consumption.[97][98][99] In 1946, the IWC placed a moratorium, limiting the annual whale catch. Since then, yearly profits for these "subsistence" hunters have been close to US$31 million (UK£20m) per year.[95]
+
+Whales can also be threatened by humans more indirectly. They are unintentionally caught in fishing nets by commercial fisheries as bycatch and accidentally swallow fishing hooks. Gillnetting and Seine netting is a significant cause of mortality in whales and other marine mammals.[100] Species commonly entangled include beaked whales. Whales are also affected by marine pollution. High levels of organic chemicals accumulate in these animals since they are high in the food chain. They have large reserves of blubber, more so for toothed whales as they are higher up the food chain than baleen whales. Lactating mothers can pass the toxins on to their young. These pollutants can cause gastrointestinal cancers and greater vulnerability to infectious diseases.[101] They can also be poisoned by swallowing litter, such as plastic bags.[102] Advanced military sonar harms whales. Sonar interferes with the basic biological functions of whales—such as feeding and mating—by impacting their ability to echolocate. Whales swim in response to sonar and sometimes experience decompression sickness due to rapid changes in depth. Mass strandings have been triggered by sonar activity, resulting in injury or death.[103][104][105][106]
+
+Whaling decreased substantially after 1946 when, in response to the steep decline in whale populations, the International Whaling Commission placed a moratorium which set a catch limit for each country; this excluded aboriginal groups up until 2004.[91][98][107][108] As of 2015, aboriginal communities are allowed to take 280 bowhead whales off Alaska and two from the western coast of Greenland, 620 grey whales off Washington state, three common minke whales off the eastern coast of Greenland and 178 on their western coast, 10 fin whales from the west coast of Greenland, nine humpback whales from the west coast of Greenland and 20 off St. Vincent and the Grenadines each year.[108] Several species that were commercially exploited have rebounded in numbers; for example, grey whales may be as numerous as they were prior to harvesting, but the North Atlantic population is functionally extinct. Conversely, the North Atlantic right whale was extirpated from much of its former range, which stretched across the North Atlantic, and only remains in small fragments along the coast of Canada, Greenland, and is considered functionally extinct along the European coastline.[109]
+
+The IWC has designated two whale sanctuaries: the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, and the Indian Ocean Whale Sanctuary. The Southern Ocean whale sanctuary spans 30,560,860 square kilometres (11,799,610 sq mi) and envelopes Antarctica.[110] The Indian Ocean whale sanctuary takes up all of the Indian Ocean south of 55°S.[111] The IWC is a voluntary organization, with no treaty. Any nation may leave as they wish; the IWC cannot enforce any law it makes.
+
+As of 2013, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recognized 86 cetacean species, 40 of which are considered whales. As of 2018, six are considered at risk, as they are ranked  "Endangered" (blue whale,  North Atlantic right whale,[112] North Pacific right whale, and sei whale), and "Vulnerable" (fin whale[113] and sperm whale). Twenty-one species have a "Data Deficient" ranking.[114] Species that live in polar habitats are vulnerable to the effects of recent and ongoing climate change, particularly the time when pack ice forms and melts.[115]
+
+An estimated 13 million people went whale watching globally in 2008, in all oceans except the Arctic.[116] Rules and codes of conduct have been created to minimize harassment of the whales.[117] Iceland, Japan and Norway have both whaling and whale watching industries. Whale watching lobbyists are concerned that the most inquisitive whales, which approach boats closely and provide much of the entertainment on whale-watching trips, will be the first to be taken if whaling is resumed in the same areas.[118] Whale watching generated US$2.1 billion (UK£1.4 billion) per annum in tourism revenue worldwide, employing around 13,000 workers.[119] In contrast, the whaling industry, with the moratorium in place, generates US$31 million (UK£20 million) per year.[95] The size and rapid growth of the industry has led to complex and continuing debates with the whaling industry about the best use of whales as a natural resource.
+
+As marine creatures that reside in either the depths or the poles, humans knew very little about whales over the course of history; many feared or revered them. The Vikings and various arctic tribes revered the whale as they were important pieces of their lives. In Inuit creation myths, when 'Big Raven', a deity in human form, found a stranded whale, he was told by the Great Spirit where to find special mushrooms that would give him the strength to drag the whale back to the sea and thus, return order to the world. In an Icelandic legend, a man threw a stone at a fin whale and hit the blowhole, causing the whale to burst. The man was told not to go to sea for twenty years, but during the nineteenth year he went fishing and a whale came and killed him.
+
+Whales played a major part in shaping the art forms of many coastal civilizations, such as the Norse, with some dating to the Stone Age. Petroglyphs off a cliff face in Bangudae, South Korea show 300 depictions of various animals, a third of which are whales. Some show particular detail in which there are throat pleats, typical of rorquals. These petroglyphs show these people, of around 7,000 to 3,500 B.C.E. in South Korea, had a very high dependency on whales.[120]
+
+The Pacific Islanders and Australian Aborigines viewed whales as bringers of good and joy. One exception is French Polynesia, where, in many parts, cetaceans are met with great brutality.[121]
+
+In Vietnam and Ghana, among other places, whales hold a sense of divinity. They are so respected in their cultures that they occasionally hold funerals for beached whales, a throwback to Vietnam's ancient sea-based Austro-Asiatic culture.[122][123][124][125] The god of the seas, according to Chinese folklore, was a large whale with human limbs.
+
+Whales have also played a role in sacred texts such as the Bible. It mentions whales in Genesis 1:21, Job 7:12, and Ezekiel 32:2. The "leviathan" described at length in Job 41:1-34 is generally understood to refer to a whale. The "sea monsters" in Lamentations 4:3 have been taken by some to refer to marine mammals, in particular whales, although most modern versions use the word "jackals" instead.[126] The story of Jonah being swallowed by a great fish is told both in the Qur'an and in the Bible. A medieval column capital sculpture depicting this was made in the 12th century in the abbey church in Mozac, France.[127] The Old Testament contains the Book of Jonah and in the New Testament, Jesus mentions this story in Matthew 12:40.[128]
+
+In 1585, Alessandro Farnese, 1585, and Francois, Duke of Anjou, 1582, were greeted on his ceremonial entry into the port city of Antwerp by floats including "Neptune and the Whale", indicating at least the city's dependence on the sea for its wealth.[129]
+
+In 1896, an article in The Pall Mall Gazette popularised a practice of alternative medicine that probably began in the whaling town of Eden, Australia two or three years earlier.[130] It was believed that climbing inside a whale carcass and remaining there for a few hours would relief symptoms of rheumatism.[131]
+
+Whales continue to be prevalent in modern literature. For example, Herman Melville's Moby Dick features a "great white whale" as the main antagonist for Ahab, who eventually is killed by it. The whale is an albino sperm whale, considered by Melville to be the largest type of whale, and is partly based on the historically attested bull whale Mocha Dick. Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories includes the story of "How the Whale got in his Throat". Niki Caro's film the Whale Rider has a Māori girl ride a whale in her journey to be a suitable heir to the chieftain-ship.[132] Walt Disney's film Pinocchio features a showdown with a giant whale named Monstro at the end of the film. Alan Hovhaness' orchestra And God Created Great Whales included the recorded sounds of humpback and bowhead whales.[133] Léo Ferré's song "Il n'y a plus rien" is an example of biomusic that begins and ends with recorded whale songs mixed with a symphonic orchestra and his voice.
+
+Belugas were the first whales to be kept in captivity. Other species were too rare, too shy, or too big. The first beluga was shown at Barnum's Museum in New York City in 1861.[134] For most of the 20th century, Canada was the predominant source of wild belugas.[135] They were taken from the St. Lawrence River estuary until the late 1960s, after which they were predominantly taken from the Churchill River estuary until capture was banned in 1992.[135] Russia has become the largest provider since it had been banned in Canada.[135] Belugas are caught in the Amur River delta and their eastern coast, and then are either transported domestically to aquariums or dolphinariums in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Sochi, or exported to other countries, such as Canada.[135] Most captive belugas are caught in the wild, since captive-breeding programs are not very successful.[136]
+
+As of 2006, 30 belugas were in Canada and 28 in the United States, and 42 deaths in captivity had been reported up to that time.[135] A single specimen can reportedly fetch up to US$100,000 (UK£64,160) on the market. The beluga's popularity is due to its unique colour and its facial expressions. The latter is possible because while most cetacean "smiles" are fixed, the extra movement afforded by the beluga's unfused cervical vertebrae allows a greater range of apparent expression.[137]
+
+Between 1960 and 1992, the Navy carried out a program that included the study of marine mammals' abilities with sonar, with the objective of improving the detection of underwater objects. A large number of belugas were used from 1975 on, the first being dolphins.[137][138] The program also included training them to carry equipment and material to divers working underwater by holding cameras in their mouths to locate lost objects, survey ships and submarines, and underwater monitoring.[138] A similar program was used by the Russian Navy during the Cold War, in which belugas were also trained for antimining operations in the Arctic.[139]
+
+Aquariums have tried housing other species of whales in captivity. The success of belugas turned attention to maintaining their relative, the narwhal, in captivity. However, in repeated attempts in the 1960s and 1970s, all narwhals kept in captivity died within months. A pair of pygmy right whales were retained in an enclosed area (with nets); they were eventually released in South Africa. There was one attempt to keep a stranded Sowerby's beaked whale calf in captivity; the calf rammed into the tank wall, breaking its rostrum, which resulted in death. It was thought that Sowerby's beaked whale evolved to swim fast in a straight line, and a 30-metre (98 ft) tank was not big enough.[140] There have been attempts to keep baleen whales in captivity. There were three attempts to keep grey whales in captivity. Gigi was a grey whale calf that died in transport. Gigi II was another grey whale calf that was captured in the Ojo de Liebre Lagoon, and was transported to SeaWorld.[141] The 680-kilogram (1,500 lb) calf was a popular attraction, and behaved normally, despite being separated from his mother. A year later, the 8,000-kilogram (18,000 lb) whale grew too big to keep in captivity and was released; it was the first of two grey whales, the other being another grey whale calf named JJ, to successfully be kept in captivity.[141] There were three attempts to keep minke whales in captivity in Japan. They were kept in a tidal pool with a sea-gate at the Izu Mito Sea Paradise. Another, unsuccessful, attempt was made by the U.S. [142] One stranded humpback whale calf was kept in captivity for rehabilitation, but died days later.[143]

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+Health is a state of physical, mental and social well-being in which disease and infirmity are absent.[1]
+
+The meaning of health has evolved over time. In keeping with the biomedical perspective, early definitions of health focused on the theme of the body's ability to function; health was seen as a state of normal function that could be disrupted from time to time by disease. An example of such a definition of health is: "a state characterized by anatomic, physiologic, and psychological integrity; ability to perform personally valued family, work, and community roles; ability to deal with physical, biological, psychological, and social stress".[2] Then in 1948, in a radical departure from previous definitions, the World Health Organization (WHO) proposed a definition that aimed higher: linking health to well-being, in terms of "physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".[3] Although this definition was welcomed by some as being innovative, it was also criticized as being vague, excessively broad and was not construed as measurable. For a long time, it was set aside as an impractical ideal and most discussions of health returned to the practicality of the biomedical model.[4]
+
+Just as there was a shift from viewing disease as a state to thinking of it as a process, the same shift happened in definitions of health. Again, the WHO played a leading role when it fostered the development of the health promotion movement in the 1980s. This brought in a new conception of health, not as a state, but in dynamic terms of resiliency, in other words, as "a resource for living". 1984 WHO revised the definition of health defined it as "the extent to which an individual or group is able to realize aspirations and satisfy needs and to change or cope with the environment. Health is a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living; it is a positive concept, emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities".[5] Thus, health referred to the ability to maintain homeostasis and recover from insults. Mental, intellectual, emotional and social health referred to a person's ability to handle stress, to acquire skills, to maintain relationships, all of which form resources for resiliency and independent living.[4] This opens up many possibilities for health to be taught, strengthened and learned.
