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History's most notorious crime scenes: from Lizzie Borden's lair to HH Holmes's 'murder castle'
What is it about places marked by murder and violence that continue to pique our interest, long after the crimes have been committed? Caitlin Blackwell Baines uncovers the history behind some of the world's most morbid locations – from a crumbling Slovakian castle to Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel
1. Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, United Kingdom Founded in AD 597, Canterbury Cathedral is Britain’s oldest and most important religious complex: the ‘mother church’ of the Anglican faith and seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. With its soaring 250-foot central tower and 13,000 square feet of stained-glass windows, the cathedral draws more than a million visitors each year – some who come to worship, others simply to marvel at its serene majesty. Such a setting would seem an unlikely place for a murder, but, ironically, that murder has been a big part of the pull for the past 850 or so years. The victim was Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, on the night of 29 December 1170, was hacked to death in the cathedral’s northwest transept. Once a royal favourite – Henry II’s chancellor and closest confidant – Becket ran afoul of the monarch soon after being ordained in 1162. By refusing to uphold the king’s authority over that of the church in the following years, the archbishop effectively sealed his fate. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/1-GettyImages-2188130261-ad7bb3e-e1773932992660.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A medieval illuminated manuscript shows three armored knights striking a kneeling, haloed cleric at an altar. The cleric prays as blood streams from his head. A chalice and open book sit on the altar, and the background is filled with ornate red and gold patterns" title="A medieval manuscript illumination depicts Thomas Becket’s gruesome demise. The archbishop was brutally killed in Canterbury Cathedral, turning a place of worship into a crime scene" /> “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Henry is reported to have ranted to his courtiers. Interpreting this as a kind of kingly hit order, four of his knights stole away under the cover of night, travelling in secret from Normandy to Canterbury, where they accosted Becket as he entered the cathedral. At first, the knights attempted to arrest the cleric, but when he refused to accompany them, a violent scuffle broke out. As Becket desperately clung to a column, the knights slashed at him with their swords, eventually striking a fatal blow to the top of his head, spraying blood and gore across the cathedral floor. The gruesome crime shocked the whole of Christendom, quickly transforming victim into martyr, and crime scene into pilgrimage site. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/2-GettyImages-999672134-08df4e0-e1773934721665.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A ruined stone castle stands on a rocky hilltop above a dense green forest, lit by warm sunrise or sunset light. Rolling hills fade into the distance under a soft pastel sky" title="A panoramic shot of Čachtice Castle, western Slovakia. Now a crumbling ruin, the castle was supposedly the site of dozens of murders perpetrated by Countess Elizabeth Báthory (Image by Getty Images)" /> 2. Čachtice Castle, Slovakia You’ve probably heard of Castle Dracula, the seat of the titular character in Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel. But have you heard of Čachtice Castle? It is the setting for a real-life horror story far more frightening than anything dreamed up in Gothic fiction. Now a crumbling ruin, teetering on a rocky outcrop in the Trenchin region of western Slovakia, the castle was once home to Countess Elizabeth Báthory – purportedly the most prolific female serial killer in history. Čachtice Castle began its existence as a 13th-century fortress built to defend the western border of the Kingdom of Hungary. Over the centuries, it was expanded and transformed into a stately home. Passing through several hands, it eventually came into the possession of nobleman Francis Nádasdy II, who, in 1575, gifted it to his 14-year-old bride, Elizabeth Báthory, as a wedding present. By all accounts, the marriage of Francis and Elizabeth was a happy one. Home life at Čachtice Castle, on the other hand, was not exactly the picture of domestic bliss. With Francis frequently away on military campaigns against the Ottoman Turks, Elizabeth was left behind to manage the family’s household and vast estates, and in her husband’s absence, the countess seems to have taken up an unusual hobby: the torture and murder of her servants. Her many victims – a revolving door of peasant girls recruited from nearby villages – were variously cut, burnt, bitten, beaten, starved and even frozen to death. Posthumous rumours that Báthory bathed in the blood of her prey to preserve her youth have never been proven, but the available evidence suggests that her actions went far beyond that of a harsh mistress. Read more | Elizabeth Báthory: a 17th-century 'serial killer' She