Information about grotto

A Marian grotto in Bischofferode (Germany)

A Grotto (Italian grotta) is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans. When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide. The picturesque Grotta Azzura at Capri and the grotto of the villa of Tiberius in the Bay of Naples are outstanding natural seashore grottoes. Whether in tidal water or high up in hills, they are very often in limestone geology where the acidity dissolved in percolating water has dissolved the carbonates of the rock matrix as it has passed through what were originally small fissures. See karst topography, cavern.

At the great Roman sanctuary of Praeneste south of Rome, the oldest portion of the primitive sanctuary was situated on the next-to-lowest terrace, in a grotto in the natural rock where there was a spring that developed into a well. Such a sacred spring had its native nymph, who might be honored in a grotto-like nymphaeum, where the watery element was never far to seek.

Tiberius filled his grotto with sculptures to recreate a mythological setting, perhaps Polyphemus' cave in the Odyssey. The numinous quality of the grotto is still more ancient, of course: in a grotto near Knossos in Crete, Eileithyia had been venerated even before Minoan palace-building, and farther back in time the immanence of the divine in a grotto is an aspect of the sacred caves of Lascaux.

The word comes from Italian grotta, Vulgar Latin grupta, Latin crypta, (a crypt). It is related by a historical accident to the word grotesque in the following way: in the late 15th century, Romans unearthed by accident Nero's Domus Aurea on the Palatine Hill, a series of rooms underground (as they had become over time), that were decorated in designs of garlands, slender architectural framework, foliations and animals. The Romans who found them thought them very strange, a sentiment enhanced by their 'underworld' source. Because of the situation in which they were discovered, this form of decoration was given the name grottesche or grotesque.

Sculpture in a grotto setting, Villa Torrigiani, Lucca

Garden grottoes

The creation of artificial grottoes was an introduction of Mannerist style to Italian, and then to French, gardens of the mid 16th century. Two famous grottoes in the Boboli Gardens of Palazzo Pitti were begun by Vasari and completed by Ammanati and Buontalenti between 1583 and 1593. One of these grottoes originally housed the Prisoners of Michelangelo. Perhaps still earlier than the Boboli grotto was one in the gardens laid out by Niccolo Tribolo (died 1550) at the Medici Villa Castello, near Florence. The Fonte di Fata Morgana ('Fata Morgana's Spring') at Grassina, not far from Florence, is a small garden building, built in 1573-4 as a garden feature in the extensive grounds of the Villa "Riposo" of Bernardo Vecchietti. It is enriched with sculptures in the manner of Giambologna.

Grotto entrance, Villa Torrigiani

The outside of such grottoes might be architectural or designed like an enormous rock or a rustic porch or rocky overhang; inside one found a temple or fountains, stalactites and even imitation gems and shells (sometimes made in ceramic); herms and mermaids, mythological subjects suited to the space: naiads, or river gods whose urns spilled water into pools. Damp grottoes were cool places to retreat from the Italian sun, but they also became fashionable in the cool drizzle of the Île-de-France; near Moscow, at Kuskovo the Sheremetev estate there is a handsome Summer Grotto, built in 1775.

Grottoes could also serve as baths, as at Palazzo del Tè, where in the 'Casino della Grotta', a small suite of intimate rooms laid out around a grotto and 'logetta' (covered balcony), courtiers once bathed in the small cascade that splashed over the pebbles and shells encrusted in the floor and walls.

Grotto pavilion in Kuskovo, Moscow (1775).

Grottoes have served as chapels, or at Villa Farnese at Caprarola, a little theater designed in the grotto manner. They were often combined with cascading fountains in Renaissance gardens.

The grotto designed by Bernard Palissy for Catherine de' Medici's château in Paris, the Tuileries, was renowned. One also finds grottos in the gardens designed by André Le Nôtre for Versailles. In England, an early garden grotto was built at Wilton House in the 1630s, probably by Isaac de Caus.

Grottoes were eminently suitable for less formal gardening too. Alexander Pope's grotto is almost all that survives of one of the very first landscape gardens in England, at Twickenham. There are grottoes in the famous landscape gardens of Stowe, Clandon Park and Stourhead. Scott's Grotto is a series of interconnected chambers, extending some 67 ft into the chalk hillside on the outskirts of Ware, Hertforshire; built during the late 18th century, the chambers and tunnels are lined with shells, flints and pieces of coloured glass [1]. The Romantic generation of tourists might not actually visit Fingal's Cave, located in the isolated Hebrides, but they heard of it, perhaps through Felix Mendelssohn's "Hebrides Overture", better known as "Fingal's Cave," which was inspired by his visit. In the 19th century, when miniature Matterhorns and rock-gardens became fashionable, a grotto might be nearby, as at Ascott House. In Bavaria, Ludwig's Neuschwanstein contains an evocation of the grotto under Venusberg, which figured in Wagner's Tannhäuser.