+
+Since the late 1970s, the federal Healthy People Initiative has been a visible component of the United States’ approach to improving population health.[6][7] In each decade, a new version of Healthy People is issued,[8] featuring updated goals and identifying topic areas and quantifiable objectives for health improvement during the succeeding ten years, with assessment at that point of progress or lack thereof. Progress has been limited to many objectives, leading to concerns about the effectiveness of Healthy People in shaping outcomes in the context of a decentralized and uncoordinated US health system. Healthy People 2020 gives more prominence to health promotion and preventive approaches and adds a substantive focus on the importance of addressing social determinants of health. A new expanded digital interface facilitates use and dissemination rather than bulky printed books as produced in the past. The impact of these changes to Healthy People will be determined in the coming years.[9]
+
+Systematic activities to prevent or cure health problems and promote good health in humans are undertaken by health care providers. Applications with regard to animal health are covered by the veterinary sciences. The term "healthy" is also widely used in the context of many types of non-living organizations and their impacts for the benefit of humans, such as in the sense of healthy communities, healthy cities or healthy environments. In addition to health care interventions and a person's surroundings, a number of other factors are known to influence the health status of individuals, including their background, lifestyle, and economic, social conditions and spirituality; these are referred to as "determinants of health." Studies have shown that high levels of stress can affect human health.[10]
+
+In the first decade of the 21st century, the conceptualization of health as an ability opened the door for self-assessments to become the main indicators to judge the performance of efforts aimed at improving human health.[11] It also created the opportunity for every person to feel healthy, even in the presence of multiple chronic diseases, or a terminal condition, and for the re-examination of determinants of health, away from the traditional approach that focuses on the reduction of the prevalence of diseases.[12]
+
+Generally, the context in which an individual lives is of great importance for both his health status and quality of their life. It is increasingly recognized that health is maintained and improved not only through the advancement and application of health science, but also through the efforts and intelligent lifestyle choices of the individual and society. According to the World Health Organization, the main determinants of health include the social and economic environment, the physical environment and the person's individual characteristics and behaviors.[13]
+
+More specifically, key factors that have been found to influence whether people are healthy or unhealthy include the following:[13][14][15]
+
+
+
+
+
+An increasing number of studies and reports from different organizations and contexts examine the linkages between health and different factors, including lifestyles, environments, health care organization and health policy, one specific health policy brought into many countries in recent years was the introduction of the sugar tax. Beverage taxes came into light with increasing concerns about obesity, particularly among youth. Sugar-sweetened beverages have become a target of anti-obesity initiatives with increasing evidence of their link to obesity.[16]– such as the 1974 Lalonde report from Canada;[15] the Alameda County Study in California;[17] and the series of World Health Reports of the World Health Organization, which focuses on global health issues including access to health care and improving public health outcomes, especially in developing countries.[18]
+
+The concept of the "health field," as distinct from medical care, emerged from the Lalonde report from Canada. The report identified three interdependent fields as key determinants of an individual's health. These are:[15]
+
+The maintenance and promotion of health is achieved through different combination of physical, mental, and social well-being, together sometimes referred to as the "health triangle."[19][20] The WHO's 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion further stated that health is not just a state, but also "a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. Health is a positive concept emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities."[21]
+
+Focusing more on lifestyle issues and their relationships with functional health, data from the Alameda County Study suggested that people can improve their health via exercise, enough sleep, spending time in nature, maintaining a healthy body weight, limiting alcohol use, and avoiding smoking.[22] Health and illness can co-exist, as even people with multiple chronic diseases or terminal illnesses can consider themselves healthy.[23]
+
+The environment is often cited as an important factor influencing the health status of individuals. This includes characteristics of the natural environment, the built environment and the social environment. Factors such as clean water and air, adequate housing, and safe communities and roads all have been found to contribute to good health, especially to the health of infants and children.[13][24] Some studies have shown that a lack of neighborhood recreational spaces including natural environment leads to lower levels of personal satisfaction and higher levels of obesity, linked to lower overall health and well being.[25] It has been demonstrated that increased time spent in natural environments is associated with improved self-reported health [26], suggesting that the positive health benefits of natural space in urban neighborhoods should be taken into account in public policy and land use.
+
+Genetics, or inherited traits from parents, also play a role in determining the health status of individuals and populations. This can encompass both the predisposition to certain diseases and health conditions, as well as the habits and behaviors individuals develop through the lifestyle of their families. For example, genetics may play a role in the manner in which people cope with stress, either mental, emotional or physical. For example, obesity is a significant problem in the United States that contributes to bad mental health and causes stress in the lives of great numbers of people.[27] (One difficulty is the issue raised by the debate over the relative strengths of genetics and other factors; interactions between genetics and environment may be of particular importance.)
+
+A number of health issues are common around the globe. Disease is one of the most common. According to GlobalIssues.org, approximately 36 million people die each year from non-communicable (not contagious) disease including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung disease (Shah, 2014).
+
+Among communicable diseases, both viral and bacterial, AIDS/HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria are the most common, causing millions of deaths every year (Shah, 2014).
+
+Another health issue that causes death or contributes to other health problems is malnutrition, especially among children. One of the groups malnutrition affects most is young children. Approximately 7.5 million children under the age of 5 die from malnutrition, usually brought on by not having the money to find or make food (Shah, 2014).
+
+Bodily injuries are also a common health issue worldwide. These injuries, including broken bones, fractures, and burns can reduce a person's quality of life or can cause fatalities including infections that resulted from the injury or the severity injury in general (Moffett, 2013).[28]
+
+Lifestyle choices are contributing factors to poor health in many cases. These include smoking cigarettes, and can also include a poor diet, whether it is overeating or an overly constrictive diet. Inactivity can also contribute to health issues and also a lack of sleep, excessive alcohol consumption, and neglect of oral hygiene (Moffett2013).There are also genetic disorders that are inherited by the person and can vary in how much they affect the person and when they surface (Moffett, 2013).
+
+Though the majority of these health issues are preventable, a major contributor to global ill health is the fact that approximately 1 billion people lack access to health care systems (Shah, 2014). Arguably, the most common and harmful health issue is that a great many people do not have access to quality remedies.[29][30]
+
+The World Health Organization describes mental health as "a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community".[31] Mental health is not just the absence of mental illness.[32]
+
+Mental illness is described as 'the spectrum of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral conditions that interfere with social and emotional well-being and the lives and productivity of people. Having a mental illness can seriously impair, temporarily or permanently, the mental functioning of a person. Other terms include: 'mental health problem', 'illness', 'disorder', 'dysfunction'.[33]
+
+Roughly one fifth of all adults 18 and over in the US are considered diagnosable with mental illness. Mental illnesses are the leading cause of disability in the US and Canada. Examples include, schizophrenia, ADHD, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and autism.[34]
+
+Many factors contribute to mental health problems, including:
+
+Achieving and maintaining health is an ongoing process, shaped by both the evolution of health care knowledge and practices as well as personal strategies and organized interventions for staying healthy.
+
+An important way to maintain your personal health is to have a healthy diet. A healthy diet includes a variety of plant-based and animal-based foods that provide nutrients to your body. Such nutrients give you energy and keep your body running. Nutrients help build and strengthen bones, muscles, and tendons and also regulate body processes (i.e. blood pressure). Water is essential for growth, reproduction and good health. Macronutrients are consumed in relatively large quantities and include proteins, carbohydrates, and fats and fatty acids. Micronutrients – vitamins and minerals – are consumed in relatively smaller quantities, but are essential to body processes.[39] The food guide pyramid is a pyramid-shaped guide of healthy foods divided into sections. Each section shows the recommended intake for each food group (i.e. Protein, Fat, Carbohydrates, and Sugars). Making healthy food choices is important because it can lower your risk of heart disease, developing some types of cancer, and it will contribute to maintaining a healthy weight.[40]
+
+The Mediterranean diet is commonly associated with health-promoting effects due to the fact that it contains some bioactive compounds like phenolic compounds, isoprenoids and alkaloids.[41]
+
+Physical exercise enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness. It strengthens muscles and improves the cardiovascular system. According to the National Institutes of Health, there are four types of exercise: endurance, strength, flexibility, and balance.[42]
+
+Sleep is an essential component to maintaining health. In children, sleep is also vital for growth and development. Ongoing sleep deprivation has been linked to an increased risk for some chronic health problems. In addition, sleep deprivation has been shown to correlate with both increased susceptibility to illness and slower recovery times from illness.[43] In one study, people with chronic insufficient sleep, set as six hours of sleep a night or less, were found to be four times more likely to catch a cold compared to those who reported sleeping for seven hours or more a night.[44] Due to the role of sleep in regulating metabolism, insufficient sleep may also play a role in weight gain or, conversely, in impeding weight loss.[45] Additionally, in 2007, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is the cancer research agency for the World Health Organization, declared that "shiftwork that involves circadian disruption is probably carcinogenic to humans," speaking to the dangers of long-term nighttime work due to its intrusion on sleep.[46] In 2015, the National Sleep Foundation released updated recommendations for sleep duration requirements based on age and concluded that "Individuals who habitually sleep outside the normal range may be exhibiting signs or symptoms of serious health problems or, if done volitionally, may be compromising their health and well-being."[47]
+
+Health science is the branch of science focused on health. There are two main approaches to health science: the study and research of the body and health-related issues to understand how humans (and animals) function, and the application of that knowledge to improve health and to prevent and cure diseases and other physical and mental impairments. The science builds on many sub-fields, including biology, biochemistry, physics, epidemiology, pharmacology, medical sociology. Applied health sciences endeavor to better understand and improve human health through applications in areas such as health education, biomedical engineering, biotechnology and public health.
+
+Organized interventions to improve health based on the principles and procedures developed through the health sciences are provided by practitioners trained in medicine, nursing, nutrition, pharmacy, social work, psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy and other health care professions. Clinical practitioners focus mainly on the health of individuals, while public health practitioners consider the overall health of communities and populations. Workplace wellness programs are increasingly adopted by companies for their value in improving the health and well-being of their employees, as are school health services in order to improve the health and well-being of children.
+
+Public health has been described as "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals."[48] It is concerned with threats to the overall health of a community based on population health analysis. The population in question can be as small as a handful of people or as large as all the inhabitants of several continents (for instance, in the case of a pandemic). Public health has many sub-fields, but typically includes the interdisciplinary categories of epidemiology, biostatistics and health services. Environmental health, community health, behavioral health, and occupational health are also important areas of public health.
+
+The focus of public health interventions is to prevent and manage diseases, injuries and other health conditions through surveillance of cases and the promotion of healthy behavior, communities, and (in aspects relevant to human health) environments. Its aim is to prevent health problems from happening or re-occurring by implementing educational programs, developing policies, administering services and conducting research.[49] In many cases, treating a disease or controlling a pathogen can be vital to preventing it in others, such as during an outbreak. Vaccination programs and distribution of condoms to prevent the spread of communicable diseases are examples of common preventive public health measures, as are educational campaigns to promote vaccination and the use of condoms (including overcoming resistance to such).
+
+Public health also takes various actions to limit the health disparities between different areas of the country and, in some cases, the continent or world. One issue is the access of individuals and communities to health care in terms of financial, geographical or socio-cultural constraints.[50] Applications of the public health system include the areas of maternal and child health, health services administration, emergency response, and prevention and control of infectious and chronic diseases.
+
+The great positive impact of public health programs is widely acknowledged. Due in part to the policies and actions developed through public health, the 20th century registered a decrease in the mortality rates for infants and children and a continual increase in life expectancy in most parts of the world. For example, it is estimated that life expectancy has increased for Americans by thirty years since 1900,[51] and worldwide by six years since 1990.[52]
+
+Personal health depends partially on the active, passive, and assisted cues people observe and adopt about their own health. These include personal actions for preventing or minimizing the effects of a disease, usually a chronic condition, through integrative care. They also include personal hygiene practices to prevent infection and illness, such as bathing and washing hands with soap; brushing and flossing teeth; storing, preparing and handling food safely; and many others. The information gleaned from personal observations of daily living – such as about sleep patterns, exercise behavior, nutritional intake and environmental features – may be used to inform personal decisions and actions (e.g., "I feel tired in the morning so I am going to try sleeping on a different pillow"), as well as clinical decisions and treatment plans (e.g., a patient who notices his or her shoes are tighter than usual may be having exacerbation of left-sided heart failure, and may require diuretic medication to reduce fluid overload).[53]
+
+Personal health also depends partially on the social structure of a person's life. The maintenance of strong social relationships, volunteering, and other social activities have been linked to positive mental health and also increased longevity. One American study among seniors over age 70, found that frequent volunteering was associated with reduced risk of dying compared with older persons who did not volunteer, regardless of physical health status.[54] Another study from Singapore reported that volunteering retirees had significantly better cognitive performance scores, fewer depressive symptoms, and better mental well-being and life satisfaction than non-volunteering retirees.[55]
+
+Prolonged psychological stress may negatively impact health, and has been cited as a factor in cognitive impairment with aging, depressive illness, and expression of disease.[56] Stress management is the application of methods to either reduce stress or increase tolerance to stress. Relaxation techniques are physical methods used to relieve stress. Psychological methods include cognitive therapy, meditation, and positive thinking, which work by reducing response to stress. Improving relevant skills, such as problem solving and time management skills, reduces uncertainty and builds confidence, which also reduces the reaction to stress-causing situations where those skills are applicable.
