494. The Museu Paulista of the University of São Paulo

 The Museu Paulista of the University of São Paulo (commonly known in São Paulo and all Brazil as Museu do Ipiranga) is a Brazilian history museum located near where Emperor D. Pedro I proclaimed the Brazilian independence on the banks of Ipiranga brook in the Southeast region of the city of São Paulo, then the "Caminho do Mar," or road to the seashore. It contains a huge collection of furniture, documents and historically relevant artwork, especially relating to the Brazilian Empire era.  The most famous work of art in the collection is the 1888 painting Independência ou Morte (Independence or Death) by Pedro Américo.  A few months after the Brazilian Declaration of Independence, people started to suggest a monument on the site where the declaration took place, although they were not sure about what sort of memorial construction to build. In 1884, Italian architect Tommaso Gaudenzio Bezzi, who was hired to develop the project, chose to build an eclectic-styled construction similar to the French Palace of Versailles with impressive and perfectly manicured gardens and fountain.

BR-230034

493. Amsterdam

 Leidsgracht/Keizersgracht

NL-1511918

492. The Romanov Family

RU-1292074

491. Berchtesgaden National Park

 Berchtesgaden National Park is in the south of Germany, on its border with Austria, in the municipalities of Ramsau bei Berchtesgaden and Schönau am Königsee, Berchtesgadener Land, Free State of Bavaria. The national park was established in 1978 to protect the landscapes of the Berchtesgaden Alps. Headquartered in the town of Berchtesgaden. The park was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1990.

DE-1633599

490. Braslau Lakes

 Braslau Lakes is one of the seven National Parks in Belarus. The National Park was set up in September 1995. It is a unique ecosystem with a number of lakes and a large area of pine forests. It has a total area of about 700 km 2 (270 square miles). This includes 30 lakes. The largest lakes are Dryvyaty (Belarusian: Дрывяты), Snudy (Belarusian: Снуды), and Strusta (Belarusian: Струста).

BY-612874

489. The stag beetle

 Lucanus cervus is the best-known species of stag beetle in the West (family Lucanidae), and is sometimes referred to simply as the stag beetle. It lives in holes in old trees and dead trunks, in the forest as well as in groves. Forest management, in eliminating old trees and dead wood, eliminates at the same time the habitat and food of this species. Once quite common, the population of the Lucanus cervus, along with that of other species of beetles which feed on wood, is in steep decline, and is now listed as a globally threatened/declining species.

NL-1507177

488.Adiantum americanum

 

CN-677057

487. Zoncolan

 Monte Zoncolan (el.1,750 metres ) is a mountain in the Carnic Alps, located in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italy. It is one of the most demanding climbs in professional road bicycle racing, having been used in the Giro d'Italia four times (2003, 2007, 2010, 2011) and the Giro Donne once (1997). Gilberto Simoni was the winner of the first two stages finishing on Monte Zoncolan in the men's Giro while Ivan Basso won in 2010, Igor Antón won in 2011 and Fabiana Luperini won at the only visit in the women's race.

IT-201727

486. Snufkin

FI-1567489

485. Staffordshire

 Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders. It adjoins the ceremonial counties of Cheshire, Derbyshire , Leicestershire, Warwickshire, West Midlands, Worcestershire, and Shropshire.  The largest city in Staffordshire is Stoke-on-Trent, which is administered separately from the rest of the county as an independent unitary authority. Lichfield also has city status, although this is a considerably smaller cathedral city. Major towns include Stafford, Burton upon Trent, Cannock, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Leek and Tamworth. Wolverhampton, Walsall, West Bromwich and Smethwick were also in Staffordshire until local government reorganisation in 1974, but are now within the West Midlands County in the West Midlands Conurbation.  With the exception of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire is divided into the districts of Cannock Chase, East Staffordshire, Lichfield, Newcastle-under-Lyme, South Staffordshire, Stafford, Staffordshire Moorlands, and Tamworth.  For Eurostat purposes the county. Together with Stoke-on-Trent and the authorities covering the ceremonial county of Shropshire, it comprises the "Shropshire and Staffordshire"

GB-370654

484. The Lüneburg Heath

 The Lüneburg Heath (German: Lüneburger Heide; also Lunenburg Heath in English) is a large area of heath, geest and woodland in northeastern part of the state of Lower Saxony in northern Germany. It forms part of the hinterland for the cities of Hamburg, Hanover, and Bremen and is named after the town of Lüneburg. Most of the area is a nature reserve. Northern Low Saxon is still widely spoken in the region.  The Lüneburg Heath has extensive areas of heathland, typical of those that covered most of the North German countryside until about 1800, but which have almost completely disappeared in other areas. The heaths were formed after the Neolithic period by overgrazing of the once widespread forests on the poor sandy soils of the geest, as this slightly hilly and sandy terrain in northern Europe is called. The Lüneburg Heath is therefore a historic cultural landscape. The remaining areas of heath are kept clear mainly through grazing, especially by a North German breed of moorland sheep called the Heidschnucke. Due to its unique landscape, the Lüneburg Heath is a popular tourist destination in North Germany.

