Map of Europe with markers of different sizes and colours showing city populations around 1530, with the largest cluster of big cities in northern Italy.

NB! · Geography · Maps · Observations · Society

Map of European city populations around 1530 and the density of towns in Northern Italy

The population of European cities by the first third of the sixteenth century. Note the densely populated north of Italy: this is precisely the age of the High Renaissance.

Archaeology · Architecture · Geography · Rome

The Karnak obelisk on Rome's Lateran Hill, brought to the city in 357

There are now about thirty genuine ancient Egyptian obelisks standing in the world; Egypt has eight, as many as Rome. The tallest stands on the Lateran Hill before the Basilica of St John the Baptist. It is an obelisk from the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak, raised in the

Archive · The East · Geography · Heritage

The 390 obelisk of Theodosius the Great in Istanbul and the inscription on its pedestal

The Obelisk of Theodosius in Constantinople in 1855 and in 2024. The inscription on the pedestal, in several languages, tells the story of the obelisk raised under Theodosius the Great, Emperor of the Roman Empire, in 390: "This is a four-sided column that lay upon the ground, whose

Architecture · The East · Geography · Heritage

This column of green marble in the corner of the stone wall of the Şehzade Mosque in Istanbul is mentioned in the text of the famous seventeenth-century Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi. Çelebi writes that the architect Sinan set it up before building the

This column of green marble in the corner of the stone wall of the Şehzade Mosque in Istanbul is mentioned in the text of the famous seventeenth-century Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi. Çelebi writes that the architect Sinan set it up before building the mosque exactly in the centre of

NB! · Archaeology · Geography · Humour

Communication with space is unavailable, since the pyramids have shifted 4 km south of their original site since construction because of the movement of the earth's crust

Communication with space is unavailable, since the pyramids have shifted 4 km south of their original site since construction because of the movement of the earth's crust. And that is without taking into account the drift of the Earth's and the Sun's orbits

Archaeology · The East · Geography · Cinema · Books · People

André Malraux and Édouard Corniglion-Molinier flew in search of the Sabaean Kingdom in 1934

In 1934 the French writer André Malraux decided to fly around Arabia and Africa by aeroplane. Malraux is the author of the masterly novel about the eve of the Chinese revolution, "Man's Fate", from which Bertolucci made "The Last Emperor". Malraux did not fly

Archive · Geography · Society · Paris · Nature

The 1910 Paris flood and the end of wooden block paving on the city's streets

The Paris flood of January–February 1910 was the worst since 1658. The Seine itself did not burst its banks, but the rise of the water in it and in its tributaries flooded most of the city through the sewers, drainage pipes and underground tunnels, the Metro included. Hundreds of

Archaeology · Geography · Heritage

Fragment of a 16th-century ship found on an Orkney beach, Armada link unconfirmed

A large fragment of a sixteenth-century ship has been found on a beach on one of the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland. Traces of shipwrecks in the distant past have been found in these parts before, but never has so substantial and well-preserved a piece of

Map of Kiribati showing white land on a blue ocean with markers for London, Paris, Poland and Banana.

Geography · Humour

Map of Kiribati with settlements named London, Paris, Poland and Banana

London-Paris-Poland-Banana. everything you need to know about Kiribati

NB! · Geography · Maps · Rome

The Limits of the World Known to Rome by the Year 150

Architecture · Geography · Science · Nature

The German medieval town of Nördlingen is built in the crater of a meteorite that fell 15 million years ago and left a mark 25 km in diameter

The German medieval town of Nördlingen is built in the crater of a meteorite that fell 15 million years ago and left a mark 25 km in diameter. The walls of all the town's buildings are filled with micro-diamonds: the rock from which the local terrain is

View from space of the Volga Delta: branching river channels across a brown plain, a greenish sea above and clouds below.

NB! · Geography · Nature

The Volga Delta, the Largest in Europe, in a Photograph by Cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky

The largest river delta in Europe, the Volga Delta, seen from space. Photo by our cosmonaut Sergey Ryazansky