+
+In addition to safety risks, many jobs also present risks of disease, illness and other long-term health problems. Among the most common occupational diseases are various forms of pneumoconiosis, including silicosis and coal worker's pneumoconiosis (black lung disease). Asthma is another respiratory illness that many workers are vulnerable to. Workers may also be vulnerable to skin diseases, including eczema, dermatitis, urticaria, sunburn, and skin cancer.[57][58] Other occupational diseases of concern include carpal tunnel syndrome and lead poisoning.
+
+As the number of service sector jobs has risen in developed countries, more and more jobs have become sedentary, presenting a different array of health problems than those associated with manufacturing and the primary sector. Contemporary problems, such as the growing rate of obesity and issues relating to stress and overwork in many countries, have further complicated the interaction between work and health.
+
+Many governments view occupational health as a social challenge and have formed public organizations to ensure the health and safety of workers. Examples of these include the British Health and Safety Executive and in the United States, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which conducts research on occupational health and safety, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which handles regulation and policy relating to worker safety and health.[59][60][61]

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+In the Christian tradition, a nativity scene (also known as a manger scene, crib, crèche (/krɛʃ/or /kreɪʃ/), or in Italian presepio or presepe) is the special exhibition, particularly during the Christmas season, of art objects representing the birth of Jesus.[1] While the term "nativity scene" may be used of any representation of the very common subject of the Nativity of Jesus in art, it has a more specialized sense referring to seasonal displays, either using model figures in a setting or reenactments called "living nativity scenes" (tableau vivant) in which real humans and animals participate. Nativity scenes exhibit figures representing the infant Jesus, his mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph.
+
+Other characters from the nativity story, such as shepherds, sheep, and angels may be displayed near the manger in a barn (or cave) intended to accommodate farm animals, as described in the Gospel of Luke. A donkey and an ox are typically depicted in the scene, and the Magi and their camels, described in the Gospel of Matthew, are also included. Several cultures add other characters and objects that may or may not be Biblical.
+
+Saint Francis of Assisi
+is credited with creating the first live nativity scene in 1223 in order to cultivate the worship of Christ. He himself had recently been inspired by his visit to the Holy Land, where he'd been shown Jesus's traditional birthplace. The scene's popularity inspired communities throughout Catholic countries to stage similar pantomimes.
+
+Distinctive nativity scenes and traditions have been created around the world, and are displayed during the Christmas season in churches, homes, shopping malls, and other venues, and occasionally on public lands and in public buildings. Nativity scenes have not escaped controversy, and in the United States of America their inclusion on public lands or in public buildings has provoked court challenges.
+
+A nativity scene takes its inspiration from the accounts of the birth of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.[2][3] Luke's narrative describes an angel announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds who then visit the humble site where Jesus is found lying in a manger, a trough for cattle feed.(Luke 2:8-20) Matthew's narrative tells of "wise men" (Greek: μαγοι, romanized: magoi ) who follow a star to the house where Jesus dwelt, and indicates that the Magi found Jesus some time later, less than two years after his birth, rather than on the exact day.(Mat.2:1-23) Matthew's account does not mention the angels and shepherds, while Luke's narrative is silent on the Magi and the star. The Magi and the angels are often displayed in a nativity scene with the Holy Family and the shepherds although there is no scriptural basis for their presence.(Luke 2:7;2:12;2:17)
+
+Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first nativity scene[4][5][6] in 1223 at Greccio, central Italy,[4][7] in an attempt to place the emphasis of Christmas upon the worship of Christ rather than upon secular materialism and gift giving.[8][9] The nativity scene created by Francis is described by Saint Bonaventure in his Life of Saint Francis of Assisi written around 1260.[10] Staged in a cave near Greccio, Saint Francis' nativity scene was a living one[4] with humans and animals cast in the Biblical roles.[11] Pope Honorius III gave his blessing to the exhibit.[12]
+
+Such reenactment pantomimes became hugely popular and spread throughout Christendom.[11] Within a hundred years every church in Italy was expected to have a nativity scene at Christmastime.[7] Eventually, statues replaced human and animal participants, and static scenes grew to elaborate affairs with richly robed figurines placed in intricate landscape settings.[11] Charles III, King of the Two Sicilies, collected such elaborate scenes, and his enthusiasm encouraged others to do the same.[7]
+
+The scene's popularity inspired much imitation in Catholic countries, and in the Early modern period sculpted cribs, often exported from Italy, were set up in Catholic churches and homes. These elaborate scenes reached their artistic apogee in the Papal state, in Emilia, in the Kingdom of Naples and in Genoa. By the end of the 19th century nativity scenes became popular beyond Catholic settings, and many versions in various sizes and made of various materials, such as terracotta, paper, wood, wax, and ivory, were marketed, often with a backdrop setting of a stable.
+
+Different traditions of nativity scenes emerged in different countries. Hand-painted santons are popular in Provence. In southern Germany, Austria and Trentino-Alto Adige the wood figurines are handcut. Colorful szopka are typical in Poland.
+
+A tradition in England involved baking a mince pie in the shape of a manger which would hold the Christ child until dinnertime, when the pie was eaten. When the Puritans banned Christmas celebrations in the 17th century, they also passed specific legislation to outlaw such pies, calling them "Idolaterie in crust".[7]
+
+Distinctive nativity scenes and traditions have been created around the world and are displayed during the Christmas season in churches, homes, shopping malls, and other venues, and occasionally on public lands and in public buildings. The Vatican has displayed a scene in St. Peter's Square near its Christmas tree since 1982 and the Pope has for many years blessed the mangers of children assembled in St. Peter's Square for a special ceremony.[13][citation needed] In the United States, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City annually displays a Neapolitan Baroque nativity scene before a 20 feet (6.1 m) blue spruce.[14]
+
+Nativity scenes have not escaped controversy. A life-sized scene in the United Kingdom featuring waxworks celebrities provoked outrage in 2004,[15] and, in Spain, a city council forbade the exhibition of a traditional toilet humor character[16] in a public nativity scene. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) indicates that animals in living displays lack proper care and suffer abuse.[17] In the United States, nativity scenes on public lands and in public buildings have provoked court challenges, and the prankish theft of ceramic or plastic nativity figurines from outdoor displays has become commonplace.[18]
+
+Static nativity scenes may be erected indoors or outdoors during the Christmas season, and are composed of figurines depicting the infant Jesus resting in a manger, Mary, and Joseph. Other figures in the scene may include angels, shepherds, and various animals. The figures may be made of any material,[4] and arranged in a stable or grotto. The Magi may also appear, and are sometimes not placed in the scene until the week following Christmas to account for their travel time to Bethlehem.[19] While most home nativity scenes are packed away at Christmas or shortly thereafter, nativity scenes in churches usually remain on display until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.[4]
+
+The nativity scene may not accurately reflect gospel events. With no basis in the gospels, for example, the shepherds, the Magi, and the ox and ass may be displayed together at the manger. The art form can be traced back to eighteenth-century Naples, Italy. Neapolitan nativity scenes do not represent Palestine at the time of Jesus but the life of the Naples of 1700, during the Bourbon period. Families competed with each other to produce the most elegant and elaborate scenes and so, next to the Child Jesus, to the Holy Family and the shepherds, were placed ladies and gentlemen of the nobility, representatives of the bourgeoisie of the time, vendors with their banks and miniatures of cheese, bread, sheep, pigs, ducks or geese, and typical figures of the time like gypsy predicting the future, people playing cards, housewives doing shopping, dogs, cats and chickens.[20]
+
+Regional variants on the standard nativity scene are many. The putz of Pennsylvania Dutch Americans evolved into elaborate decorative Christmas villages in the twentieth century. In Colombia, the pesebre may feature a town and its surrounding countryside with shepherds and animals. Mary and Joseph are often depicted as rural Boyacá people with Mary clad in a countrywoman's shawl and fedora hat, and Joseph garbed in a poncho. The infant Jesus is depicted as European with Italianate features. Visitors bringing gifts to the Christ child are depicted as Colombian natives.[21] After World War I, large, lighted manger scenes in churches and public buildings grew in popularity, and, by the 1950s, many companies were selling lawn ornaments of non-fading, long-lasting, weather resistant materials telling the nativity story.[22]
+
+Pantomimes similar to the scene staged by St. Francis at Greccio became an annual event throughout Christendom.[6] Abuses and exaggerations in the presentation of mystery plays during the Middle Ages, however, forced the church to prohibit performances during the 15th century.[4] The plays survived outside church walls, and 300 years after the prohibition, German immigrants brought simple forms of the nativity play to America. Some features of the dramas became part of both Catholic and Protestant Christmas services with children often taking the parts of characters in the nativity story. Nativity plays and pageants, culminating in living nativity scenes, eventually entered public schools. Such exhibitions have been challenged on the grounds of separation of church and state.[4]
+
+In some countries, the nativity scene took to the streets with human performers costumed as Joseph and Mary traveling from house to house seeking shelter and being told by the houses' occupants to move on. The couple's journey culminated in an outdoor tableau vivant at a designated place with the shepherds and the Magi then traveling the streets in parade fashion looking for the Christ child.[22]
+
+Living nativity scenes are not without their problems. In the United States in 2008, for example, vandals destroyed all eight scenes and backdrops at a drive-through living nativity scene in Georgia. About 120 of the church's 500 members were involved in the construction of the scenes or playing roles in the production. The damage was estimated at more than US$2,000.[23] Additionally, the use of real animals in living nativity scenes has provoked complaint.[citation needed]
+
+In southern Italy, living nativity scenes (presepe vivente) are extremely popular. They may be elaborate affairs, featuring not only the classic nativity scene but also a mock rural 19th-century village, complete with artisans in traditional costumes working at their trades. These attract many visitors and have been televised on RAI. In 2010, the old city of Matera in Basilicata hosted the world's largest living nativity scene of the time, which was performed in the historic center, Sassi.[24]
+
+A donkey (or ass) and an ox typically appear in nativity scenes. Besides the necessity of animals for a manger, this is an allusion to the Book of Isaiah: "the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider" Isaiah 1:3. The Gospels do not mention an ox and donkey[25] Another source for the tradition may be the extracanonical text, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew of the 7th century. (The translation in this text of Habakkuk 3:2 is not taken from the Septuagint.):[26][27]
+
+"And on the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary went out of the cave, and, entering a stable, placed the child in a manger, and an ox and an ass adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by the prophet Isaiah, "The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib." Therefore, the animals, the ox and the ass, with him in their midst incessantly adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by Habakkuk the prophet, saying, "Between two animals you are made manifest."[25]
+
+The ox traditionally represents patience, the nation of Israel, and Old Testament sacrificial worship while the ass represents humility, readiness to serve, and the Gentiles.[28]
+
+The ox and the ass, as well as other animals, became a part of nativity scene tradition. In a 1415, Corpus Christi celebration, the Ordo paginarum notes that Jesus was lying between an ox and an ass.[29] Other animals introduced to nativity scenes include elephants and camels.[19]
+
+By the 1970s, churches and community organizations increasingly included animals in nativity pageants.[22] Since then, automobile-accessible "drive-through" scenes with sheep and donkeys have become popular.[30]
+
+In 1982, Pope John Paul II inaugurated the annual tradition of placing a nativity scene on display in the Vatican City in the Piazza San Pietro before the Christmas Tree.[31]
+
+In 2006, the nativity scene featured seventeen new figures of spruce on loan to the Vatican from sculptors and wood sawyers of the town of Tesero, Italy in the Italian Alps.[32] The figures included peasants, a flutist, a bagpipe player and a shepherd named Titaoca.[32] Twelve nativity scenes created before 1800 from Tesero were put on display in the Vatican audience hall.[32]
+
+The Vatican nativity scene for 2007 placed the birth of Jesus in Joseph's house, based upon an interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew. Mary was shown with the newborn infant Jesus in a room in Joseph's house. To the left of the room was Joseph's workshop while to the right was a busy inn—a comment on materialism versus spirituality.[33] The Vatican's written description of the diorama said, "The scene for this year's Nativity recalls the painting style of the Flemish School of the 1500s."[34] The scene was unveiled on December 24 and remained in place until February 2, 2008 for The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.[35] Ten new figures were exhibited with seven on loan from the town of Tesero and three—a baker, a woman, and a child—donated to the Vatican.[35] The decision for the atypical setting was believed to be part of a crackdown on fanciful scenes erected in various cities around Italy. In Naples, Italy, for example, Elvis Presley and Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi, were depicted among the shepherds and angels worshipping at the manger.
