December newsletter. Europeana

	Dear Reader, welcome to the December newsletter. This issue introduces winter scenes from Europeana, takes you to the magical world of fairy tales, and highlights some our new content. Best wishes for the festive season from the Europeana team.
	Europeana Looks Ahead To 2011
	More virtual exhibitions and new features for the Europeana.eu portal are waiting around the corner in 2011, and there will be a special bonus for music lovers. Some 45,000 images of musical instruments from museums across Europe will soon be published on Europeana.Read More...
	Winter Inspiration on Europeana		New Content: Architecture and Art		The Magic of Fairy Tales
	Winter's cold days and long nights have fed the imaginations of Europe's painters, photographers, composers and filmmakers for centuries. Their impressions of people skating across icy ponds, snow-covered houses, skiers in majestic mountain landscapes and star-filled skies fill the pages of Europeana. Read More...		Explore the fine buildings and historic sites of Europe, see their transformation across time, and take a closer look at renowned works of art. The Image Library Foto Marburg and Cultura italia have made over 1.7 million works available on Europeana, giving you a unique opportunity to know more about Europe's art history. Read More...		Intricate lace of ice on windowpanes, a mosaic of prints on the snow, fresh scent of a fur tree... Winter brings with it the atmosphere of magic, taking us to the enchanting world of fairy tales. Browse through the marvelous collection of fairy tales on Europeana and find your favourite stories. Read More...
	Europeana Looks Ahead To 2011
	Photograph of Lawrence Crisp, Royal Engineers, Courtesy of The Great War Archive. Photograph of James Manson, Signaller, Courtesy of The Great War Archive.		With 2011 just around the corner, Europeana is planning a series of exciting projects and improvements to unite Europe's cultural heritage and will also make usingEuropeana.eu even easier than before. The activities will start early next year, when Europeana will travel around Germany to gather First World War memorabilia such as family letters and pictures from local communities. Material contributed by the public will be digitised and included in Europeana. Some of the digitised objects will also be featured in a new virtual exhibition. The online display will place objects from Germany's citizens alongside items already gathered by the Great War Archive in the UK and First World War relics from institutions across Europe. In this way, the experiences of families on all sides of the trenches during the First World War will be represented in a single space, creating a unique pan-European view on an event traditionally covered from a solitary national perspective. More virtual exhibitions will follow later in the year, including one on the history of travel, which is being assembled by EuropeanaTravel and The European Library. These exhibitions are one of the main ways in which Europeana aims to highlight themes from the millions of items in our collection and show how digitisation can help unite Europe's shared cultural history, even when the physical objects are geographically far apart. For example, our debut exhibition on the theme of Art Nouveaubrought together posters, sculptures, photographs and designs from dozens of cultural institutions in 17 European countries. The spring and summer months will also be a time to unveil improvements to the functionality of the Europeana.eu portal. "We will focus on enriching the content and providing context. We'll improve search and discovery as well as inviting users to share their knowledge with us. Through APIs and widgets it will also be possible to re-use Europeana content on partner web sites," says David Haskiya, Europeana's product developer. Throughout the year, there will also be plenty of new content to explore. Musical instruments from museums across Europe will be added by MIMO, as will television footage from EUscreen and descriptions of archival materials from the APEnet project.
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	Winter Inspiration on Europeana
	Zima w Polsce, Courtesy of Biblioteka Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sklodowskiej. De Potterierei in de winter, Groeninge Museum Bruges.		Winter's cold days and long nights have fed the imaginations of Europe's painters, photographers, composers and filmmakers for centuries. Their impressions of people skating across icy ponds, snow-covered houses, skiers in majestic mountain landscapes and star-filled skies fill the pages of Europeana. Some such as the 20th century painting De Potterierei in de winter depict city streets dusted with snow, while others like this 1929 photograph of an ice-covered fisherman's hut in the Bulgarian seaside town of Varna show how harsh winter can be. Others take a more playful approach. There are whimsical posters of graceful skatersfrom prolific 19th century French artist Jules Chéret and objects inspired by winter celebrations, such as this Norwegian postcard showing a jolly Santa Claus. The inspiration of winter is also heard in song, through musical masterpieces, such as Tchaikovsky's December suite from his series The Seasons and of course the famous Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi. "Shivering, frozen mid the frosty snow in biting, stinging winds; running to and fro to stamp one's icy feet, teeth chattering in the bitter chill," is the sonnet Vivaldi penned to accompany the Allegro Non Molto portion of his Winter concerto and the music reflects these frigid experiences. And of course, from more modern times, we can watch videos of events such asChristmas celebrations at a church in Sweden, winter scenes from Paris in 1942 andfrom Italy. The pictures below represent a small sample of the winter-themed objects waiting to be discovered on Europeana.
