Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Monument

Chicago-based publisher Haymarket Books will launch the reimagined London tube map next International Women’s Day, March 8, 2021.

A New London Tube Map Will Highlight Women and Nonbinary People

Co-organizers Emma Watson and Reni Eddo-Lodge drew inspiration from a 2016 project centered on the New York City subway

As protesters citing Louis IX’s history as a crusader call for the statue’s removal, counter-protesters ardently protect it.

History of Now

In St. Louis, History and Nostalgia Battle It Out

The city’s Catholic community faces off against protesters over a statue honoring the city’s namesake

Archaeologist Ben Edwards and his daughter Bella recreated the Bryn Celli Ddu landscape in the computer game "Minecraft."

Explore a 5,000-Year-Old Welsh Tomb Recreated in Minecraft

The virtual world now boasts a cube-based recreation of Bryn Celli Ddu in its heyday

As the South rewrote of the history of the war and reaffirmed a dormant white supremacist ideology, the North’s printmakers, publishers and image makers operated right beside them.

How Northern Publishers Cashed In on Fundraising for Confederate Monuments

In the years after the Civil War, printmakers in New York and elsewhere abetted the Lost Cause movement by selling images of false idols

Now behind fences erected by the police, the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Park has been criticized ever since its dedication.

What Frederick Douglass Had to Say About Monuments

In a newly discovered letter, the famed abolitionist wrote that ‘no one monument could be made to tell the whole truth’

A man passes by graffiti on the side of the slave quarters of Decatur House in Washington, D.C.

History of Now

What the Protesters Tagging Historic Sites Get Right About the Past

Places of memory up and down the East Coast also witnessed acts of resistance and oppression

The circle of submerged shafts likely acted as a boundary for a sacred area or precinct associated with the Durrington Walls henge.

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Discover Enormous Ring of Ancient Pits Near Stonehenge

The buried shafts may represent the largest prehistoric structure ever found in Great Britain

Summer solstice sunrise over Stonehenge

Virtual Travel

How to Livestream Stonehenge’s Summer Solstice Celebrations

Annual event at the Neolithic monument will be broadcast virtually in place of an in-person gathering

The planned memorial to victims of slavery will be located in the Tuileries Gardens in the center of Paris.

France Seeks Proposals for Memorial to Victims of Slavery

Currently, Paris is home to just one significant monument recognizing the country’s history of enslavement

A marble statue of Christopher Columbus was beheaded in Boston.

Christopher Columbus Statues Beheaded, Pulled Down Across America

Protesters in three U.S. cities targeted sculptures of the Italian explorer and colonizer

Governor Ralph Northam has ordered the removal of Richmond's statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Confederate Monuments Are Coming Down Across the Country

As protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd continue, statues commemorating controversial historical figures are being removed from U.S. cities

The Stenton House, circa 1865 to 1914

Philadelphia Will Memorialize Dinah, an Enslaved Woman Who Saved the City’s Historic Stenton House in 1777

Currently in the works, the new monument will honor her contributions and legacy with a contemplative space

Stonehenge, as recreated by Alexandra McNamara of Tappan, New York, with cheese, a rock, granola and bread

Education During Coronavirus

See ‘Cheesehenge’ and Other Historical Homages Created for Archaeology Competition

The Archaeological Institute of America launched its Build Your Own Monument challenge early to inspire families quarantining at home

A sketch from Eiffel’s workshop appears to show the statue with a bulkier shoulder than the final version has.

Recently Discovered Drawings for the Statue of Liberty Hint at a Last-Minute Change

Sketches from the workshop of French engineer Gustave Eiffel suggest a different plan for Lady Liberty’s upraised arm

A pickup truck collided with a moai statue and platform on Eastern Island.

After Truck Topples Easter Island Statue, Mayor Calls for Traffic Restrictions

The incident, which happened over the weekend, remains under investigation but may have involved faulty brakes

Dame Helen Gwynne-Vaughan, chief controller of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, is one of six women set to be recognized with "blue plaques."

London Will Install Six New Plaques Commemorating Women’s History

The move is part of an ongoing effort to correct gender imbalances in the city’s 150-year-old “blue plaque” initiative

A Dixie Highway marker on Georgia State Route 3

Parts of Florida Highway Honoring the Confederacy Will Be Renamed in Honor of Harriet Tubman

Miami-Dade County commissioners unanimously approved plans to rename local stretches of Dixie Highway

The iconic Plymouth Rock and other sites were covered in red graffiti Monday during a vandalism spree discovered at the site marking the landing of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts 400 years ago.

Plymouth Rock and Other Massachusetts Monuments Vandalized With Red Graffiti

Town manager Melissa G. Arrighi called the defacement “unfathomable and unconscionable”

A bronze statue of abolitionist Harriet Tubman is seen during a private viewing ahead of its unveiling at the Maryland State House, Monday, Feb. 10, 2020, in Annapolis.

Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass Honored With Statues in Maryland State House

Both historic figures were born into slavery in Maryland and went on to become key activists in the abolitionist movement

The moai at Easter island, built by the Rapa Nui people

New Research Rewrites the Demise of Easter Island

Yet another spate of evidence suggests the Rapa Nui people were going strong long after Europeans first arrived in 1722

Page 7 of 12