+
+In 2008, the province of Trento, Italy provided sculpted wooden figures and animals as well as utensils to create depictions of daily life.[36] The scene featured seventeen figures[36] with nine depicting the Holy Family, the Magi, and the shepherds.[37] The nine figures were originally donated by Saint Vincent Pallotti for the nativity at Rome's Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle in 1842[36] and eventually found their way to the Vatican. They are dressed anew each year for the scene.[37] The 2008 scene was set in Bethlehem with a fountain and a hearth representing regeneration and light.[38] The same year, the Paul VI Audience Hall exhibited a nativity designed by Mexican artists.[36]
+
+Since 1968, the Pope has officiated at a special ceremony in St. Peter's Square on Gaudete Sunday that involves blessing hundreds of mangers and Babies Jesus for the children of Rome.[12] In 1978, 50,000 schoolchildren attended the ceremony.[12]
+
+A santon (Provençal: "little saint") is a small hand-painted, terracotta nativity scene figurine produced in the Provence region of southeastern France.[39] In a traditional Provençal crèche, the santons represent various characters from Provençal village life such as the scissors grinder, the fishwife, and the chestnut seller.[39] The figurines were first created during the French Revolution when churches were forcibly closed and large nativity scenes prohibited.[40] Today, their production is a family affair passed from parents to children.[41] During the Christmas season, santon makers gather in Marseille and other locales in southeastern France to display and sell their wares.[40]
+
+Szopka are traditional Polish nativity scenes dating to 19th century Kraków, Poland.[42] Its cultural significance has landed it on the UNESCO cultural heritage list. Their modern construction incorporates elements of Kraków's historic architecture including Gothic spires, Renaissance facades, and Baroque domes,[42] and utilizes everyday materials such as colored tinfoils, cardboard, and wood.[43] Some are mechanized.[44] Prizes are awarded for the most elaborately designed and decorated pieces[42] in an annual competition held in Kraków's main square beside the statue of Adam Mickiewicz.[44] Some of the best are then displayed in Kraków's Museum of History.[45] Szopka were traditionally carried from door-to-door in the nativity plays (Jasełka) by performing groups.[46]
+
+A similar tradition, called "betlehemezés" and involving schoolchildren carrying portable folk-art nativity scenes door-to-door, chanting traditional texts, is part of Hungarian folk culture, and has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years. An example of such a portable wooden nativity scene is on display at the Nativity Museum in Bethlehem.
+
+The Czech Republic, and the cultures represented in its predecessors i.e. Czechoslovakia and the lands of former Bohemia, have a long tradition regarding betlémy (literally "Bethlehems"), crèches. The tradition of home Nativity scenes is often traced to the 1782 ban of church and institutional crèches by emperor Joseph II, officially responding to public disturbances and the resulting "loss of dignity" of such displays.[47][48] As this followed the Edict of Toleration proclaimed the previous year, it reduced State support of the Catholic church in this multi-confessional land.[49][50]
+
+The issue of cost arose, and paper-cut crèches (papírový betlém), "the crèche of the poor", became one major expression,[51] as well as wood-carved ones, some of them spectacular as they grew in complexity and detail. Many among the major Czech artists, sculptors and illustrators have as a significant part of their legacy the crèches that they created.
+
+The following people are known for creating Czech paper crèches:
+
+Tomáš Krýza (1838–1918) built in a period of over 60 years a nativity scene covering 60 m² (length 17 m, size and height 2 m) which contains 1389 figures of humans and animals, of which 133 are moveable. It is on display in southern Bohemian town Jindřichův Hradec. Since 1998, it figures as the largest mechanical nativity scene in the world in the Guinness Book of World Records.
+
+Perhaps the best known nativity scene in America is the Neapolitan Baroque Crèche displayed annually in the Medieval Sculpture Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Its backdrop is a 1763 choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid and a twenty-foot blue spruce decorated with a host of 18th-century angels. The nativity figures are placed at the tree's base. The crèche was the gift of Loretta Hines Howard in 1964, and the choir screen was the gift of The William Randolph Hearst Foundation in 1956.[52] Both this presepio and the one displayed in Pittsburgh originated from the collection of Eugenio Catello.
+
+A life-size nativity scene has been displayed annually at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah for several decades as part of the large outdoor Christmas displays sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
+
+Each holiday season, from Light Up Night in November through Epiphany in January, the Pittsburgh Crèche is on display in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Pittsburgh Creche is the world's only authorized replica of the Vatican's Christmas crèche, on display in St. Peter's Square in Rome.[53] Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art also displays a Neapolitan presepio. The presepio was handcrafted between 1700 and 1830, and re-creates the Nativity within a panorama of 18th-century Italian village life. More than 100  human and angelic figures, along with animals, accessories, and architectural elements, cover 250 square feet and create a depiction of the Nativity as seen through the eyes of Neapolitan artisans and collectors.[54]
+
+The Radio City Christmas Spectacular, an annual musical holiday stage show presented at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, features a Living Nativity segment with live animals.[55][56]
+
+In 2005, President of the United States of America, George W. Bush and his wife, First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush displayed an 18th-century Italian presepio. The presepio was donated to the White House in the last decades of the 20th century.[57]
+
+The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh annually display Neapolitan Baroque nativity scenes which both originated from the collection of Eugenio Catello.
+
+On her Christmas Day 2007 television show, Martha Stewart exhibited the nativity scene she made in pottery classes at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia while serving a 2005 sentence. She remarked, "Even though every inmate was only allowed to do one a month, and I was only there for five months, I begged because I said I was an expert potter—ceramicist actually—and could I please make the entire nativity scene."[58] She supplemented her nativity figurines on the show with tiny artificial palm trees imported from Germany.[58]
+
+Christmas is celebrated by Australians in a number of ways. In Australia, it's summer season and is very hot during Christmas time.
+
+During the Christmas time, locals and visitors visit places around their towns and suburbs to view the outdoor and indoor displays. All over the towns, the places are lit with colorful and modern spectacular lighting displays. The displays of nativity scenes with Aussie featured native animals like kangaroos and koalas are also evident.[citation needed]
+
+In Melbourne, a traditional and authentic Nativity Scene is on display at St. Elizabeth's Parish, Dandenong North. This annual Australian Nativity Scene creator and artist Wilson Fernandez has been building and creating the traditional nativity scenes since 2004 at St. Elizabeth's Parish.[59]
+
+To mark this special event, Most Reverend Denis Hart Archbishop of Melbourne celebrated the Vigil Mass and blessed the Nativity Scene on Saturday, 14 December 2013.[60]
+
+Bethlehem Live is an all-volunteer living nativity produced by Gateway Christian Community Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The production includes a reconstruction of the ancient town of Bethlehem and seven individual vignettes. There also happens to be an annual, highly publicized nativity scene at the St. Patrick's Basilica, Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario.[61][62]
+
+The Universalis Foederatio Praesepistica, World association of Friends of Cribs was founded in 1952, counting today 20 national associations dedicated to this subject. The Central office is in Austria.[63]
+
+In the United States and Canada Friends of the Creche has over 200 members, with a major conference every two years.[64] FotC maintains a list of permanent exhibits of Nativity scenes in the United States and a list of permanent exhibits of Nativity scenes in other parts of the world.
+
+The Bavarian National Museum displays a notable collection of Nativity scenes from the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries.
+
+Every year in Lanciano, Abruzzo (Italy), a Nativity Scene exhibition (called in Italian "Riscopriamo il presepe") takes place at Auditorium Diocleziano, usually until the 6th of January. An average of one hundred Nativity scenes are shown, coming from every region of Italy. There are also many Nativity scenes made by local kindergarten, primary, secondary and high school. The event is organised by Associazione Amici di Lancianovecchia[65]
+
+Museums dedicated specifically to paper Nativity scenes exist in Pečky, Zábrdí.
+
+Nativity scenes have been involved in controversies and lawsuits.[66]
+
+In 1969, the American Civil Liberties Union (representing three clergymen, an atheist, and a leader of the American Ethical Society), tried to block the construction of a nativity scene on The Ellipse in Washington, D.C.[67] When the ACLU claimed the government sponsorship of a distinctly Christian symbol violated separation of church and state,[67] the sponsors of the fifty-year-old Christmas celebration, Pageant of Peace, who had an exclusive permit from the Interior Department for all events on the Ellipse, responded that the nativity scene was a reminder of America's spiritual heritage.[67] The United States Court of Appeals ruled on December 12, 1969, that the crèche be allowed that year.[67] The case continued until September 26, 1973, when the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs[67] and found the involvement of the Interior Department and the National Park Service in the Pageant of Peace amounted to government support for religion.[67] The court opined that the nativity scene should be dropped from the pageant or the government end its participation in the event in order to avoid "excessive entanglements" between government and religion.[67] In 1973, the nativity scene vanished.[67]
+
+In 1985, the United States Supreme Court ruled in ACLU v. Scarsdale, New York that nativity scenes on public lands violate separation of church and state statutes unless they comply with "The Reindeer Rule"—a regulation calling for equal opportunity for non-religious symbols, such as reindeer.[68] This principle was further clarified in 1989, when the Supreme Court in County of Allegheny v. ACLU ruled that a crèche placed on the grand staircase of the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh, PA violated the Establishment Clause, because the "principal or primary effect" of the display was to advance religion.
+
+In 1994, at Christmas, the Park Board of San Jose, California, removed a statue of the infant Jesus from Plaza de Cesar Chavez Park and replaced it with a statue of the plumed Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl, commissioned with US$500,000 of public funds. In response, protestors staged a living nativity scene in the park.[68]
+
+In 2006, a lawsuit by the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian group in the United States, was brought against the state of Washington when it permitted a public display of a holiday tree and a menorah but not a nativity scene. Because of the lawsuit, the decision was made to permit a nativity scene to be displayed in the rotunda of the state Capitol, in Olympia, as long as other symbols of the season were included.[69]
+
+In 2013, Gov. Rick Perry signed into Texas law the Merry Christmas bill which would allow school districts in Texas to display nativity scenes.
