LAS INCANTADAS (The "enchanted")- THE STOLEN BEAUTY OF THESSALONÍKI.

by Michael Balaroutsos architect

The "enchanted" was a monument to the Thessalonian's known as the "Idols" or "Las Incantadas" in Judeo-Spanish dialect of the city. The monument constituted a duo-tone colonnade built piers, which were decorated by two opposite sides with full-length forms of relief to about natural size.

The monument, dating between the late 2nd and early 3rd AD century, built around a white marble, is described by authors as the most important and most beautiful monument of antiquity in Thessaloníki. It was part of the Agora, but its exact location has not been revealed.

In 1864 the statues,after  being dismantled  with a vandal way, was stolen by the French scholar of paleography Emmanuel Miller and exported outside the Greek boundaries. Since then, sometimes called "Miller Marbles" are in the Louvre, and according to information out there on a permanent basis.

DIONISOS

                                                                

   DIOSKOUROS

AURA

                                                            

      GANYMEDES

MAINAS

ARIADNΕ

VICTORY

                                                                                                                                               

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HDR Photographs Of Famous Lighthouses

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Swiss finish world's longest tunnel - Europe - Al Jazeera English

Swiss finish world's longest tunnel

Tunnel through the Alps is hailed as an environmental triumph as it will shift freight traffic from road to rail. Last Modified: 15 Oct 2010 19:08 GMT Email Article Print Article Share Article Send Feedback

The tunnel is part of a larger project to limit the damage caused by road traffic in the Alps [Reuters] The drilling of the world's longest tunnel has been completed in the Swiss Alps, clearing the path for a high-speed railway which will connect northern and southeastern Europe and shift lorry freight onto rail. After 15 years of construction work, the 9.5-metre wide drilling machine bore through the last strip of rock on  Friday, joining two ends of the 57km Gotthard Base tunnel about 2,000 metres under a mountain. The event, attended by 200 dignitaries, was broadcast live on Swiss television and watched by European Union transport ministers at a meeting in Luxembourg. "Here, in the heart of the Swiss Alps, one of the biggest environmental projects on the continent has become  reality," Moritz Leuenberger, the Swiss transport minister, said. Tunnel workers paid tribute to their colleagues who had died on the construction site with a minute's silence  as the names of the eight victims were read out. The tunnel is being hailed as an environmental triumph as much as an unprecedented engineering feat. It is part of a larger project to shift the haulage of goods from roads to rails, spurred mainly by a concern that heavy lorries are destroying Switzerland's pristine Alpine landscape. About 1.2 million lorries currently move through Switzerland's mountainous countryside every year, harming rare plants and animals due to exhaust fumes while adding to the erosion of the Alps. The aim is to halve the traffic within two years from the tunnel's opening. Swiss voters, who are paying more than $1,300 each to fund the project, approved its construction in a series of referendums almost 20 years ago and will have to wait several more before it is ready for rail traffic. When it is opened for traffic in 2017, passengers will ultimately be able to speed from the Italian city of Milan to Zurich in Switzerland in less than three hours and further north into Germany, cutting the journey time by an hour. ================================================================================= BBC VIDEO Giant drill creates world's longest tunnel in Switzerland see VIDEO IN            http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11553369