title: Kuwait International Airport

text: Terminal 1 is the primary building at Kuwait International Airport and houses most arriving and departing flights other than those operated by Jazeera Airways, Kuwait Airways, Aegean Airlines and flydubai, which operate out of the other terminals; it has 16 gates. The terminal also houses restaurants, duty-free shops, security checkpoints, and four lounges.


title: Kuwait International Airport

text: Terminal 2, designed by Foster + Partners, will expand the airport's overall capacity by 25–50 million passengers per year through the introduction of a triangular building with 28 gates, 4,500 additional parking spaces and a 400-bed air-side hotel. It began construction in May 2017 and was due for completion in August 2022, but got shifted to 2024 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new terminal is environmentally sustainable. It is one of the world's largest environment friendly airport projects. It is an essential part of Kuwait Vision 2035.


title: Kuwait International Airport

text: Originally named the Sheikh Saad General Aviation Terminal and conceived for use by private aircraft, Terminal 3 is a small building that was used exclusively by Aegean Airlines and flydubai before being shut down due to work in Terminal 2.


title: Kuwait International Airport

text: Inaugurated on 8 August 2018, Terminal 4 is used by all flights operated by Kuwait's national carrier, Kuwait Airways. The building was designed by the Spanish branch of the American company AECOM and built by a joint venture between Cengiz Insaat and First Kuwaiti Contractor. It is housed in a dedicated building neighboring the cargo-handling facilities on the airport compound and built over an area of 55,000 square meters. It offers five bus gates and nine boarding bridges gates, with a capacity of eight planes at the same time. Terminal 4 can handle 4.5 million passengers annually and eases congestion at Terminal 1. There are 2,450 additional car parking spaces in a dedicated surface lot adjacent to the terminal and connected to the building by a bridge.


title: Kuwait International Airport

text: Inaugurated in May 2018, Terminal 5 is exclusively used by Kuwait-based budget airline Jazeera Airways. Attached to Terminal 1 but with dedicated entrance/exit points, it also includes check-in zones, security checkpoints, lounges, shops, three departure gates, customs and arrival belts. It additionally offers 350 parking spaces in a multi-story facility attached to Terminal 5 by a bridge.


title: The Fog of War

text: The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 American documentary film about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, illustrating his observations of the nature of modern warfare. It was directed by Errol Morris and features an original score by Philip Glass. The title derives from the military concept of the "fog of war", which refers to the difficulty of making decisions in the midst of conflict.


title: The Fog of War

text: The film was screened out of competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature of 2003. In 2019, it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: The Fog of War

text: Composed of archival footage, recordings from the 1960s of conversations of the United States Cabinet, and new interviews with former-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, "The Fog of War" depicts McNamara's life, as seen from his perspective as an eighty-five-year-old man. It is divided into eleven sections based upon "lessons" Morris derived from his interviews with McNamara, as well as the eleven lessons presented at the end of McNamara's 1995 book, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" (written with Brian VanDeMark).


title: The Fog of War

text: Born in San Francisco during World War I, McNamara says his earliest memory is of American troops returning from Europe. Coming from humble origins, he graduated from University of California, Berkeley, where he met his first wife, Margaret Craig McNamara, and Harvard Business School, where he went on to teach. During World War II, he served as an officer in the Army Air Forces under General Curtis LeMay, who was later Chief of Staff of the Air Force while McNamara was Secretary of Defense. After the war, McNamara was one of the Whiz Kids at Ford Motor Company, of which he was briefly president before he left to become Secretary of Defense for newly-elected President John F. Kennedy, a role he continued to hold, until 1968, under President Lyndon Johnson. As Secretary of Defense, McNamara was a controversial figure, and in the film he discusses, in particular, his involvement in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the escalation of the Vietnam War. At some points, McNamara speaks openly and critically about the actions of himself and others, while, at others, he is somewhat defensive and withholding.


title: The Fog of War

text: In a 2004 appearance at U.C. Berkeley, Errol Morris said the documentary had its origins in his interest in McNamara's 2001 book, "Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century" (written with James G. Blight). Morris initially approached McNamara about an interview for an hour-long television special, but, after the interview was extended multiple times, he decided to make a feature film instead; ultimately, Morris interviewed McNamara for some twenty hours. At the event at U.C. Berkeley, McNamara disagreed with the interpretations of his lessons that Morris used in "The Fog of War", and he later provided ten new lessons for a special feature on the DVD release of the film. When asked to apply the lessons from "In Retrospect" to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, McNamara refused, arguing that ex-secretaries of defense must not comment upon the policies of the incumbent defense secretary, though he did suggest other people could apply the lessons to the war in Iraq, as they are about war in general, not a specific war.


title: The Fog of War

text: For his interviews with McNamara, Morris used a special device he had developed called the "Interrotron", which projects images of interviewer and interviewee on two-way mirrors in front of their respective cameras so each appears to be talking directly to the other. Use of this device is intended to approximate an actual interaction between the two, while encouraging the subject to make direct eye contact with the camera and, therefore, the audience.


title: The Fog of War

text: Reviews for the film were very positive. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has an approval rating of 96%, based on 142 reviews, and an average rating of 8.32/10; the website's critical consensus states: ""The Fog of War" draws on decades of bitter experience to offer a piercing perspective on the Cold War from one of its major architects". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 87 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: The Fog of War

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" wrote: "Although McNamara is photographed through the Interrotron, the movie is far from offering only a talking head. Morris is uncanny in his ability to bring life to the abstract, and here he uses graphics, charts, moving titles and visual effects in counterpoint to what McNamara is saying.".


title: The Fog of War

text: Over the course of the documentary, Morris distills McNamara's philosophy of war into eleven basic tenets:


title: The Fog of War

text: McNamara repeats this sentence several times throughout the documentary. He discusses a moment during the Cuban Missile Crisis when he and Kennedy were trying to keep the United States out of war, but General Curtis LeMay wanted to invade Cuba. Kennedy received two messages from Nikita Khrushchev during the Crisis, which McNamara refers to as the "soft message" and the "hard message." He says the first message sounded like it came from a "drunk man or one under a lot of stress" and stated that, if the United States guaranteed it would not invade Cuba, the missiles would be removed, while the second stated that, if the United States attacked Cuba, "we're prepared to confront you with masses of military power." Llewellyn Thompson, a former US ambassador to Moscow who knew Khrushchev personally, urged Kennedy to respond to the soft message, as he believed Khrushchev would be willing to remove the missiles if, afterward, he could draw attention away from the fact that he had failed to establish nuclear weapons in Cuba by taking credit for saving Cuba from being invaded by the US. Kennedy eventually agreed with Thompson and the situation was resolved without further escalation.


title: The Fog of War

text: McNamara emphasizes that it was luck that prevented nuclear war—rational individuals like Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro came close to destroying themselves and each other. He states that the possibility of nuclear destruction still exists today.


title: The Fog of War

text: This lesson refers to McNamara's private life. He states that "there's something beyond one's self and a responsibility to society" while discussing when he started to court his wife, Margaret Craig McNamara, and had a child. Around this time, WWII began and McNamara became the youngest assistant professor at Harvard.


title: The Fog of War

text: McNamara was brought back from the Eighth Air Force and assigned to the 58th Bomb Wing. He flew in some of the first B-29s, which, it was hoped, would be able to destroy targets much more efficiently and effectively than earlier bombers, and was responsible for analyzing bombing operations and making recommendations for improvements.


title: The Fog of War

text: McNamara talks about the proportions of cities destroyed in Japan by the US before the dropping of the nuclear bomb, comparing the destroyed Japanese cities to similarly-sized cities in the US: Tokyo, roughly the size of New York City, was 51% destroyed; Toyama, the size of Chattanooga, was 99% destroyed; Nagoya, the size of Los Angeles, was 40% destroyed; Osaka, the size of Chicago, was 35% destroyed; Kobe, the size of Baltimore, was 55% destroyed; etc. He says LeMay once said that, had the United States lost the war, they would have been tried for war crimes, and agrees with this assessment.


title: The Fog of War

text: McNamara worked at Ford in an executive position and commissioned studies on subjects like buyer demographics, the causes of accidents, and ways to make cars safer. He was chosen to replace Henry Ford II as president of the company, the first person outside the Ford family to hold that position, though he quit after five weeks to become Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, having first declined an offer to be Secretary of Treasury.


title: The Fog of War

text: McNamara affirms Morris' framing of lesson 7 in relation to the Gulf of Tonkin incident: "We see what we want to believe."


title: The Fog of War

text: McNamara says that, even though the United States is the strongest nation in the world, it should never use that power unilaterally: "if we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we better reexamine our reasoning."


title: The Fog of War

text: McNamara believed the ultimate responsibility for the Vietnam War was on the president and says that, had Kennedy lived, the situation would have unfolded more desirably. In 1968, he resigned as Secretary of Defense (or was fired) and became president of the World Bank.


title: The Fog of War

text: Sony Pictures Classics allowed proceeds from limited screenings of the film to benefit Clear Path International's work with victims of the Vietnam War.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Tarbela Dam (, ) is an earth-filled dam along the Indus River in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Located mainly in the Swabi district of the province, The dam is about from the city of Swabi, northwest of Islamabad, and east of Peshawar. It is the largest earth-filled dam in the world. The dam is high above the riverbed and its reservoir, Tarbela Lake, has a surface area of approximately .


