Just saw this article on the net.... Not much new information but it says that the portuguese and babylonians are in... which opens up a really good chance that one of the scenarios will be a colonization-esque escapade.

Plus they have a previously unseen pic (at least by me) of the apostolic palace.

Here is the rought translation according to babel fish....
Civilization IV, one of the most successful games in compatible and with a more numerous community of fans, is to point to send a new expansion that will be titled Beyond the Sword. Between the many improvements that this expansion will include it can emphasize the appearance of new civilizations like the one of Portugal or Babilonia, as well as amount of new buildings, technologies and leaders in each one of the civilizations, improving the game experience. You can press "To read more" to accede to the complete list of improvements (in English).

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.hardgame2.com/index.php?zone=news&mod=noticia&id=31564

I haven't seen this confirmed elsewhere, perhaps someone else can elighten me.

Maybe that building is just a symbol of the renaissance or something..might be the palace like in Civ II! That would, of course,be fantastic!

Maybe that building is just a symbol of the renaissance or something..might be the palace like in Civ II! That would, of course,be fantastic!
It's the Cathedral of Florence (Firenze), if I'm correct.
One of the most beautiful Renaissance cathedrals in Italy...

My guess this is an art for the "Apostollic Palace" wonder.

Looks like a wallpaper rather than in-game graphics.

The Apostolic Palace doesn't look like that in real life, so it is, indeed, the Cathedral of Florence. This is odd, however, because the Cathedral of Florence was not announced as one of the wonders in the game, and I was thinking the announced wonders were all of the wonders we were getting. So we're either getting more wonders or this person just slapped an image together from another game. Alternatively, Firaxis made an image that has no real meaning... sort of like the Warlord's box with its World War I planes.

Isn't it il Duomo?

Isn't it il Duomo?
I don't know which building you mean by that, but I compared the drawing in the link to some pictures of the Cathedral of Florence and of the St. Peters Basilica in Rome, and it definitely looks a lot more like the Cathedral of Florence

It could be that they are using this cathedral for the Apostolic Palace though. There are some other wonders that have a strange representation as well. Like the Kremlin is represented by St. Basil's Cathedral...

I don't know which building you mean by that, but I compared the drawing in the link to some pictures of the Cathedral of Florence and of the St. Peters Basilica in Rome, and it definitely looks a lot more like the Cathedral of Florence

It could be that they are using this cathedral for the Apostolic Palace though. There are some other wonders that have a strange representation as well. Like the Kremlin is represented by St. Basil's Cathedral...

Il Duomo is the Cathedral of Florence, and this pic is a spot-on depiction of it.

My guess is that they are using Il Duomo as a stand-in for AP.

I might guess that it's a start screen for some scenario based on renaissance Italy.