Icons

The mystery and perceived danger of these underground sites easily led to the formation of myths and gods. The upper Palaeolithic paintings at places like Lascaux are likely to have had mystical connections and Greek and Roman gods such as Hades (Pluto), follow the same tradition. Christianity has sought to make such places safe by developing shrines there. Though the cave-setting for the Nativity is a 2nd-century development based on apocrypha, the Marian grotto is a 19th century phenomenon. The 20th-century Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, Iowa is the largest religiously-inspired grotto in the world.

External links

http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~niless/awsthome.htm
The Folly Fellowship- An organization which celebrates architectural follies

[2] - Lourdes Grotto in San Antonio Texas

Applications

Soda water (also known as Seltzer water) is water with CO₂ dissolved under pressure. The taste of soda water was discovered by the 18th century chemist Joseph Priestley.
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Karst topography is a landscape shaped by the dissolution of a soluble layer or layers of bedrock, usually carbonate rock such as limestone or dolomite. These landscapes display distinctive surface features and underground drainages, and in some examples there may be little or no
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Country Italy
Region Latium
Province Rome (RM)
Mayor Rodolfo Lena

Area km
Population
- Total (as of Dec.
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nymph is any member of a large class of female entities in human form, that is either bound to a particular location, or landform, or is part of the retinue of a god, such as Dionysus, Hermes, or Pan, or a goddess, generally Artemis.
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nymphaeum, in ancient Greece and Rome, was a monument consecrated to the nymphs, especially those of springs. These monuments were originally natural grottoes, which tradition assigned as habitations to the local nymphs.
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Polyphemus (Greek: Πολύφημος, transliterated as Polyphemos in Robert Fitzgerald's translation), a character in Greek mythology, is a Cyclops, the one-eyed son of Poseidon and Thoosa.
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The Odyssey (Greek Οδύσσεια (Odússeia)) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to the Ionian poet Homer. The poem is commonly dated circa 800 to circa 600 BC.
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Knossos (alternative spellings Knossus, Cnossus, Gnossus, Greek Κνωσός pronounced [kno̞sˈo̞s]
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Ilithyia —the Latin spelling—or more usually Eileithyia^[1] (Greek: Εἰλείθυια), was the Cretan goddess whom Greek mythology adapted as the goddess of childbirth and midwiving.
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The Minoan civilization was a bronze age civilization which arose on Crete, an island in the Aegean Sea. The Minoan culture flourished from approximately 2700 to 1450 BC; afterwards, Mycenaean Greek culture became dominant on Crete.
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Lascaux is the setting of a complex of caves in southwestern France famous for its cave paintings. The original caves are located near the village of Montignac, in the Dordogne département.
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Italian}}}
Official status
Official language of: European Union
European Union
Switzerland
San Marino
Vatican City
Sovereign Military Order of Malta

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Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris, "common speech") is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects and sociolects of the Latin language until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages — a distinction usually made
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Latin}}}
Official status
Official language of: Vatican City
Used for official purposes, but not spoken in everyday speech
Regulated by: Opus Fundatum Latinitas
Roman Catholic Church
Language codes
ISO 639-1: la
ISO 639-2: lat
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crypt (from the Latin crypta and the Greek kryptē) is a stone chamber or vault, usually beneath the floor of a church or castle, usually used as a chapel or burial vault possibly containing sarcophagi, coffins or relics of important persons such as saints or
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Nero
Emperor of the Roman Empire

Nero at Glyptothek, Munich
Reign October 13, 54 – June 9, 68
(Proconsul from 51)
Full name Nero Claudius Caesar
Augustus Germanicus
Born November 15 37
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The Domus Aurea (Latin for "Golden House") was a large landscaped "portico villa", designed to take advantage of artificially created landscapes, rather than a monumental palace,^[1]
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The Palatine Hill,
one of the seven hills of Rome
In Latin / Italian Palatium /
Colle Palatino
Rione Campitelli
Buildings Flavian Palace

People Cicero, Augustus, Tiberius, Domitian
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Grotto