Scientists from the University of Padua have, for the first time, been able to decipher the streets and buildings of a lost Roman town called Altinum, just north of Venice. They did this by flying over the site near the modern-day village of Altino, which is today no more than a few cornfields to the naked eye. They then took aerial photos with cameras using near-infrared and other light wavelengths. The result is an image of the Altinum that lies half a metre or more below ground level, and clearly shows streets, a basilica, an amphitheatre and a canal. Historians…
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By the middle of the 13th century, Dunwich was a prosperous coastal city with a fearsome royal flotilla, extravagant priories and thousands of happy inhabitants. It was a genuine rival to London, and the envy of Europe. But just two hundred years later the city lay in ruins, torn to shreds by the tyrannical tides of the East Anglian coast; its once-illustrious ramparts reduced to ruins at the bottom of the North Sea. Today the town remains a stunning coastal retreat, and the shattered pieces of its greyfriars’ abbey broods beatifully across the beach. But now a team of experts…
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Athens was the learning centre of what was one of the greatest empirical cultures in history – the Ancient Greeks. Building the foundations of civilisation, the Greeks progressed education, politics, sports, science, arts and philosophy. Spawning the concept of democracy, and influencing design and architecture for centuries to come, Athens served as the template for society. Nashville is the capital of the American state of Tennessee, has a prosperous port and numerous high rise skyscrapers, and lays claim to being the home of country music. A city which has a thriving commercial heart, boasting enough neon signs to make Las…
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Xi’an is a city which boasts many ancient relics, from the famous Terracotta Warriors, to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda. As one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China, the city was fortified with one of the oldest and best preserved Chinese city walls. Chris Bryant’s photograph of the Xi’an City Walls shows the immense beauty of the scene. An image of still water captures a near perfect reflection of the bridge, and the vegetation looks richly green against the stone walls. Perhaps most telling in this photograph is the river extending to a vanishing point in the distance,…
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The Ongoing Silvio Saga That Berlusconi is involved in a tangled web of political scandal and lurid details about his private life is nothing new. To date he’s been accused of bribery, an impropriety with an under-age girl, as well as involvement with the mafia, all with impunity (which makes me laugh, because in the UK all you need to make an MP resign is the whiff of a dodgy expense claims form). After all, Silvio is not stupid by any means, and at times when a problem has arisen, he has been known to conveniently have a law passed…
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Mary Beard is professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Her academic work mainly focuses on aspects of Roman and Greek culture and she claims to be ‘particularly interested in the reception of Classics in the modern world’. This is borne out by her column for the Times Online, A Don’s Life, which comments incisively on modern life, often with a classical twist – I particularly liked her suggestions for Latin catch-phrases for London’s tube commuters. She also has a long list of published books to her name, the two most recent…
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Via Dell’ Impero An exhibition opening today at the Musei Capitolini in Rome shows the building of the city’s infamous via dei Fori Imperiali (previously via dell’ Impero), which also tore through the forums of Nerva, Augustus and Trajan, with little regard for the ancient Roman constructions that lay beneath. Via Dell’ Impero – Nascita di una Strada (Birth of a Road) will feature photos, paintings and sketches by professional Roman photographers and artists, including Filippo Reale, Cesare Faraglia and Odoardo Ferretti. The exhibition runs until20 September, documenting the demolition of buildings and the excavations which took place before the…
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In my ever-long quest to be innovative and interactive with how Heritage Key presents information, I thought I’d take a moment out to have a little fun and games! So using mapping software from umapper,I’ve devised a little map quiz. Here’s how it works – you’re presented with a map and asked to find a location (which appears at the top of the screen). You then use your mouse cursor and click where you think that particular location is on the map. Simple, huh? Not exactly, as I’m using a physical map. So there’s no country borders or landmarks to…
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In the deep south of Mexico, there lies a mysterious and enchanting temple in ruins, a relic of a Mesoamerican past. Lou Rouge’s photograph beautifully captures the mystical aura of this tomb in a fantastic capture which portrays the mood perfectly. The mist and dark lighting creates the sense of the unknown, but maintains the feel of the alluring. It’s a photograph which makes the person looking at it feel that the place has hidden secrets which are waiting to be unravelled. And it certainly has those!The Temple of Inscriptions, as it is known in English, is the only Maya…
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Terracotta armies are certainly in the news at the moment. The long-awaited third dig of Qin Shihuang’s tomb finally got under way last month in China, while a slightly more idiosyncratic clay army was causing some consternation in Germany last week: prosecutors are investigating whether the saluting garden gnomes created by artist Ottmar Hoerl are in fact breaking strict German code that bans Nazi symbols and gestures.Libya’s Terracotta Army While these terracotta armies grab the limelight, there is another ‘army’ of 4,500 small terracotta figurines, which were uncovered during excavations at the Greek and Roman ruins of Cyrene near Shahhat…