HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-08-28T08:01:06.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue"
items: Michael Wood on amazing insights into medieval daily life
items: Emperors, popes and Renaissance glory: exploring Rome’s history
items: Explore Yangon, Myanmar: City of Golden Pagodas
items: Explore Fès, Morocco: Morocco’s spiritual capital
items: Explore Thessaloniki, Greece: Greece's cultural melting pot
items: Explore Rome, Italy: the 'eternal city'
items: Explore Cusco, Peru: Navel of the Incan world
items: Explore Arles, France: 'Little Rome' of Provence
items: New Orleans, United States: Louisiana's 'big easy'

Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue"
type: item
date: 2025-08-28T08:00:15.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Civil rights
subject: Global cities
subject: Historical people
description: Kavita Puri on explorations of the migrant experience
encoded: If you gaze up at the skyline in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, you might spot a new addition. Made from stainless-steel panels and shaped like a rollercoaster, the Tornado sits on top of the city’s newly opened Fenix, a museum that tells the story of human migration. Visitors climb to the distinctive Tornado up a sweeping staircase at the museum’s entrance, along a meandering route that represents the many different journeys people take to reach their destinations. On arriving at the viewing platform, you can take in a panoramic view of the city and its waterways where millions of Europeans once boarded ships in Europe’s largest port, many of them leaving for a new life in the US. Today, Rotterdam is home to more than 170 nationalities. It’s an interesting choice to open a museum to migration at a time when the subject has become so toxic, not least in the Netherlands. Designed by the Chinese firm MAD Architects, the museum displays have exhibits including thousands of suitcases, images of refugees, and a life-sized city bus. Perhaps reasoned discussions about migration can be inspired by art. Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history This is not the first European museum dedicated to migration: they exist in many countries, including Germany, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Poland and France. So it is surprising that the UK does not have a permanent migration museum, only one that has spent years in makeshift venues. After all, millions of people have left Britain over the centuries, not least during the building of its empire, while inward migration – particularly during the postwar years – has shaped our language, culture, cuisine and art. Until recently, you could visit the Migration Museum in its temporary home in Lewisham Shopping Centre, housed in a former H&M store between Foot Locker and TK Maxx. Outside the entrance stood a sculpture entitled Wall, comprising two panels from the Berlin Wall …

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Michael Wood on amazing insights into medieval daily life
type: item
date: 2025-05-10T08:00:06.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Global cities
subject: Medieval life
description: "Globalism is ironing out the fabulous texture and diversity of the old world", writes historian Michael Wood
encoded: Coming from industrial Manchester in the cold, rainy north of England, I have loved the Mediterranean all my life. The wondrous diversity of landscapes, cultures and histories, and the peoples around its shores – all are an inexhaustible delight. Recently, I’ve gone back to an old favourite book, A Mediterranean Society by Shelomo Dov Goitein. Published from 1967, it’s never included in those ‘great historians’ debates, but it is a masterpiece. A portrait of medieval merchant communities in the eastern Mediterranean, its canvas is huge, stretching across Europe to India, and from Morocco to Crimea. It centres on one of the world’s most amazing historical archives: the Cairo Geniza (‘storeroom’ in Hebrew) of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat, Old Cairo – a stone’s throw from the Nile. A windowless box of a room on the second floor, reachable only via a rickety wooden ladder, by the 19th century it was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes of documents. A photo from 1898 shows some of them: heaped, crumbling, wrapped in cloth, crammed in wooden tea chests. These were the business documents – and so much else – of medieval Jewish merchant communities, and are especially rich for the period 950–1250. There were 400,000 of them – the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts anywhere in the world. Read more | Michael Wood on the rise of a new world order The Geniza was one of hundreds that once existed in the hyper-literate society of the medieval Levant. They survived because Jewish tradition dictated that Hebrew script was sacred and should not be thrown away but stored or buried reverently in a cemetery. Removed from Egypt in 1897, this incredible treasure trove is now divided between many libraries, with the majority of the documents in Cambridge. After the Second World War, Goitein – already a great scholar in the languages of the Near East – decided to dedicate the rest of his life’s work to the archive. The result was his portrait of the Geniza in f…

