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LONDON STREETS AND SIGHTS



2016-09-17 664 Обсуждений (0)
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The names of the streets and districts are often connected with the history of the city and the country.

But often the names of the streets are no old and so changed that only few people know how this or that street got its name.

People who read books by English writers, listen to the radio, see English films can't help knowing such names as Trafalgar Square, Soho, Piccadilly, Charing Cross, etc.

Let's begin with Piccadilly. It is a fine street which has seen much history over the centuries. For generations Piccadilly has been the heart of London. Nowadays it is such a focal point that on special occasions, such as a Coronation or on New Year's Eve, as many as 50,000 people gather there.

Actually it immortalized a man who is now forgotten. The icon was a tailor who grew rich by making high collars called "piccadillies". He built a grand house which he called Piccadilla Hall, and the name, slightly changed, has lived on.

Charing Cross is one of the oldest spots in London. Once there was a small village in that place. The villagers were charing wood, making charcoal of it. That is why the village was named Charing. In 1291 Eleonor the English Queen, died outside London. Her husband wanted her body to be taken to Westminster Abbey and buried there. At every place where the funeral procession stopped a wooden cross was erected. The last place was at Charing and since then the place is called Charing Cross. The reproduction of that last cross can be seen at the entrance to Charing Cross Railway Station. Nowadays Charing Cross Road is known by its workshops where one can buy books in different languages of new and old editions.

No one, however, can explain "Soho" convincingly. The legend goes that in the old days there used to be green fields there and the people around went fox-hunting a great deal. When a hunter saw a fox he called to the dogs "So-Ho”, “So-Ho”.

Now Soho is the district where one can see people of different types, hear them speaking different languages. It is famous for its various restaurants.

There are some short streets in Soho in which six or seven restaurants of different national cooking stand one after another in a line. One can have breakfast in a Greek restaurant, dinner — in Italian and supper—in Armenian.

These are only a few examples but all London's long-past history can be told by its streets and districts names.

Task I. Make up a list of streets, squares, other sights mentioned in the text above.

Task II. Speak on the origins of the names: Piccadilly, Charing Cross, Soho.

PICCADILLY CIRCUS

Piccadilly Circus was formed in 1819 at the intersection of Piccadilly and the fashionable Regent Street, whose gracious curve was modernised with new facades 60 years ago. Here is the Cafe Royal, a haunt of literary figures and artists earlier this century. The Circus - a meeting point favoured by Londoners - has been the subject of numerous planning schemes and remains in the throes of change. Eros, the winged figure of an archer with his bow, is taking up a new position after restoration. The aluminium sculpture is properly titled. The Shaftesbury Memorial, having been wrought by Sir Alfred Gilbert in 1892-3 as a tribute to the Earl of Shaftesbury, a Victorian Philanthropist. In Trafalgar Square, Nelson stands atop his 145 foot high monument This legendary admiral, victor of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and here poised on a classical column, is guarded by a quartet of lions modelled by So Edwin Landseer and cast by Marocchelti in 1867. Four bronze reliefs near the base are cast from French cannon captured at the naval battles they illustrate.

Trafalgar Square, with the National Gallery on the North Side and Whitehall to the South, is frequented as much by pigeons as by people. A Christmas tree is sent as a gift each year from Norway end on New Year's Eve crowds gather around the tree and the lions to herald in the new year. Soho the home of strip-tease, the cinema industry and international haute cuisine, is on the edge of theatre land, rich in history and rich in cultural mix. The name Soho probably came from an ancient hunting cry So-Ho - in its farmland days. Among the earliest residents of this increasingly cosmopolitan heart of London was Charles II's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth. By the 19th century it must have seemed a strange area, described by John Galsworthy in the Forsyte Saga as "Untidy, full of Greeks, Ishmaelites, cats, Italians, tomatoes, restaurants, organs, coloured stuffs, queer names, people looking out of upper windows it dwells remote from the British Body Politic". Today there's a complete China town and restaurants serve haute cuisine from scores of countries.

