Word: profani
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...fact, the world's oldest continuous art collector, and the history of its museums goes back to 1503, when Julius II set up a courtyard for connoisseurs, the Belvedere, stocked with a collection of antique statuary. Above its entrance was engraved a Vergilian tag, "Procul este, profani, "which freely translates as "Closed to non-experts." Turnstile tallies were not a concern of Renaissance Popes. In the past 1,500 years or so, the Vatican has amassed vast amounts of art in a way that has oscillated between the ravenous and the haphazard. There is a vague popular belief-which...
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