Author: Ms. R.

Vikings have been plagued by a lot of misconceptions. Their mythos would lead you to believe they wore horned helmets, for example. (They didn’t.) And that they set their funerary barges alight with a flaming arrow shot from the shore. (Also untrue.) Real Viking burials did involve ships, though not where you might expect them. Viking leaders were buried in boats that were dug into the dirt, then covered over with earth and turf, forming a tumulus, or burial……

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They are everywhere, ubiquitous to the point where they are nearly synonymous with the spirits themselves: small, plastic bottles of strawberry Fanta, placed solicitously in front of shrines, straws helpfully tilted towards the gods for easier sipping. Turn the corner just off of Bangkok’s Charoen Krung Road, and you’ll spy a single Fanta in front of a simple concrete spirit house. At the popular night market Asiatique, a battalion of crimson bottles vie for space before the resident spirits…….

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Ancient Rome‘s brutal gladiatorial games have lived on in legends and stories long after the games themselves ended. The Colosseum is an impressive architectural feat that continues to draw in vast numbers of tourists every year. But another, lesser-known historic attraction stands nearby: the ruins of the Ludus Magnus, the Great Gladiatorial Training School of Rome. Originally constructed under the reign of Emperor Domitian in the late first century, the Ludus Magnus was the largest of the four gladiatorial……

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As the COVID-19 pandemic has altered the shape of the world, one of the more dramatic changes is in the lives of teachers, parents, and kids. With most schools closed, summer camps canceled, and kids home, both parents and teachers are challenged with giving kids engaging and interesting activities. That’s why Atlas Obscura teamed up with Nomadic Learning, an online education company, to build a series of interactive lessons that take kids to amazing spots around the world, ask……

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This memorial shows a heavily clad steelworker sampling molten steel. It was created in 1989 by artist Dimitrios Akis, and moved from its original location near State Route 7 and placed across the street from the Steubenville Library in 2015. The memorial recalls the prosperous years of the the steel industry during the Second World War and the post-war era. The area’s steel industry has been in steady decline since the 1980s. Huge steel works in Steubenville and Weirton,……

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Poland is full of small hamlets and villages that are by some considered to be unremarkable. Some of these places have something that makes them notable, like Skrzyńsko Parish Church, the legendary home to a massive spider. Bigorzówka is another one of those places, mostly due to its notable mushroom-shaped rock. Mushroom rocks, sometimes called pedestal rocks, are geological structures that, over thousands of years of erosion, develop a wide top supported by a narrower base—not unlike a capped mushroom…….

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When Lorenzo Reina picked up his phone on a sunny morning in December 2017, he thought it was a prank. “The voice on the other side said I had been selected for the Venice Biennale,” he says. “I thought it was a joke and hung up.” Two days later, he received an official email from Mario Cucinella, curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture, stating that Reina’s work, an open-air theater called Teatro Andromeda,……

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On the outskirts of the quaint Welsh town of Machynlleth stands Bron-Yr-Aur, an 18th-century cottage famous for its associations with Led Zeppelin. The cottage was used as a holiday home during the 1950s by the family of young Robert Plant, who would become the band’s lead singer and lyricist. Despite its lack of running water or electricity, Plant eventually returned to the cottage with his bandmates in 1970. The retreat was designed as a respite after the band’s North……

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Hidden amid the affluent Kalorama neighborhood, home to several political heavyweights, is the oldest home in Washington, DC. However, the house was originally crafted far away from the city.  Constructed during the 1750s, the home was designed for wealthy shipowner and merchant, Robert Hooper, who went by the nickname “King”.  After Hooper lost the house to creditors, it changed hands several times over the next few generations. The house’s drawing-room was sold to the Kansas City Museum by a……

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Located in a small shopping center, the Museum of Ancient Wonders is an unexpected surprise sandwiched between Big Lots and Bambino’s Pizza. When visitors enter this museum, they are instantly transported to epochs from centuries past.  The space is larger than it appears, large enough to house 375 artifacts and fossils. Exhibits explore a wide range of subjects, from the life of King Tutankhamun⁠—to the creatures of the Mesozoic period. The King Tut exhibit features reproductions of the king’s……

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It’s fitting that one of the first sculptures visitors encounter in René Lévesque Park is about feet. David Moore’s “Site/Interlude” consists of five colossal steel legs, each filled with rubble. Spaced along a path like a series of mysterious footprints, they beckon viewers further into the park. Sprawling and spacious, the park does require a lot of walking. At 1,500,000 square feet (140,000 square meters), it’s one of the largest outdoor sculpture gardens in Canada. Twenty-two monumental works by……

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