Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

European History

The Two Towers in Bologna, Italy, on December 14, 2023

Donations Help Save Bologna’s 12th-Century Leaning Tower

Officials recently shut down the area around the increasingly delicate structure

The 31-inch-tall tree is billed as the "humblest Christmas tree in the world."

103-Year-Old Artificial Christmas Tree Sells for Over $4,000

The tree was originally purchased for 8-year-old Dorothy Grant in 1920

A crane lifts the new golden rooster to the top of Notre-Dame Cathedral's spire on December 16, 2023.

Notre-Dame Gets New Spire and Golden Rooster

The return of these two distinctive features marks a poignant milestone in the cathedral’s reconstruction

Italian opera singing is now among the hundreds of cultural practices officially recognized by UNESCO.

Italian Opera Singing Is Now Protected by the U.N.

UNESCO announced 55 new additions to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage

One side of the device was used to tell the date of Easter Sunday.

This Device Might Be England’s Oldest Dated Scientific Instrument

The 712-year-old artifact is a horary quadrant, a medieval tool used to tell time based on the position of the sun

Example predictions of smell-related objects from the object detection models developed by the Odeuropa project computer vision team. Image credits: J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Floris Claesz. van Dijck, Still Life with Cheeses, c. 1615', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8296 (accessed 23 October 2023 11:21:47).  

A New Encyclopedia Explores Europe’s Smelly History

Odeuropa is an online database of scents from 16th- to early 20th-century Europe culled from historical literature and art

An illustration of life in medieval Cambridge

New Research

‘Bone Biographies’ Reconstruct Lives of Medieval Cambridge Commoners

Researchers have used skeletal remains to compile information about the lives of ordinary residents of the city

The Banksy mural in Dover, England, showed a worker chipping away a star on the European Union flag.

Banksy’s Brexit Mural in Dover Has Been Demolished

Contractors are working to determine whether restoration of the piece’s remains is possible

Babyn Yar, outside Kyiv, where 33,771 Jews were killed over two days in September 1941. The small portraits show unidentified Ukrainians, likely Jews, before the war.

Ukraine Planned an Ambitious Memorial at the Site of a Holocaust Massacre. Then War Came to Kyiv

The Nazis and Soviets sought to erase the mass killing of 33,000 Jews at Babyn Yar, but a new effort seeks to remember the dead even as Russia attacks

Diana first spotted the blouse on a rack of clothes presented to her by the fashion team at Vogue magazine.

Princess Diana’s Engagement Portrait Blouse Is for Sale

Diana wore the garment for a portrait that officially announced her engagement in 1981

A stela found at Las Capellanías, a necropolis in southern Spain, is changing conceptions around ancient gender roles. 

Cool Finds

This 3,000-Year-Old Stone Slab Found in Spain Is Upending Ideas About Ancient Gender Roles

The newly discovered stela depicts a figure with a headdress, a necklace, swords and male genitalia

Vanessa Kirby, who plays Joséphine in Ridley Scott's Napoleon, says the empress “was just this massive contradiction.” ­

Based on a True Story

The Real History Behind Empress Joséphine in Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon’

A new Hollywood epic traces Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise and fall through his checkered relationship with his first wife

AmaWaterways' first Black heritage river cruise took place in August on the Rhône River in France.

These New River Cruises Celebrate Black History and Culture Around the World

On the heels of its first sold-out Black heritage cruise in August, AmaWaterways is unveiling new trips in France, Portugal, Egypt and beyond

A display of low-value coins from Greece helps illustrate how money became part of ordinary peoples' everyday lives during economic transformation in medieval Europe.

How Money Transformed Medieval Europe

A new exhibition explores the questions raised by economic revolution—and how familiar those questions remain today

“The World Made Wondrous: The Dutch Collector’s Cabinet and the Politics of Possession” takes a 17th-century Dutch cabinet as its starting point, tracing the threads of Dutch colonization through each object on view.

How Cabinets of Curiosities Laid the Foundation for Modern Museums

An exhibition at LACMA examines the legacy of Dutch colonization through a fictive 17th-century collector’s room of wonders

Princess Diana in 1985. The sixth season of "The Crown" opens 12 years later, in the summer of 1997.

Based on a True Story

How Princess Diana’s Death Transformed the Royal Family

The last season of “The Crown” will examine the aftermath of the beloved royal’s death in a car accident in 1997

Police initially arrested a 16-year-old boy in connection with the felling.

Hadrian’s Wall Damaged by Sycamore Gap Tree Felling, Inspection Confirms

Cut down by a chainsaw, the beloved tree fell atop the 1,900-year-old Roman wall in September

This 15th-century medical manuscript shows different colors of urine alongside the ailments they signify.

Modern Medicine Traces Its Scientific Roots to the Middle Ages

Contrary to popular belief, early medieval doctors relied on rational deduction to understand and treat disease

The letters remained unopened in storage for more than two centuries before Renaud Morieux read them.

Sealed French Love Letters Read for the First Time in 265 Years

Written during the Seven Years’ War, the letters offer rare insights into the lives of everyday people during wartime

Child refugees from Germany and Austria at the Amsterdam Burgerweeshuis orphanage. Truus Wijsmuller stands at far left, looking at the children she helped save.

The Unsung Hero Who Saved Thousands of Children During the Holocaust

Truus Wijsmuller spirited Jewish refugees to safety and stood up to the architect of Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution”

Page 30 of 81