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	New Content: Architecture and Art
	Tondo Doni, Courtesy of CulturaItalia. Querschnitt des ersten Entwurfes, Courtesy of Deutsches Dokumentationszentrum für Kunstgeschichte.		Take a tour across Europe, visit cultural sites and discover masterpieces from Europeana's new collections: Foto Marburg at the German Documentation Centre for Art History and Cultura italia, the internet portal of the Italian ministry of culture. With its broad profile and a rich collection of original photographs from the 1870s until today, Foto Marburg is one of the largest image archives on European art and architecture. Many of the early photos effectively document objects of cultural heritage before their modification, damage or complete destruction. For example, the beautiful Baroque Dresden Frauenkirche, which was destroyed during World War II, has been reconstructed on the basis of the original architect's annotated diagrams and photographs from the Marburg image library. The magnifying tool on the Marburg's site enables you to see the finest details of George Bähr's magnificent conception, which has become one of the city's main tourist sites since its re-opening in 2005. Another highlight is the ceiling decoration with the magnificent painting Triumph of Prudence in the Town Hall in Augsburg, Germany, which was also destroyed during the war, and restored close to its original beauty with the help of historical photographs. In addition, Foto Marburg has an outstanding collection of photographs that document art in Germany from 1860 to modern day. For example, you can appreciate the work of the most prominent sculptor of Prussian classicism Gottfried Schadow depicting young princesses Luise und Friederike of Prussia. Cultura italia also brings you remarkable cultural works of different times and genres. Historical artefacts, interior details, and a number of Italian Renaissance masterpieces from the Uffizi in Florence are some of its marvellous highlights. Here you can see Doni Tondo by Michelangelo Buonarotti, the only existing panel painting that he created without the aid of his assistants. Commissioned by Agnolo Doni, the painting was to commemorate his marriage to a daughter of a powerful and influential Tuscan family. A similar use of colour can be also traced in Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling frescoes. You can also find La Tempesta by Venetian painter Giorgione, which is believed to be the first landscape in the history of Western paintings. La Tempesta portrays a soldier and a woman breast-feeding near a stream, against a backdrop of ruins and a gathering storm These are only a few examples of the two collections. Learn more about our new content and see for yourself.
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	The Magic of Fairy Tales
	Sleeping Beauty, Courtesy of Het Geheugen van Nederland. The Tale of the Golden Cockerel, Courtesy of Chouvashia State Art Museum.		Terrifying dragons and beautiful princesses, evil stepmothers and friendly dwarfs, brave knights and hideous witches - all come to life in the magical world of fairy tales. Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella or Puss in Boots are the characters who have become an inseparable part of our childhood memories. See the marvellous collection of fairy tales on Europeana and select your favourites. Long before fairy tales made it to print, they were passed on from generation to generation in an oral form. The Brothers Grimm from Germany are among the most renowned collectors of folk tales, who wrote them down and later edited them, making these tales into the literary works we know today. Here you can find the fascinating stories of the notable Brothers published in different languages. For example, Snow White in German, Town Musicians of Bremen in Spanish or The Frog Prince in Polish. Some of the Grimms' tales find roots in the books of Charles Perrault, who is one of the founders of the fairy tale literary genre. Little Red Riding Hood, The Sleeping Beauty,Cinderella and Tom Thumb are some of his best-known fairy tales. You can also discover works of the famous Danish writer, Hans Christian Andersen. Read his endearing stories about love in The Snow Queen, The Little Mermaid or The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Although it was his fairy tales, like The Ugly Duckling, that brought him fame, Andersen was also a profound novelist and a poet. You can see that in the first edition of his works on Europeana. Europeana also gives you the best stories from Russia: The tale of Tsar Saltan byAlexander Pushkin as well as illustrations to some of his other fairy tales. Want to know more? Try searching for: Fairy tales Brothers Grimm Charles Perrault Hans Christian Andersen