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Christopher Columbus and the Córdoba connection

It was here in Córdoba that Columbus obtained permission for his historical journey across the Atlantic.

The relatively modern statue in the garden of the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos shows Columbus standing before the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabelle, asking them for the money to begin his voyage, which he believed would open up a much shorter trading route to Asia. The Genoese navigator had already been trying to raise money for his journey for seven years. Initially Isabella said no. But as Columbus was dejectedly leaving the court, the story goes, Ferdinand intervened, and the decision was reversed.

The journeys of Columbus began the colonial era, which inflicted suffering, slavery and death on indigenous peoples around the world. The diaries of Bartolomé de las Casas, the young Spanish priest who accompanied Columbus on his second journey, are eloquent, anguished records of the "cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see". It seems ironic that on the ruins of perhaps one of the most civilised and beautiful Islamic courts ever to exist, flowered the most brutal and bloody era of Christianity.

A team of archaeologists in Rome has claimed to have found the remains of a legendary revolving dining room built by Emperor Nero to impress his guests.

According to a report in The Guardian, digging on the Palatine Hill, archaeologists stumbled on the remnants of a circular room, 16 metres (53ft) in diameter, which they believe formed part of Nero’s palace, built in the first century AD.

Sixty years after Nero’s reign, the historian Suetonius wrote that the dining room revolved “night and day, in imitation of the motion of the celestial bodies”.

Archaeologists have yet to determine how the room revolved. Known as the Domus Aurea, or Golden Room, the palace also featured an artificial lake and was dominated by a 100-foot statue of Nero.

“This discovery has no equal among ancient Roman architectural finds,” said dig leader Francoise Villedieu.

He said that the room was supported by a pillar with a diameter of 4m (13ft). Traces of a wood platform which possibly floated on water in the room have also been found.

Italy’s government has granted 200,000 Euros to let the dig continue. (ANI)