Page 47 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Italy

A POR TR AIT OF IT AL Y  45

Padua University, founded in
1222, was a centre of scientific
learning in the Renaissance.
Galileo, inventor of the telescope,
taught physics here, and the
Trentino- The Veneto lectern he used is still on view.
Alto Adige and Friuli

The Venetian Marco Polo
set off for the East as a youth
in 1271. He stayed at the court
of the Mongol emperor Kublai
Galileo Galilei proved Khan for nearly two decades
that the earth revolved before returning home. He is
around the sun, over- seen here arriving at Hormuz
turning Church doctrine. in the Persian Gulf from India.
He was convicted of
heresy in 1633. Here he
shows the rings of Saturn
Le Marche
to Venetian senators.
Umbria
Winner of the Nobel Prize
for Physics in 1938, Enrico
Fermi directed the first
controlled nuclear chain
reaction. He built the world’s
first nuclear reactor for
Rome and Abruzzo, Molise producing power at the
University of Chicago.
Lazio and Puglia

Naples and
Campania
Pliny the Elder wrote
Basilicata his catalogue of human
and know ledge, Natural
Calabria History, in AD 77. He died
when Vesuvius erupted
two years later, but his
book retained its
authority for 1,500 years.
Spectacles were invented
in Italy in the 13th century.
They are first recorded in Venice,
still an important centre for
glasswork today.

Sicily
The mathematician Archimedes was
born in c. 287 BC in Syracuse, Sicily,
then a Greek colony. Legend has it that
he discovered the principle of specific
gravity while in the bath.

044-045_EW_Italy.indd 45 4/4/17 5:32 PM