The Prehistoric Sepulcher of Huerta Montero dates back over 4,600 years and was used for collective burials and rituals during the Copper Age. Preserved in exceptional condition, the structure is one of the most remarkable burial sites in Extremadura. It was built by excavating 2 … | Continue reading
The Museum of East Asian Art is the only museum in the UK solely dedicated to the arts and cultures of East and Southeast Asia. It includes over 2,000 objects from the region, with the permanent collection spanning from 5,000 B.C. to the present. Visitors can admire ceramics, met … | Continue reading
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Joey Weiss: Upstairs is where we have our classical instruments room. Dylan Thuras: Oh, I see. I see. Okay. What’s downstairs then? That’s like your synths? Joey: Downstairs is our 1950s room. Dylan: I … | Continue reading
Completed in 1964 and designed by Edward Durrell Stone, this architectural gem would be entirely at home in an episode of Star Trek. A modern take on a Roman temple, the building exemplifies New Formalism, the mid-20th century architectural style Stone helped pioneer. Rejecting t … | Continue reading
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Dylan Thuras: I’m here and no one’s here yet. This is a mailbag episode, and so we’re going to chat and ask each other questions. But it’s just me right now. So I’m going to eat some clementine and get s … | Continue reading
The Battle of the Somme may have been a relatively short-lived offensive, lasting only five months from July 1 to November 18, 1916. The resulting carnage, however, claimed the lives of well over 300,000 French, British, and German soldiers. The deadly detritus of the world's fir … | Continue reading
Olso. Capital of Norway. Gateway for many to the country's stunning fjords. The city is home to some of Norway's iconic sights, like the King and Queen's Palace, Vigeland Sculpture Park, and the Viking Ship Museum. While strolling the through the great Nordic city, you might sens … | Continue reading
A former Australian prison, Fremantle is now preserved as Western Australia's only World Heritage-listed building. Visitors can still explore its cellblocks, perimeter walls, gallows, and and underground labyrinth of tunnels—once home to imperial convicts, colonial prisoners, ene … | Continue reading
Walking around Germany today, one sees few signs of the brutal years of Nazi rule. Aside from concentration camps and a handful of larger sites like Berlin's Olympic Stadium and the Nuremberg Rally Grounds preserved as memorials, Germany has scrubbed away signs of its dark past a … | Continue reading
When this theatre opened in 1925, it brought in top Hollywood talents in the worlds of silent films and vaudeville. The biggest star of that era, Mary Pickford, dedicated the theatre on opening night, May 28, 1925. It was the second of the three classics designed by the Los Angel … | Continue reading
Legend has it that one October morning, in 1644, when moving close to the window to get better light to conduct his morning toilet, Charles I was almost removed from history. A bullet, shot by a Parliamentarian soldier, crashed through the glass and embedded itself in the wooden … | Continue reading
What did museums used to look like? The University of Coimbra's Science Museum attempted to answer this question by pooling together a variety of works from its collections into a single room. The Cabinet of Curiosities exhibition evokes the 18th-century mindset of organizing thi … | Continue reading
Nishiki Tenmangū Shrine was founded in 1003. It was originally located at the birthplace of Sugawara no Michizane—a 9th-century aristocrat who posthumously became a deity in the Japanese pantheon, the much-revered (and feared) god of academia known as Tenjin. It was later relocat … | Continue reading
In the 19th century, two porcelain factories (the Kuznetsov Factory, owned by Sidor Kuznetsov and the Jessen Factory, owned by Jakob Karl Jessen) were established in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire. Both produced fine pottery and porcelain items during the empire’s final de … | Continue reading
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Dylan Thuras: For this conversation, we asked you to choose places that you felt like shaped or influenced your life in some fundamental way. Paul Scheer: Absolutely. Dylan: I have to say the three place … | Continue reading
Lourdes, Fátima, Guadalupe, Knock. There are many sites that are sacred to Christians for alleged visions of the Virgin Mary. One of the oldest sites with that distinction is in the tiny North Norfolk village of Walsingham. The story goes back to 1061, five years before the Norma … | Continue reading
