1.   For half a millennium, Alberti has occupied a secure niche.

2.   From a more esthetic viewpoint, the private house can seem like the architectural equivalent of easel painting, both of which are about half a millennium old.

3.   Now this street, a market for half a millennium, is a heap of bricks and metal, singed electrical wire looped around ash and rubble.

4.   For half a millennium Turkey was the seat of the Islamic Caliphate, and this put it in the political and cultural centre of the Islamic world.