There is a point in an Arctic winter when ordinary ideas about daytime stop being useful. The sun may skim the horizon without properly rising, snow can turn blue in the long twilight, and a clear night can suddenly fill with green light. T...
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In 1929, while scholars were cataloguing manuscripts in Istanbul's Topkapı Palace, they encountered a fragment of an extraordinary world map. Painted in vivid colors on parchment traditional...
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In the old medina of Fez, behind carved doors and walls that have witnessed more than a millennium of Moroccan history, books have survived dynasties, wars, political upheavals and the arriv...
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Modern elections are designed to look ordinary. Voters enter a booth, mark a choice, deposit a ballot and wait for arithmetic to produce a winner. In medieval and early modern Europe, choosi...
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Look down at a computer keyboard and you are looking at a museum whose exhibits still work. Some keys preserve decisions made by nineteenth-century typewriter manufacturers. Others carry sym...
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There is a peculiar kind of certainty that appears around traditional food. A grandmother made a dish one way, a restaurant in its supposed birthplace serves it another, and suddenly one ver...
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Few subjects can turn an ordinary Italian lunch into a tribunal quite as quickly as a traditional recipe. Put cream in carbonara, use pancetta instead of guanciale, add garlic where somebody...
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Was wine invented in Georgia or by the Romans? The answer isn't as simple as one might think. While Georgia holds the title for the oldest wine, Rome may be the birthplace of modern wine cul...
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Conclave, the new Pope is elected: it is Robert Francis Prevost. His name will be Leone XIV Habemus Papam! These two Latin words echo across the Vatican every time a new leader of th...
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Rising from a sea of mist in central Italy is Civita di Bagnoregio, a medieval village perched on top of a crumbling volcanic cliff. Often called “The Dying Town,” Civita seems straight out...
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