The Well of St. Chads dates back to the Middle Ages. It's at the beginning (or the end, depending on your point of view) of the 90-mile pilgrimage to Chester. Its waters were rumored to heal skin diseases and sores. The well remained known and was written about frequently throug … | Continue reading
Wadi-al-Salaam translates to the Valley of Peace and is located in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq. Inside the burial site are over 10,000 tombs and crypts, with each capable of interning 50 people. The cemetery covers over 1,000. | Continue reading
Nowadays the sleepy Queensland town of Muttaburra is best known for the discovery of the towering dinosaur known as the Muttaburrasaurus. But it also boasts a number of other unusual finds, including the A.A. Cassimitis General Store Museum. The Cassimitis General Store Museum i … | Continue reading
The strikingly gorgeous stations of the Tashkent Metro may rival those in Moscow, even considered by some to be the most beautiful in the world. But they remain largely obscure because photography inside the metro was not only strictly forbidden, but illegal until June 2018. Esta … | Continue reading
The remains of the Old Tunnel Mill are located in a horseshoe formed by the turns of the Muscatatuck River just outside of Vernon, Indiana. All that is left of the massive two-and-a-half-story mill are a few foundation walls and a large chimney. Power for the mill was furnished … | Continue reading
A disputed church in Priština, located on the campus of the University of Priština, has a complex history. Originally planned as part of an open-plan campus in the 1970s, it was later given to the Serbian Orthodox Church by the municipality, leading to tension and disputes. Const … | Continue reading
According to legend, Sun Quan, King of the Wu Kingdom, came into possession of the cremated remains of Buddha. To house these relics, the king ordered the construction of 13 pagodas, and Longhua Pagoda is rumored to be one of them. Longhua is a Buddhist temple, dedicated to the M … | Continue reading
“Hands aren’t just for typing and texting, but for creating,” says Pasquale Marinelli, a bell artisan in Italy. Pasquale and his brother Armando are the 26th generation of a family who has been crafting handmade bells since the middle ages. Pouring scalding-hot liquid metal into … | Continue reading
Some believe that these ruins gave their name to the nearby pit village of Bearpark. The belief is the name is a corruption of the French term "Beau Repaire" the name given to the Priory. Beaurepaire Priory was originally built by the Prior of Durham in charge of the Priory and … | Continue reading
In Buddhism, the Five Hundred Arhats are the most loyal of the Buddha’s disciples, who attended the religion's first council at Rājagṛha (modern Rajgir, India) right after the Buddha's final nirvana to compile his teachings into scriptures. Several Japanese and Chinese temples ar … | Continue reading
Between 1850 and 1852, a mighty, squat stone fort rose from a low-lying island in the Milford Haven Waterway in Wales. Originally proposed by Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII, more than 300 years earlier, Stack Rock Fort—about 800 yards off the coast—was built t … | Continue reading
A new sculpture by Daniel Popper, and a permanent addition to the new community of Aurora Highlands. Cast in resin and standing about 25 feet, Umi will continue to greet new homeowners and visitors to Hogan Park for the foreseeable future. | Continue reading
In the township of Itakura, Gunma, a bizarre sculpture lurks in the sleepy, poorly-lit lobby of a local community center. An eldritch entity composed of countless coleopteran corpses in the style of Oogie Boogie, the Konchū Senju-Kannon is the stuff of entomophobic nightmares. H … | Continue reading
The Jimbocho district of Tokyo is known for its decades-old cafés. Viennese coffee was first introduced to the Japanese public in 1953 at the Ladrio, one of the java joints situated in a narrow alley. The rich, potent concoction quickly became a favorite spot of countless authors … | Continue reading
For Eastern Europeans, arcades elicit a healthy dose of nostalgia—perhaps even more so than people from other places with a history of arcades. In Eastern Europe, arcades survived well into the 2000s as a viable business model. Often in the form of mobile arcades that drove aroun … | Continue reading
Some 19,000 years ago, glacial meltwaters cut through sandstone, leaving unique rock formations locals say are shaped like animals. An eagle with outstretched wings is widely remarked as the most recognizable naturally-carved sandstone shape. Other shapes include a dinosaur, an e … | Continue reading