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Emperors, popes and Renaissance glory: exploring Rome’s history
type: item
date: 2023-04-29T08:05:40.000Z
creator: Dr Shushma Malik
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Global cities
subject: History's greatest cities podcast series
description: Now capital of a united Italy, Rome has enjoyed eras of imperial might but also periods of conflict and chaos. Dr Shushma Malik guides us through the key events of the past 28 centuries.
encoded: Famously – or, at least, according to legend – Rome owes its existence to twin brothers Romulus and Remus, sons of the war god Mars, who had been abandoned and suckled by a she-wolf. Having established settlements on the Palatine and Aventine Hills, respectively, the two fought, and Remus was killed. By tradition, Rome was founded on that day, 21 April 753 BC, with Romulus becoming the first of seven kings. Remains of Iron Age settlement have been discovered on the Palatine Hill, and evidence of even earlier Bronze Age occupation in the region, so perhaps that story isn’t pure myth. The last of the seven mythical kings, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus – Tarquin the Proud – was a tyrannical ruler. His son, Sextus Tarquinius, was also a criminal; Sextus’ rape of another man’s wife, Lucretia, and her subsequent suicide was the highly disturbing episode that, according to the historian Livy (writing some five centuries later), prompted the expulsion of the king and the foundation of the Roman Republic in 509 BC. Read more | Sarah Peverley on why Italy’s ancient capital is her favourite place From kingdom to republic Rome would be governed by a senate headed by two consuls, ensuring that no one man had complete power. In that nascent republic, the centre of civic life, as well as religion, commerce and entertainment, was the Roman Forum, still a fascinating place to visit today. Initially a relatively small settlement with limited influence, over the following five centuries of the republic Rome grew as its territory expanded. Its power swelled throughout what’s now Italy, then across and around the Mediterranean with wars against the Macedonians and with Carthage in the third and second centuries BC. By the end of the Third Punic War in 146 BC, Roman territory covered parts of the Iberian Peninsula and what’s now Tunisia. The following century, as a result of conquests by generals including Julius Caesar, it grew to encompass much of mainland western Europe, swathes of coast…

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Explore Yangon, Myanmar: City of Golden Pagodas
type: item
date: 2019-09-01T13:19:21.000Z
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Global cities
description: David Eimer roams the colonial core and glittering Buddhist shrines of the former capital of Myanmar (Burma)
encoded: Yangon’s beating heart is the Shwedagon Pagoda, the holiest temple in all Myanmar (Burma), one of the most fervently Buddhist countries in the world. While new buildings zoom up in Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the Shwedagon’s golden zedi (stupa), some 100 metres high, remains visible from many of the city’s 33 neighbourhoods. The Shwedagon is one of the liveliest places in Yangon, busy from before dawn till late at night. People come to pray, to promenade around the base, or just to sit and talk in its shadow. Legend has it that the Shwedagon is over 2,500 years old, and houses hairs of the Buddha brought to Myanmar from India; more likely it was established initially as a Hindu shrine by Indian traders who began arriving in what was then a fishing village from the fifth or sixth century AD. Nothing is certain in Yangon’s early history. Despite being Myanmar’s capital until 2006 – when administrative functions were moved to the newly built Naypyidaw – and despite still being the country’s largest city, the earliest known written accounts of the settlement date from the 15th century. At that time it was known as Dagon and was little more than a collection of wooden monasteries and homes surrounding the Shwedagon, which had long since shaken off its probable Hindu origins and was already a famed Buddhist pilgrimage site. Another settlement of houses sat a couple of miles south of the Shwedagon in what is now downtown, alongside the river that connected Dagon to the Ayeyarwady delta and the Andaman Sea beyond it. It was this tiny town that the then Burmese king Alaungpaya renamed Yangon (‘End of Strife’) in 1755 to celebrate his victory over a rival kingdom. Almost a century later, in 1852, Rear Admiral Charles Austen (brother of novelist Jane Austen) used the Shwedagon to guide a fleet of invading ships up the Yangon river. The British changed the settlement’s name to Rangoon and, by 1886, the country’s abundant natural resources were in British hands. As Indian and Chi…