title: Tarbela Dam

text: The Tarbela Dam is built on the Indus at Bara near the village of Tarbela. It is about 30km from the town of Attock. When the Indus leaves the Himalayans foothills and enters the Potwar pleateau, the water is stored in the reservoir of the dam. It is 143 meters high, has an area of 243 square km, storage capacity of 119 billion cubic meters of water and has nine gates to control the outflow of water. The dam was completed in 1976 and was designed to utilize water from the Indus River for irrigation, flood control, and the generation of hydroelectric power by storing flows during the monsoon period and subsequently releasing stored water during the low flow period in winter. The installed capacity of the 4,888 MW Tarbela hydroelectric power stations will increase to 6,298 MW after completion of the planned fifth extension financed by Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the World Bank.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: The dam is at a narrow spot in the Indus River valley, named after the town of Tarbela in the Haripur District of Hazara Division, Pakistan.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: The main dam wall, built of earth and rock fill, stretches from the island to river right, standing high. A pair of concrete auxiliary dams spans the river from the island to river left. The dam's two spillways are on the auxiliary dams rather than the main dam. The main spillway has a discharge capacity of and the auxiliary spillway, . Annually, over 70% of water discharged at Tarbela passes over the spillways and is not used for hydropower generation.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Five large tunnels were constructed as part of the outlet works. Hydroelectricity is generated from turbines in tunnel 1 through 3, while tunnels 4 and 5 were designed for irrigation use. Both tunnels are to be converted to hydropower tunnels to increase Tarbela's electricity-generating capacity. These tunnels were originally used to divert the Indus River while the dam was being constructed.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: MA hydroelectric power plant on the right side of the main dam houses 14 generators fed with water from outlet tunnels 1, 2, and 3. There are four 175 MW generators on tunnel 1, six 175 MW generators on tunnel 2, and four 432 MW generators on tunnel 3, for a total generating capacity of 3,478 MW.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Tarbela Reservoir is long, with a surface area of . The reservoir initially stored of water, with a live storage of , though this figure has been reduced over the subsequent 35 years of operation to due to silting. The maximum elevation of the reservoir is above MSL and the minimum operating elevation is above MSL. The catchment area upriver of the Tarbela Dam is spread over of land largely supplemented by snow and glacier melt from the southern slopes of the Himalayas. There are two main Indus River tributaries upstream of the Tarbela Dam. These are the Shyok River, joining near Skardu, and the Siran River near Tarbela.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Tarbela Dam was constructed as part of the Indus Basin Project after signing of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan. The purpose was to compensate for the loss of water supplies of the eastern rivers (Ravi, Sutlej and Beas) that were designated for exclusive use by India per terms of the treaty. By the mid-1970s, power generation capacity was added in three subsequent hydro-electrical project extensions which were completed in 1992, installing a total of 3,478 MW generating capacity.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Construction of Tarbela Dam was carried out in three stages to meet the diversion requirements of the river. Construction was undertaken by the Italian firm Salini Impregilo.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: In the first stage, the Indus River was allowed to flow in its natural channel, while construction works commenced on the right bank where a 1500 feet (457 meters) long and 694.8 feet (212 meters) wide diversion channel was being excavated along with a 105 feet (32 meter) high buttress dam that was also being constructed. Stage 1 construction lasted approximately 2.5 years.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: The main embankment dam and the upstream blanket were constructed across the main valley of the river Indus as part of the second stage of construction. During this time, water from the Indus river remained diverted through the diversion channel. By the end of construction works in stage 2, tunnels had been built for diversion purposes. Stage 2 construction took 3 years to complete.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Under the third stage of construction, works were carried out on the closure of diversion channel and construction of the dam in that portion while the river was made to flow through diversion tunnels. The remaining portion of upstream blanket and the main dam at higher levels was also completed as part of stage 3 works, which were concluded in 1976.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: An area of about 260 square kilometers and about of land was acquired for construction. The large reservoir of the dam submerged 135 villages, which resulted in displacement of a population of about 96,000 people, many of whom were relocated to townships surrounding the Tarbela Reservoir or in adjacent higher valleys.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: For the land and built-up property acquired under the Land Acquisition Act of 1984, a cash compensation of Rs 469.65 million was paid to those affected. In the absence of a national policy, the resettlement concerns of the people displaced by the Tarbela Dam were addressed on an ad hoc basis. In 2011, many such people had still not been resettled or given land in compensation for their losses by the government of Pakistan, in accordance with its contractual obligations with the World Bank.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Because the source of the Indus River is glacial meltwater from the Himalayas, the river carries huge amounts of sediment, with an annual suspended sediment load of 200 million tons. Live storage capacity of Tarbela reservoir had declined more than 33.5 per cent to 6.434 million acre feet (MAF) against its original capacity of 9.679 MAF because of sedimentation over the past 38 years. The useful life of the dam and reservoir was estimated to be approximately 50 years. However, sedimentation has been much lower than predicted, and it is now estimated that the useful lifespan of the dam will be 85 years, to about 2060.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Pakistan plans to construct several large dams upstream of Tarbela, including the Diamer-Bhasha Dam. Upon completion of the Diamer-Bhasha dam, sediment loads into Tarbela will be decreased by 69%.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: In addition to fulfilling the primary purpose of the dam, i.e., supplying water for irrigation, Tarbela Power Station has generated 341.139 billion kWh of hydro-electric energy since commissioning. A record annual generation of 16.463 billion kWh was recorded during 1998–99. Annual generation during 2007–08 was 14.959 billion kWh while the station shared peak load of 3702 MW during the year, which was 23.057% of total WAPDA system peak.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Tarbela dam extension-IV was planned in June, 2012, and PC-1 was developed for the project . US ambassador Richard Olson offered aid for construction of this project during his visit to Pakistan, in March, 2013. In September 2013, Pakistan's Water and Power Development Authority signed a Rs. 26.053 billion contract with Chinese firm Sinohydro and Germany's Voith Hydro for executing civil works on the 1,410 MW Tarbela-IV Extension Project. Construction commenced in February 2014, and was completed in February 2018.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: This project was constructed on Tunnel No. 4 of Tarbela Dam. It consists of three turbine-generator units, each with a capacity of 470 MW. The project is expected to provide an average of 3.84 billion units of electricity annually to the National Grid. It is intended to help supplement electricity supply during the high-demand summer months.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Annual benefits of the project were estimated at about Rs. 30.7 billion. On an annual basis, over 70% of water passing through Tarbela is discharged over spillways, while only a portion of the remaining 30% is used for hydropower generation.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: The Water and Power Development Authority in Pakistan says the third and last unit at its 1,410-MW Tarbela 4th Extension Hydropower Project has been synchronized with the National Grid.With this extension, the installed capacity of the Tarbela Hydel Power Station has increased to 4,888 MW.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: The project's cost was initially estimated to be $928 million, but the cost was revised downwards to $651 million. The World Bank had agreed to provide an $840 million loan for the project in June 2013.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: The loan had two components: The first is a $400 million International Development Association loan, which will be lent as a concessional loan at low interest rates. The second portion consists of a $440 million from the World Bank's International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Pakistan's Water and Power Development Authority was to provide the remaining $74 million required for construction, before the project's cost was downwardly revised by $277 million. Interest costs for the loans are estimated to cost $83.5 million.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Because of revised lower costs to $651 million from $928 million, the World Bank permitted Pakistani officials to expedite completion of the project by 8 months at a cost of an additional $51 million. Pakistani officials were also permitted to divert $126 million towards the Tarbela-V Extension Project.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: The Tarbela Dam was built with five original tunnels, with the first three dedicated to hydropower generation, and the remaining two slated for irrigation use. The fourth phase extension project uses the first of the two irrigation tunnels, while the fifth phase extension will use the second irrigation tunnel. Pakistan's Water and Power Development Authority sought expressions of interest for the Tarbela-V Extension Project in August 2014, and was given final consent for construction in September 2015.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: Construction is yet to begin in July 2021 but will require an estimated 3.5 years for completion. The project will require installation of three turbines with a capacity of 470 MW each in Tarbela's fifth tunnel which was previously dedicated to agricultural use. Upon completion, the total power generating capacity of Tarbela Dam will be increased to 6,298 MW.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: The hydro power project of tunnel 5 has two major components: power generation facilities and power evacuation facilities. The major works included under the project are modifications to tunnel 5 and building a new power house and its ancillaries to generate about 1,800GWh of power annually, a new 50 km of 500kV double-circuit transmission line from Tarbela to the Islamabad West Grid Station for power evacuation, and a new 500kV Islamabad West Grid Station.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: In November 2015, the World Bank affirmed that it would finance at least $326 million of the project's estimated $796 million cost which includes $126 million of funding that was diverted from the $840 million fourth phase extension project after costs for that project were revised downwards. In September 2016, the World Bank approved an additional financing of $390 million for the fifth extension hydropower project of Tarbela dam that will support the scaling up of the power generation capacity by adding 1,410 megawatts to the existing tunnel 5.