Long Ya Men, or Dragon’s Teeth Gate, was a craggy granite outcrop that once stood at the gateway to Keppel Harbour in Singapore, near the present site of Labrador Park. Known locally by the Malays as Batu Berlayer ("sailing rock"), it served as navigational aids to ancient marine … | Continue reading
This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com. They found the victims floating in the water. Some had eyeballs full of air bubbles, others had their stomachs pushed up i … | Continue reading
When driving through the Polish country side one can expect to see endless fields, orchards, quaint cottages, and even some stately new buildings that tower out above the rest. However, if you drive past the right place, you will also see a surreal collection of enormous wooden b … | Continue reading
When the sun sets on Provincetown, Massachusetts, roving visitors fill the streets, wandering to and from dive bars, live music venues, nightclubs, seaside eateries, drag shows, and beyond. But as the wee hours approach, almost every restaurant shutters. That is, every restaurant … | Continue reading
The town of Paducah, Kentucky, is home to the National Quilt Museum as well as the world’s largest quilting needle. This sculpture, apparently stitching Lower Town’s art district to the rest of Paducah, underscores the heartland’s cultural ties to quilting and Paducah’s love for … | Continue reading
The Drumtroddan Rock Art site is made up of three groups of cup and ring-marked stones. Two of the groupings lie in a field, while a third is a small distance away in the coppice beyond a dyke. These carved stones probably date to the Neolithic or early Bronze Age, between 3500 a … | Continue reading
The city of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada, is known for its prolific street art and building murals. Yet, no art installation is more magical than that found in the quiet residential neighborhood of Wolseley. The artwork comprises a collection of Brobdingnagian animal images that … | Continue reading
Soviet architecture, while incredibly efficient, is not always known for its creative flair. However, where there is a standard, artists tend to find a way around them, which in this case was done by building a castle that is also a skyscraper. The castle flat was built in 1988 … | Continue reading
The tranquil community of Whitehall in Upstate New York became the center of Bigfoot mania. The Adirondacks, where 6 million acres of brooding woodlands and unsettled mountains stretch out larger than several New England states, have a rich mythology of beastly stories dating bac … | Continue reading
Hyenas, vultures, lions, leopards. They all seem like expected dinner guests to a feast consisting of a massive elephant carcass. But recently, researchers in Kenya caught an unexpected diner on camera. The elephant in the room, it turned out, was a hippo. In 2019, an internation … | Continue reading
For years, the only way to try Maria Piedad Cano’s famed arepas was to roam along Roosevelt Avenue well after dark and hope for good fortune. Cano was a lawyer and a judge in her homeland of Colombia, but after she fled to the United States, she turned to wielding a mobile griddl … | Continue reading
The statue of Ferdinando I, astride his horse in Piazza Santissima Annunziata, is a familiar sight. But take a closer look at the base of the statue. On the bronze plaque at the rear of the statue is a curious circle of bees, all facing the queen in the center: the bees represent … | Continue reading
Through the snaking fjords of Norway, one will find the picturesque, modern town of Haugesund. It has many beautiful monuments, including a statue of the American actress Marilyn Monroe. You might ask, why is there a bronze Marilyn Monroe statue next to a canal in Haugesund? The … | Continue reading
The granite steps and Lake Clara Meer in Piedmont Park are the only things that still remain from the 1895 Cotton States and International Exposition. The exposition lasted 15 weeks in September 1895 and saw nearly a million attendees. The exposition buildings were temporary stru … | Continue reading
Established in 2019 by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul Book Repository is South Korea's first municipal secondhand bookstore. Housed in a renovated warehouse, the unique cultural center is home to tens of thousands of used books, including such rarities as independent pu … | Continue reading
Within the second-largest of Michigan's state parks resides the second-largest waterfall east of the Mississippi: Tahquamenon Falls. ("Tahquamenon" rhymes with "phenomenon.") The falls are actually a series—the largest of which, called the Upper Falls, stretches 200 feet wide and … | Continue reading