+
+In the United States, nativity figurines are sometimes stolen from outdoor public and private displays during the Christmas season[70] in an act that is generally called Baby Jesus theft. The thefts are usually pranks with figurines recovered within a few hours or days of their disappearances.[71] Some have been damaged beyond repair or defaced with profanity, antisemitic epithets, or Satanic symbols.[72][73] It is unclear if Baby Jesus theft is on the rise as United States federal law enforcement officials do not track such theft.[71] Some communities protect outdoor nativity scenes with surveillance cameras or GPS devices concealed within the figurines.[72]
+
+In December 2004, Madame Tussaud's London, England, United Kingdom nativity scene featured waxwork models of soccer star David Beckham and his wife Victoria Beckham as Joseph and Mary, and Kylie Minogue as the Angel.[74] Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and the Duke of Edinburgh were cast as the Magi while actors Hugh Grant, Samuel L. Jackson, and comedian Graham Norton were cast as shepherds.[75] The celebrities were chosen for the roles by 300 people who visited the Madame Tussaud's in October 2004 and voted on the display. The Archbishop of Canterbury was not impressed, and a Vatican spokesperson said the display was in very poor taste. Other officials reacted angrily, with one noting it was "a nativity stunt too far".[75] "We're sorry if we have offended people," said Diane Moon, a spokesperson for the museum. She said the display was intended in the spirit of fun.[76]
+The scene was damaged in protest by James Anstice, a member of the Jesus Fellowship Church, who pushed over one of the figures and knocked the head off another. He was later ordered to pay £100 in compensation.[77]
+
+There is a regional tradition in the Catalonia region where an additional figure is added to the Nativity scene: the Caganer. It depicts a person defecating. In 2005, the Barcelona city council provoked a public outcry by commissioning a nativity scene which did not include a Caganer.[78]
+
+Christmas crib on the Saint Peter´s square, Vatican
+
+Living nativity at St. Wojciech Church, Wyszków, Poland, 2006
+
+Christmas crib inside the Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican
+
+Nativity scene in Buchach, Ukraine
+
+Nativity scene in Buenos Aires (1924)
+
+Nativity scene in St. Wendel
+
+Nativity scene in the Netherlands
+
+Christmas crib
+
+Crib family with shepherds at the crib exhibition in Bamberg 2015
+
+Abstract Nativity display in a home.
+
+Media related to Nativity scenes at Wikimedia Commons
+

en/5272.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,148 @@
+In the Christian tradition, a nativity scene (also known as a manger scene, crib, crèche (/krɛʃ/or /kreɪʃ/), or in Italian presepio or presepe) is the special exhibition, particularly during the Christmas season, of art objects representing the birth of Jesus.[1] While the term "nativity scene" may be used of any representation of the very common subject of the Nativity of Jesus in art, it has a more specialized sense referring to seasonal displays, either using model figures in a setting or reenactments called "living nativity scenes" (tableau vivant) in which real humans and animals participate. Nativity scenes exhibit figures representing the infant Jesus, his mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph.
+
+Other characters from the nativity story, such as shepherds, sheep, and angels may be displayed near the manger in a barn (or cave) intended to accommodate farm animals, as described in the Gospel of Luke. A donkey and an ox are typically depicted in the scene, and the Magi and their camels, described in the Gospel of Matthew, are also included. Several cultures add other characters and objects that may or may not be Biblical.
+
+Saint Francis of Assisi
+is credited with creating the first live nativity scene in 1223 in order to cultivate the worship of Christ. He himself had recently been inspired by his visit to the Holy Land, where he'd been shown Jesus's traditional birthplace. The scene's popularity inspired communities throughout Catholic countries to stage similar pantomimes.
+
+Distinctive nativity scenes and traditions have been created around the world, and are displayed during the Christmas season in churches, homes, shopping malls, and other venues, and occasionally on public lands and in public buildings. Nativity scenes have not escaped controversy, and in the United States of America their inclusion on public lands or in public buildings has provoked court challenges.
+
+A nativity scene takes its inspiration from the accounts of the birth of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.[2][3] Luke's narrative describes an angel announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds who then visit the humble site where Jesus is found lying in a manger, a trough for cattle feed.(Luke 2:8-20) Matthew's narrative tells of "wise men" (Greek: μαγοι, romanized: magoi ) who follow a star to the house where Jesus dwelt, and indicates that the Magi found Jesus some time later, less than two years after his birth, rather than on the exact day.(Mat.2:1-23) Matthew's account does not mention the angels and shepherds, while Luke's narrative is silent on the Magi and the star. The Magi and the angels are often displayed in a nativity scene with the Holy Family and the shepherds although there is no scriptural basis for their presence.(Luke 2:7;2:12;2:17)
+
+Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first nativity scene[4][5][6] in 1223 at Greccio, central Italy,[4][7] in an attempt to place the emphasis of Christmas upon the worship of Christ rather than upon secular materialism and gift giving.[8][9] The nativity scene created by Francis is described by Saint Bonaventure in his Life of Saint Francis of Assisi written around 1260.[10] Staged in a cave near Greccio, Saint Francis' nativity scene was a living one[4] with humans and animals cast in the Biblical roles.[11] Pope Honorius III gave his blessing to the exhibit.[12]
+
+Such reenactment pantomimes became hugely popular and spread throughout Christendom.[11] Within a hundred years every church in Italy was expected to have a nativity scene at Christmastime.[7] Eventually, statues replaced human and animal participants, and static scenes grew to elaborate affairs with richly robed figurines placed in intricate landscape settings.[11] Charles III, King of the Two Sicilies, collected such elaborate scenes, and his enthusiasm encouraged others to do the same.[7]
+
+The scene's popularity inspired much imitation in Catholic countries, and in the Early modern period sculpted cribs, often exported from Italy, were set up in Catholic churches and homes. These elaborate scenes reached their artistic apogee in the Papal state, in Emilia, in the Kingdom of Naples and in Genoa. By the end of the 19th century nativity scenes became popular beyond Catholic settings, and many versions in various sizes and made of various materials, such as terracotta, paper, wood, wax, and ivory, were marketed, often with a backdrop setting of a stable.
+
+Different traditions of nativity scenes emerged in different countries. Hand-painted santons are popular in Provence. In southern Germany, Austria and Trentino-Alto Adige the wood figurines are handcut. Colorful szopka are typical in Poland.
+
+A tradition in England involved baking a mince pie in the shape of a manger which would hold the Christ child until dinnertime, when the pie was eaten. When the Puritans banned Christmas celebrations in the 17th century, they also passed specific legislation to outlaw such pies, calling them "Idolaterie in crust".[7]
+
+Distinctive nativity scenes and traditions have been created around the world and are displayed during the Christmas season in churches, homes, shopping malls, and other venues, and occasionally on public lands and in public buildings. The Vatican has displayed a scene in St. Peter's Square near its Christmas tree since 1982 and the Pope has for many years blessed the mangers of children assembled in St. Peter's Square for a special ceremony.[13][citation needed] In the United States, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City annually displays a Neapolitan Baroque nativity scene before a 20 feet (6.1 m) blue spruce.[14]
+
+Nativity scenes have not escaped controversy. A life-sized scene in the United Kingdom featuring waxworks celebrities provoked outrage in 2004,[15] and, in Spain, a city council forbade the exhibition of a traditional toilet humor character[16] in a public nativity scene. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) indicates that animals in living displays lack proper care and suffer abuse.[17] In the United States, nativity scenes on public lands and in public buildings have provoked court challenges, and the prankish theft of ceramic or plastic nativity figurines from outdoor displays has become commonplace.[18]
+
+Static nativity scenes may be erected indoors or outdoors during the Christmas season, and are composed of figurines depicting the infant Jesus resting in a manger, Mary, and Joseph. Other figures in the scene may include angels, shepherds, and various animals. The figures may be made of any material,[4] and arranged in a stable or grotto. The Magi may also appear, and are sometimes not placed in the scene until the week following Christmas to account for their travel time to Bethlehem.[19] While most home nativity scenes are packed away at Christmas or shortly thereafter, nativity scenes in churches usually remain on display until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.[4]
+
+The nativity scene may not accurately reflect gospel events. With no basis in the gospels, for example, the shepherds, the Magi, and the ox and ass may be displayed together at the manger. The art form can be traced back to eighteenth-century Naples, Italy. Neapolitan nativity scenes do not represent Palestine at the time of Jesus but the life of the Naples of 1700, during the Bourbon period. Families competed with each other to produce the most elegant and elaborate scenes and so, next to the Child Jesus, to the Holy Family and the shepherds, were placed ladies and gentlemen of the nobility, representatives of the bourgeoisie of the time, vendors with their banks and miniatures of cheese, bread, sheep, pigs, ducks or geese, and typical figures of the time like gypsy predicting the future, people playing cards, housewives doing shopping, dogs, cats and chickens.[20]
+
+Regional variants on the standard nativity scene are many. The putz of Pennsylvania Dutch Americans evolved into elaborate decorative Christmas villages in the twentieth century. In Colombia, the pesebre may feature a town and its surrounding countryside with shepherds and animals. Mary and Joseph are often depicted as rural Boyacá people with Mary clad in a countrywoman's shawl and fedora hat, and Joseph garbed in a poncho. The infant Jesus is depicted as European with Italianate features. Visitors bringing gifts to the Christ child are depicted as Colombian natives.[21] After World War I, large, lighted manger scenes in churches and public buildings grew in popularity, and, by the 1950s, many companies were selling lawn ornaments of non-fading, long-lasting, weather resistant materials telling the nativity story.[22]
+
+Pantomimes similar to the scene staged by St. Francis at Greccio became an annual event throughout Christendom.[6] Abuses and exaggerations in the presentation of mystery plays during the Middle Ages, however, forced the church to prohibit performances during the 15th century.[4] The plays survived outside church walls, and 300 years after the prohibition, German immigrants brought simple forms of the nativity play to America. Some features of the dramas became part of both Catholic and Protestant Christmas services with children often taking the parts of characters in the nativity story. Nativity plays and pageants, culminating in living nativity scenes, eventually entered public schools. Such exhibitions have been challenged on the grounds of separation of church and state.[4]
+
+In some countries, the nativity scene took to the streets with human performers costumed as Joseph and Mary traveling from house to house seeking shelter and being told by the houses' occupants to move on. The couple's journey culminated in an outdoor tableau vivant at a designated place with the shepherds and the Magi then traveling the streets in parade fashion looking for the Christ child.[22]
+
+Living nativity scenes are not without their problems. In the United States in 2008, for example, vandals destroyed all eight scenes and backdrops at a drive-through living nativity scene in Georgia. About 120 of the church's 500 members were involved in the construction of the scenes or playing roles in the production. The damage was estimated at more than US$2,000.[23] Additionally, the use of real animals in living nativity scenes has provoked complaint.[citation needed]
+
+In southern Italy, living nativity scenes (presepe vivente) are extremely popular. They may be elaborate affairs, featuring not only the classic nativity scene but also a mock rural 19th-century village, complete with artisans in traditional costumes working at their trades. These attract many visitors and have been televised on RAI. In 2010, the old city of Matera in Basilicata hosted the world's largest living nativity scene of the time, which was performed in the historic center, Sassi.[24]
+
+A donkey (or ass) and an ox typically appear in nativity scenes. Besides the necessity of animals for a manger, this is an allusion to the Book of Isaiah: "the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider" Isaiah 1:3. The Gospels do not mention an ox and donkey[25] Another source for the tradition may be the extracanonical text, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew of the 7th century. (The translation in this text of Habakkuk 3:2 is not taken from the Septuagint.):[26][27]
+
+"And on the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary went out of the cave, and, entering a stable, placed the child in a manger, and an ox and an ass adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by the prophet Isaiah, "The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib." Therefore, the animals, the ox and the ass, with him in their midst incessantly adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by Habakkuk the prophet, saying, "Between two animals you are made manifest."[25]
+
+The ox traditionally represents patience, the nation of Israel, and Old Testament sacrificial worship while the ass represents humility, readiness to serve, and the Gentiles.[28]
+
+The ox and the ass, as well as other animals, became a part of nativity scene tradition. In a 1415, Corpus Christi celebration, the Ordo paginarum notes that Jesus was lying between an ox and an ass.[29] Other animals introduced to nativity scenes include elephants and camels.[19]
+
+By the 1970s, churches and community organizations increasingly included animals in nativity pageants.[22] Since then, automobile-accessible "drive-through" scenes with sheep and donkeys have become popular.[30]
+
+In 1982, Pope John Paul II inaugurated the annual tradition of placing a nativity scene on display in the Vatican City in the Piazza San Pietro before the Christmas Tree.[31]
+
+In 2006, the nativity scene featured seventeen new figures of spruce on loan to the Vatican from sculptors and wood sawyers of the town of Tesero, Italy in the Italian Alps.[32] The figures included peasants, a flutist, a bagpipe player and a shepherd named Titaoca.[32] Twelve nativity scenes created before 1800 from Tesero were put on display in the Vatican audience hall.[32]
+
+The Vatican nativity scene for 2007 placed the birth of Jesus in Joseph's house, based upon an interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew. Mary was shown with the newborn infant Jesus in a room in Joseph's house. To the left of the room was Joseph's workshop while to the right was a busy inn—a comment on materialism versus spirituality.[33] The Vatican's written description of the diorama said, "The scene for this year's Nativity recalls the painting style of the Flemish School of the 1500s."[34] The scene was unveiled on December 24 and remained in place until February 2, 2008 for The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.[35] Ten new figures were exhibited with seven on loan from the town of Tesero and three—a baker, a woman, and a child—donated to the Vatican.[35] The decision for the atypical setting was believed to be part of a crackdown on fanciful scenes erected in various cities around Italy. In Naples, Italy, for example, Elvis Presley and Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi, were depicted among the shepherds and angels worshipping at the manger.
