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The Flaminio Obelisk is one of the thirteen ancient obelisks in Rome. It is located in the Flaminio quarter on Piazza del Popolo.
The Nineteenth Dynasty pharaoh Seti I quarried this obelisk from granite quarries in Aswan. Before his death, artists inscribed three of the four faces of the obelisk, which Seti intended to erect in the Temple of Re in Heliopolis. Seti's son and successor Ramesses II completed its inscriptions and set it up in Heliopolis.
It was brought to Rome in 1 BC by command of Augustus, together with the Obelisk of Montecitorio, and placed on the spina of the Circus Maximus, followed three centuries later by the Lateran Obelisk. Like most Egyptian obelisks, the Flaminio Obelisk was probably one of a pair, but no trace of its companion has been found.
The obelisk was rediscovered in 1587, broken into three pieces, together with the Lateran Obelisk; and was erected in the Piazza del Popolo by Domenico Fontana in 1589, at the command of Pope Sixtus V. Sixtus had the Septizodium demolished to provide the travertine for the obelisk's pedestal, among other building projects.
In 1823, Giuseppe Valadier embellished it with a base having four circular basins and stone lions, imitating the Egyptian style.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.