They generally were built where property had been left by the donors to foreign orders to pray for their souls.
It was therefore to Byzantium that Italy turned for metal-workers, and especially for goldsmiths, when, in the 6th to the 8th centuries, the basilica of St Peter's in Rome was enriched with masses of gold and silver for decorations and fittings, the gifts of many donors from Belisarius to Leo III., the mere catalogue of which reads like a tale from the Arabian Nights.
By a decree of 1842 this fund was transferred to the public treasury of Mexico, the Mexican government undertaking to pay interest thereon in perpetuity in furtherance of the design of the original donors.
The People's Palace, Mile End Road, opened in 1887, is both a recreative and an educational institution (called East London College) erected and subsequently extended mainly through the liberality of the Drapers' Company and of private donors.
They had geometric patterns with birds, trees, &c., and bore inscriptions in mosaic with the names of the donors.