+
+In 2008, the province of Trento, Italy provided sculpted wooden figures and animals as well as utensils to create depictions of daily life.[36] The scene featured seventeen figures[36] with nine depicting the Holy Family, the Magi, and the shepherds.[37] The nine figures were originally donated by Saint Vincent Pallotti for the nativity at Rome's Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle in 1842[36] and eventually found their way to the Vatican. They are dressed anew each year for the scene.[37] The 2008 scene was set in Bethlehem with a fountain and a hearth representing regeneration and light.[38] The same year, the Paul VI Audience Hall exhibited a nativity designed by Mexican artists.[36]
+
+Since 1968, the Pope has officiated at a special ceremony in St. Peter's Square on Gaudete Sunday that involves blessing hundreds of mangers and Babies Jesus for the children of Rome.[12] In 1978, 50,000 schoolchildren attended the ceremony.[12]
+
+A santon (Provençal: "little saint") is a small hand-painted, terracotta nativity scene figurine produced in the Provence region of southeastern France.[39] In a traditional Provençal crèche, the santons represent various characters from Provençal village life such as the scissors grinder, the fishwife, and the chestnut seller.[39] The figurines were first created during the French Revolution when churches were forcibly closed and large nativity scenes prohibited.[40] Today, their production is a family affair passed from parents to children.[41] During the Christmas season, santon makers gather in Marseille and other locales in southeastern France to display and sell their wares.[40]
+
+Szopka are traditional Polish nativity scenes dating to 19th century Kraków, Poland.[42] Its cultural significance has landed it on the UNESCO cultural heritage list. Their modern construction incorporates elements of Kraków's historic architecture including Gothic spires, Renaissance facades, and Baroque domes,[42] and utilizes everyday materials such as colored tinfoils, cardboard, and wood.[43] Some are mechanized.[44] Prizes are awarded for the most elaborately designed and decorated pieces[42] in an annual competition held in Kraków's main square beside the statue of Adam Mickiewicz.[44] Some of the best are then displayed in Kraków's Museum of History.[45] Szopka were traditionally carried from door-to-door in the nativity plays (Jasełka) by performing groups.[46]
+
+A similar tradition, called "betlehemezés" and involving schoolchildren carrying portable folk-art nativity scenes door-to-door, chanting traditional texts, is part of Hungarian folk culture, and has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years. An example of such a portable wooden nativity scene is on display at the Nativity Museum in Bethlehem.
+
+The Czech Republic, and the cultures represented in its predecessors i.e. Czechoslovakia and the lands of former Bohemia, have a long tradition regarding betlémy (literally "Bethlehems"), crèches. The tradition of home Nativity scenes is often traced to the 1782 ban of church and institutional crèches by emperor Joseph II, officially responding to public disturbances and the resulting "loss of dignity" of such displays.[47][48] As this followed the Edict of Toleration proclaimed the previous year, it reduced State support of the Catholic church in this multi-confessional land.[49][50]
+
+The issue of cost arose, and paper-cut crèches (papírový betlém), "the crèche of the poor", became one major expression,[51] as well as wood-carved ones, some of them spectacular as they grew in complexity and detail. Many among the major Czech artists, sculptors and illustrators have as a significant part of their legacy the crèches that they created.
+
+The following people are known for creating Czech paper crèches:
+
+Tomáš Krýza (1838–1918) built in a period of over 60 years a nativity scene covering 60 m² (length 17 m, size and height 2 m) which contains 1389 figures of humans and animals, of which 133 are moveable. It is on display in southern Bohemian town Jindřichův Hradec. Since 1998, it figures as the largest mechanical nativity scene in the world in the Guinness Book of World Records.
+
+Perhaps the best known nativity scene in America is the Neapolitan Baroque Crèche displayed annually in the Medieval Sculpture Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Its backdrop is a 1763 choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid and a twenty-foot blue spruce decorated with a host of 18th-century angels. The nativity figures are placed at the tree's base. The crèche was the gift of Loretta Hines Howard in 1964, and the choir screen was the gift of The William Randolph Hearst Foundation in 1956.[52] Both this presepio and the one displayed in Pittsburgh originated from the collection of Eugenio Catello.
+
+A life-size nativity scene has been displayed annually at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah for several decades as part of the large outdoor Christmas displays sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
+
+Each holiday season, from Light Up Night in November through Epiphany in January, the Pittsburgh Crèche is on display in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Pittsburgh Creche is the world's only authorized replica of the Vatican's Christmas crèche, on display in St. Peter's Square in Rome.[53] Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art also displays a Neapolitan presepio. The presepio was handcrafted between 1700 and 1830, and re-creates the Nativity within a panorama of 18th-century Italian village life. More than 100  human and angelic figures, along with animals, accessories, and architectural elements, cover 250 square feet and create a depiction of the Nativity as seen through the eyes of Neapolitan artisans and collectors.[54]
+
+The Radio City Christmas Spectacular, an annual musical holiday stage show presented at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, features a Living Nativity segment with live animals.[55][56]
+
+In 2005, President of the United States of America, George W. Bush and his wife, First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush displayed an 18th-century Italian presepio. The presepio was donated to the White House in the last decades of the 20th century.[57]
+
+The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh annually display Neapolitan Baroque nativity scenes which both originated from the collection of Eugenio Catello.
+
+On her Christmas Day 2007 television show, Martha Stewart exhibited the nativity scene she made in pottery classes at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia while serving a 2005 sentence. She remarked, "Even though every inmate was only allowed to do one a month, and I was only there for five months, I begged because I said I was an expert potter—ceramicist actually—and could I please make the entire nativity scene."[58] She supplemented her nativity figurines on the show with tiny artificial palm trees imported from Germany.[58]
+
+Christmas is celebrated by Australians in a number of ways. In Australia, it's summer season and is very hot during Christmas time.
+
+During the Christmas time, locals and visitors visit places around their towns and suburbs to view the outdoor and indoor displays. All over the towns, the places are lit with colorful and modern spectacular lighting displays. The displays of nativity scenes with Aussie featured native animals like kangaroos and koalas are also evident.[citation needed]
+
+In Melbourne, a traditional and authentic Nativity Scene is on display at St. Elizabeth's Parish, Dandenong North. This annual Australian Nativity Scene creator and artist Wilson Fernandez has been building and creating the traditional nativity scenes since 2004 at St. Elizabeth's Parish.[59]
+
+To mark this special event, Most Reverend Denis Hart Archbishop of Melbourne celebrated the Vigil Mass and blessed the Nativity Scene on Saturday, 14 December 2013.[60]
+
+Bethlehem Live is an all-volunteer living nativity produced by Gateway Christian Community Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The production includes a reconstruction of the ancient town of Bethlehem and seven individual vignettes. There also happens to be an annual, highly publicized nativity scene at the St. Patrick's Basilica, Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario.[61][62]
+
+The Universalis Foederatio Praesepistica, World association of Friends of Cribs was founded in 1952, counting today 20 national associations dedicated to this subject. The Central office is in Austria.[63]
+
+In the United States and Canada Friends of the Creche has over 200 members, with a major conference every two years.[64] FotC maintains a list of permanent exhibits of Nativity scenes in the United States and a list of permanent exhibits of Nativity scenes in other parts of the world.
+
+The Bavarian National Museum displays a notable collection of Nativity scenes from the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries.
+
+Every year in Lanciano, Abruzzo (Italy), a Nativity Scene exhibition (called in Italian "Riscopriamo il presepe") takes place at Auditorium Diocleziano, usually until the 6th of January. An average of one hundred Nativity scenes are shown, coming from every region of Italy. There are also many Nativity scenes made by local kindergarten, primary, secondary and high school. The event is organised by Associazione Amici di Lancianovecchia[65]
+
+Museums dedicated specifically to paper Nativity scenes exist in Pečky, Zábrdí.
+
+Nativity scenes have been involved in controversies and lawsuits.[66]
+
+In 1969, the American Civil Liberties Union (representing three clergymen, an atheist, and a leader of the American Ethical Society), tried to block the construction of a nativity scene on The Ellipse in Washington, D.C.[67] When the ACLU claimed the government sponsorship of a distinctly Christian symbol violated separation of church and state,[67] the sponsors of the fifty-year-old Christmas celebration, Pageant of Peace, who had an exclusive permit from the Interior Department for all events on the Ellipse, responded that the nativity scene was a reminder of America's spiritual heritage.[67] The United States Court of Appeals ruled on December 12, 1969, that the crèche be allowed that year.[67] The case continued until September 26, 1973, when the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs[67] and found the involvement of the Interior Department and the National Park Service in the Pageant of Peace amounted to government support for religion.[67] The court opined that the nativity scene should be dropped from the pageant or the government end its participation in the event in order to avoid "excessive entanglements" between government and religion.[67] In 1973, the nativity scene vanished.[67]
+
+In 1985, the United States Supreme Court ruled in ACLU v. Scarsdale, New York that nativity scenes on public lands violate separation of church and state statutes unless they comply with "The Reindeer Rule"—a regulation calling for equal opportunity for non-religious symbols, such as reindeer.[68] This principle was further clarified in 1989, when the Supreme Court in County of Allegheny v. ACLU ruled that a crèche placed on the grand staircase of the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh, PA violated the Establishment Clause, because the "principal or primary effect" of the display was to advance religion.
+
+In 1994, at Christmas, the Park Board of San Jose, California, removed a statue of the infant Jesus from Plaza de Cesar Chavez Park and replaced it with a statue of the plumed Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl, commissioned with US$500,000 of public funds. In response, protestors staged a living nativity scene in the park.[68]
+
+In 2006, a lawsuit by the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian group in the United States, was brought against the state of Washington when it permitted a public display of a holiday tree and a menorah but not a nativity scene. Because of the lawsuit, the decision was made to permit a nativity scene to be displayed in the rotunda of the state Capitol, in Olympia, as long as other symbols of the season were included.[69]
+
+In 2013, Gov. Rick Perry signed into Texas law the Merry Christmas bill which would allow school districts in Texas to display nativity scenes.
+
+In the United States, nativity figurines are sometimes stolen from outdoor public and private displays during the Christmas season[70] in an act that is generally called Baby Jesus theft. The thefts are usually pranks with figurines recovered within a few hours or days of their disappearances.[71] Some have been damaged beyond repair or defaced with profanity, antisemitic epithets, or Satanic symbols.[72][73] It is unclear if Baby Jesus theft is on the rise as United States federal law enforcement officials do not track such theft.[71] Some communities protect outdoor nativity scenes with surveillance cameras or GPS devices concealed within the figurines.[72]
+
+In December 2004, Madame Tussaud's London, England, United Kingdom nativity scene featured waxwork models of soccer star David Beckham and his wife Victoria Beckham as Joseph and Mary, and Kylie Minogue as the Angel.[74] Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and the Duke of Edinburgh were cast as the Magi while actors Hugh Grant, Samuel L. Jackson, and comedian Graham Norton were cast as shepherds.[75] The celebrities were chosen for the roles by 300 people who visited the Madame Tussaud's in October 2004 and voted on the display. The Archbishop of Canterbury was not impressed, and a Vatican spokesperson said the display was in very poor taste. Other officials reacted angrily, with one noting it was "a nativity stunt too far".[75] "We're sorry if we have offended people," said Diane Moon, a spokesperson for the museum. She said the display was intended in the spirit of fun.[76]
+The scene was damaged in protest by James Anstice, a member of the Jesus Fellowship Church, who pushed over one of the figures and knocked the head off another. He was later ordered to pay £100 in compensation.[77]
+
+There is a regional tradition in the Catalonia region where an additional figure is added to the Nativity scene: the Caganer. It depicts a person defecating. In 2005, the Barcelona city council provoked a public outcry by commissioning a nativity scene which did not include a Caganer.[78]
+
+Christmas crib on the Saint Peter´s square, Vatican
+
+Living nativity at St. Wojciech Church, Wyszków, Poland, 2006
+
+Christmas crib inside the Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican
+
+Nativity scene in Buchach, Ukraine
+
+Nativity scene in Buenos Aires (1924)
+
+Nativity scene in St. Wendel
+
+Nativity scene in the Netherlands
+
+Christmas crib
+
+Crib family with shepherds at the crib exhibition in Bamberg 2015
+
+Abstract Nativity display in a home.