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Explore Fès, Morocco: Morocco’s spiritual capital
type: item
date: 2019-05-01T09:35:20.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Global cities
subject: Islam
description: The soul of the Maghreb lingers in the medieval walled city of the former imperial capital. Paul Bloomfield roams the labyrinthine byways of Fès
encoded: It’s a story that’s all too familiar: Muslims, suffering the brutal aftermath of rebellion, flee around and across the Mediterranean to seek a new life. Such is the tale of Fès’s early years, and here these refugees provided the bedrock of Islamic learning, architecture, commerce and community. To see how these factions slotted together, climb to a viewpoint north of the medina (walled city) at dusk, as the muezzins’ calls drift from hundreds of mosques. From among the Merenid tombs scattered like broken teeth across the hillside, gaze into the valley to Fès el-Bali, the oldest part of the city. The village of Medinat Fès was founded here by Moulay Idriss, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and founder of the Arab state of Morocco, shortly after his arrival in c787, having fled the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad. But it was his son, succeeding as Sultan Idriss II in c807, who developed Fès as his capital and the country’s spiritual heart. Read more: 6 lesser-known facts about the Ottoman Empire And in the heart of his city Idriss II lies today, under the pyramidal roof of his zaouïa (tomb shrine institution). It’s closed to non-Muslims, but wander past its heavy wooden doors and you may glimpse the tiled courtyard and shrine. Idriss II forged the character of the city through two acts of Islamic hospitality. First, around 817, he welcomed hundreds of Andalucian families escaping repressive Umayyad rule in Córdoba; they settled on the east bank of the Oued (river) Fès, forming al-Andalous (the Andalucian quarter). Then, seven years later, he allotted land on the west bank to refugees fleeing persecution in Kairouan (now in Tunisia) – the al-Qarawiyyin district. Wealthy and pious, in 857 the latter group built the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and, two years later, its university – reputedly the world’s oldest continuously operating place of higher education. Both are off-limits to non-Muslims, as are most medersas (Islamic colleges) scattered around the medina; an exception i…

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Explore Thessaloniki, Greece: Greece's cultural melting pot
type: item
date: 2019-03-01T12:23:56.000Z
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Global cities
description: Thessaloniki boasts a thrillingly cosmopolitan heritage, with Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman legacies, a long-term population of Sephardic Jews – and, of course, generations of Greek influence. Alev Scott roams the sights of Greece’s second city
encoded: For many centuries after Athens’ ancient heyday, and before it rose again as the capital of a newly independent Greece in 1833, Thessaloniki was the most important city not only in Greece but in the entire Balkan region. Founded in 315 BC, and named for a half-sister of Alexander the Great, Thessaloniki become one of the first truly cosmopolitan cities in the world, attracting waves of refugees over the centuries: Sephardic Jews in the 15th century, Orthodox Christians from Anatolia in the early 20th century, and refugees fleeing wars in the Middle East today. As the capital of the Greek region of Macedonia, the city lies at the heart of political tensions surrounding Greece’s longstanding dispute with its neighbour, the soon-to-be-renamed Republic of North Macedonia, a few miles to the north. In 1917, the old city of Thessaloniki was consumed by a devastating fire that left a quarter of the population homeless, destroyed mosques and synagogues, and condemned the city to an uninspiring 20th-century architectural transformation. The relics that have survived that disaster, however, speak of a spectacularly diverse past. The 8th-century Byzantine Hagia Sophia (‘Holy Wisdom’) church is once again in full working order – less palatial than the original in Istanbul, but painstakingly restored with dazzling gold-painted icons. Close by are signs of the earlier Roman occupation (168 BC–476 AD) in the shape of a ragged but clearly defined forum and the imposing fourth-century Rotunda of Galerius. Read more: 6 things you (probably) didn’t know about the ancient Greeks During the long Ottoman occupation (1430–1912), the city blossomed under a system of government that encouraged diversity. Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 came here at the invitation of Sultan Bayezid II, and became the majority demographic until 1912, when the city fell to Greek forces. The city became known as “the Jerusalem of the Balkans”, dominated by Jewish trade, commerce and real estate and with Ladino…

