higher than Hamburg, Altona enjoys a purer and healthier atmosphere. It has spacious squares and streets, among the latter the Palmaille, a stately avenue ending on a terrace about 100 ft. above the Elbe, whence a fine view is obtained of the river and the lowlands beyond. Of the six Evangelical churches, the Hauptkirche (parish church), with a lofty steeple, is noteworthy. The main thoroughfares are embellished by several striking monuments, notably the memorials of the wars of 1864 and 1870, bronze statues of the emperor William I. and Bismarck and the column of Victory (Siegessäule). The museum (1901) is an imposing building in the German Renaissance style and contains, in addition to a valuable library, ethnographical and natural history collections. Its site is that formerly occupied by the terminus of the Schleswig-Holstein railways, but a handsome central station lying somewhat farther to the N., connected with Hamburg by an elevated railway, now accommodates all the traffic and provides through communication with the main Prussian railway systems. There are also fine municipal and judicial buildings, a theatre (under the same management as the Stadttheater in Hamburg), a gymnasium, technical schools, a school of navigation and a hospital. In respect of its local industries Altona has manufactures of tobacco and cigars, of machinery, woollens, cottons and chemicals. There are also extensive breweries, tanneries and soap and oil works. Altona carries on an extensive maritime trade with Great Britain, France and America, but it has by no means succeeded in depriving Hamburg of its commercial superiority—indeed, so dependent is it upon its rival that most of its business is transacted on the Hamburg exchange, while the magnificent warehouses on the Altona river bank are to a large extent occupied by the goods of Hamburg merchants. Since 1888, when Altona joined the imperial Zollverein, approximately half a million sterling has been spent upon harbour improvement works. The exports and imports resemble those of Hamburg. In the ten years 1871–1880, the port was entered on an average annually by 737 vessels of 67,735 tons, in 1881–1890 by 608 vessels of 154,713 tons, and in 1891–1898 by 839 vessels of 253,384 tons.
In 1890 the populous suburbs of Ottensen to the W., where the poet Gottlieb Klopstock lies buried, Bahrenfeld, Othmarschen and Övelgönne were incorporated. Without these suburbs the growth of the town may be seen from the following figures:—(1864, when it ceased to be Danish) 53,039; (1880) 91,049; (1885) 104,717; (1890) together with the four suburbs, 143,249; (1895) 148,944; (1900) 161,508; (1905) 168,301. Altona is the headquarters of the IX. German army corps.
The name Altona is said to be derived from allzu-nah (“all too near”), the Hamburgers’ designation for an inn which in the middle of the 16th century lay too close to their territory. For a long time this was the only house in the locality. When in 1640 Altona passed to Denmark it was a small fishing village. Its rise to its present position is mainly due to the fostering care of the Danish kings who conferred certain customs privileges and exemptions upon it with a view to making it a formidable rival to Hamburg. In 1713 it was burnt by the Swedes, but rapidly recovered from this disaster, and despite the trials of the Napoleonic wars, gradually increased in prosperity. In 1853, owing to the withdrawal by Denmark of its customs privileges, its trade waned. In 1864 Altona was occupied in the name of the German Confederation, passed to Prussia after the war of 1866, and 1888 together with Hamburg joined the Zollverein, while retaining certain free trade rights over the Freihafengebiet which it shares with Hamburg and Wandsbek.
See Wichmann, Geschichte Altonas (2 vols., Alt., 1896); Ehrenberg & Stahl, Altonas topographische Entwickelung (Alt., 1894).
ALTOONA, a city of Blair county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., about 117 m. E. by N. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 30,337; (1900) 38,973, of whom 3301 were foreign-born, 1518 being German; (1910) 52,127. It lies in the upper end of Logan Valley at the base of the Alleghany mountains, about 1180 ft. above sea-level, and commands views of some of the most picturesque mountain scenery in the state. A short distance to the W. is the famous Horseshoe Bend of the Pennsylvania railway. Altoona is served by the Pennsylvania railway, and is one of the leading railway cities in the United States. Its freight yard is 7 m. long, and has 221 m. of tracks. Large numbers of eastbound coal trains from the mountains and westbound “empties” returning to the mines stop here; and the cars of these trains are classified here and new trains made up. Locomotives and cars are sent to Altoona to be repaired from all over the Pennsylvania railway system E. of Pittsburg, and cars and locomotives are built here; and in the south Altoona foundries car wheels and general castings for locomotives and cars are made. The several departments of railway work are used to give training in a sort of railway university. Graduates of technical schools are received as special apprentices and are directed in a course of four years through the erecting shops, vice shop, blacksmith shop, boiler shop, roundhouse, test department, machine shop, air-brake shop, iron foundry, car shop, work of firing on the road, office work in the motive power accounting department, and drawing room; the most competent may be admitted through the grades of inspector, in the office of the master mechanic or of the road foreman of engines, assistant master mechanic, assistant engineer of motive power, master mechanic and superintendent of motive power. The Pennsylvania railway, co-operating with the public school authorities, established at Altoona, in 1907, a railway high school, the first institution of the kind in the country. It has a well-equipped drawing room, carpenter shop, forging room, foundry, science laboratories and machinery department, in which expert instruction is given. In 1905 the city’s factory products were valued at $14,349,963, and in this year the railway shops gave employment to 83·7% of all wage-earners employed in manufacturing establishments. The manufacture of silk is the only other important industry in the city. The site of the city (formerly farming land) was purchased in 1849 by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and was laid out as a town. It was incorporated as a borough in 1854 and was chartered as a city in 1868.
ALTO-RELIEVO (Ital. for “high relief”), the term applied to sculpture that projects from the plane to which it is attached to the extent of more than one-half the outline of the principal figures, which may be nearly or in parts entirely detached from the background. It is thus distinguished from basso-relievo (q.v.), in which there is a greater or less approximation in effect to the pictorial method, the figures being made to appear as projecting more than half their outline without actually doing so. At the same time it is not only the actual degree of relief which is implied by these two terms, but a resultant difference also of design and treatment necessitated by the contingent differences of light and shadow. (See Relief and Sculpture.)
ALTÖTTING, a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Bavaria, on the Mörren, not far from its junction with the Inn, and on the Mühldorf-Burghausen railway. Pop. (1900) 4344. It has long been a place of pilgrimage to which Roman Catholics, especially from Austria, Bavaria and Swabia resort in large numbers, on account of a celebrated image of the Virgin Mary in the Holy Chapel, which also contains the hearts of some Bavarian princes in silver caskets. In the church of St Peter and St Paul is the tomb of Tilly.
ALTRANSTÄDT, a village of Germany, in Prussian Saxony near Merseburg (q.v.), with (1900) 813 inhabitants. Altranstädt is famous in history for two treaties concluded here: (1) the peace which Augustus II., king of Poland and elector of Saxony, was forced to ratify, on the 24th of September 1706, with Charles XII. of Sweden, whereby the former renounced the throne of Poland in favour of Stanislaus Leszczynski—a treaty which Augustus declared null and void after Charles XII.’s defeat at Poltava (8th of July 1709); (2) the treaty of the 31st of August 1707, by which the emperor Joseph I. guaranteed to Charles XII. religious tolerance and liberty of conscience for the Silesian protestants.
ALTRINCHAM, or Altringham (and so pronounced), a market-town in the Altrincham parliamentary division of Cheshire, England, 8 m. S.W. by S. of Manchester, on the London