In the bylanes of Sadashiv Peth, a neighbourhood in the older part of Pune, stands an old stone building from the early 1900s. This building houses an institute called Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal. (Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal means Historical Research Institute). It was establis … | Continue reading
The siltstone Sabu disk was discovered by Walter Emery in 1938 at the Saqqara Necropolis south of Giza. It is named after an official in whose mastaba tomb it was found. Dating from the First Dynasty around the 30th century BCE, few such objects have ever been found with a bizarr … | Continue reading
New York has always been a hungry city, with locals and visitors alike constantly searching for the next best bite. For 19th-century workers, oyster bars provided a cheap snack similar to today’s dollar pizza slice. Meanwhile, members of New York’s elite once toasted each other o … | Continue reading
In a country and city where buildings are often considered to have a 30-year lifespan, the Sapporo Clock Tower is an obvious outlier. Built in 1878 when Sapporo was still being settled by Japanese, it is the oldest building in the city as well as the oldest clock tower in the cou … | Continue reading
For the love of fizz. Soda Nation is Scandinavia's largest shop dedicated to soda, pop, and anything carbonated. Though it appears small from the outside, stepping inside, it's near impossible to not be intimidated and awestruck while staring up at the surrounding walls. What you … | Continue reading
Atlas Obscura CEO Louise Story chats with actor, screenwriter, producer, and podcast host Rhym Guissé to discuss the process behind creating Charlie’s Place – a new Atlas Obscura podcast co-produced with Rococo Punch in partnership with Pushkin Industries and Visit Myrtle Beach – … | Continue reading
The history of Vesikko, which translates to “mink” in Finnish, is tied to some of the most dramatic periods of the 20th century. After its defeat in World War I, according to the terms of Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forbidden from having a submarine fleet. In order to circu … | Continue reading
Beloved. Notorious. Defiant. Folk hero. These are just a few ways to describe Charlie Fitzgerald, the entrepreneur who owned an integrated nightclub during the Jim Crow era in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Charlie broke down racial barriers through the power of music and dance, h … | Continue reading
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Dylan Thuras: If you ever find yourself in Portland, Oregon, in the southeast part of the city, it’s a really nice spot to go and poke around. There are a bunch of cool antique shops, furniture makers, r … | Continue reading
The Serra da Leba, long a formidable obstacle for transportation across southern Angola, was conquered in the 1970s by this rather nerve-wracking series of switchbacks on the Namibe-Lubango Road. It ascends around 6,053 feet (1,845 meters meters) in less than 18 miles (30 kilomet … | Continue reading
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and Amazon. Rhym Guissé: A quick warning, some of the language and imagery used to describe this period of time may be upsetting. Please take care while listening. Betty Singleton: I remember my mother was getting ready to … | Continue reading
Kokera sushi may be the rarest sushi you have never heard of. Only available fresh on Saturdays (from around 9:00 to 12:00) at a small morning market in the seaside town of Toyo, kokera sushi is unique to this region of Kochi Prefecture, and most closely resembles a “sushi cake,” … | Continue reading
This small plaque sits unassumingly on a corner in front of a flower shop, less than a block away from the main entrance of the Pike Place Market in Seattle. The plaque reads:"I have always known that at last I would take this road. But yesterday I did not know it would be today. … | Continue reading
Located in a historic neighborhood north of downtown Toronto, Wychwood Park was established in 1874 as an experimental space for an artists’ colony. In the 1890s, housing expanded across the neighborhood, designed by the Toronto architect Eden Smith. With strong Commonwealth ties … | Continue reading
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Johanna Mayer: Hey, Amanda. Amanda McGowan: Hey, Johanna. What’s up? Johanna: I want to start by showing you this photo. First, maybe just describe the photo to me. Amanda: Yeah. Okay. So we are standing … | Continue reading
In the past, gallows were part of the landscape and town councils incorporated the death penalty into their ordinances as a guarantor of the social order. These instruments of death were located at high points such as hills, so as to be visible to the people. This is the case of … | Continue reading