Berwick Street market provides the best displays of fresh fruit and vegetables while clubs present a saucier frontage. Soho is for shopping, entertainment and browsing or dining day and night Covent Garden, a fascinating short walk away, was once pasture and belonging to the Abbey at Westminster. In the 17th century the Fourth Earl of Bedford summoned Info Jones and the continental style Piazza was ham, complete with St Paul's Church and then a market which Hogarth portrayed in engravings. The area went downhill - Turkish baths and brothels thrived until, in the 19th century, Charles Fowler designed a smart new market. Fashionable Londoners now mingled with farmers, cotter-mongers, and flower girls who inspired Pygmalion, which became the musical My Fair Lady. Times change: the Flower Market is now London Transport Museum and the main buildings have been transformed into shops and restaurants in the years since the fresh produce moved to more spacious accommodation in Nine Elms, just South West of Vauxhall Bridge.

Covent Garden Opera House, home of the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet companies is actually the third theatre on the site, designed by E.M. Barry in 1858 and enlarged in the past decade. In early years moments of unintentional drama ranged from riots in 1763 when entry at half price after the third act was refused and in 1833 when the famous actor Edmund Kean had a stroke during a performance of Othello. The present Opera House is noted for its productions with the world's finest performers which he could watch his magnum opus arise on a prominent position at the top of Ludgate Hill. His mammoth achievement took 35 years to create beginning soon after the Fire of London in 1666 during union the older church - ravaged by the Parliamen­tary army in the 1560s - was finally destroyed.

The Cathedral, a fitting setting for the marriage of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981 has the grandeur of scale with a nave 180 feet long and a height of 365 feet from the floor to the top of the cross. It also has artistic sensitivity, from Grinling Gibbons' immaculate carvings to frescoes of scenes from the like of St Paul's painted by Sir James Thornhill on the inner dome.

The paintings can be seen from the Whispering Gallery 100 feet above floor level. St Paul's was the burial place of Wren, who died alike age of 91, having changed London's skyline with some 50 exquisite churches. His tomb, one of the first in the Cathedral, is marked by a black marble slab in the crypt. St Paul's is the resting place of Admiral Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington. While it has witnessed somber funeral processions, the bell called Great Tom is generally only tolled for the deaths of members of the royal family, bishops of London, deans of St Paul's and the Lord Mayor of London, should boor she die in office.

The old churchyard is a public garden. Remnants of the medieval cloister are visible and a memorial marks the approximate site of St Paul's Cross, an open air pulpit where the Pope's condemnation of Martin Luther was proclaimed in the presence of Cardinal Wolsey. Near here some of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators were hanged having failed to blow up the Houses of Parliament.

In more peaceful vein in Paternoster Square is Elizabeth Frink's 1975 sculpture of a shepherd and sheep.

(From "This is London")

Task I: answer the questions:

1. What can you tell about Piccadilly Circus?

2. Why is a Christmas tree placed on Trafalgar square?

3. What parts of London are portrayed in the works by Hogarth?

4. What is the most well-known theatre in London? Render the most interesting facts from its history.

5. What is the artistic and architectural value of Sr. Paul's Cathedral? When does its bell toll?

 

Task II: translate:

Ни один человек, побывавший в Лондоне, не миновал этого англиканского собора, возвышающегося в самом центре столицы Соединенного Королевства. Когда-то здесь стояла церковь, уничтоженная пожаром 1666 г. На ее месте зодчий Кристофер Рен возвел в 1675-1710 гг. Собор Святого Павла, по праву ставший шедевром европейского барокко. В плане храм представляет собой гигантский крест: его длина 150, а ширина 30 метров. Высота собора более 110 метров. В ясную погоду со смотровой площадки можно видеть весь Лондон. Под величественными сводами собора богослужения совершаются с начала XVIII в. Здесь похоронены выдающиеся люди, среди них флотоводец Г. Нельсон, разгромивший испанский флот в Трафальгарской битве.

 

MUSEUMS

The National Gallerywas born when King George IV urged the government to purchase a collection of 38 paintings including six of Hogarth's Marriage A La Mode. Rubens, Rembrandt, other Flemish, Dutch and Italian Renaissance masters were acquired as years passed and the Gallery grew, and is still growing as a mecca of world class paintings. Next door is the National Portrait Gallery, one of the first major institutions to acknowledge the importance of photography in artistic heritage.

When the Tate Gallery opened in 1897 British painters, including Turner, appeared there. The Tate, beside the Thames, continued collecting British artists from 1850 to join works by Hogarth, Blake and Pre-Raphaelites and foreign works from the time of the Impressionists. The walls are decorated by Rex Whistler and Henry Moore bronzes are in the grounds, outside.