title: Tarbela Dam

text: The project will be financed by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), with a variable spread and 20-year maturity, including a six-year grace period. This will be the first World Bank-supported project in South Asia to be jointly financed with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) which will be providing $300m and the Government of Pakistan $133.5m. The total cost of the project is $823.5m.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: Virtus Pallacanestro Bologna, known for sponsorship reasons as Virtus Segafredo Bologna, is an Italian professional basketball club based in Bologna, Emilia-Romagna.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: The club was founded in 1929, which makes it the oldest club in Italy and one of the oldest ones in Europe. Virtus is the second most titled basketball club in Italy after Olimpia Milano, having won 16 Italian national championships, 8 Italian National Cups and 3 Italian Supercups. Moreover, it is one of the most successful teams in European competitions, having won two EuroLeagues, one EuroCup, one FIBA Saporta Cup, one EuroChallenge and one Basketball Champions League. It currently plays in the Italian first division LBA as well as in the EuroLeague. The club is owned by the coffee entrepreneur Massimo Zanetti.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: Some of the club's star players over the years have included: Gianni Bertolotti, Tom McMillen, Carlo Caglieris, Renato Villalta, Marco Bonamico, Jim McMillian, Krešimir Ćosić, Roberto Brunamonti, Augusto Binelli, Micheal Ray Richardson, Jure Zdovc, Predrag Danilović, Cliff Levingston, Arijan Komazec, Orlando Woolridge, Zoran Savić, Bane Prelević, Alessandro Abbio, Radoslav Nesterović, Antoine Rigaudeau, Alessandro Frosini, Hugo Sconochini, Marko Jarić, Manu Ginóbili, Matjaž Smodiš, David Andersen, Travis Best, Keith Langford, Miloš Teodosić, Marco Belinelli, Daniel Hackett and Tornike Shengelia. While some of the club's greatest coaches had been: Vittorio Tracuzzi, Dan Peterson, Terry Driscoll, Alberto Bucci, Ettore Messina, Aleksandar Đorđević and Sergio Scariolo.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: Virtus was founded in 1871 as a gymnastics club, forming its first professional basketball team in 1929 as part of a multi sports club. The club's motto was "Forte Franco Fermo Fiero" ("Strong Frank Firm Proud") and was inserted in the logo under the Black V, with a cross made by four F; the motto is still used by Virtus today. The team's home court was the former church of Santa Lucia in the city center, which could host a few hundred people.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: The first official championship of Virtus dates back to 1934, the year in which the Bolognese team won the first division tournament, obtaining the promotion in the top tournament after a hard-fought group of playoffs against Unione Sportiva of Milan and Ginnastica Rome. Team's captain was Venzo Vannini, while other important players were Giuseppe Palmieri and Giancarlo Marinelli. After the promotion, Virtus settled permanently at the top of the national basketball league, and achieved a long series of honorable placings: in the nine championships disputed from 1935 to the outbreak of the Second World War, the Black V collected 6-second places, 2 third places, and a sixth place, however Virtus never achieved to win a national title.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: From 1943 to 1945, the championship was suspended due to the outbreak of the war in the country and the beginning of the civil war. At the end of the world war, Santa Lucia was no longer available for basketball games and after a brief period of outdoor matches on a field in Via del Ravone, the team moved to Sala Borsa, the city's stock exchange, readjusted in the evening for basketball matches. This unusual venue became the hallmark of a new Italian basketball season, compared to the worldwide famous Boston Garden. In July 1945, Virtus, led by Achille Canna, Luigi Rapini and Antonio Calebotta, won its first national Serie A title, defeating 35–31 Reyer Venezia in the final.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following season, Renzo Poluzzi became the new head coach and led Virtus to its second championship. Under Poluzzi, Virtus won the title again in 1948 and 1949, achieving the so-called "four-peat". In 1949–50 season, the Black V arrived second after Olimpia Milano; during these years, the long-time rivalry with Olimpia, known as "derby of Italy", began. Olimpia won the title for the next four years too, while the Black V placed second in 1952 and 1953. In 1954, Vittorio Tracuzzi was appointed new head coach; Tracuzzi was a Virtus player too, acting as a "player-coach". At the end of the season, Tracuzzi led Virtus to its fifth national title. The team doubled the next season, achieving a so-called "back-to-back". During the 1950s the first derbies were played against Gira and Moto Morini, the other two teams of Bologna.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: Due to the increasing fame of Virtus, the Sala Borsa was no longer suitable for hosting games; so in 1956, the long-time Mayor of Bologna, Giuseppe Dozza, inaugurated a new arena, which was simply known as "Sports Hall" and had a seating capacity of more than 7,000 people. The arena was later nicknamed "Il Madison", after New York's Madison Square Garden and, in 1966, after Dozza's retirement from politics, it was renamed "PalaDozza". From 1956 to 1960, Virtus placed second, always behind its arch-rival Olimpia Milan. At the end of the 1959–60 season, Tracuzzi left Virtus after having won two championships in five seasons, with a winning record of 108–22, being widely considered one of Black V's greatest coaches of all time.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1960, the Spanish coach, Eduardo Kucharski, succeeded Tracuzzi at the head of the team. Virtus, led by its best player Gianfranco Lombardi, took part in its first European Champions Cup, but it was ousted by CCA Bucarest in the second round. At the end of the Italian regular season, the Black V placed second again, behind Ignis Varese.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1962 and 1963 Virtus arrived third and Kucharski was sacked, while Mario Alesini, a former Virtus player, became the new head coach. However, in the next three seasons, Alesini did not reach to bring back the title to Bologna. In 1966, Jaroslav Šíp was hired as new head coach, but Virtus never became a real contender for the championship, with Olimpia and Ignis which alternatively won the title until 1968.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: The 1960s had been an unfortunate decade for Virtus. The turning point occurred in 1968, when the lawyer Gianluigi Porelli was appointed by the then president of the multi-sport club, Giovanni Elkan, at the head of the basketball section. Alternately nicknamed "Torquemada" or "Robespierre" for his quick and often dictatorial methods, or, more frequently, "L'Avvocato" ("The Lawyer"), Porelli has been one of the most prominent figures in the history of Virtus which, through initiatives often unpopular but almost always winning, definitively carried towards professionalism.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: As soon as he arrived, at only 38 years old, Porelli sacked coach Šíp and appointed Renzo Ranuzzi, a former player. However, Ranuzzi lasted one year only, due to the poor result of the team, which ended the season at the 10th place. After another poor result in the 1969–70 season under coach Nello Paratore, in 1970, Porelli hired Black V's legendary coach Vittorio Tracuzzi and sold the best player of the time, Gianfranco Lombardi, unleashing a popular uprising that even ended up in court. Despite Tracuzzi's comeback, the team placed 10th once again. In 1970, thanks to Porelli, Virtus was also one of the main proponents and founders of the Lega Basket, the governing body of the top-tier level professional Italian basketball league.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the same year, Virtus broke away from the multi sports club, becoming a joint-stock company. Thanks to this choice, which was highly criticised at the time, Porelli definitively healed the club's finances. In 1971, Porelli hired the American player John Fultz who, supported by important Italian players like Gianni Bertolotti and Luigi Serafini, succeeded in placing the team 5th in the national championship, the best result since 1967–68. In the following season, the team, composed by the same players and coached by Nico Messina, arrived 6th.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1973, Porelli opened a new season of triumphs, thanks to a partnership with Sinudyne, a famous Italian domestic appliances company, and especially with the engagement of the young American coach Dan Peterson, coming from the Chile's national basketball team. Virtus immediately won its first Italian Cup in 1973–74 season, which was club's first title since 1955–56.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following season, Virtus signed Tom McMillen, a 22-years-old player from Maryland University, who was selected with the 9th overall pick by the Buffalo Braves during the 1974 NBA draft. He signed with the Braves but postponed his entry into the NBA to attend the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. McMillen lived and studied in the UK, but he moved to Bologna during the weekends to play basketball. At the end of the season, characterized by outstanding performances by McMillen, the team placed 4th in the national championship and was eliminated at the quarterfinals of the European Cup Winners' Cup.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1975, McMillen started his career in the NBA, so Porelli and Peterson signed Terry Driscoll, a former NBA player and 4th overall pick in 1969 draft. Thanks to Driscoll's leadership and the fundamental support of Italian players like Carlo Caglieris, Gianni Bertolotti, Marco Bonamico and Luigi Serafini, Virtus won its seventh national championship, the first one after twenty years.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1976–77, Virtus ended first in the regular season, however it lost the championship finals against Varese, by 2–0. In the following season, the Black V succeeded in reaching the national finals, but nonetheless it lost 2–1 against Varese again. The team also reached the final of the Cup Winner's Cup, but lost 84–82 against Gabetti Cantù.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1978, after two consecutive second places, coach Peterson left the Black V to sign with Virtus historic rival, Olimpia Milan. This move was heavily criticised by Black V's fans, but it was approved by Porelli himself. However, despite the controversies which rose around his farewell, Peterson's legacy was huge: the American coach deeply changed the team's organization and contributed in bringing back Virtus to the top of Italian basketball after twenty years of struggles.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: After Peterson's departure, Terry Driscoll was appointed new head coach. Porelli signed also Krešimir Ćosić, one of the best centers in Europe; the team was also composed by great Italian players as Renato Villalta, Carlo Caglieris and the captain Gianni Bertolotti. In the national finals, Virtus faced its former coach, Dan Peterson and his new team, Olimpia. Despite the great expectations around a hard-fought final, the Black V easily won the title in only two games. The team also reached the semi-finals of the Cup Winners' Cup, where it was eliminated for only one point by the Dutch EBBC.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following season, Porelli signed Jim McMillian, a 1972 NBA champion with the Los Angeles Lakers. McMillian, who was immediately nicknamed by Virtus fans as "Il Duca Nero" ("The Black Duke"), led the team achieving a back-to-back, winning its ninth titles against Cantù. The team took part also in the European Champions Cup, where it was eliminated in the semi-finals group stage.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: At the end of the season, Driscoll’s two year contract had expired. Porelli and Driscoll could not agree on a contract. Despite Driscoll’s great successes, first as player, one championship, and two championships as a coach in five years, when no agreement was reached, Driscoll chose to return to retire from basketball.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: At the beginning of the 1980–81 season, Driscoll's assistant, Ettore Zuccheri, became the new head coach, but he was later replaced by Renzo Ranuzzi. The team reached once again the national finals, but it slightly lost the playoff series by 2–1 against Cantù. Returning to the top in Italy, the Black V attempted to become a major team in Europe too, and in 1981, Virtus reached the final of the FIBA European Champions Cup in Strasbourg. However, a few days before the final, McMillian suffered a serious injury against Brindisi and was forced not to play in the final, which then Virtus lost by only one point against Maccabi Tel Aviv, after a very contested game and dubious referees' choices.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: After the defeat in the Cup, Porelli sacked Ranuzzi and hired coach Aleksandar Nikolić, worldwide known as "The Professor". The team was composed also by young and talented Italian players like Roberto Brunamonti and Augusto Binelli, as well as important foreign players, like the Bahamian center Elvis Rolle. Despite his fame, Nikolić did not succeed in bringing Virtus back to title, so in 1983, after the brief experiences of George Bisacca and Mauro Di Vincenzo, the 35 years-old Alberto Bucci, from Bologna, became the new head coach. In the same years, the club signed a deal with Granarolo, a milk and dairy production company, which became the new team's sponsor. Virtus ended the regular season second, after Peterson's Olimpia. The two teams faced themselves in a historic final, always remembered as one of the best in Italian basketball history, in which Virtus defeated Olimpia by 2–1, reaching its 10th national title, also known as "La Stella" ("The Star"), due to the star which is attributed to teams that manage to win ten national championships. In the same year, the team completed a domestic double by adding a National Cup.