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Amanda McGowan: Picture a college campus in Southern California in the 1960s. Here is what comes to mind for me. I’m picturing kids with long hair, wearing flower crowns, playing music, protesting, and t … | Continue reading
Many who are otherwise unaware of Czechia's history are surprised to learn that it has a large Vietnamese community. With around 70,000 Vietnamese in the country as of 2024, they are the third-largest ethnic minority there and the third-largest Vietnamese diaspora in Europe. They … | Continue reading
Born in 1900, Žanis Lipke fought for Latvian independence following World War I before marrying his wife Johanna Novicka and starting a family in western Riga and taking up work as a stevedore and dock worker at the local port. However, Lipke also had strong left-leaning politica … | Continue reading
Japan is a country of sacred mountains. Some can be easily scaled by funicular or other transportation, while others require a hike. None, however, are arguably more difficult and dramatic than Ota Shrine, one of the five major sacred sites of southern Hokkaido. The journey to th … | Continue reading
Imagine a large palace in the style of the castles of Europe, overlooking the red rocks and foothills west of Denver. This was the dream of John Brisben Walker, who envisioned a summer home for the presidents of the United States. He donated land and lobbied for support to build … | Continue reading
The Museum of Water, opened to the public in 2003 as a gift to Saint Petersburg for its 300th anniversary, is located in a 19th-century water tower and treatment facility near the south bank of the Neva River. Combining the old with the new, the functional with the artistic, the … | Continue reading
Wall Street is best known for its connection to the financial markets, as it is the birthplace of large banks and stock exchanges. However, not many consider the origin of the street’s name. Wall Street is named after the literal wall that was built in 1653, separating New Amster … | Continue reading
Born in 1878 near Chesterville, Ontario, James Francis Melville "Frank" Moodie came West to Calgary in 1901 and attempted to establish a jewelry and watch repair business with his brother. Lacking demand for their services, Moodie moved on to other enterprises, including prospect … | Continue reading
Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Elah Feder: A few weeks ago, I contacted someone named Judith Finell, not really expecting to hear back from her, because Judith is a forensic musicologist, and she’s in very high demand. On a typical da … | Continue reading
The area of Kasba Peth in Pune is full of narrow, criss-crossing lanes, alleys, and old buildings. It is the oldest area in the city. Along one of the many lanes in the area, one can hear the rhythmic striking sound of hammer against metal. This lane is called Tambat Ali, which t … | Continue reading
Matosavank stands quietly in the heart of the forest, partially reclaimed by nature, yet still welcoming visitors—its moss-covered stones and silence create a unique, almost sacred atmosphere that feels both forgotten and alive. | Continue reading
In a state known for its colonial and Pueblo-inspired architecture, and particularly in a pueblo itself, a neo-Gothic church seems rather unexpected. However, although the current church itself dates from 1912, there has been one here since 1598. That makes the San Juan Bautista … | Continue reading
On a busy corner of Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, California sits a gem of mid-20th century design. The Casa de Cadillac was built in 1948 and has been in continuous operation as an automotive dealership ever since. Designed by the architects Randall Duell and Phillip Conkli … | Continue reading
Mexico City’s troubled relation with water is fairly well-known: from the Aztec/Mexica city of Tenochtitlán which was based on islands found on a large series of brackish lakes, to the modern metropolis stuck between cycles of drought and flooding. Among draining aquifers causing … | Continue reading
Often overlooked in the Morbihan, the northwestern department of France known for its neolithic monuments, is this site at Locmariaquer. The Grand Menhir of Er Grah is also the largest stone moved by humans during the Stone Age. The catch is that it is no longer standing, having … | Continue reading
Standing at a height of 1,209 feet (386 meters) on an island in the Daugava River south of Riga’s city center, the Riga Radio and Television Tower is potentially the most notable structure built in Latvia during the Soviet era. The tower was originally conceived of in 1972 as not … | Continue reading