Completed 6th August 2024

 

1000 Pieces

Atlantis Center of the Ancient World

Manufactured by BlueBird 

Shangri-La is a mystical place in Tibet, where people live in peace and harmony.

Xanadu (Shangdu) was a summer retreat of Kublai Khan, the emperor of China and grandson of Dschingis Khan. Xanadu is also a metaphor for wealth and idyllic life. Built in 1256, the ruins of Shangdu are in Mongolia today, 370 km north of Peking.

 

Dracula is a fiction novel written by Bram Stoker in 1897. Dracula is the most renowned vampire who lived in a castle in Romania, but we also know Nosferatu (movie by Max Schreck, 1922), Edward Cullen (Twilight, Stephenie Meyer) or Lestat de Lioncourt (Vampre Chronicles, Anne Rice)

Theben was mentioned by Homer as the city of the seven doors

The Queen of Sheba's Palace is one of several places popularly held to be the residence of the legendary Queen of Sheba. It may refer to Dungur, archaeological site in Aksum, Ethiopia.

 

Carthaea or Karthaia was one of the four ancient Greek city-states on the island of Ceos (today Kea or Tzia) in the Cyclades.

 

The "King Solomon" is the legendary Biblical king renowned both for his wisdom and for his wealth. A number of sites have been suggested as the location of his mines, including the workings at the Timna valley near Eilat. Research published in September 2013 has shown that this site was in use during the 10th century BC as a copper mine possibly by the Edomites.

The Bible refers to King Solomon having sent out trading expeditions along the Red Sea, which brought exotic wares and animals from Africa to Jerusalem. Muslim traders told Portuguese travellers in the 16th and 17th centuries that the region's gold mines belonged to King Solomon and that he built the now-ruined Great Zimbabwe.

 

El Dorado is commonly associated with the legend of a gold city purportedly located somewhere in the Americas. Originally "The Golden Man" was the term used by the Spanish in the 16th century to describe a mythical tribal chief or king of the Muisca people, an indigenous people of the Altiplano Cundiboyacense of Colombia.

 

 A second location for El Dorado was inferred from rumors, which inspired several unsuccessful expeditions in the late 16th century in search of a city called Manoa on the shores of Lake Parima. Two of the most famous of these expeditions were led by Sir Walter Raleigh.

 

The Fountain of Youth is a mythical spring which allegedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted around the world for thousands of years.

 Stories of similar waters also featured prominently among the people of the Caribbean during the Age of Exploration (early 16th century); they spoke of the restorative powers of the water in the mythical land of Bimini. Based on these many legends, explorers and adventurers looked for the elusive Fountain of Youth or some other remedy to aging, generally associated with magic waters.

 

Atlantis is a fictional island mentioned in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias as part of an allegory on the hubris of nations. In the story, Atlantis is described as a naval empire that ruled all Western parts of the known world. After an attempt to conquer "Ancient Athens," Atlantis fell out of favor with the deities and submerged into the Atlantic Ocean. Since Plato described Athens as resembling his ideal state in the Republic, the Atlantis story is meant to bear witness to the superiority of his concept of a state.