Lexington, Kentucky and Cincinnati, Ohio

We traveled to Lexington, the center of Bluegrass Country.  On the city's outskirts are hundreds of the world's most celebrated horse farms.  Nearly 50,000 horses are bred in the Lexington area each year. In 1789, not long after horses were brought here from Virginia, the census noted more horses than humans.

We visited the Kentucky Horse Park and its International Museum of the Horse.  The museum carefully documents the evolution of the horse and its history with humans, and includes an excellent collection of historical artifacts.

A hunting scene from ancient Egypt.

A broach from Scythia, c 500-400 BC.

These ancient Roman horseshoes, made of iron, were tied with leather thongs around the horse's legs, not nailed to their hooves.

This T'ang dynasty (c 618-906 AD) Chinese horse is an excellent example of horses found buried in the tombs of nobles and officials.

During the late Middle Ages, as armor protection for riders became more effective, their horses became targets.  This German horse-head armor (chanfron) dates from about 1560 AD.  The long, pointed spikes at the bottom of the picture are calthrops.  Used to disable the horses of an advancing enemy, they were one of the cruelest defenses against cavalry ever invented.

Full armor, called barding, for rider and horse quickly evolved out of necessity.  The armor in this French Victorian statue by Granger of Paris, is fully articulated.

Although the game of polo did not become a western pastime until 1869 when British officers brought it to England from India, records exist showing that it was played in Persia (modern-day Iran) during the time of Darius I, c 500 BC.  This colorful miniature dates to 1520 and shows the nobility of Persia playing polo.

This 19th century reproduction of a much older tile is a vibrant example of the importance of the horse in Persian art.

The Kentucky Horse Park also boasts the burial place of the legendary racehorse, Man O War, whose running stride was twenty-eight feet.

Located on the Ohio River, Cincinnati has some beautiful hills and bluffs.

We stopped at the scenic cliff-top Eden Park, overlooking the Ohio River.  

And yes, it snowed.  In fact it developed into a white-out.

It was here that the city placed a replica of The Capitoline Wolf, donated in 1931 by Benito Mussolini.  The bronze sculpture depicts the moment when Romulus and Remus, the mythological eventual founders of the city of Rome, were saved from starvation by a mother wolf.  The original sculpture of the lone wolf, cast sometime between the 10th and 11th centuries AD, has been housed in a palace on the Capitoline Hill in Rome since 1471.  The figures of Romulus and Remus were added sometime in the 15th century.  Mussolini, who considered himself the founder of the "New Rome," gave the sculpture to Cincinnati as a token of goodwill to celebrate a Sons of Italy national convention here.