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1984–85, Virtus reached the semi-final group stage of the Champions Cup, where, however, it was eliminated. After a defeat in the playoffs' quarterfinals against Olimpia, Bucci was sacked and Sandro Gamba became the new coach. Gamba, one of the most successful Italian coaches of all time, did not succeed in winning with Virtus too, exiting in the first round of 1986 playoffs and being eliminated in the quarterfinals of 1987 playoffs. In 1988, Krešimir Ćosić, a former Virtus star, replaced Gamba. Despite the head coach's change, the team continued collecting poor successes, being ousted in the Korać Cup's quarterfinals and in the first round of national playoffs.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1988, Porelli hired Bob Hill, who was New York Knicks' head coach until the previous season. Hill brought in Italy two former NBA players: Micheal Ray Richardson, an NBA All-Star and former player for the Knicks and New Jersey Nets, who was banned from the NBA for violations of league's drug policy, and Clemon Johnson, 1983 NBA champion with the Philadelphia 76ers, who also played for the Indiana Pacers and Seattle SuperSonics. At the beginning of the season, Porelli reached an agreement with Knorr, a German food and beverage brand, which became the team's sponsor. In 1988–89 Virtus won its third Italian Cup, but it was defeated in the semi-finals for the national championship against Enichem Livorno, coached by Bucci.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: Despite the playoffs' elimination, the season was considered a rebirth for Virtus: the national cup was the team's first trophy since 1984 and the great performances of Richardson had brought back the passion for basketball in the city. This period became known as "Sugar-mania", from Richardson's historic nickname.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following summer, Hill surprisingly resigned from his post and his assistant, the 30 years-old Ettore Messina, was appointed new head coach. The Black V won the Italian Cup again and on 13 March 1990, won its first European title, the FIBA European Cup Winners' Cup, the second-tier level European-wide competition, defeating 79–74 the Real Madrid coached by George Karl. The final was characterized by an outstanding performance of Richardson, able of scoring 29 points. However, the team was once again eliminated in national playoffs' quarterfinals against Phonola Caserta.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1990–91, Virtus placed third in the regular season but it was once again eliminated in the national semi-finals by Caserta. At the end of the season, Richardson was not confirmed and signed for Slobodna Dalmacija, putting an end to a three-year period in which he brought Virtus to win its first European trophy and laid the foundations for club's successes in the following years.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1991, after two years of internal struggles within the shareholders' assembly, during which he also briefly lost the control of the club, Porelli sold Virtus to Alfredo Cazzola, a local trade fair entrepreneur. During 23 years of tenure, Porelli won four national titles, four Italian Cups and one Cup Winner's Cup, transforming a simple basketball section of a multisport club into one of the richest and most successful teams in Europe.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: As president, Cazzola brought to Virtus an entrepreneurial mentality, which would be necessary in the team's future growth. In the 1991–92 season, the Black V, led by captain Brunamonti and Jure Zdovc, reached the national semi-finals, but lost against Scavolini Pesaro, which had already eliminated Virtus in the national cup few months before. The team also lost against Partizan in the FIBA European League quarterfinals.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the summer of 1992, Cazzola signed Predrag Danilović, a young Yugoslav player who won the latest FIBA European League with Partizan. Under the strong leadership of Danilović and the important support of Brunamonti, Claudio Coldebella, Paolo Moretti, Augusto Binelli and Bill Wennington, the team, coached by Ettore Messina, won its eleventh national championship, defeating 3–0 the Benetton Treviso. However the team was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the FIBA European League by Real Madrid Teka.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following season, Messina became the new coach of Italy's national basketball team and Alberto Bucci, returned to coach Virtus, with whom he had won a national championship in 1984. The team was completed with Cliff Levingston, two-time NBA champion with the Chicago Bulls. In the same year, Cazzola signed a deal with Buckler Beer, a brand of Heineken, which became the new sponsor of the team. In October 1993, Virtus took part to the McDonald's Open in Munich, where it arrived second, after the Phoenix Suns. In May 1994, Virtus won its second consecutive national title, defeating 3–2 Scavolini Pesaro, after a very contested final. Once again, the Black V was ousted during the FIBA European League quarterfinals by Olympiacos.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the 1994–95 season, Joe Binion replaced Levingston, while the rest of the team remained untouched. In May 1995, Virtus won its 13th title, defeating 3–0 Benetton Treviso, accomplishing a so-called "three-peat". However, for the third consecutive times, the team which dominated the Italian league was eliminated at the FIBA European League quarterfinals, this time by Panathinaikos.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: After the three-peat, Danilović left Virtus for the Miami Heat. Cazzola signed Arijan Komazec, a Croatian guard-forward, and Orlando Woolridge, a long-time NBA player; while young Italian players like Alessandro Abbio became increasingly important. In September 1995, Virtus won its first Italian Supercup against Benetton Treviso; while in October, the Black V participated in the McDonald's Championship, arriving second after the Houston Rockets. The team ended the regular season in first place, but he was eventually eliminated by Stefanel Milano in the playoffs' semi-finals. Moreover, the team did not succeed in passing the second group stage of the Champions Cup.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1996, captain Roberto Brunamonti retired from basketball after 14 seasons as a Virtus player. During the summer, the club signed important international players like Zoran Savić from Real Madrid Teka and Branislav Prelević from PAOK. Moreover, Kinder, a product brand line of Italian confectionery multinational Ferrero SpA, became the new sponsor of Virtus. On 8 March 1997, coach Bucci was replaced by Lino Frattin, who after a few days, won Black V's fifth Italian Cup against Cantù. The team was eliminated by Stefanel Milano in the Top 16 of the FIBA EuroLeague, the former Champions Cup. In the national playoffs, Virtus was eliminated in the semi-finals by the other Bologna's team, Teamsystem, which, after years of poor results, was becoming increasingly competitive.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 1997, Roberto Brunamonti became team's general manager, while coach Messina and Sasha Danilović returned to Virtus and the team was completed with important international players like Radoslav Nesterovič, Antoine Rigaudeau, Hugo Sconochini and Alessandro Frosini, as well as with the confirmation of Zoran Savić and Alessandro Abbio. In the same year, the club moved to PalaMalaguti, an indoor sporting arena in Casalecchio di Reno with a seating capacity of more than 8,000 people, leaving PalaDozza after almost 40 years.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: On 23 April 1998, Virtus won its first EuroLeague, defeating 58–44 AEK in Barcelona, with Savić elected MVP of the Final Four. While on 31 May, Virtus conquered its 14th national title, defeating in Game 5 of the final, Teamsystem Bologna. At twenty seconds from the end of the game, with Fortitudo leading by 4, Danilović scored a three-point shot and at the same time suffered a foul by Dominique Wilkins, completing the so-called "four-point shot". Then Virtus won the match in the overtime. The 1998 final between Virtus and Fortiudo is widely considered as the greatest one in the history of Italian basketball, with two teams from the same city, which were among the best ones in the continent. During this period, Bologna was nicknamed "Basket City", due to the fame and the victories of town's two teams.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following season, Virtus won its 7th Italian Cup in January 1999. The team also defeated Fortitudo 57–62 in a historic EuroLeague's semi-final in Munich, but it lost 82–74 in the final against Žalgiris of Tyus Edney and was eliminated in the semi-finals for the national championship by Treviso. In 1999–2000 season, the Black V lost the Italian Cup final against Treviso and was defeated 83–76 by AEK, in the FIBA Saporta Cup's final in Lausanne. Moreover, Virtus was once again eliminated by Treviso, in the semi-finals for the national championship.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In May 2000, Cazzola sold Virtus to Marco Madrigali, a video game entrepreneur, who became the new president of the club. Under Cazzola's presidency, Virtus lived a period which became known as its "Golden Age", in which the Black V won four national titles, two Italian Cups and a EuroLeague, becoming one of the most notable and successful teams in Europe.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the 2000–01 season, Madrigali and Brunamonti signed important players, like Marko Jarić, Manu Ginóbili, Matjaž Smodiš, Rashard Griffith and David Andersen; while at the beginning of the season, Sasha Danilović suddenly announced his retirement from basketball. The absence of a strong leader like Danilović and the subsequent ban for doping of another historic player like Hugo Sconochini, forced every single player of the team to take more responsibility, but at the same time opened spaces to the immature and talented newcomers, free to show their abilities and experience at a high level.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: After a tough beginning, the season had a turning point during the Christmas derby against Fortitudo, which was soundly won by the Black V by 99–62. From then, Virtus started an outstanding season, characterized by an unrepeatable group capable of beating every record and becoming one of the strongest European teams of all time and, according to many, the strongest ever. On 28 April 2001, Virtus won its seventh Italian Cup against Pesaro, while on 10 May, the Black V won its second EuroLeague, defeating 3–2 Tau Cerámica, in the first and only series in the history of EuroLeague finals. Manu Ginóbili was elected Finals MVP. On 19 June, Virtus won its 15th national championship, beating Paf Wennington Bologna 3–0, while Ginobili was elected Italian League MVP too. After the double in 1997–98, in 2000–01 season, Virtus completed a so-called Triple Crown (known in Italy as "Grande Slam"), winning all the trophies that it could won.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following season, Virtus won its 8th Italian Cup, but after some defeats Madrigali fired Messina. However, after a field invasion by Virtus supporters before a match against Pallacanestro Trieste, Madrigali was forced to re-hire him. Despite this, the team lost 89–83 the EuroLeague final, which was held in PalaMalaguti, against Panathinaikos of Dejan Bodiroga and Željko Obradović, and was eliminated in the semi-finals for the national championship by Benetton Treviso.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 2003, Ginóbili moved to the NBA, where he played for the San Antonio Spurs, and Ettore Messina was hired by Benetton, thus Bogdan Tanjević was appointed new head coach. During the summer, due to contrasts with Madrigali, Brunamonti also left the club, after nearly 20 years spent as player and general manager.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: After a soundly defeat in Fabriano, Tanjević was replaced by Valerio Bianchini, who failed in reaching the playoffs for the first time in Virtus history but succeeded in saving the team from relegation. However, suffering from serious financial problems, mainly caused by the failure of Madrigali's video game company CTO SpA, Virtus was excluded from the Serie A in August 2003, after missing payments to players, first of all the young Slovenian Sani Bečirovič.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: The bankruptcy was avoided thanks to the intervention of a local trade fair entrepreneur, Claudio Sabatini, who transacted all the debts of the club, after agreements with creditors and took over the company from Madrigali. Sabatini acquired also the club Progresso Castelmaggiore, from a small town in Bologna's hinterland, which played in Serie A2 and sponsored the new team with FuturVirtus brand, guaranteeing, therefore, the continuity of the glorious name "Virtus" despite the exclusion from the championships.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 2003–04 season, Sabatini signed important former NBA players like Charles Smith, Vonteego Cummings and Rick Brunson. The team was initially coached by Giampiero Ticchi, who was replaced in November by Alberto Bucci, Black V's historic coach. Despite good premises, FuturVirtus did not reach the promotion in Serie A, losing 3–0 in the final series of playoffs from Aurora Jesi.