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Explore Rome, Italy: the 'eternal city'
type: item
date: 2019-01-01T10:42:58.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Roman
subject: Period
subject: Global cities
description: Some 27 centuries after it was founded, Rome continues to captivate and confuse. Ferdinand Addis roams the ancient ruins and modern memories of the Italian capital
encoded: Rome was around 700 years old when people first began calling it the ‘eternal city’. That was during the reign of the emperor Augustus, more than 2,000 years ago, and it has weathered the storms of Europe’s history ever since: sacks by Visigoths and Vandals; raids by Saracens and Normans; the competing ambitions of popes and kings. The result is a city still haunted by its turbulent past. From cheerful cafés by the Campo de’ Fiori you can step down into cellars that once belonged to the Theatre of Pompey, the monumental complex in which Julius Caesar was murdered. Near Trajan’s Forum, with its famous spiral column, a fortified tower looms – a reminder of the medieval clans who turned the city into a battleground. The layers of past epochs are piled on top of one another. The flank of the Palatine Hill is a tangle of ancient brickwork, vaulting that supported the palaces of vanished emperors. Excavations down to the level of the bedrock here have uncovered traces of primitive huts from the 8th century BC – by tradition, the era when Romulus founded the city. Read more: A brief guide to ancient Rome and the Romans, plus 9 fascinating facts Rome has always been a religious city. The Basilica of San Clemente, on the lower slopes of the Caelian Hill, is famous not just for its spectacular 12th-century mosaics but also for the history it conceals: under the basilica’s marble floor lie the remains of an older medieval church, which itself was built on top of an ancient shrine to Mithras. But piety has gone hand in hand with vice. Not far from San Clemente soar the arches of the Colosseum, a monument to darker human appetites. Saint Augustine tells the story of a Christian friend who tried to close his eyes against the horrors of the amphitheatre. But when the crowd went wild seeing a gladiator fall, he dared to peep at the action. Immediately, says Augustine, he was gripped, “delighted with the wicked contest and drunk with blood-lust. He was now no longer the same man who…

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Explore Cusco, Peru: Navel of the Incan world
type: item
date: 2018-10-01T14:38:05.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Global cities
description: This spectacular city high in the Peruvian Andes boasts a fascinating fusion of pre-Columbian and Spanish colonial heritage. Paul Bloomfield explores Cusco, epicentre of the Incan empire
encoded: Stand in Cusco’s central square and the city’s contradictory nature quickly becomes clear. In the Plaza de Armas, graced by huge Spanish churches and colonial arcades, you’ll encounter colourfully clad indigenous women leading baby alpacas around a bronze statue of the empire-building Inca Pachacutec (reigned 1438–c1471). This square was – in a larger form – the heart of the Incan capital founded, according to legend, by Manco Cápac in the 12th century at the qosq'o (navel) of the world. You’ll see overlapping layers of the city’s history in the Catedral dominating the plaza’s north-eastern side. Like other colonial structures, it was built (from 1559) on the site of an earlier Incan monument – Kiswarkancha, palace of the Inca Viracocha – using cut stones pilfered from the fortress of Sacsayhuamán to the north of the city. Behind its Baroque exterior hang paintings by indigenous artists of the Cusco School, blending European styles with local elements – spot the roast cuy (guinea pig) in Marcos Zapata’s Last Supper. To see the most striking colonial larceny, stroll south-east from Plaza de Armas along Loreto and onto Pampa de Castillo, lined with simple restaurants serving typical local fare – this is the place to try cuy, chicharones (crispy fried pork chunks), trucha (trout) or lomo saltado (stir-fried beef loin). Beyond stands the church and convent of Santo Domingo, built on Qorikancha, a major Incan complex. Its Temple of the Sun was reputedly the wealthiest in Tawantinsuyu, the vast Incan empire that once stretched from Colombia to Chile. Beyond a Baroque facade, excavated remains give a sense of the complex’s scale; according to the early 17th-century chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, the temple walls were clad with 700 solid gold sheets. The Spanish reputedly took three months to melt down all the gold they stripped from Inca sites here. The Museo Histórico Regional offers insights into the natural and cultural history of the surrounding area, but also an int…

