Do you know why these small barns in Valais, called “Stadel”, were built on posts?
With the help of those posts and the plates of slate, called “MĂ€useplatte”, they tried to stop rats an mice from entering the barns and eating the grain, which was stored in them.
Did you know that the gallo-roman theater of the Vicus Ricciacus (today: Dalheim) had a capacity of 3,500 seats?
It measures 62,5 meters in diameter and was erected at the beginning of the 2nd century AD. On top of that it is one of the best preserved theatres in the Civitas Treverorum (area around Trier).
Did you know that the oldest known stadium is the stadium at Olympia?
From 776 BC the ancient Olympic Games were held in this stadium and it had a capacity of 45,000. At the 2004 Summer Olympics the shot put events were held in this historical venue.
There is a long list of famous historical stadiums, like the colosseum in Rome which had a capacity of 50,000 or the Circus Maximus which could seat 250,000 people.
The biggest stadium in recent times was the Strahov Stadium in Prague, which has a field size of 9 football pitches and was built in 1926 for the display synchronized gymnastics. It had a capacitiy of 220,000 spectators and is used today as a training centre by the Sparta Prague. Since 2003 the stadium is on the list of UNESCO cultural heritage.
Todays biggest stadium in use is the Narendra Modi Stadium, a cricket stadium in India, which has a seating capacity of 132,000 spectators.
The biggest ever planned stadium was the “Deutsches Stadion” on the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. It was designed by Albert Speer and should have had a seated capacity of 405,000 spectators. It was one of the crazy architectural ideas of the Nazi Regime that were never realised, because oft the outbreak of WWII.
In the pictures are the stadiums of 1. FC Köln and FC Schalke 04. Well, you can see that stadiums are nowadays still very popular for sporting events and hopefully the fans can soon return into the stadiums to support there favourite teams.
Wosst Dir, dass den eelsten bekannten Stadion den Stadion zu Olympia ass?
Did you know that the cathedrale in Strasbourg had been the tallest building in the world from 1647 to 1874?
With its 142 meter tall spire the cathedral became in 1647 the tallest building in the world after the old 151 meter tall spire of the St. Mary’s Church in Stralsund burned down.
In 1874 the Strasbourg Cathedral was surpassed by the new spire of the St. Nicholas Church in Hamburg.
The most striking feature of the Strasbourg Cathedrale is the “missing” second spire of the church. Originally it was planned to build two spires, but because of the long construction works (1015-1439 with interruptions) the often changing architects, financial issues and a lack of solid ground they decided to build just one octogonal tower.
Afterwards the building of the second tower was often discussed, but as you can see it was never realised.
This route goes also through Luxembourg and follows todays N3 from Frisange to Luxembourg City and the N6 from Luxembourg City to Steinfort. The number of stone markers in Luxembourg is 31,5. That’s because the first one in Frisange is exactly on the boarder between France and Luxembourg and so only one half is on Luxembourgish territory.
The stone markers show a torch that comes from the sea. The torch is a symbol for freedom and it comes from the sea, because the allied forces, that liberated Western-Europe, came over the ocean to land in Normandy.
Did you know that the coat of arms of Luxembourg goes back to the 13th century?
The first one to use a primitive form of these arms was Henry V Count of Luxembourg. It consisted of a red lion on a silver and blue striped background. After Henry VI shortly used a first version of a forked tailed red lion as we know it today, the older version of Henry V became later on the official coat of arms of the Luxembourg dynasty (1247-1437). The forked tailed red lion reappeared in 1470 as they wanted to distinguish it from the old coat of arms of Habsbourg, which also showed a red lion. Until today the coat of arms with the forked tailed red lion on a silver and blue background, or “barruly of argent and azure in ten parts and a lion rampant gules, crowned, armed and langued in gold with a forked tail crossed in saltire” as it is called in the official version, is used as the coat of arms of Luxembourg and is also a part of the Grand-Dukes coat of arms. Surprisingly the background is described as barruly of argent and azure in ten parts, that’s because the tincture in heraldry follows strict rules for the naming of colours and metals. So the official tincture of the background is silver and azure blue and not white and blue as often supposed. Sometimes it’s difficult to show the silver metal, so they use a white colour. It’s the same with the metal gold, where they often use a yellow colour.