Tag: Archaeology

Thermopylae Battle: Landscape, Memory and the Story of Leonidas

Thermopylae Battle: Landscape, Memory and the Story of Leonidas Travellers driving south from Lamia towards Delphi today cross a broad, flat plain between mountains and the sea, cut through by a motorway, with the coast some way off to the east. It is hard to believe that this was once one of the narrowest and […]

Delos, Greece: Sacred Island, Trade Network and Archaeological City

Delos, Greece: Sacred Island, Trade Network and Archaeological City Half an hour by boat from the whitewashed lanes of Mykonos lies a low, dry, rocky island with almost no one living on it. Step ashore, and the ground is covered with ruins: temples, porticoes, markets, streets of houses with mosaic floors, a theatre, and a […]

Oracle of Delphi: Consultation Ritual and the Sacred Landscape of Apollo

Oracle of Delphi: Consultation Ritual and the Sacred Landscape of Apollo For more than a thousand years, people climbed a steep mountainside in central Greece to put their questions to a god. Kings asked whether to go to war, cities asked where to found colonies, and private individuals asked about marriages, debts and journeys. The […]

Mystras, Greece: Byzantine City on a Spartan Hillside

Mystras, Greece: Byzantine City on a Spartan Hillside About eight kilometres from modern Sparta, a steep spur of the Taygetos mountains is covered from foot to summit with the ruins of a medieval city: domed churches, monastery walls, houses, gates and, near the top, a great palace, all crowned by a castle. This is Mystras, […]

Palace of Nestor: Mycenaean Pylos and the Archaeology of a Bronze Age Kingdom

Palace of Nestor: Mycenaean Pylos and the Archaeology of a Bronze Age Kingdom On a low hill among olive groves in the south-west Peloponnese, under a long modern roof, lie the remains of a Bronze Age palace that has told archaeologists more about how a Mycenaean kingdom actually worked than any other site in Greece. […]

Mycenae Archaeological Site: Lion Gate, Tombs and Bronze Age Power

Mycenae Archaeological Site: Lion Gate, Tombs and Bronze Age Power Mycenae sits on a low, rocky hill in the north-eastern Peloponnese, tucked between two higher peaks and looking out over the plain of Argos towards the sea. From a distance the ruins are easy to miss. Up close, the Mycenae archaeological site is overwhelming: walls […]

Diros Caves: Water Caves and Prehistoric Landscapes of the Mani

Diros Caves: Water Caves and Prehistoric Landscapes of the Mani On the western shore of the Mani, where the bare grey mountains of the southern Peloponnese drop straight into the sea, a small boat slides from daylight into darkness. Inside, still water reflects ranks of stalactites, some hanging just above your head, others continuing far […]

Ancient Olympic Games: Olympia, Festival, Sport and Panhellenic Identity

Ancient Olympic Games: Olympia, Festival, Sport and Panhellenic Identity The ancient Olympic Games were not, first and foremost, a sporting event. They were a religious festival in honour of Zeus, held every four years in a sanctuary in the green valley of Olympia in the western Peloponnese, and the races and contests took place within […]

Parthenon History: Temple, Treasury, Church and Museum Piece

Parthenon History: Temple, Treasury, Church and Museum Piece Few buildings have lived as many lives as the Parthenon. Raised in the fifth century BC as a temple to Athena, it also served as the strongroom of an empire, then for well over a thousand years as a church, briefly as a mosque, and finally as […]

Corinth Canal: An Ancient Isthmus and a Modern Engineering Cut

Corinth Canal: An Ancient Isthmus and a Modern Engineering Cut West of Athens, on the road into the Peloponnese, the motorway crosses a gap in the earth so narrow and so deep that it looks less like a waterway than a crack. Far below the bridge, a ribbon of blue-green water runs straight between near-vertical […]

Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus: Sound, Sanctuary and Performance

Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus: Sound, Sanctuary and Performance Stand in the round orchestra of the ancient theatre of Epidaurus and look up, and the whole hillside seems to fold towards you: fifty-five rows of pale limestone seats climbing a wooded slope in the Argolid, with nothing behind them but pine trees and sky. It is […]

Acropolis of Athens: Sacred Rock, Civic Symbol and Archaeological Landscape

Acropolis of Athens: Sacred Rock, Civic Symbol and Archaeological Landscape Seen from almost anywhere in central Athens, the Acropolis of Athens looks like a single monument: a pale limestone outcrop crowned by the Parthenon. Walk up it, and it turns out to be something more complicated. The rock was a Bronze Age citadel before it […]

Vikings in North America: The Norse Discovery of the New World

Vikings in North America Although they often do not receive their due accolades, the Vikings were actually the first Europeans to cross the Atlantic Ocean and discover and explore North America – almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus. The Viking sagas have long told of their journeys westwards across from their Greenland colonies around 1000 CE […]

Tipasa, Algeria

Tipasa Lying on the present-day Algerian coast, 65 km (40 miles) west of Algiers, are the fascinating remains of the ancient city of Tipasa. Phoenician, Roman, early Christian, and Byzantine ruins all lay scattered alongside the golden beaches of the bay, spread out between a blue sea and rolling hills covered with pine trees. Once […]

Istanbul, Imperial City: The Definitive Guide

Istanbul, Imperial City | Small Group History Tours Turkey For more than a thousand years, Constantinople stood as the capital of the Byzantine Empire, surviving numerous attacks and internal rebellions, until the cannons of the Ottoman Empire breached its walls. Constantinople, the bastion of Christianity, was renamed Istanbul, “the city of Islam”. It became the starting […]

From Cairo to the NAC: Egypt Builds a New Capital City

From Cairo to the NAC: Egypt Builds a New Capital City On July 11, 2018 Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi laid the first stone of what was to become Egypt’s new capital. The city is so new it still does not have a name. Currently called the New Administrative Capital or NAC, the area covers […]

The Roman Ruins of Volubilis: Morocco’s Lost Imperial City

The Roman Ruins of Volubilis: Morocco’s Lost Imperial City Hidden in the fertile foothills of Morocco’s Zerhoun mountains lie the Roman ruins of Volubilis, one of the best-preserved ancient cities in Africa. Once a thriving frontier outpost of the Roman Empire, its excavated streets, mosaics, and triumphal arch reveal a fusion of Berber, Punic, Greek […]

Troy, Turkey: The Ancient City Behind Homer’s Iliad

Troy, Turkey: The Ancient City Behind Homer’s Iliad Troy is one of the most famous cities in the ancient world — not for its size or wealth, but because it was the stage for Homer’s Iliad, one of the foundational works of Western literature. The real archaeological site sits at Hisarlik in northwestern Turkey, and […]

Thebes, Egypt

Thebes, Egypt Rising from the banks of the Nile some 800 kilometres south of the Mediterranean, Thebes was for centuries the beating heart of ancient Egypt — a city so wealthy in its prime that Homer described its gates as overflowing with gold. Its temples and royal tombs, preserved today around modern Luxor, still rank […]

Medieval British Village Life: The Definitive Guide for Seniors

Life in the Medieval British Village In a previous article, we looked at the icons of the British village–the pub and the cottage–and looked at their history and evolution from Roman and Norman times. In this article we will look at daily life in the British village during the medieval period–or the period spanning the […]

From Anatolia to the Ottoman Empire: A History of Turkey

From Anatolia to the Ottoman Empire: A History of Turkey For six centuries, the Ottoman Empire ruled from the gates of Vienna to the deserts of Arabia, absorbing the older civilisations of Anatolia — the Hittites, Greeks, Persians, Romans, Byzantines and Seljuks — into one of history’s most enduring superpowers. Its palaces, mosques and battlefields […]