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: During the summer of 2004 the club obtained the re-affiliation to the Italian Basketball Federation and the right to use the name "Virtus Pallacanestro" again. The team was completed, among others, with Corey Brewer, A.J. Guyton and Bennett Davison and was coached by Giordano Consolini, who served as Messina's assistant for years. On 3 June 2005, Virtus returned to the top division, defeating 3–0 the Premiata Montegranaro.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the 2005–06 season, Sabatini hired Zare Markovski from Macedonia as new head coach and signed, among others, David Bluthenthal, Dušan Vukčević and Christian Drejer. Despite a good season's start the team ended 9th, out of the playoffs.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: After the end of the season, Bluthenthal, who was Black V's top scorer, went to Fortitudo, while Virtus confirmed Vukčević and Drejer, as well as coach Markovski. Moreover, Sabatini signed Travis Best, a former NBA player for the Indiana Pacers, Brett Blizzard, Guilherme Giovannoni, Vlado Ilievski and Tyrone Grant. The team reached the Italian Cup final, losing against Benetton Treviso and placed second in the regular season, qualifying for the playoffs after a five-year absence. Markovski's team reached the championship finals, but it was defeated 3–0 by Montepaschi Siena. The Black V also reached the EuroCup semi-finals, where it was defeated by the Ukrainian team Azovmash Mariupol.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following summer, the team was suddenly reshaped and Markovski was fired by Sabatini, whose presidency was characterized by his fickle nature, which led him implementing unexpected and often unpopular choices. The president hired Stefano Pillastrini as new head coach and signed, among others, Alan Anderson, Delonte Holland, Dewarick Spencer and Roberto Chiacig. Virtus participated in the EuroLeague, but arrived last in the Group A, winning only two games out of 14. In January 2008, Pillastrini was fired and Renato Pasquali became the new coach; after few months Sabatini re-signed Travis Best, who led the team to the second consecutive Italian Cup final, lost against Avellino. However, Virtus ended the season at the 16th place.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 2008–09 season, the team was completely renewed with prominent players like the former NBA player Earl Boykins, Keith Langford, Sharrod Ford and the re-sign of Dušan Vukčević. After few months, coach Pasquali was succeeded by Matteo Boniciolli. On 21 February, Virtus played its third consecutive Italian Cup final, which once again lost against Siena. On 26 April 2009, Virtus won the European third tier trophy, the EuroChallenge, against Cholet Basket, thanks to 21 points of the Final Four MVP Keith Langford. The team ended the regular season at the 5th place and was eliminated in the first round of national playoffs by Treviso. Boniciolli was immediately fired by president Sabatini and the team was reshaped again during summer.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following season, Sabatini hired Lino Lardo as head coach and appointed Vukčević as team's captain. He also signed, among others, David Moss, Andre Collins, Petteri Koponen and Viktor Sanikidze. Virtus lost its fourth consecutive Italian Cup final and ended the season 5th, being eliminated 3–2 in the first round of the playoffs by Cantù. In 2010–11, the team was completed with Giuseppe Poeta, Valerio Amoroso, Jared Homan, as well as K.C. Rivers from 2011. The Black V ended the regular season 8th and was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by Siena.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 2011–2012, Sabatini hired Alessandro Finelli as new coach and signed important players like Chris Douglas-Roberts, a former NBA players, Terrell McIntyre and Angelo Gigli. In late 2011, Sabatini sold Virtus to a foundation of local entrepreneurs, however, he remained as CEO and "de facto" general manager. At the end of the regular season, the Black V arrived 5th, being eliminated by Dinamo Sassari, in the first round of the playoffs. In the following season, Virtus signed, among others, Steven Smith, Richard Mason Rocca and Jacob Pullen. During the season, Luca Bechi succeeded Finelli as new head coach. The team ended the season at the 14th place.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: After years of poor successes, Sabatini definitively exited from the club and in 2013, Renato Villalta, a former Virtus star, was appointed president. In 2013–14 season, Virtus signed, among others, Matt Waksh, Willie Warren and Shawn King. In January 2014, Bechi was sacked due to poor results, and Giorgio Valli became the new coach. However, the team arrived 13th, out of the playoffs.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 2014–15 season, Virtus returned to the playoffs, thanks to an outstanding season of its top-scorers Allan Ray, Jeremy Hazell and Okaro White. However, it was eliminated in the first round by Olimpia Milan.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following year Villalta was abruptly removed from his post and Francesco Bertolini was appointed president by the foundation. After a few months, Bertolini was replaced too by Alberto Bucci, the former Virtus coach, who won three national titles with the Black V between 1980s and 1990s. However, the season was characterized by a serious injury to team captain, Allan Ray, and the substitute players signed by the club failed to adequately replace the injured top-player. On 4 May 2016, at the end of the regular season the team ranked 16th and last, therefore it was relegated to Serie A2 for the first time in its history.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In the following summer, president Bucci announced Alessandro Ramagli as new head coach of Virtus. The club built a good team for the league, led by important players such as Guido Rosselli, Klaudio Ndoja, Michael Umeh and Kenny Lawson. During the season an important change in ownership occurred: the coffee entrepreneur and former politician, Massimo Zanetti, owner of Segafredo, who was also team's sponsor, became the majority shareholder of the club. Virtus ended second in the regular season behind Treviso and on 19 June 2017, won the playoffs, beating Trieste by 3–0, thus returning to the top series after only one year. During the playoffs, the Black V returned after more than twenty years to Bologna's historic arena, PalaDozza, which became the new official home court in the following season.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In summer 2017, the club signed two of the most prominent Italian players, Pietro Aradori and Alessandro Gentile, as well as two international players like Marcus Slaughter and Oliver Lafayette. Despite good premises, the team was eliminated in the first round of Italian Cup's Final Eight and failed to qualify for the championship playoffs.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: The 2018–19 season began with the appointment of Alessandro Dalla Salda as new club's CEO and the hire of Stefano Sacripanti as new head coach. Aradori and Filippo Baldi Rossi were confirmed and the club signed, among others, Tony Taylor, Kevin Punter, Amath M'Baye and Brian Qvale, to participate in the Basketball Champions League, which was Virtus's first European competition after ten years. The team reached a record of seven wins in the first seven games of the continental competition, which had never been achieved before. In March 2019, the team signed Mario Chalmers, two-time NBA champion with the Miami Heat. On 9 March, president Alberto Bucci died at 70 years old, due to complications from a cancer. On 11 March, after a defeat against Cantù and with Virtus temporarily out of playoffs, the team board sacked Sacripanti and appointed the Serbian Aleksandar Đorđević as new head coach. On 4 April, the Black V defeated Nanterre 92, reaching the BCL Final Four in Antwerp, which won on 5 May defeating Iberostar Tenerife 73–61, thanks to an outstanding game by Kevin Punter, who was able to score 26 points and was nominated Final Four MVP. The BCL was the fifth European title in team's history and the first one after ten years.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In July 2019, Virtus opened its women's basketball wing, to participate in the Serie A1 championship. In the same month, Giuseppe Sermasi, a local entrepreneur and former vice president, became Virtus new president, holding the vacant post after Bucci's death, while Luca Baraldi, a prominent manager of Segafredo, was appointed new CEO.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: On 13 July, Virtus signed a three-year deal with Miloš Teodosić, 2016 EuroLeague champion and former NBA player, who was widely considered one of the best European point guard of all time. In August, the Black V signed Kyle Weems, a small forward from Tofaş, and Stefan Marković, a point guard from BC Khimki who, along with Teodosić, would become the backbone of the team in the following seasons. Among others, the club signed also Vince Hunter, Julian Gamble and Giampaolo Ricci. In the 2019–20 season, Virtus played some home games, including the derby against Fortitudo won 94–62, at the Virtus Segafredo Arena, a temporary indoor arena with a capacity of nearly 10,000 seats, located in the Fiera District.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: On 7 April 2020, after more than a month of suspension, the Italian Basketball Federation officially ended the 2019–20 season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic that severely hit Italy. Virtus ended the season first, with 18 wins and only 2 defeats, but the title was not assigned. On 5 May, the EuroLeague's commissioner Jordi Bertomeu announced the cancellation of the EuroCup season too. Virtus, which had achieved the league's playoffs, was confirmed for the following season.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: After the early end of the season, the team was largely confirmed for the following championship and, in May and June, the club signed prominent Italian players, like Awudu Abass and Amedeo Tessitori, and homegrown ones, like Amar Alibegović. In September, Virtus hosted the Supercup's Final Four at the Segafredo Arena, but it lost against Olimpia Milan 75–68; the Supercup was the first competition since the cancellation of the previous season. In November 2020, Virtus signed a three-year deal with Marco Belinelli, from the San Antonio Spurs. Belinelli, one of the greatest Italian players of all time and 2014 NBA Champion, started his career with Virtus in the early 2000s. The season was also characterized by the emergence of Alessandro Pajola, the young Italian point guard who became one team's most important players. In April 2021, despite a winning record of 19–2, Virtus was defeated in the EuroCup's semifinals by UNICS Kazan. However, the season ended with a great success. In fact, after having knocked out 3–0 both Basket Treviso in the quarterfinals and New Basket Brindisi in the semifinals, on 11 June Virtus defeated 4–0 its historic rival Olimpia Milano in the national finals, winning its 16th national title and the first one after twenty years. Teodosić was appointed MVP of the finals.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: On 15 June, after a few days from the victory, Đorđević was not confirmed as head coach at the end of his two-year contract, due to some tensions with the club's ownership occurred during the season. On 18 June, the club hired the new head coach, signing a three-year deal with Sergio Scariolo, from the Toronto Raptors. Moreover, Marković, Hunter, Gamble and Ricci were not renewed, while in July and August 2021 Virtus signed important foreign players like Ekpe Udoh, Kevin Hervey and Mouhammadou Jaiteh, as well as one of the most talented Italian point guards, Nico Mannion, from the Golden State Warriors. On 21 September, the team won its second Supercup, defeating Olimpia Milano 90–84. However, during the same month, Udoh and Abass suffered serious knee injuries and Virtus signed JaKarr Sampson from the Indiana Pacers and Isaïa Cordinier from Nanterre 92 to replace them.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: On 28 October 2021, Zanetti was elected president of Virtus, succeeding Giuseppe Sermasi at the head of the club, and became the only shareholder after a €2 million capital increase. In early 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent international sanctions againt Russia forced all international players to leave the country. On 3 March, Virtus signed the Italian point guard Daniel Hackett, while on 7 March, the club reached an agreement with the Georgian power forward Tornike Shengelia, both of them from CSKA Moscow.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: Despite a tough EuroCup regular season ended at the fourth place, Virtus ousted Lietkabelis, Ulm and Valencia in the first three rounds of the playoffs and, on 11 May 2022, defeated Frutti Extra Bursaspor by 80–67 at the Segafredo Arena, winning its first EuroCup and qualifying for the EuroLeague after 14 years. With 21 points scored, the Serbian point guard Miloš Teodosić was once again appointed MVP of the final. However, despite having ended the regular season at the first place and having ousted 3–0 both Pesaro and Tortona in the first two rounds of playoffs, Virtus was defeated 4–2 in the national finals by Olimpia Milan.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: During the following summer, Udoh, Hervey, Sampson, Alibegović and Tessitori left the club, but Virtus confirmed the backbone of the roster, notably including Shengelia, who was renewed until June 2024. Moreover, the club signed prominent foreign players like Jordan Mickey, Gabriel Lundberg, Semi Ojeleye and Ismaël Bako. On 29 September 2022, after having ousted Milano in the semifinals, Virtus won its third Supercup, defeating 72–69 Banco di Sardegna Sassari and achieving a back-to-back, following the 2021 trophy.


