It is important to remember that the tiaras in old Italian pictures are inventions of the artists and not copied from actual examples.
The Saggio is a learned and valuable work, containing an important collection of examples from the best masters of the old Italian and Spanish schools, with excellent explanatory notes.
Between them stood the old Italian palace of Prince Menshikov, the site of which is now occupied by the pilot school.
Among the more prominent secular buildings are the Giirzenich, a former meeting-place of the diets of the Holy Roman Empire, built between 1441 and 1447, of which the ground floor was in 1875 converted into a stock exchange, and the upper hall, capable of accommodating 3000 persons, is largely utilized for public festivities, particularly during the time of the Carnival; the Rathaus, dating from the 13th century, with beautiful Gobelin tapestries; the Tempelhaus, the ancestral seat of the patrician family of the Overstolzens, a beautiful building dating from the 13th century, and now the chamber of commerce; the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, in which is a collection of paintings by old Italian and Dutch masters, together with some works by modern artists; the Zeughaus, or arsenal, built on Roman foundations; the Supreme Court for the Rhine provinces; the post-office (1893); the Imperial Bank (Reichsbank); and the municipal library and archives.
The coarse myth told by Ovid, in which Anna plays a trick on Mars when in love with Minerva, is probably an old Italian folk-tale, poetically applied to the persons of these deities when they became partially anthropomorphized under Greek influence.