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Explore Arles, France: 'Little Rome' of Provence
type: item
date: 2018-09-01T13:34:14.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Roman
subject: Period
subject: Global cities
description: Throughout the past 26 centuries, Arles has been a key trading post, a major Roman regional hub, and muse to 19th-century artists. Bijan Omrani explores the Provençal city at the mouth of the Rhône
encoded: Set at the apex of the Rhône delta in Provence, Arles has long been a crucial gateway between the Mediterranean and the heartlands of western Europe. By the 6th century BC it was a busy Phoenician trading port, and over the centuries it drew Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Franks and Saracens. To explore its early history, visit the Musée Départemental Arles Antique. Among its treasures are a magnificent 31-metre-long Roman barge raised from the bed of the Rhône, and statues and inscriptions of eastern cults – Cybele, Mithras, Isis – imported from the farthest reaches of Roman territory. Signs of 500 years of Roman rule, beginning in the first century BC, are everywhere. Most impressive is the amphitheatre; like Rome’s Colosseum, it was built around AD 70, but is better preserved. After the empire collapsed, Arles suffered frequent raids; the amphitheatre became a fortified mini-town, with four defensive towers built into its walls, probably in the eighth century. You can see marks on its stonework made by the beams of hundreds of dwellings built inside, removed in the early 19th century. In Roman times, the amphitheatre staged gladiator fights and animal combat; bullfights have been held here since its 19th-century restoration. The Roman Theatre nearby is more refined, though much less well preserved: after the Roman period it was used as a stone quarry and its stage became a nunnery’s garden. Two giant columns of exotic stone still stand, reminders of its original grandeur and the arrival of Roman high culture in this provincial city. The forum was the heart of Roman Arles. Today, only fragments of its structures still stand, built into the walls of the Place du Forum. However, you can grasp its original scale at the Cryptoporticus, a c90-metre-long, three-sided subterranean stone arcade on which the forum’s portico was built – a breathtaking testament to Roman engineering. Arles became an important administrative centre later in the Roman period when the frontiers wer…

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New Orleans, United States: Louisiana's 'big easy'
type: item
date: 2018-07-01T13:58:42.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Global cities
description: New Orleans, which this year marks its 300th anniversary, offers a heady brew of Creole culture, jazz music and a diverse ethnic heritage. Adam Karlin roams Louisiana's biggest city
encoded: New Orleans is often dubbed the most European city in the United States. Yet, despite its Francophonic name, this is arguably the most Caribbean city in the country, with the deepest connection to the African diaspora. It sits on a low bend of the Mississippi river once inhabited by the mound-building Mississippian culture. French fur trappers and traders had explored the area before Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville founded the city of Nouvelle-Orléans in 1718, just upstream from the point where North America’s longest waterway hits the Gulf of Mexico. The city became capital of French Louisiana, and was subject to the Code Noir decrees covering race, religion and slavery. White slave-owners who fathered children with slaves were required to free both mother and child. As a result, Louisiana developed a large population of gens de couleur libres (‘free people of colour’) who had a disproportionate influence on the city’s culture; many of them settled in the Treme neighbourhood near the French Quarter. Slaves were not required to work on Sundays, when they would gather in ‘Congo Square’ – now part of Louis Armstrong Park – to trade, socialise and sing. Hence the black community of New Orleans – enslaved and free – retained a deep connection to African music and folkways forcefully repressed in other parts of North America. Read more: Hitler’s jazz band: how the Nazis used swing as propaganda In 1763, New Orleans was ceded to the Spanish empire, and the blending of Spanish and French populations led to the creation of a specific Franco-Iberian Creole demographic. In 1788 and 1794, fires destroyed many of the city’s wooden buildings, which were replaced with much of the iconic architecture of the French Quarter. Examples include the Cabildo, the Spanish city hall built from 1795, and Pitot House, a 1799 plantation mansion. Carnival and the famous Mardi Gras parades were first celebrated in the 18th century; find out more at the Presbytère, part of Louisiana State Mu…

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