title: Virtus Bologna

text: Since its foundation, Virtus Bologna has changed several home arenas. Each of them was more than just a basketball court, rather a real "house" of the Black V, marking, in the period when they were used, a different era of the long club's history:


title: Virtus Bologna

text: In 2019, the club has closed a deal to build a new arena with 12,000 seating capacity in the Fiera District, not far away from the temporary Virtus Segafredo Arena.


title: Slouch hat

text: A slouch hat is a wide-brimmed felt or cloth hat most commonly worn as part of a military uniform, often, although not always, with a chinstrap. It has been worn by military personnel from many different nations including Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, New Zealand, Southern Rhodesia, France, the United States, the Confederate States, Germany and many others. Australia and New Zealand have had various models of slouch hat as standard issue headwear since the late Victorian period.


title: Slouch hat

text: Today it is worn by military personnel from a number of countries, although it is primarily associated with Australia, where it is considered to be a national symbol. The distinctive Australian slouch hat, sometimes called an "Australian bush hat" or "digger hat", has one side of the brim turned up or pinned to the side of the hat with a Rising Sun Badge in order to allow a rifle to be slung over the shoulder. The New Zealand Mounted Rifles wore a similar headdress but with the New Zealand military badge attached to the front of the cloth band (puggaree) wound around the base of the hat's crown.


title: Slouch hat

text: In the United States it was also called the Kossuth hat, after Lajos Kossuth. During the American Civil War (1861–65) the headgear was common among both Confederate and Union troops in the Western Theater, although not always with its brim turned up at the side. During the Spanish–American War, as commander of the Rough Riders, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt became known for wearing a slouch hat.


title: Slouch hat

text: The name "slouch hat" refers to the fact that one side droops down as opposed to the other which is pinned against the side of the crown. This style of hat has been worn for many hundreds of years, especially during the English Civil War during the 17th century when it became associated with the forces of King Charles I, the Cavaliers, but it was also fashionable for the aristocracy throughout Europe during that time until it developed into the cocked hat with two (bicorn) or three (tricorn) points.


title: Slouch hat

text: It was introduced into Australia around 1885, although it traces its military use back to Austrian skirmishers. The modern slouch hat is derived from the black "Corsican hat" (Korsehut) – historically used in the Austrian army during the Napoleonic Wars. The headwear saw primary use by 15 battalions of Austrian Jägers (skirmishers) and it featured an upturned brim, leather chinstrap and feather plume. The regular infantry also saw limited use of the Corsican hat in the periods 1803–06 and 1811–36.


title: Slouch hat

text: A shortage of cork helmets led to the widespread use of the slouch hat amongst British Empire forces during the Second Boer War, where it was used by units including the City Imperial Volunteers (CIV), Imperial Yeomanry, and King Edward's Horse. An 1884 painting displayed in the regimental museum of the pipe band of 1st Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders shows the unit in service dress, crossing the veldt in Zululand, wearing khaki slouch hats. After the war many armies rejected the once-popular headwear (as the British Army did in 1905), although it came back into fashion briefly during World War II during the Burma campaign and amongst troops serving in India and Southeast Asia at this time.


title: Slouch hat

text: The slouch hat in gray felt was worn by the Schutztruppe (protection force), the colonial armed force of Imperial Germany, as an alternative to the pith helmet, especially in South West Africa. Different coloured puggarees were worn by the Germans in South West Africa, German East Africa, German West Africa (Togo and Cameroon), German New Guinea and China. The hat had its brim pinned up on the right side with a cockade in the national colors and was worn with the home uniform as well. German colonial police units in South West Africa wore a khaki slouch hat with a small national cockade on the front and the right side pinned up by a metal Imperial crown device.


title: Slouch hat

text: It became associated with the Australian military around the end of the 19th century, and since World War I it has been manufactured in Australia for the Australian Army by companies such as Akubra, Mountcastle & Sons and Bardsley Hats. The Australian military still wear the slouch hat with a Unit Colour Patch to identify their unit, and it has become a national symbol in Australia.


title: Slouch hat

text: The slouch hat or Terai hat is also associated with the Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger (Dutch East Indies Army). It is worn by Gurkha regiments of the British Army and Indian Army (formerly the British Indian Army), but no longer worn on active service. The 2nd Gurkha Rifles became the first Gurkha regiment to adopt the slouch hat when they were issued with the Australian variant in 1901. The Gurkha terai hat is created by fusing two hats into one to make the hat more rigid and is worn at an angle, tilted to the right. The Chindits and other units of Field Marshal William Slim's British Fourteenth Army, who fought against the Japanese in the Far East during World War II, also became associated with the slouch hat (also known as the bush hat in the British Army). The slouch hat was also used by colonial units of the British Empire, including the Royal West African Frontier Force, the Canadian Yukon Field Force, Canadian Pacific Railway Militia, the Kenya Regiment and troops from Rhodesia.


title: Slouch hat

text: The slouch hat was first worn by military forces in Australia in 1885 when the newly created Victorian Mounted Rifles adopted the hat as part of their uniform after their commanding officer, Thomas Price, had seen them worn by police in Burma. On 22 December 1890, the military commanders of the then separate Australian Colonies prior to the Federation of Australia met to discuss the introduction of the khaki uniform throughout Australia. They agreed that all Australian Forces with the exception of the Artillery would wear the slouch hat. It was to be looped up on one side—Victoria and Tasmania on the right and the other colonies (later states) on the left. This was done so that rifles could be held at the slope without damaging the brim. After Federation, the slouch hat became standard Australian Army headgear in 1903 and since then it has developed into an important national symbol.


title: Slouch hat

text: The slouch hat (also known as a hat KFF, or hat khaki fur felt) is worn as the standard ceremonial headress for all members of the Army, except those belonging to units or corps that have an official headress such as a beret, and is treated with the utmost care and respect. It is also worn in some units as general duty dress. When worn for ceremonial purposes, the "Grade 1" Slouch hat is worn with a seven-band puggaree, six of which represent the states of Australia while the seventh represents the territories of Australia. A Unit Colour Patch is worn on the right of puggaree, while a Corps or Regiment Hat badge is placed to its front and the General Service Badge (The Rising Sun) worn on the left brim which is folded up and clipped into place.


title: Slouch hat

text: The slouch hat worn by the Army is one of its trademarks, but it is not theirs alone: the Royal Australian Air Force wears the HKFF with a dark blue or "Air Force Blue" Puggaree, as a Non Ceremonial head dress for the RAAF; the Royal Australian Navy is also known to wear the hat when wearing camouflage and other uniforms, and has the same features as the RAAF's HKFF.


title: Slouch hat

text: Soldiers from the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR) wear a jungle green coloured puggaree with no colour patch, which dates back to traditions when serving in Malaya. Staff Cadets at the Royal Military College, Duntroon also wear a darker pugaree, however it contains eight pleats. The eighth pleat signifies the graduation of the first international cadet through the Royal Military College who hailed from New Zealand. They also wear the chin strap of the hat the opposite way around from that of the rest of the Army, as the first commander of the 1st Australian Imperial Force, William Throsby Bridges, was found wearing his slouch hat back to front when he was fatally wounded at Gallipoli.


title: Slouch hat

text: Some units of the Royal Australian Armoured Corps such as cavalry and light horse regiments wear emu plumes behind the Rising Sun badge. This is a reference to a practice dating from World War 1, where Light Horsemen would chase down emus and steal their feathers to mount in their hat as a mark of their riding skill.


