Painting of a European marketplace

Europe

Watercolour illustration of Split

General History

The history of Split: Croatia’s splendid Roman palace city

Eleanor of Aquitaine. (Illustration by Andy Tuohy)

Eleanor of AquitaineWhy did she revolt against her husband?

General History

The history of Paris: Romans, Renaissance and Revolution

Water colour image of Madrid, showing a building behind a water fountain

General History

The history of Madrid: from the Moors to modernity

Watercolour illustration of Lisbon, showing a street leading up towards a church

General History

The history of Lisbon: Portugal’s capital of exploration and commerce

Hitler and French Marshal Henri-Phillipe Petain

Second World War

Vichy France: your guide to the WW2 regime

A 1948 photograph of the House of Epidius Rufus in Pompeii. The structure had to be rebuilt after being damaged by Allied bombs during WWII (Photo by SuperStock/Alamy Stock Photo)

How were Pompeii and Herculaneum discovered?

An 18th-century artwork depicting the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius from across the Bay of Naples (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

PompeiiA timeline of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius

What can the streets of Pompeii reveal about daily life in ancient Rome?

Could the Nazis have built the world's first atomic bomb?

Second World War

The German Nuclear Weapons ProgramCould the Nazis have built the first atomic bomb?

A 19th-century depiction of the market of Pompeii

PompeiiWhat was life like before the eruption of Vesuvius?

A purported portrait of Elizabeth Báthory as a young woman

General Early Modern

Elizabeth Báthory: a 17th-century 'serial killer'

A 17th-century engraving of the Mount Vesuvius eruption of AD 79, by Athanasius Kircher (Photo by Shawshots/Alamy Stock Photo)

Your ultimate guide to Pompeii, plus 8 fascinating facts about the ancient Roman city

A relief on Trajan's Column shows Roman troops crossing the Danube during the war against the Dacians. Victory was the framework upon which Pax Romana was built (Photo by akg-images/Erich Lessing)

The Pax Romana: how the Romans maintained peace at the point of a sword

History's Greatest Cities Season 2

General History

History’s greatest cities: Warsaw

History's Greatest Cities Season 2

General History

History’s greatest cities: Split

Watercolour illustration of Athens

General History

The history of Athens: exploring the birthplace of democracy and philosophy

Is Eastern Europe disappearing?

A portrait of Chevalier d’Éon presenting as a woma

Chevalièr d’Éon: the tale of an 18th-century gender non-conforming spy

Fulvia gleefully posing with Cicero’s severed head, in an 1898 painting by Pavel Svedomsky. Whether or not she pierced his tongue with hairpins is the subject of debate (Photo by CBW / Alamy Stock Photo)

Fulvia: the maligned wife of politicians who made herself the power broker of ancient Rome

Men of the 23rd US Infantry in France, 1918. The Western Front w ould not have even come into existence had the Schlieffen Plan been executed successfully. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

What if…The Schlieffen plan had been successful?

Why is Napoleon such a figure of ridicule in cinema?

Ridley’s Scott’s Napoleon trailer: a historian reacts

What should we make of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon?

OppenheimerIs Nolan perpetuating a historical myth?

Historian Simon Schama, 2015 (Photo by David Levenson/Getty Images)

Simon Schama“Humans are a marvel of ingenuity, yet we seem to exist in this great pond of primitive terror and paranoia”

Napoleon Bonaparte depicted as emperor of France in c1804. By now he had his sights set on establishing a dynasty (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

How Napoleon (almost) destroyed the French Revolution

Queen Margaret of Anjou, seated besides King Henry VI of England, is presented a book in a contemporary illumination (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty)

Margaret of Anjou: the 'she-wolf' queen who wouldn’t go quietly

Illustration of the Children's Crusade of 1212, from the Story of the British Nation, Volume 1, by Walter Hutchinson, c1920 (Photo by The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images)

What was the Children’s Crusade, and did it actually happen?

Illustration of Spartacus, the escaped gladiator who became a leader in the Third Servile War, and his comrades using vines to abseil down the slopes of Mount Vesuvius in preparation of a surprise attack.

The Servile Wars: Spartacus & the rebellions that threatened the Roman Republic