+
+Media related to Nativity scenes at Wikimedia Commons
+

en/5273.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,148 @@
+In the Christian tradition, a nativity scene (also known as a manger scene, crib, crèche (/krɛʃ/or /kreɪʃ/), or in Italian presepio or presepe) is the special exhibition, particularly during the Christmas season, of art objects representing the birth of Jesus.[1] While the term "nativity scene" may be used of any representation of the very common subject of the Nativity of Jesus in art, it has a more specialized sense referring to seasonal displays, either using model figures in a setting or reenactments called "living nativity scenes" (tableau vivant) in which real humans and animals participate. Nativity scenes exhibit figures representing the infant Jesus, his mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph.
+
+Other characters from the nativity story, such as shepherds, sheep, and angels may be displayed near the manger in a barn (or cave) intended to accommodate farm animals, as described in the Gospel of Luke. A donkey and an ox are typically depicted in the scene, and the Magi and their camels, described in the Gospel of Matthew, are also included. Several cultures add other characters and objects that may or may not be Biblical.
+
+Saint Francis of Assisi
+is credited with creating the first live nativity scene in 1223 in order to cultivate the worship of Christ. He himself had recently been inspired by his visit to the Holy Land, where he'd been shown Jesus's traditional birthplace. The scene's popularity inspired communities throughout Catholic countries to stage similar pantomimes.
+
+Distinctive nativity scenes and traditions have been created around the world, and are displayed during the Christmas season in churches, homes, shopping malls, and other venues, and occasionally on public lands and in public buildings. Nativity scenes have not escaped controversy, and in the United States of America their inclusion on public lands or in public buildings has provoked court challenges.
+
+A nativity scene takes its inspiration from the accounts of the birth of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.[2][3] Luke's narrative describes an angel announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds who then visit the humble site where Jesus is found lying in a manger, a trough for cattle feed.(Luke 2:8-20) Matthew's narrative tells of "wise men" (Greek: μαγοι, romanized: magoi ) who follow a star to the house where Jesus dwelt, and indicates that the Magi found Jesus some time later, less than two years after his birth, rather than on the exact day.(Mat.2:1-23) Matthew's account does not mention the angels and shepherds, while Luke's narrative is silent on the Magi and the star. The Magi and the angels are often displayed in a nativity scene with the Holy Family and the shepherds although there is no scriptural basis for their presence.(Luke 2:7;2:12;2:17)
+
+Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first nativity scene[4][5][6] in 1223 at Greccio, central Italy,[4][7] in an attempt to place the emphasis of Christmas upon the worship of Christ rather than upon secular materialism and gift giving.[8][9] The nativity scene created by Francis is described by Saint Bonaventure in his Life of Saint Francis of Assisi written around 1260.[10] Staged in a cave near Greccio, Saint Francis' nativity scene was a living one[4] with humans and animals cast in the Biblical roles.[11] Pope Honorius III gave his blessing to the exhibit.[12]
+
+Such reenactment pantomimes became hugely popular and spread throughout Christendom.[11] Within a hundred years every church in Italy was expected to have a nativity scene at Christmastime.[7] Eventually, statues replaced human and animal participants, and static scenes grew to elaborate affairs with richly robed figurines placed in intricate landscape settings.[11] Charles III, King of the Two Sicilies, collected such elaborate scenes, and his enthusiasm encouraged others to do the same.[7]
+
+The scene's popularity inspired much imitation in Catholic countries, and in the Early modern period sculpted cribs, often exported from Italy, were set up in Catholic churches and homes. These elaborate scenes reached their artistic apogee in the Papal state, in Emilia, in the Kingdom of Naples and in Genoa. By the end of the 19th century nativity scenes became popular beyond Catholic settings, and many versions in various sizes and made of various materials, such as terracotta, paper, wood, wax, and ivory, were marketed, often with a backdrop setting of a stable.
+
+Different traditions of nativity scenes emerged in different countries. Hand-painted santons are popular in Provence. In southern Germany, Austria and Trentino-Alto Adige the wood figurines are handcut. Colorful szopka are typical in Poland.
+
+A tradition in England involved baking a mince pie in the shape of a manger which would hold the Christ child until dinnertime, when the pie was eaten. When the Puritans banned Christmas celebrations in the 17th century, they also passed specific legislation to outlaw such pies, calling them "Idolaterie in crust".[7]
+
+Distinctive nativity scenes and traditions have been created around the world and are displayed during the Christmas season in churches, homes, shopping malls, and other venues, and occasionally on public lands and in public buildings. The Vatican has displayed a scene in St. Peter's Square near its Christmas tree since 1982 and the Pope has for many years blessed the mangers of children assembled in St. Peter's Square for a special ceremony.[13][citation needed] In the United States, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City annually displays a Neapolitan Baroque nativity scene before a 20 feet (6.1 m) blue spruce.[14]
+
+Nativity scenes have not escaped controversy. A life-sized scene in the United Kingdom featuring waxworks celebrities provoked outrage in 2004,[15] and, in Spain, a city council forbade the exhibition of a traditional toilet humor character[16] in a public nativity scene. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) indicates that animals in living displays lack proper care and suffer abuse.[17] In the United States, nativity scenes on public lands and in public buildings have provoked court challenges, and the prankish theft of ceramic or plastic nativity figurines from outdoor displays has become commonplace.[18]
+
+Static nativity scenes may be erected indoors or outdoors during the Christmas season, and are composed of figurines depicting the infant Jesus resting in a manger, Mary, and Joseph. Other figures in the scene may include angels, shepherds, and various animals. The figures may be made of any material,[4] and arranged in a stable or grotto. The Magi may also appear, and are sometimes not placed in the scene until the week following Christmas to account for their travel time to Bethlehem.[19] While most home nativity scenes are packed away at Christmas or shortly thereafter, nativity scenes in churches usually remain on display until the feast of the Baptism of the Lord.[4]
+
+The nativity scene may not accurately reflect gospel events. With no basis in the gospels, for example, the shepherds, the Magi, and the ox and ass may be displayed together at the manger. The art form can be traced back to eighteenth-century Naples, Italy. Neapolitan nativity scenes do not represent Palestine at the time of Jesus but the life of the Naples of 1700, during the Bourbon period. Families competed with each other to produce the most elegant and elaborate scenes and so, next to the Child Jesus, to the Holy Family and the shepherds, were placed ladies and gentlemen of the nobility, representatives of the bourgeoisie of the time, vendors with their banks and miniatures of cheese, bread, sheep, pigs, ducks or geese, and typical figures of the time like gypsy predicting the future, people playing cards, housewives doing shopping, dogs, cats and chickens.[20]
+
+Regional variants on the standard nativity scene are many. The putz of Pennsylvania Dutch Americans evolved into elaborate decorative Christmas villages in the twentieth century. In Colombia, the pesebre may feature a town and its surrounding countryside with shepherds and animals. Mary and Joseph are often depicted as rural Boyacá people with Mary clad in a countrywoman's shawl and fedora hat, and Joseph garbed in a poncho. The infant Jesus is depicted as European with Italianate features. Visitors bringing gifts to the Christ child are depicted as Colombian natives.[21] After World War I, large, lighted manger scenes in churches and public buildings grew in popularity, and, by the 1950s, many companies were selling lawn ornaments of non-fading, long-lasting, weather resistant materials telling the nativity story.[22]
+
+Pantomimes similar to the scene staged by St. Francis at Greccio became an annual event throughout Christendom.[6] Abuses and exaggerations in the presentation of mystery plays during the Middle Ages, however, forced the church to prohibit performances during the 15th century.[4] The plays survived outside church walls, and 300 years after the prohibition, German immigrants brought simple forms of the nativity play to America. Some features of the dramas became part of both Catholic and Protestant Christmas services with children often taking the parts of characters in the nativity story. Nativity plays and pageants, culminating in living nativity scenes, eventually entered public schools. Such exhibitions have been challenged on the grounds of separation of church and state.[4]
+
+In some countries, the nativity scene took to the streets with human performers costumed as Joseph and Mary traveling from house to house seeking shelter and being told by the houses' occupants to move on. The couple's journey culminated in an outdoor tableau vivant at a designated place with the shepherds and the Magi then traveling the streets in parade fashion looking for the Christ child.[22]
+
+Living nativity scenes are not without their problems. In the United States in 2008, for example, vandals destroyed all eight scenes and backdrops at a drive-through living nativity scene in Georgia. About 120 of the church's 500 members were involved in the construction of the scenes or playing roles in the production. The damage was estimated at more than US$2,000.[23] Additionally, the use of real animals in living nativity scenes has provoked complaint.[citation needed]
+
+In southern Italy, living nativity scenes (presepe vivente) are extremely popular. They may be elaborate affairs, featuring not only the classic nativity scene but also a mock rural 19th-century village, complete with artisans in traditional costumes working at their trades. These attract many visitors and have been televised on RAI. In 2010, the old city of Matera in Basilicata hosted the world's largest living nativity scene of the time, which was performed in the historic center, Sassi.[24]
+
+A donkey (or ass) and an ox typically appear in nativity scenes. Besides the necessity of animals for a manger, this is an allusion to the Book of Isaiah: "the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider" Isaiah 1:3. The Gospels do not mention an ox and donkey[25] Another source for the tradition may be the extracanonical text, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew of the 7th century. (The translation in this text of Habakkuk 3:2 is not taken from the Septuagint.):[26][27]
+
+"And on the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary went out of the cave, and, entering a stable, placed the child in a manger, and an ox and an ass adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by the prophet Isaiah, "The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib." Therefore, the animals, the ox and the ass, with him in their midst incessantly adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by Habakkuk the prophet, saying, "Between two animals you are made manifest."[25]
+
+The ox traditionally represents patience, the nation of Israel, and Old Testament sacrificial worship while the ass represents humility, readiness to serve, and the Gentiles.[28]
+
+The ox and the ass, as well as other animals, became a part of nativity scene tradition. In a 1415, Corpus Christi celebration, the Ordo paginarum notes that Jesus was lying between an ox and an ass.[29] Other animals introduced to nativity scenes include elephants and camels.[19]
+
+By the 1970s, churches and community organizations increasingly included animals in nativity pageants.[22] Since then, automobile-accessible "drive-through" scenes with sheep and donkeys have become popular.[30]
+
+In 1982, Pope John Paul II inaugurated the annual tradition of placing a nativity scene on display in the Vatican City in the Piazza San Pietro before the Christmas Tree.[31]
+
+In 2006, the nativity scene featured seventeen new figures of spruce on loan to the Vatican from sculptors and wood sawyers of the town of Tesero, Italy in the Italian Alps.[32] The figures included peasants, a flutist, a bagpipe player and a shepherd named Titaoca.[32] Twelve nativity scenes created before 1800 from Tesero were put on display in the Vatican audience hall.[32]
+
+The Vatican nativity scene for 2007 placed the birth of Jesus in Joseph's house, based upon an interpretation of the Gospel of Matthew. Mary was shown with the newborn infant Jesus in a room in Joseph's house. To the left of the room was Joseph's workshop while to the right was a busy inn—a comment on materialism versus spirituality.[33] The Vatican's written description of the diorama said, "The scene for this year's Nativity recalls the painting style of the Flemish School of the 1500s."[34] The scene was unveiled on December 24 and remained in place until February 2, 2008 for The Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.[35] Ten new figures were exhibited with seven on loan from the town of Tesero and three—a baker, a woman, and a child—donated to the Vatican.[35] The decision for the atypical setting was believed to be part of a crackdown on fanciful scenes erected in various cities around Italy. In Naples, Italy, for example, Elvis Presley and Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi, were depicted among the shepherds and angels worshipping at the manger.
