Author: Ms. R.

The Trevi Fountain is one of Rome‘s most notable tourist attractions. But what most visitors are unaware of is that there is an archaeological site hidden right beneath the famed neighborhood. Today nicknamed the “City of Water,” Vicus Caprarius is an ancient Roman apartment complex (insulae) dating to the 1st-century, established after the Great Fire of 64. It was then renovated into a domus, or upper-class house during the 4th-century. During the late 1990s, the site was discovered during expansion work……

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Near the cross-country skiing track on Terminillo, a winter resort famously developed by Italian Dictator Mussolini in the 1930s, a mysterious medieval sword stands as a testimony to an ancient local legend. The sword is set in the stone in an area known as “Cinque Confini” (Five Borders), at a spot where traditionally the territories of five towns met. Those towns are Rieti, Cittaducale, Micigliano, Borgovelino, and Castel Sant’Angelo. It’s said the sword was placed at this location by……

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Ivo Zdarsky does not talk a big game. He has a gentle, easygoing manner and a gap-toothed smile, with a staccato laugh and a soft voice. He pauses sometimes before he speaks, measuring his words, which are pronounced in a gentle Eastern European accent, a vestige of his youth in Czechoslovakia. Zdarsky does, however, live in a big house. In an airplane hangar, actually, in Lucin, Utah, an abandoned railroad town of which he’s the sole inhabitant. “I don’t……

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Rocca Sforzesca is a stunning example of the evolution of castles and fortifications between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Its origins date back to 1261 when a 10 tower structure was built on the remains of a pre-existing tower from the 11th-century. At the end of the 15th-century, the rectangular towers proved to be completely unsuitable for countering firearms, such as cannons. Between 1472 and 1484 the towers were changed into thicker circular structures and renovated by the……

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It’s no surprise that being the center of Christian worship in the city since 1283, Chester Cathedral has many depictions of Christ and the Virgin Mary. The cathedral is over 700 years old, so one would expect to see a cobweb or two. However, Chester Cathedral is home to a set of cobwebs that actually comprise a rare piece of artwork. It’s the only cobweb picture in the United Kingdom and is one of only a few that still……

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Many North American Indigenous cultures—from the Haida First Nations on Canada’s West Coast to the Hopi in the American Southwest—incorporate masks in their ceremonies, legends, and other cultural practices. So, confronted with the reality of the pandemic, in which masks have taken on a very different cultural and political significance, two Indigenous artists in Canada, Nathalie Bertin and Lisa Shepherd, decided to make them part of a global art practice. “Masks have really freaked some people out,” Bertin says…….

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This work first appeared on SAPIENS under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license. Read the original here. As I type, the American West is ablaze with more than 100 devastating wildfires. Many of these are record-setting in both size and intensity. Several, including one in my home state of Colorado, have been so intense they’ve created their own thunderstorms. Science shows that wildfires have been getting more destructive over the last several decades. The question is: Why? Are they getting……

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Power struggles are messy affairs, even in the world of acorn woodpeckers. Dozens of birds, grouped in coalitions, can fight for days on end, while spectators fly in from nearly two miles away to witness a battle for the right to breed. And word spreads fast—when a bird’s death creates a vacancy in prime territory, the battle to fill it breaks out within minutes, and faraway onlookers can arrive in less than an hour. These are some of the……

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