To dare everything the peril must compel; You dont have to fear anything when you have everything to fear. (1) The chiseled words of the poet Cornelius can only suit Heraclius (575-641), the Byzantine emperor who had the audacity to attack fate. If Constantinople will inevitably end up falling, a
Life of Orientalism (1) Lawrence Alma-Tadema, (2) Jean-Francois Portaels Orientalism is an exclusively European phenomenon, a representation of the Orient in modern European art. This artistic movement involves the use of subjects and motifs that have drawn inspiration from literature, archite
All men have a secret attraction for ruins. This feeling is due to the fragility of our nature, to a secret conformity between these destroyed monuments and the speed of our existence. Chateaubriand Ancient ruins, sometimes reflected in the calm waters, or almost hidden by thickets of creep
In the middle of the 19th century, the rise of the railway led to the development of a revolution in travel across Europe.In this great upheaval of an industrious and innovative century, an idea was to germinate and make its way into the mind of the Belgian engineer Georges Nagelmackers (1845-1905):
Earth coal Although it seems unlikely to us, air pollution problems in human societies began almost a thousand years ago. As early as the 9th century, coal (as opposed to charcoal), found on the northeast coast of England, was burned as fuel. Soon the air reeked of filthy fumes, making breathing i
A legend says that Marsilio Ficino (1433 – 1499), the son of Cosimo de Medicis doctor, died more than a century old thanks to a miraculous knowledge of which he held the secret... But this is probably not the case since the Florentine died at the age of seventy after having brought to the Italian h
“Fog everywhere. Fog upstream of the river, where it flows between green islets and meadows, fog downstream of the river where it unfolds among the alongside ships and the pollution of the shores of a noble (and dirty) city. The tirade stretched over several paragraphs to describe, in the novel The
When Chateaubriand began his journey from Paris to Jerusalem – journey made in July 1806 – , he did not yet glimpse all the difficulties that would accumulate during this trip. The road infrastructures were fragmented or non-existent, the omnipresent danger, but the desire to discover the world was
The breath of July had cooled the glaciers of Spitsbergen, and torn from the bay of La Madeleine, like shreds of continent, the ice accumulated by nine months of winter. Like floating islands whose shores would have had mountains of crystal, these ices covered the sea in the distance, dazzling in t
We know that fairy tales are the only truth in life said Antoine de Saint-Exupéry candidly. The Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen (1857–1914) can testify to this, he did it all his life. We are talking here about the grand master of legendary creatures called trolls. But far from the distorted defi
Terror of the year 1000, story of a fabrication. “It was a universal belief in the Middle Ages that the world was to end with the year one thousand of the incarnation […] This end of such a sad world was all together the hope and the dread of the Middle Ages. » Jules Michelet (1798-1874), Histo
Beyond the horizon was a country which, according to Marco Polo, was called Cipango and contained countless precious stones and especially gold. It will be necessary to wait until 1543 for the Europeans to land on the Japanese archipelago. A completely unknown land. In general, they know justice a
It is the story of a tribune who was forgotten for five centuries. Nothing foreshadowed Nicolas, son of Lorenzo, to become the one who for a very short time united Rome under his seven-starred aegis (1). The man of the people is however not a simple agitator in love with the temporary intoxication o
Suppose Sparta were devastated and only the temples with the foundations remained:after a long time its power would raise, I believe, in relation to its renown, serious doubts among future generations. (1) The warning of the Athenian historian Thucydides is clear:between the legend told, even alter
[Part I] White Revolution Far from a unique support symbolized by the popular layers, Cola di Rienzo was going to take the necessary political support with the “popolo grasso et minuto” (cf. merchants and artists) to put a stop to the barons from the great families in power. The idea, or rather we
To what degree can the torments of a war be represented to the general public? The difficulty is to highlight heroism and sacrifice in the face of the relentless observation of the battlefield. The question of military representation and victims will arise in force during the First World War, when m
“The lay people in Iceland who owned the manuscripts sat on them like dragons on gold. » This is the bitter observation presented by the Reverend Magnús Ólafsson in the seventeenth century in a correspondence with the Danish scholar Ole Worm. But what is this treasure that has reached us with so mu
On July 24, 1911, Yale University history professor Hiram Bingham III climbed to the top of a mountain ridge in Peru and encountered one of the most amazing sets of ruins:Machu Picchu. His book, Cradle of Gold:The Story of Hiram Bingham, has been an inspiration to many artists and authors. Howeve
The north 3,000 years ago:people live in simple dwellings and grow food. The Hitzacker Archaeological Center recreates the Bronze Age with three long houses and a morgue. How did people live in Northern Germany in the Bronze Age around 3,000 years ago? The Archaeological Center in Hitzacker on the
Up to 4,000 people fought on the oldest known battlefield in Europe 3,300 years ago. The battle in the Tollense valley near Neubrandenburg is still a mystery. Crushed skulls, bones pierced by arrowheads, remains of weapons:these and other finds bear witness to the oldest known battle in Europe. Hun
Today we mourn the loss, four years ago, of teacher Peter Connolly , British historian and illustrator, whose works have illuminated classical antiquity for generations of readers. For many, the last charge of the Spartans at Thermopylae, the clash of triremes at Salamis or Alexanders phalanx at Hyd
The Guelph terms and gibellines come from the Italian terms guelfi and ghibellini , with which the two factions were called that since the 12th century supported the House of Bavaria (the Welfen, and hence the word Guelph in the Holy Roman Empire, respectively. listen)) and to the house of the Hoh
Pedomazoma was the heaviest blood toll a nation was called upon to pay during foreign occupation. This is because his goal was not only to weaken the defeated but to strengthen the winner. Paedomazoma only sick brains like the Turks could have conceived as nothing similar, to this extent, has ev
The Jugurthine War is a war between the Kingdom of Numidia and the Roman Republic in North Africa. Speaking of Numidia, it is also known as the kingdom of the horse race, and it was a force that divided the victory and defeat of the Second Punic War. Hannibal, who crossed the Alps with the Num