DE-1672859

483. The Annunciation Cathedral

 The Cathedral of the Annunciation (Russian: Благовещенский собор, or Blagoveschensky sobor) is a Russian Orthodox church dedicated to the Annunciation of the Theotokos. It is located on the southwest side of Cathedral Square of the Moscow Kremlin in Russia, where it connects directly to the main building of the complex of the Grand Kremlin Palace, adjacent to the Palace of Facets. It was originally the personal chapel for the Muscovite tsars, and its abbot remained a personal confessor of the Russian royal family until the early 20th century. The Cathedral of the Annunciation was built by architects from Pskov in 1484-1489 as part of Grand Duke Ivan III plans for a large-scale renovation of the Moscow Kremlin. It was built on the spot of an older 14th century cathedral of the same name, which had been rebuilt in 1416. This older cathedral in turn had replaced a previous wooden church from the 13th century that had fallen victim to the frequent fires in the Kremlin.

RU-1263012

482. Stetind

 Stetind or Stetinden is a mountain ( 1.392 m. )in the municipality of Tysfjord in Nordland county, Norway. It is located about 15 kilometres northeast of the village of Kjøpsvik. The mountain has very smooth sides reaching all the way to the fjord. Stetind has an obelisk-shape which gives it a very distinct look. In 2002, it was voted to be the "National Mountain" of Norway by listeners of NRK.

NO-68308

481. Kernave

 Kernavė was a medieval capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and today is a tourist attraction and an archeological site. It is located in the Širvintos district municipality located in southeast Lithuania. A Lithuanian state cultural reserve was established in Kernavė in 1989. In 2004 Kernavė Archaeological Site was included into UNESCO world heritage list

LT-248222

480. Lighthouses from Holland

NL-1501773

479. Fairy-tail cottage

 Fairy-tail cottage in Flenovo, architect S.V. Malyutin

RU-1232549

478. Villa in Chernivtsi

 

 UA-382773

477. Niederrhein

 The Lower Rhine region or Niederrhein is a region around the Lower Rhine section of the river Rhine in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany between approximately Neuss and Düsseldorf in the South and the Dutch border around Emmerich in the North. As the region can be defined either geographically, linguistically, culturally, or by political, economic and traffic relations throughout the centuries, as well as by more recent political subdivisions, its precise borders are disputable and occasionally may be seen as extending beyond the Dutch border. Yet, while the Dutch half of the Lower Rhine geographic area is called Nederrijn in Dutch, it does practically not overlap with the German Niederrhein region, although one term is the translation of the other.

DE-1590901

476. Cesky Meran

CZ-219767

475. Turkey

 Lovely scenery from Turkey

474. Postcard

US-1915569

Dar Mlodziezy - Private

 Dar Młodzieży ("The Gift of Youth") is a Polish sail training ship designed by Zygmunt Choreń. A prototype of a class of six, the following five slightly-differing units were built subsequently by the same shipyard for the merchant fleet of the former Soviet Union. Her sister ships are Mir, Druzhba, Pallada, Khersones and Nadezhda. The ship was launched in November 1981 at the Gdańsk shipyard, Poland, and commissioned for service in July 1982 at Gdynia, thus replacing her forerunner Dar Pomorza. Her home port is Gdynia. The Dar Młodzieży is the first Polish-built, ocean-going sailing vessel to circumnavigate the globe (1987-88), thus repeating the famous voyage of her predecessor (1934-35).

473. Sunrise at Chaguaramas

 Chaguaramas lies in the North West Peninsula of Trinidad west of Port of Spain; the name is often applied to the entire peninsula, but is sometimes used to refer to the most developed area. The entire peninsula was leased to the United States in 1940 for the construction of a naval base under the Destroyers for Bases Agreement.  The base was also used during the early 1960s as a BMEWS early warning radar site, as well as serving as a missile tracking site on the U.S. Air Force Eastern Test Range.  The base was scaled back in 1956 and the area was returned to Trinidad and Tobago control in 1963.[1]  Chaguaramas was the location slated for the construction of the capital of the short-lived West Indies Federation. It is also the place where the Treaty of Chaguaramas was signed, establishing Caricom, the Caribbean Community and Common Market, in 1973.

TT-1395

472. Kivach Waterfall

Kivach is a 10.7-m-high cascade waterfall in Russia. It is situated on the Suna River in the Kondopoga District, Republic of Karelia and gives its name to the Kivach Natural Reserve, founded in 1931.  Kivach owes much of its fame to Gavrila Derzhavin, a Russian poet who was inspired by its "unruly stream" to write "Waterfall", one of the most important Russian poems of the 18th century. Many other eminent visitors followed Derzhavin to see the famed waterfall. One of these was Alexander II of Russia, who commissioned a new road to Kivach, a pavilion on the right bank of the stream and a bridge slightly downstream.  In 1936, the Soviets diverted part of the river to feed a local hydroelectric power station, which affected the waterfall negatively, while its rivals — Girvas (14.8 m) and Por-Porog (16.8 m) — were destroyed altogether. Although it is not as spectacular as it used to be, Kivach is still considered a major sight in Karelia.

RU-1223767

471. Ponte d'Augusto

 The Ponte d'Augusto, Bridge of Tiberius (Italian: Ponte di Tiberio) is a Roman bridge in Rimini, Italy. The bridge features five semicircular arches with an average span length of ca. 8 m. Construction work started during Augustus' reign and was finished under his successor Tiberius in 20 AD; an inscription thus calls the structure as "given by both emperors". The bridge was the only crossing of the Marecchia not destroyed by the retreating German army during the Battle of Rimini and is said to have resisted all attempts at destruction, including the ignition failure of explosive charges. The bridge is still open to pedestrian and vehicular traffic, with the exception of heavy goods vehicles.

IT-200470