title: Slouch hat

text: The NZ version of the slouch hat is currently worn by the various corps and regiments of the New Zealand Army, known as the "Mounted Rifles Hat". The puggaree is always khaki-green-khaki, the original Mounted Rifles puggaree, with only the badge denoting the wearer's Regimental affiliation. It was originally reintroduced for wear by Queen Alexandra's Mounted Rifles in the mid-1990s, but in 2000 its issue was broadened to all Corps for wear with working dress (influenced by such use by QAMR) as well as with service dress. As an alternative to the typical NZ army lemon squeezer, the NZ Mounted Rifles Hat is worn on all but the most important occasions, where the lemon squeezer takes precedence. The slouch hat predates the introduction of the lemon squeezer hat (which did not appear until after the Boer War) and is worn brim down. Historic photographs indicate the brim to have been worn up in the Australian style on occasion. The term 'bush hat' is also associated with New Zealand culture such as the Bushman, Southern man and man alone stereotypes. The New Zealand Police Force wear a variant of the bush hat in navy blue, normally in rural areas. Considered obsolete as main dress, it is now rarely worn instead of the standard peaked cap or recently (2021) introduced baseball cap.


title: Slouch hat

text: Officers and men of the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Canadian Air Force serving overseas were issued with white cotton duck hats during the Gulf War. Non-uniformed regiments also wore slouch hats during the Northwest Rebellion and slouch hats were common with Canadian mounted regiments in the 2nd Boer War.


title: Slouch hat

text: The slouch hat has been known in the US military at least since the American Civil War, being fairly common among officers.


title: Slouch hat

text: The standard headgear for US soldiers in the Vietnam War in the 1960s was a fatigue baseball or field cap that offered little protection from the sun. Local tailors made a slouch hat in a style between a French type bush hat of the First Indochina War and an Australian type bush hat with a snap on the brim to pin one side up that was widely bought and unofficially worn by American troops in Vietnam. The local tailors usually used green fatigue cloth or leopard skin pattern military camouflage from old parachutes. The hat often had a cloth arc emblazoned with the word VIET-NAM on the brim. The US 1st Air Commando Group members officially adopted the green slouch hat on 22 May 1964 as their distinctive and practical headgear.


title: Slouch hat

text: In 1972 the US Army authorized female drill sergeants to wear a similar type cloth bush hat with the brim pinned up on the side as their distinctive headgear.


title: Slouch hat

text: A few state police forces in India use slouch hats, or did so in the past. The Armed Reserve wing of the Kerala Police wore slouch hats up to the 1980s, but today the slouch hat is only worn by Recruit Trainee Police Constables (RTPC) during their training. The Armed Reserve policemen of Kerala Police now wear a blue peaked cap. The Karnataka Police continues to use slouch hats for its members in the lower ranks of the police (Constables and Head Constables), with the colours of the police unit embroidered on the turned-up brim. The number of the individual officer is also fixed onto the side of the brim. The Rajasthan Provincial Constabulary: the armed branch of the Rajasthan Police, also uses the slouch hat pinned up to the side, as the standard service and ceremonial headgear for all its Constables and Head Constables.


title: Slouch hat

text: The uniform of Nigerian soldiers in the 1960s included a slouch hat, popularly known as "Banga Banga", although the term "banga-banga" also refers to the lower rank's fez.


title: Slouch hat

text: Some units of the British Army sent to South Africa during the Boer War adopted the slouch hat, particularly members of the Imperial Yeomanry, and retained its use on their return to the UK after the war. Though the Service Cap became standard after the formation of the Territorial Force in 1908, the Royal East Kent Mounted Rifles used them for ceremonial purposes until around 1910.


title: Slouch hat

text: Post war, the Gurkhas are the only unit which retained the use of a version of the slouch hat. The primary version is the Terai hat, after the Terai region in Nepal. A version called the Double Terai has a double thick crown and brim for additional sun protection and durability.


title: Slouch hat

text: Prior to 1972, when the new 'greens' uniform was introduced, most corps and regiments of the Rhodesian Army wore slouch hats. The Rhodesian African Rifles and Grey's Scouts continued to wear the slouch after the introduction of the new uniform, although they were replaced with berets for working dress.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Pembrokeshire ( ; ) is a county in the south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and the rest by sea. The county is home to Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. The Park occupies more than a third of the area of the county and includes the Preseli Hills in the north as well as the Pembrokeshire Coast Path.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Historically, mining and fishing were important activities, while industry nowadays is focused on agriculture (86 per cent of land use), oil and gas, and tourism; Pembrokeshire's beaches have won many awards. The county has a diverse geography with a wide range of geological features, habitats and wildlife. Its prehistory and modern history have been extensively studied, from tribal occupation, through Roman times, to Welsh, Irish, Norman, English, Scandinavian and Flemish influences.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Pembrokeshire County Council's headquarters are in the county town of Haverfordwest. The council has a majority of Independent members, but the county's representatives in both the Senedd and UK Parliament are Conservative. Pembrokeshire's population was 122,439 at the 2011 census, an increase of 7.2 per cent from the 2001 figure of 114,131. Ethnically, the county is 99 per cent white and, for historical reasons, Welsh is more widely spoken in the north of the county than in the south.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: The county town is Haverfordwest. Other towns include Pembroke, Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven, Fishguard, Tenby, Narberth, Neyland and Newport. In the west of the county, St Davids is the United Kingdom's smallest city in terms of both size and population (1,841 in 2011). Saundersfoot is the most populous village (more than 2,500 inhabitants) in Pembrokeshire. Less than 4 per cent of the county, according to CORINE, is built-on or green urban.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: There are three weather stations in Pembrokeshire: at Tenby, Milford Haven and Penycwm, all on the coast. Milford Haven enjoys a mild climate and Tenby shows a similar range of temperatures throughout the year, while at Penycwm, on the west coast and 100m above sea level, temperatures are slightly lower.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: The county has on average the highest coastal winter temperatures in Wales due to its proximity to the relatively warm Atlantic Ocean. Inland, average temperatures tend to fall 0.5 °C for each 100 metres increase in height.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: The rocks in the county were formed between 600 and 290 million years ago. More recent rock formations were eroded when sea levels rose 80 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Around 60 million years ago, the Pembrokeshire landmass emerged through a combination of uplift and falling sea levels; the youngest rocks, from the Carboniferous Period, contain the Pembrokeshire Coalfield. The landscape was subject to considerable change as a result of ice ages; about 20,000 years ago the area was scraped clean of soil and vegetation by the ice sheet; subsequently, meltwater deepened the existing river valleys. While Pembrokeshire is not usually a seismically active area, in August 1892 there was a series of pronounced activities (maximum intensity: 7) over a six-day period.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: The Pembrokeshire coastline includes numerous bays and sandy beaches. The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, the only park in the UK established primarily because of its coastline, occupies more than a third of the county. The park contains the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, a near-continuous long-distance trail from Amroth, by the Carmarthenshire border in the southeast, to St Dogmaels just down the River Teifi estuary from Cardigan, Ceredigion, in the north. The National Trust owns of Pembrokeshire's coast. Nowhere in the county is more than from tidal water. The large estuary and natural harbour of Milford Haven cuts deep into the coast; this inlet is formed by the confluence of the Western Cleddau (which flows through Haverfordwest), the Eastern Cleddau, and rivers Cresswell and Carew. Since 1975, the estuary has been bridged by the Cleddau Bridge, a toll bridge carrying the A477 between Neyland and Pembroke Dock. Large bays are Newport Bay, Fishguard Bay, St Bride's Bay and western Carmarthen Bay. There are several small islands off the Pembrokeshire coast, the largest of which are Ramsey, Grassholm, Skokholm, Skomer and Caldey. The seas around Skomer and Skokholm, and some other areas off the Pembrokeshire coast are Marine protected areas.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: There are many known shipwrecks off the Pembrokeshire coast with many more undiscovered. A Viking wreck off The Smalls has protected status. The county has six lifeboat stations, the earliest of which was established in 1822; in 2015 a quarter of all Royal National Lifeboat Institution Welsh rescues took place off the Pembrokeshire coast.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Pembrokeshire's diverse range of geological features was a key factor in the establishment of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and a number of sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs). In the north of the county are the Preseli Hills, a wide stretch of high moorland supporting sheep farming and some forestry, with many prehistoric sites and the probable source of the bluestones used in the construction of the inner circle of Stonehenge in England. The highest point is Foel Cwmcerwyn at , which is also the highest point in Pembrokeshire. Elsewhere in the county most of the land (86 per cent according to CORINE) is used for farming, compared with 60 per cent for Wales as a whole.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Pembrokeshire's wildlife is diverse, with marine, estuary, ancient woodland, moorland and farmland habitats. The county has a number of seasonal seabird breeding sites, including for razorbill, guillemot, puffin and Manx shearwater, and rare endemic species such as the red-billed chough; Grassholm has a large gannet colony. Seals, several species of whales (including a rare humpback whale sighting in 2021), dolphins and porpoises can be seen off the Pembrokeshire coast; whale-watching boat trips are frequent, particularly during the summer months. An appeal for otter sightings in 2014 yielded more than 100 responses, and a rare visit by a walrus occurred in the spring of 2021.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Pembrokeshire is one of the few places in the UK that is home to the rare Southern damselfly, "Coenagrion mercuriale", which is found at several locations in the county, and whose numbers have been boosted by conservation work over a number of years.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Human habitation of the region that is now Pembrokeshire extends back to between 125,000 and 70,000 years and there are numerous prehistoric sites such as Pentre Ifan, and neolithic remains (12,000 to 6,500 years ago), more of which were revealed in an aerial survey during the 2018 heatwave; in the same year, a 1st-century Celtic chariot burial was discovered, the first such find in Wales. There may have been dairy farming in Neolithic times.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: There is little evidence of Roman occupation in what is now Pembrokeshire. Ptolemy's "Geography", written , mentioned some coastal places, two of which have been identified as the River Teifi and what is now St Davids Head, but most Roman writers did not mention the area; there may have been a Roman settlement near St Davids and a road from Bath, but this comes from a 14th-century writer. Any evidence for villas or Roman building materials reported by mediaeval or later writers has not been verified, though some remains near Dale were tentatively identified as Roman in character by topographer Richard Fenton in his "Historical Tour" of 1810. Fenton stated that he had "...reason to be of opinion that they had not colonized Pembrokeshire till near the decline of their empire in Britain".