+
+In 2008, the province of Trento, Italy provided sculpted wooden figures and animals as well as utensils to create depictions of daily life.[36] The scene featured seventeen figures[36] with nine depicting the Holy Family, the Magi, and the shepherds.[37] The nine figures were originally donated by Saint Vincent Pallotti for the nativity at Rome's Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle in 1842[36] and eventually found their way to the Vatican. They are dressed anew each year for the scene.[37] The 2008 scene was set in Bethlehem with a fountain and a hearth representing regeneration and light.[38] The same year, the Paul VI Audience Hall exhibited a nativity designed by Mexican artists.[36]
+
+Since 1968, the Pope has officiated at a special ceremony in St. Peter's Square on Gaudete Sunday that involves blessing hundreds of mangers and Babies Jesus for the children of Rome.[12] In 1978, 50,000 schoolchildren attended the ceremony.[12]
+
+A santon (Provençal: "little saint") is a small hand-painted, terracotta nativity scene figurine produced in the Provence region of southeastern France.[39] In a traditional Provençal crèche, the santons represent various characters from Provençal village life such as the scissors grinder, the fishwife, and the chestnut seller.[39] The figurines were first created during the French Revolution when churches were forcibly closed and large nativity scenes prohibited.[40] Today, their production is a family affair passed from parents to children.[41] During the Christmas season, santon makers gather in Marseille and other locales in southeastern France to display and sell their wares.[40]
+
+Szopka are traditional Polish nativity scenes dating to 19th century Kraków, Poland.[42] Its cultural significance has landed it on the UNESCO cultural heritage list. Their modern construction incorporates elements of Kraków's historic architecture including Gothic spires, Renaissance facades, and Baroque domes,[42] and utilizes everyday materials such as colored tinfoils, cardboard, and wood.[43] Some are mechanized.[44] Prizes are awarded for the most elaborately designed and decorated pieces[42] in an annual competition held in Kraków's main square beside the statue of Adam Mickiewicz.[44] Some of the best are then displayed in Kraków's Museum of History.[45] Szopka were traditionally carried from door-to-door in the nativity plays (Jasełka) by performing groups.[46]
+
+A similar tradition, called "betlehemezés" and involving schoolchildren carrying portable folk-art nativity scenes door-to-door, chanting traditional texts, is part of Hungarian folk culture, and has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years. An example of such a portable wooden nativity scene is on display at the Nativity Museum in Bethlehem.
+
+The Czech Republic, and the cultures represented in its predecessors i.e. Czechoslovakia and the lands of former Bohemia, have a long tradition regarding betlémy (literally "Bethlehems"), crèches. The tradition of home Nativity scenes is often traced to the 1782 ban of church and institutional crèches by emperor Joseph II, officially responding to public disturbances and the resulting "loss of dignity" of such displays.[47][48] As this followed the Edict of Toleration proclaimed the previous year, it reduced State support of the Catholic church in this multi-confessional land.[49][50]
+
+The issue of cost arose, and paper-cut crèches (papírový betlém), "the crèche of the poor", became one major expression,[51] as well as wood-carved ones, some of them spectacular as they grew in complexity and detail. Many among the major Czech artists, sculptors and illustrators have as a significant part of their legacy the crèches that they created.
+
+The following people are known for creating Czech paper crèches:
+
+Tomáš Krýza (1838–1918) built in a period of over 60 years a nativity scene covering 60 m² (length 17 m, size and height 2 m) which contains 1389 figures of humans and animals, of which 133 are moveable. It is on display in southern Bohemian town Jindřichův Hradec. Since 1998, it figures as the largest mechanical nativity scene in the world in the Guinness Book of World Records.
+
+Perhaps the best known nativity scene in America is the Neapolitan Baroque Crèche displayed annually in the Medieval Sculpture Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Its backdrop is a 1763 choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid and a twenty-foot blue spruce decorated with a host of 18th-century angels. The nativity figures are placed at the tree's base. The crèche was the gift of Loretta Hines Howard in 1964, and the choir screen was the gift of The William Randolph Hearst Foundation in 1956.[52] Both this presepio and the one displayed in Pittsburgh originated from the collection of Eugenio Catello.
+
+A life-size nativity scene has been displayed annually at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah for several decades as part of the large outdoor Christmas displays sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
+
+Each holiday season, from Light Up Night in November through Epiphany in January, the Pittsburgh Crèche is on display in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Pittsburgh Creche is the world's only authorized replica of the Vatican's Christmas crèche, on display in St. Peter's Square in Rome.[53] Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art also displays a Neapolitan presepio. The presepio was handcrafted between 1700 and 1830, and re-creates the Nativity within a panorama of 18th-century Italian village life. More than 100  human and angelic figures, along with animals, accessories, and architectural elements, cover 250 square feet and create a depiction of the Nativity as seen through the eyes of Neapolitan artisans and collectors.[54]
+
+The Radio City Christmas Spectacular, an annual musical holiday stage show presented at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, features a Living Nativity segment with live animals.[55][56]
+
+In 2005, President of the United States of America, George W. Bush and his wife, First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush displayed an 18th-century Italian presepio. The presepio was donated to the White House in the last decades of the 20th century.[57]
+
+The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh annually display Neapolitan Baroque nativity scenes which both originated from the collection of Eugenio Catello.
+
+On her Christmas Day 2007 television show, Martha Stewart exhibited the nativity scene she made in pottery classes at the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia while serving a 2005 sentence. She remarked, "Even though every inmate was only allowed to do one a month, and I was only there for five months, I begged because I said I was an expert potter—ceramicist actually—and could I please make the entire nativity scene."[58] She supplemented her nativity figurines on the show with tiny artificial palm trees imported from Germany.[58]
+
+Christmas is celebrated by Australians in a number of ways. In Australia, it's summer season and is very hot during Christmas time.
+
+During the Christmas time, locals and visitors visit places around their towns and suburbs to view the outdoor and indoor displays. All over the towns, the places are lit with colorful and modern spectacular lighting displays. The displays of nativity scenes with Aussie featured native animals like kangaroos and koalas are also evident.[citation needed]
+
+In Melbourne, a traditional and authentic Nativity Scene is on display at St. Elizabeth's Parish, Dandenong North. This annual Australian Nativity Scene creator and artist Wilson Fernandez has been building and creating the traditional nativity scenes since 2004 at St. Elizabeth's Parish.[59]
+
+To mark this special event, Most Reverend Denis Hart Archbishop of Melbourne celebrated the Vigil Mass and blessed the Nativity Scene on Saturday, 14 December 2013.[60]
+
+Bethlehem Live is an all-volunteer living nativity produced by Gateway Christian Community Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The production includes a reconstruction of the ancient town of Bethlehem and seven individual vignettes. There also happens to be an annual, highly publicized nativity scene at the St. Patrick's Basilica, Ottawa in Ottawa, Ontario.[61][62]
+
+The Universalis Foederatio Praesepistica, World association of Friends of Cribs was founded in 1952, counting today 20 national associations dedicated to this subject. The Central office is in Austria.[63]
+
+In the United States and Canada Friends of the Creche has over 200 members, with a major conference every two years.[64] FotC maintains a list of permanent exhibits of Nativity scenes in the United States and a list of permanent exhibits of Nativity scenes in other parts of the world.
+
+The Bavarian National Museum displays a notable collection of Nativity scenes from the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries.
+
+Every year in Lanciano, Abruzzo (Italy), a Nativity Scene exhibition (called in Italian "Riscopriamo il presepe") takes place at Auditorium Diocleziano, usually until the 6th of January. An average of one hundred Nativity scenes are shown, coming from every region of Italy. There are also many Nativity scenes made by local kindergarten, primary, secondary and high school. The event is organised by Associazione Amici di Lancianovecchia[65]
+
+Museums dedicated specifically to paper Nativity scenes exist in Pečky, Zábrdí.
+
+Nativity scenes have been involved in controversies and lawsuits.[66]
+
+In 1969, the American Civil Liberties Union (representing three clergymen, an atheist, and a leader of the American Ethical Society), tried to block the construction of a nativity scene on The Ellipse in Washington, D.C.[67] When the ACLU claimed the government sponsorship of a distinctly Christian symbol violated separation of church and state,[67] the sponsors of the fifty-year-old Christmas celebration, Pageant of Peace, who had an exclusive permit from the Interior Department for all events on the Ellipse, responded that the nativity scene was a reminder of America's spiritual heritage.[67] The United States Court of Appeals ruled on December 12, 1969, that the crèche be allowed that year.[67] The case continued until September 26, 1973, when the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs[67] and found the involvement of the Interior Department and the National Park Service in the Pageant of Peace amounted to government support for religion.[67] The court opined that the nativity scene should be dropped from the pageant or the government end its participation in the event in order to avoid "excessive entanglements" between government and religion.[67] In 1973, the nativity scene vanished.[67]
+
+In 1985, the United States Supreme Court ruled in ACLU v. Scarsdale, New York that nativity scenes on public lands violate separation of church and state statutes unless they comply with "The Reindeer Rule"—a regulation calling for equal opportunity for non-religious symbols, such as reindeer.[68] This principle was further clarified in 1989, when the Supreme Court in County of Allegheny v. ACLU ruled that a crèche placed on the grand staircase of the Allegheny County Courthouse in Pittsburgh, PA violated the Establishment Clause, because the "principal or primary effect" of the display was to advance religion.
+
+In 1994, at Christmas, the Park Board of San Jose, California, removed a statue of the infant Jesus from Plaza de Cesar Chavez Park and replaced it with a statue of the plumed Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl, commissioned with US$500,000 of public funds. In response, protestors staged a living nativity scene in the park.[68]
+
+In 2006, a lawsuit by the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian group in the United States, was brought against the state of Washington when it permitted a public display of a holiday tree and a menorah but not a nativity scene. Because of the lawsuit, the decision was made to permit a nativity scene to be displayed in the rotunda of the state Capitol, in Olympia, as long as other symbols of the season were included.[69]
+
+In 2013, Gov. Rick Perry signed into Texas law the Merry Christmas bill which would allow school districts in Texas to display nativity scenes.
+
+In the United States, nativity figurines are sometimes stolen from outdoor public and private displays during the Christmas season[70] in an act that is generally called Baby Jesus theft. The thefts are usually pranks with figurines recovered within a few hours or days of their disappearances.[71] Some have been damaged beyond repair or defaced with profanity, antisemitic epithets, or Satanic symbols.[72][73] It is unclear if Baby Jesus theft is on the rise as United States federal law enforcement officials do not track such theft.[71] Some communities protect outdoor nativity scenes with surveillance cameras or GPS devices concealed within the figurines.[72]
+
+In December 2004, Madame Tussaud's London, England, United Kingdom nativity scene featured waxwork models of soccer star David Beckham and his wife Victoria Beckham as Joseph and Mary, and Kylie Minogue as the Angel.[74] Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and the Duke of Edinburgh were cast as the Magi while actors Hugh Grant, Samuel L. Jackson, and comedian Graham Norton were cast as shepherds.[75] The celebrities were chosen for the roles by 300 people who visited the Madame Tussaud's in October 2004 and voted on the display. The Archbishop of Canterbury was not impressed, and a Vatican spokesperson said the display was in very poor taste. Other officials reacted angrily, with one noting it was "a nativity stunt too far".[75] "We're sorry if we have offended people," said Diane Moon, a spokesperson for the museum. She said the display was intended in the spirit of fun.[76]
+The scene was damaged in protest by James Anstice, a member of the Jesus Fellowship Church, who pushed over one of the figures and knocked the head off another. He was later ordered to pay £100 in compensation.[77]
+
+There is a regional tradition in the Catalonia region where an additional figure is added to the Nativity scene: the Caganer. It depicts a person defecating. In 2005, the Barcelona city council provoked a public outcry by commissioning a nativity scene which did not include a Caganer.[78]
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+Christmas crib on the Saint Peter´s square, Vatican
+
+Living nativity at St. Wojciech Church, Wyszków, Poland, 2006
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+Christmas crib inside the Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican
+
+Nativity scene in Buchach, Ukraine
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+Nativity scene in Buenos Aires (1924)
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+Nativity scene in St. Wendel
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+Nativity scene in the Netherlands
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+Christmas crib
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+Crib family with shepherds at the crib exhibition in Bamberg 2015
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+Abstract Nativity display in a home.
+
+Media related to Nativity scenes at Wikimedia Commons
+