The British Museum's supreme collection was based on the will of Sir Hans Sloane in 1753, which prodded Parliament to acquire his art, antiquities and natural history collections at a sum (£20,000) far below their actual value. At the same time the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts was purchased for the nation and on January 15, 1759 the new museum opened. The King's Library was built in 1823 and new wings followed. So did a round Reading Room under a vast copper dome. Ancient works of art abound from Roman hoardes unearthed in recent years to copies of the Magna Carta, Parthenon sculptures and Egyptian mummies.

The Victoria and Albert Museum is sited next to a clutch of sister museums — Science arid Natural History and Geological which grew out of Prince Albert's Great Exhibition initiatives. The V & A, with its fine and applied art, halls of sculpture and costume, came to South Kensington in 1857 with the active support of the Prince. A new building was commissioned forty years later and Queen Victoria laid the foundation stone in 1899 in one of her last public engagements. Statues of the Queen and her Consort are above the ornate main entrance to this treasure house packed with priceless items from jewels to historic costumes to works of art from around the world and British furniture including the giant Bed of Ware, large enough to sleep a whole family.

At Madame Tussaud's in Marylebone visitors mingle with the famous and infamous, with the royal family, pop stars, and in the Chamber of Horrors meat executioners at work in lurid reality. The founder, been as Marie Grosholtz, came face to face with death. As a wax-worker of renown in Paris and former art tutor to the sister of Louis XVI, she was commanded by the leaders of the French Revolution to take death masks from the decapitated heads of the victims of the guillotine. Having married a civil engineer, Francois Tussaud, she came to London early in the 19th century and by the time of her death in 1850 at the age of 89, her waxworks were famous. Her grandson, Joseph Tussaud, supervised their move to the present site near Baker Street in 1884 since when the collection has kept pace with society — good, evil, stately — and stars. The Planetarium, next door, with its green copper dome, was opened by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1958. Exhibitions and the theatre of the night-time skies use modern technology to reveal mysterious and dramatic movements of the heavens in both hemispheres, through history and into space.

 

Task I: Read the text. Match the lists of the exhibits with the names of the museums.

1. Hogarth, Rubens, Rembrandt Other Flemish, Dutch, Italian Renaissance masters a) The Madame Tussaud's
2. Turner, Blake, pre-Raphaelites, Impressionists, Wistler and Moore b) The National Gallery
3. Ancient works of art from the Roman times, copies of the Magna Carta, Parthenon Sculptures, Egyptian mummies c) Planetarium
4. Fine and applied arts, sculpture, historical costumes, jewels, furniture d) The British Museum
5. Royal family, pop stars, politicians, film stars, authors e) The V & A museum
6. Night-time skies, hemispheres, space f) The Tate Gallery

Info box

The Museums and Galleries of London:

The Bank of England Museum, Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, The Wallace Collection, The British Museum, The Courtauld Institute Galleries, The Dulwich Picture Gallery, The Geological Museum, The Museum of London, The Museum of the Moving Image, The National Army Museum, The National Gallery, The Tate, The Natural History Museum, The V & A Museum, The Queen's Gallery, The Science Museum

THE SCIENCE MUSEUM

The Science Museum in South Kensington doesn't look very interesting from the outside. It's surrounded by other museums which are much more beautiful.

You walk in through the entrance into a huge central hall which stretches up to a glass roof high above. Around this hall on three sides are five floors of galleries. Each gallery is filled with objects, models and diagrams which illustrate a particular subject in science or engineering. For example, there is one corridor full of clocks, from Roman and Egyptian ones to modern times. You can look up from the central hall and catch a glimpse of telescopes, cameras, steam engines and computers.

At the tap of the building, under the roof, there is one huge room full of aeroplanes. You can see French, British, German and Japanese planes from the First and Second World Wars, and models of modern passenger planes like Concorde. On the walkway in front of each plane there is a phone — if you pick it up, you can hear a tape recording which explains what the plane is and how it was developed and where it was used.

When you think of a museum, you think of glass cases with labels saying “Do Not Touch”. But with lots of the exhibits in the Science Museum, you are encouraged to push buttons, turn wheels and operate the models of trains or engines. There is even a computer terminal which looks like an electric typewriter with a screen which can be operated by any visitor.

Task I: read the text. Describe:

1) What does the Science museum look from the outside and the inside;

2) The exhibits in its galleries;

3) The top floor of the building;

4) The peculiarity of the museum.



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