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Part of a possible Roman road is noted by CADW near Llanddewi Velfrey, and another near Wiston. Wiston is also the location of the first Roman fort discovered in Pembrokeshire, investigated in 2013.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Some artefacts, including coins and weapons, have been found, but it is not clear whether these belonged to Romans or to a Romanised population. Welsh tradition has it that Magnus Maximus founded Haverfordwest, and took a large force of local men on campaign in Gaul in 383 which, together with the reduction of Roman forces in south Wales, left a defensive vacuum which was filled by incomers from Ireland.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Between 350 and 400, an Irish tribe known as the Déisi settled in the region known to the Romans as "Demetae". The Déisi merged with the local Welsh, with the regional name underlying "Demetae" evolving into Dyfed, which existed as an independent petty kingdom from the 5th century. In 904, Hywel Dda married Elen (died 943), daughter of the king of Dyfed Llywarch ap Hyfaidd, and merged Dyfed with his own maternal inheritance of Seisyllwg, forming the new realm of Deheubarth ("southern district"). Between the Roman and Norman periods, the region was subjected to raids from Vikings, who established settlements and trading posts at Haverfordwest, Fishguard, Caldey Island and elsewhere.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Dyfed remained an integral province of Deheubarth, but this was contested by invading Normans and Flemings who arrived between 1067 and 1111. The region became known as Pembroke (sometimes archaic "Penbroke"), after the Norman castle built in the cantref of Penfro. In 1136, Prince Owain Gwynedd at Crug Mawr near Cardigan met and destroyed a 3,000-strong Norman/Flemish army and incorporated Deheubarth into Gwynedd.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Norman/Flemish influence never fully recovered in West Wales. In 1138, the county of Pembrokeshire was named as a county palatine. Rhys ap Gruffydd, the son of Owain Gwynedd's daughter Gwenllian, re-established Welsh control over much of the region and threatened to retake all of Pembrokeshire, but died in 1197. After Deheubarth was split by a dynastic feud, Llywelyn the Great almost succeeded in retaking the region of Pembroke between 1216 and his death in 1240. In 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted to introduce the English common law system to Wales, heralding 100 years of peace, but had little effect on those areas already established under the Marcher Lords, such as Cemais in the north of the county.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Henry Tudor, born at Pembroke Castle in 1457, landed an army in Pembrokeshire in 1485 and marched to Cardigan. Rallying support, he continued to Leicestershire and defeated the larger army of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. As Henry VII, he became the first monarch of the House of Tudor, which ruled England until 1603.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: The Laws in Wales Act 1535 effectively abolished the powers of the Marcher Lords and divided the county into seven hundreds, roughly corresponding to the seven pre-Norman cantrefi of Dyfed. The hundreds were (clockwise from the northeast): Cilgerran, Cemais, Dewisland, Roose, Castlemartin, Narberth and Dungleddy and each was divided into civil parishes; a 1578 map in the British Library is the earliest known to show parishes and chapelries in Pembrokeshire. The Elizabethan era brought renewed prosperity to the county through an opening up of rural industries, including agriculture, mining and fishing, with exports to England and Ireland, though the formerly staple woollen industry had all but disappeared.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: During the First English Civil War (1642–1646) the county gave strong support to the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), in contrast to the rest of Wales, which was staunchly Royalist. In spite of this, an incident in Pembrokeshire triggered the opening shots of the Second English Civil War when local units of the New Model Army mutinied. Oliver Cromwell defeated the uprising at the Siege of Pembroke in July 1648. On 13 August 1649, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland began when New Model Army forces sailed from Milford Haven.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: In 1720, Emmanuel Bowen described Pembrokeshire as having five market towns, 45 parishes and about 4,329 houses, with an area of . In 1791 a petition was presented to the House of Commons concerning the poor state of many of the county's roads, pointing out that repairs could not be made compulsory by the law as it stood. The petition was referred to committee. People applying for poor relief were often put to work mending roads. Workhouses were poorly documented. Under the Poor Laws, costs and provisions were kept to a minimum, but the emphasis was often on helping people to be self-employed. While the Poor Laws provided a significant means of support, there were many charitable and benefit societies. After the Battle of Fishguard, the failed French invasion of 1797, 500 French prisoners were held at Golden Hill Farm, Pembroke. From 1820 to 1878 one of the county's prisons, with a capacity of 86, was in the grounds of Haverfordwest Castle. In 1831, the area of the county was calculated to be with a population of 81,424.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: It was not until nearly the end of the 19th century that mains water was provided to rural south Pembrokeshire by means of a reservoir at Rosebush and cast iron water pipes throughout the district.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Throughout much of the 20th century (1911 to 1961) the population density in the county remained stable while it rose in England and Wales as a whole. There was considerable military activity in Pembrokeshire and offshore in the 20th century: a naval base at Milford Haven because German U-boats were active off the coast in World War I and, in World War II, military exercises in the Preseli Hills and a number of military airfields. The wartime increase in air activity saw a number of aircraft accidents and fatalities, often due to unfamiliarity with the terrain. From 1943 to 1944, 5,000 soldiers from the United States Army's 110th Infantry Regiment were based in the county, preparing for D-Day. Military and industrial targets in the county were subjected to bombing during World War II. After the end of the war, German prisoners of war were accommodated in Pembrokeshire, the largest prison being at Haverfordwest, housing 600. The County of Pembroke War Memorial in Haverfordwest carries the names of 1,200 of those that perished in World War I.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: As a result of differential immigration over hundreds of years, such as the influx of Flemish people, the south of the county has fewer Welsh-speaking inhabitants (about 15 per cent) than the north (about 50 per cent). The rough line that can be drawn between the two regions, illustrated by the map, is known as the Landsker Line, and the area south of the line has been termed "Little England Beyond Wales". The first objective, statistically based description of this demarcation was made in the 1960s, but the distinction was remarked upon as early as 1603 by George Owen of Henllys. A 21st century introduction of Welsh place names for villages which had previously been known locally only by their English names has caused some controversy.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: In 1851, a religious census of Pembrokeshire showed that of 70 per cent of the population, 53 per cent were nonconformists and 17 per cent Church of England (now Church in Wales, in the Diocese of St Davids). The 2001 census for Preseli Pembrokeshire constituency showed that 74 per cent were Christian and 25 per cent of no religion (or not stated), with other religions totalling less than 1 per cent. This approximates to the figures for the whole of Wales.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: In 2001, Preseli Pembrokeshire constituency was 99 per cent white European, marginally lower than in 1991, compared with 98 per cent for the whole of Wales. 71 per cent identified their place of birth as Wales and 26 per cent as from elsewhere in the UK.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Under the Local Government Act 1888, an elected county council was set up to take over the functions of the Pembrokeshire Quarter Sessions. It was based at the Shire Hall, Haverfordwest. This and the administrative county of Pembrokeshire were abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, with Pembrokeshire forming two districts of the new county of Dyfed: South Pembrokeshire and Preseli – the split being made at the request of local authorities in the area. In 1996, under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, the county of Dyfed was broken up into its constituent parts, and Pembrokeshire has been a unitary authority since then. A new County Hall was built in 1999 in Haverfordwest and serves as the county council's headquarters. In 2017 Pembrokeshire County Council had 60 members and no political party in overall control; there were 34 independent councillors. In 2009, the question of county names and Royal Mail postal addresses was raised in the Westminster parliament; it was argued that Royal Mail's continued use of the county address Dyfed was causing concern and confusion in the Pembrokeshire business community. The Royal Mail has subsequently ceased requiring county names to be used in postal addresses. In 2018, Pembrokeshire County Council increased council tax by 12.5 per cent, the largest increase since 2004, but the county's council tax remains the lowest in Wales.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: The Pembrokeshire (Communities) Order 2011 established the most recent arrangement of communities (the successors to civil parishes) in the county which have their own councils; see the foot of this page for a list of communities.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Since 2010, Pembrokeshire has returned two Conservative MPs to the Parliament of the United Kingdom at Westminster: Stephen Crabb for Preseli Pembrokeshire and Simon Hart for South Pembrokeshire which is represented jointly with West Carmarthenshire. The corresponding Members of the Senedd (MSs) returned to the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) in Cardiff are Paul Davies and Angela Burns respectively, both Conservatives.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: There are no motorways in Pembrokeshire; the nearest is the M4 motorway from London which terminates at the Pont Abraham services in Carmarthenshire some from Haverfordwest. The A40 crosses Pembrokeshire from the border with Carmarthenshire westwards to Haverfordwest, then northwards to Fishguard. The A477 from St. Clears to Pembroke Dock is long, of which only are dual carriageway. The Cleddau Bridge, toll-free from 28 March 2019, carries the A477 across the Cleddau Estuary. The A478 traverses eastern Pembrokeshire from Tenby in the south to Cardigan, Ceredigion in the north, a distance of . The A487 is the other major route, running northwest from Haverfordwest to St Davids, then northeast following the coast, through Fishguard and Newport, to the boundary with Ceredigion at Cardigan. Owing to length restrictions in Fishguard, some freight vehicles are not permitted to travel northeast from Fishguard but must take a longer route via Haverfordwest and Narberth. The B4329 former turnpike runs from Eglwyswrw in the north to Haverfordwest across the Preseli Hills.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: The main towns in the county are covered by regular bus and train services operated by First Cymru (under their "Western Welsh" livery), Transport for Wales Rail and sometimes Great Western Railway respectively, and many villages by local bus services, or community or education transport.


title: Pembrokeshire

text: Pembrokeshire is served by rail via the West Wales Lines from Swansea. Direct trains from Milford Haven run to Manchester Piccadilly. Branch lines terminate at Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven and Fishguard, linking with ferries to Ireland from Pembroke Dock and Fishguard. Seasonal ferry services operate from Tenby to Caldey Island, from St Justinians (St Davids) to Ramsey Island and Grassholm Island, and from Martin's Haven to Skomer Island. Haverfordwest (Withybush) Airport provides general aviation services.