Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Travel

Virtual Travel

Ten New Travel Books to Read When You’re Stuck at Home

Don’t let the coronavirus quarantine hold you back from becoming an armchair traveler

Women Who Shaped History

A Tour of Beauty Industry Pioneer Madam C.J. Walker’s Indianapolis

The hair-care magnate at the center of the new Netflix series ‘Self Made’ left her imprint on the city where she launched her career

Figurines on display at Poland's Cat Museum

Poland’s Only Cat Museum Puts Couple’s Private Collection of Trinkets on Display

The pint-sized institution, which opened last year, is filled with 1,000 feline-themed knickknacks that journeyed with their owners from Ukraine

A general view shows the step pyramid of Djoser in Egypt's Saqqara necropolis, south of the capital Cairo, on March 5.

Egypt’s Oldest Pyramid Reopens to Public After 14-Year Hiatus

Built nearly 4,700 years ago as a tomb for the pharaoh Djoser, the structure underwent more than a decade of on-and-off restorations

Mapping the Gay Guides’ main function is preserving and publicizing an overlooked, under-studied chapter in LGBTQ history.

This Interactive Map Visualizes the Queer Geography of 20th-Century America

Mapping the Gay Guides visualizes local queer spaces’ evolution between 1965 and 1980

Built at the turn of the seventh century, the white plaster-coated road begins in Cobá and ends 62 miles west, at Yaxuná's ancient downtown in the center of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Did a Seventh-Century Warrior Queen Build the Maya’s Longest Road?

Dubbed the “white road” in honor of its limestone paving, the 62-mile path is an engineering marvel on par with Maya pyramids

You can now a book a stay in Lucy the Elephant.

Spend a Night in This 65-Foot-Tall, Elephant-Shaped Airbnb

Keen travelers can pay $138 to spend a night inside Lucy the Elephant, a 138-year-old six-story structure on the Jersey Shore

Surfers ride the bore tide at Turnagain Arm.

How to Surf Alaska’s Bore Tide

Turnagain Arm offers surfers an experience they can’t get anywhere else in the country

Cousins Flaurience Sengstacke (left) and Roberta G. Thomas (right) regaled readers with tales of their travels in some 20 Chicago Defender columns published between July 1931 and August 1932.

Experience 1930s Europe Through the Words of Two African American Women

In the pages of the “Chicago Defender,” the cousins detailed their adventures traversing the continent while also observing signs of the changing tides

Cars gather outside the Montgomery County, Alabama, jail as police begin bringing in religious and political leaders indicted in the bus boycott.

How Automobiles Helped Power the Civil Rights Movement

Montgomery bus boycotters had a secret weapon: cars

Vegas Vicky, Las Vegas, Nevada

Virtual Travel

A Vibrant Tour of America’s Neon Signs

In his upcoming book ‘Neon Road Trip,’ photographer John Barnes captures a luminous part of advertising history

Mo‘omomi Preserve on the north coast of the Hawaiian island of Moloka‘i protects a dune ecosystem that boasts rare coastal species.

Hawai‘i’s Last Dunes Are Home to Species Found Nowhere Else on the Planet

A nature preserve on Moloka‘i reveals rare life forms—some ancient and others just newly established

Could New York be the Gotham we prize without the Guggenheim?

How New York Made Frank Lloyd Wright a Starchitect

The Wisconsin-born architect’s buildings helped turn the city he once called an ‘inglorious mantrap’ into the center of the world

Photographers gather at the eastern edge of El Capitan in February, eager to capture Yosemite's "firefall."

Nine Rare Natural Phenomena Worth Traveling For

You have to be in the right place at the right time to see these awe-inspiring events

The main building of the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island, Nebraska, was built by famed modernist architect Edward Durell Stone.

Seven Spots Where You Can See Big-Name Architecture in Small-Town America

From gas stations to public libraries, these celebrity architect-designed buildings are worth a road trip

The high-quality ice comes straight from a pond located just a stone’s throw away from Ice Art Park, just west of downtown Fairbanks, where the annual competition is held.

The Painstaking Art of Ice Carving

It might be cold and labor intensive, but that doesn’t stop artists from testing their ice sculpting skills at the World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks

Chagyrskaya Cave in Siberia's Altai Mountains, where researchers uncovered Neanderthal stone blades that resemble tools excavated in Europe

Neanderthals May Have Trekked 2,000 Miles to Siberia

A new tool analysis suggests European Neanderthals migrated east at least twice

Prince performs at Minneapolis’ First Avenue nightclub in August 1983.

Why Prince Would Not Sound Like Prince Without Minneapolis

A human geographer explains how the city’s unique sonic culture nurtured and inspired the musical genius

A Beethoven monument stands in Vienna's Beethovenplatz.

Following Beethoven’s Footsteps Through Vienna

For the composer’s 250th birthday, visit the apartments where he lived, the theaters where he worked and his final resting place

The Most Anticipated Museum Openings of 2020

Slated for this year are new institutions dedicated to ancient Egyptian, the Olympics, African American music and the Army

Page 29 of 132