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Cultural Preservation

Scene from All is Lost, a 1923 film identified at the Library of Congress's Mostly Lost Film Festival

Cool Finds

The Library of Congress Needs Your Help to Identify These Silent Movies

For the fifth year, the “Mostly Lost” film festival calls on its audience to help identify obscure details in movie-making history

Some of Uber den Tellerrand's volunteers teaching a cooking class.

Cool Finds

Refugees Are Teaching Germans How to Cook Their Traditional Foods

Cooking classes are bridging the gaps between Germans and Middle Eastern refugees

One of the destroyed handprints.

Trending Today

Vandals Destroyed 8,000-Year-Old Aboriginal Artworks in Tasmania

The priceless rock art is damaged beyond repair

Trending Today

Five Landmarks Threatened by Climate Change

Will a warming planet destroy humankinds’ most precious cultural treasures?

This sad relic of ancient Rome is up for adoption.

Trending Today

Rome Is Looking for People to Adopt Famous, Falling-Apart Sites

When in Rome, pony up some cash for cultural preservation

Kurt Riley, governor of the Acoma Pueblo people, spoke on the ever-present specter of theft of cultural objects.

Native Americans Decry the Auctioning-Off of Their Heritage in Paris

Community leaders convene at the National Museum of the American Indian to push for change

Trending Today

China Will Start Publicly Shaming Tourists Who Graffiti Mount Everest

Leave nothing but footprints

The ruins of the ancient city of Palmyra after it was recaptured by the Syrian army in March.

Trending Today

Unesco: Don’t Worry, Palmyra Is Still Authentic

The ancient city may have been destroyed, but it is still a treasured cultural site

Swiss yodeling choir Jodlerclub Echo during a competition.

Switzerland

How to Yodel Like a Local

The Swiss tradition is much more than a simple yodel-ay-ee-oooo

The Slovak Radio Building, an inverted pyramid completed in 1983, has been called “one of the ugliest buildings in the world.” Recording studios at the center are surrounded by outward-facing offices. Its heavy weight and rough texture seem to capture the grim, waning years of Communist Party rule.

Is Bratislava’s Communist-Era Architecture Worth Preserving?

For residents of Slovakia’s capital, Cold War structures recall a painful past

An Illustrated Map of Chicago, Youthful City of the Big Shoulders, Restless, Ingenious, Wilful, Violent, Proud to be Alive! by Charles Turzak, Boston, 1931. A whimsical map of the city including parks, planes, and even Lake Michigan sea monsters

Cool Finds

Eight Awesome Maps From Stanford’s New David Rumsey Map Center

A collection of 150,000 historic maps merges paper and digital images in new ways

For the first time in hundreds of years, some seders might include rice and beans.

Trending Today

For the First Time in 800 Years, Rice and Beans Are Kosher for Passover

The Jewish Conservative movement relaxes a 13th-century ban on rice, corn and beans during Passover

Goulash began as a humble soup-stew, cooked over an open fire by Hungarian herdsmen. The addition of refined varieties of paprika from ground red chilies made the dish an international staple.

Smithsonian Journeys Travel Quarterly: The Danube

The Humble Beginnings of Goulash

The hearty soup-stew known around the world began as the everything-goes-in meal of Hungarian herdsmen

Cool Finds

An Italian Senator Wants Kids to Learn About Wine in School

A bill would add wine classes to elementary school curriculums

Rima Timbaryan collects dough for baking.

Armenia

Tastes of Memory: How to Bake an Authentic Armenian Lavash

Preserving Armenian culture, memory and identity in the kitchen

A self-portrait made by Johnny Rotten on the walls of the studio where the Sex Pistols recorded their first demos.

Cool Finds

Johnny Rotten’s Graffiti Made These Buildings Historic Landmarks

The Sex Pistols’ home and recording studio are now protected as a cultural heritage sites

A red pigment reference from the Forbes Pigment Collection helped prove that a supposed Jackson Pollock painting was a fake.

This Could Be the World’s Most Colorful Library

Harvard’s Forbes Pigment Collection preserves some of history’s most precious colors—and helps conserve the world’s greatest art

This 12,000-year-old city could soon be inundated thanks to a hydroelectric dam.

Trending Today

These Are Europe’s Eight Most Endangered Cultural Landmarks

Unless things change, these historic sites could disappear from the map forever

On a remote plateau, researchers reveal a royal capital whose splendors prefigure the glories of the Angkor complex.

The Lost City of Cambodia

Deep in the jungles of southeast Asia, archaeologists have rediscovered the remains of an invisible kingdom that may have been the template for Angkor Wat

Wacky Victorian women play behind a clothing screen, ca. 1900.

Cool Finds

Researchers Seek Silly Sherlocks to Dig up Victorian-Era Jokes

Joke detectives are using the British Library to uncover what made Victorians chuckle

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