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The Galerie d'Apollon - an iconic room of the Louvre, home to some of its most precious historical collections, is a part of the Louvre, famous for its high vaulted ceilings with painted decorations. Originally designed as a reception hall for Louis XIV, the Galerie d'Apollon was decorated by some of the greatest artists in French history (including Le Brun, Girardon, Lagrenée, and Delacroix) and served as a model for the Hall of Mirrors at the Château de Versailles. The gallery has a total surface area of 600 m² (61.34 m long and 15 m high). It was built over 350 years ago and decorated over the course of two centuries. The Louvre Museum, Musee de Louvre.
This large space adjoining the royal apartments first served as the palace's second chapel (1672-1682), and then the Great Guard's Room "for both the King and the Queen" (1682-1789). In 1833, it became a room devoted to the glory of Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul and then Emperor of the French. The plan was to display the greatest paintings of his reign, which could not be placed anywhere else in the palace: the two immense paintings commissioned from Jacques-Louis David to commemorate the ceremonies celebrating Napoleon's crowning as Emperor of the French: The Coronation of 2 December 1804 (1805-1808), and The Distribution of the Eagle Standards on 5 December 1804 (1808-1810). The Palace of Versailles.
The Civil Forum is the core of daily life of the city and is the focal point of all the main public buildings for city administration and justice, business management, and trade activities such as markets, as well as the main places of citizen worship. The square of the Forum originally looked like a simple open area with an overall regular shape, made of clay and its western side opened on to the Sanctuary of Apollo, whereas the eastern side had a row of shops.
The Large Theatre was built by exploiting the natural slope of the hill for the construction of the auditorium. The staircase was separated into three areas with corridors, which were in turn divided into five sectors, and was based on a passage with a barrel vault. It was built around the middle of the 2nd century BC and significantly restored according to the Roman stlye.
An inscription, visible at the entrance of the corridor that provides access to the east and that is one of the very few representations known with reference to the name of the architectus, recalls the works carried out in the Augustan age by Marcus Artorius Primus. These works concern the scene and the stage, the adoption of the velarium, a large tarp used as a cover for the warmer days and the numbering of the seats. In the theatre they represented comedies and tragedies of Greek-Roman tradition.
The Odeon or theatrum tectum as it was called by the Romans, was built during the early years of the colony (79 BC), as evidenced by an inscription. This building was dedicated to the representation of the most popular theatrical genre at the time, miming, and could also be used for musical and singing performances. It was richly decorated with multi- coloured marbles whereas large male tuff figures (telamones) supported the steps. The structure was completely covered by a functional roof to improve the acoustics. The plaster of the external masonry retains many graffiti of the spectators of the shows that were held here, sometimes even from very distant regions.
The house of Menander is a typical example of a Roman home of a high-ranking family. The atrium has frescoes with scenes from the Iliad and the Odyssey. The peristyle is rhodium-shaped, with the north side higher. The house owes its name to a picture of Menander, an Athenian playwriter, placed in the portico. The house has a small thermal area below which there is a basement, perhaps a cellar, where a box was found with 118 pieces of silverware, now on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
The Forum was significantly modified between the 3rd and 2nd century BC when the shape of the square was regularised, surrounded by porticoes and the bottom paved with slabs of tuff. The axis of the square became the facade of the Temple of Jupiter, aligned with Mount Vesuvius. At the beginning of the Imperial age the Forum was re-paved with travertine slabs, some of which are no longer in their original location and have a groove to accommodate the bronze letters that belonged to a large inscription.
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