Tucson muralist Joe Pagac wanted to venture into art that was interactive and, literally, accessible to everyone. Using the ubiquitous javelina as a model, Joe placed one in the Captain's seat of a tandem waiting for his stoker. Folks love to pose on the rear saddle with Javier a … | Continue reading
Experience a journey through the ancient past, traversing 150 million years of history, to unearth the mysteries of the beasts that once roamed the very ground on which Dinosaur Ridge sits today. Over 250 dinosaur footprints await you, along with crocodile scratches, and other tr … | Continue reading
Not far from Ulaanbaatar, near the city's new airport, is the small town of Zuun Mod. This town is the aimag center of Tov, the country's central province and one of Mongolia's 21 aimags. While Zuun Mod itself does not have many attractions, a one-hour walk takes visitors to a hi … | Continue reading
This Atlas Obscura–themed crossword comes from independent crossword constructor Brendan Emmett Quigley. He has been a professional puzzlemaker since 1996, and his pieces have appeared in dozens of publications. He's also a member of the Boston Typewriter Orchestra. You can solve … | Continue reading
Just southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, the ruins of a colonial open-pit iron ore mine are located on the hillsides of Nanny's Mountain. The mine was operational from approximately 1760 to 1820. Prior to the Revolutionary War, the iron mine fueled early industry in the area … | Continue reading
This incredible site is home to different petroglyphs and pictographs. There are a few from the Archaic period and some from the Fremont period. Before the highway was built, an ancient structure was excavated by archeologists that was right next to the soon-to-be road. This unea … | Continue reading
The Lewis Ansbacher Map Collection is located on the 4th floor of the Jacksonville Main Library in downtown Jacksonville and is a collection of 24o maps dating back to the 16th century. The maps are displayed along the walls of the room and give the room a feeling of both worldli … | Continue reading
The alluring, musky fragrance of marigolds floats from a Hindu shrine, as a group of men laugh over ginger-infused milk teas served in clay cups called kulhads. In a nearby perfume distillery, a man turns his head towards the laughter as he crushes a batch of discarded kulhads. H … | Continue reading
Gastro Obscura’s Summer Cookout columnist Paula Marcoux is a food historian and the author of Cooking With Fire. Throughout the summer, she’ll be sharing recipes and stories from the luminous history of open-fire cooking. Deep in the mid-winter Maine woods in 1902, a young chemis … | Continue reading
When the minerals of a mining town have been fully extracted, there is a chance that it will become a ghost town. That is what happened to Real de Catorce in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí when its silver ran dry in the early 20th century. But it was never completely abando … | Continue reading
In ancient Greece, yearly theater competitions sponsored by chorēgia, wealthy patrons of the dramatic arts, were held in the Theater of Dionysus. The chorēgia, literally "the leader of the chorus," who sponsored the winning performance received a large winning trophy. In 320 BC, … | Continue reading
Atlas Obscura’s Wondersky columnist Rebecca Boyle is an award-winning science journalist and author of the upcoming Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are (January 2024, Random House). Throughout the summer, she’ … | Continue reading
Northeast of Leeds, England is the small town of Pickering in the Ryedale district of North Yorkshire. The small town's parish church, the Church of St. Peter & St. Paul, features remarkable original medieval wall paintings and welcomes both human and canine visitors. The first c … | Continue reading
The church of St. George the Martyr is the oldest Anglican church in Southeast Asia. Before the church was built, religious services in Penang were conducted at Fort Cornwallis and later at the courthouse in George Town, a short distance away. Plans for a church were submitted as … | Continue reading
Among our crosswords and other puzzles, we'll be featuring logic challenges from Puzzle Communication Nikoli, a cult-favorite puzzle publication from Japan. A PDF of the puzzle, as well as the solution, can be downloaded below. Mazes have existed for thousands of years and might … | Continue reading
Located 40 miles southwest of London in the town of Aldershot, Redan Fort is a fascinating historical site constructed during the mid-19th century. This was a time of great conflict that saw many wars throughout Europe. During the 1853-1856 Crimean War, an alliance between the Ot … | Continue reading