was a sadistic killer whose position of power and relative isolation at Čachtice Castle allowed her to operate unchecked for over two decades. During this time, she is estimated to have killed as many as 600 young women and girls. Had the cruel countess stuck to her original victim pool of poor servants, she may have escaped capture. Indeed, it was only when several young noblewomen invited to the castle to attend a gynaeceum (finishing school) went missing that the authorities finally took notice. In December 1610, Čachtice Castle was raided on the orders of King Matthias II. Báthory was seized during a post-Christmas feast – and not, as it was later claimed, in the middle of a murder. Owing to her high station, however, she managed to avoid trial (and inevitable execution) and was instead placed on house arrest in her castle. She died there four years later. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/3-GettyImages-167652325-3e2d3aa-e1773934794798.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Historic three‑storey corner building with wrought‑iron balconies and arched windows in a busy street scene" title="The present-day LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans. The original building burned down in 1834, revealing evidence of Delphine LaLaurie’s horrific torture of enslaved people (Image by Getty Images)" /> 3. LaLaurie Mansion, New Orleans, United States Sadistic slave-owning socialite Delphine LaLaurie might just be New Orleans’ answer to Countess Báthory. If ever you travel to the city, you will inevitably hear of the notorious madame and her house of horrors. It is a stately three-storey French empire-style townhouse located on Royal Street in the heart of the historic French Quarter, the city’s main tourist district. On 10 April 1834, the mansion caught fire, attracting a large crowd of curious onlookers. At the time, the LaLaurie Mansion was renowned for its lavish interiors and decadent soirees – as well as for something more sinister. Rumour had it that the mistress of the manor treated her slaves exceptionally cruelly – which spoke volumes, given that most slave-owners thought nothing of whipping their workers at the time. These rumours would soon prove to be true. When concerned members of the community entered the house to help extinguish the flames, they made a horrific discovery. According to reports, behind the padlocked door of the attic, they found “seven slaves more or less horribly mutilated… suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to another”. So shocking was the scene that the once-respected society hostess was run out of town by an angry mob. Nearly 200 years later, the legend of Madame LaLaurie lives on as one of the darkest chapters in the city’s pre-Civil War history. Though privately owned and publicly inaccessible, the present-day LaLaurie Mansion (rebuilt three years after the fire) still manages to draw hordes of tourists, who come to gawk at its paradoxically elegant exterior. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/4-GettyImages-117081718-8c2be8c-e1773938765180.jpg" width="1500" height="1002" alt="Black‑and‑white photo of a worn brick building with an arched passageway and a sign reading ‘Millers Court." title="The exterior of 13 Miller’s Court, Whitechapel, c1900. In 1888, the body of Mary Jane Kelly – the last of Jack the Ripper’s ‘canonical five’ victims – was discovered inside (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. 13 Miller's Court, London, United Kingdom No list of historical true crime would be complete without an entry on Jack the Ripper, the pseudonymous serial killer responsible for the brutal slayings of at least five women in London's Whitechapel district between August and November 1888. Easily the most infamous unsolved murders in global history, there’s no shortage of Ripper-related content out there: books, films, TV shows, websites – and even historical walking tours offering the opportunity to follow in the mysterious murderer’s footsteps. Of course, there’s not much for the modern Ripper tourist to see. The gritty East End streets that comprised the killer’s hunting grounds were long ago transformed as part of a series of early 20th-century improvement projects designed to eradicate the scourge that was the Whitechapel slums. But before this modern uplift, at least a few intrepid explorers were able to visit the crime scenes and view them much as the killer would have done. Read more | He's the Victorian serial killer you've never heard of – and we may now know who he was On 20 December 1890, The Birmingham Mail published the account of one journalist’s journey through Jack the Ripper’s East London. The highlight of his adventures in so-called ‘Murderland’ was a trip to 13 Miller’s Court – the site of the last (and most ghastly) of the canonical Ripper murders. It was inside this squalid one room tenement that, just two years earlier, Mary Jane Kelly – a sex worker in her mid-20s – was found mutilated beyond all recognition. According to the journalist, “for a long time after the murder [the room] was vacant. Nobody would take it, owing to the rumour that it was haunted by Jack’s victim”. But, by the time of the journalist’s visit, it was occupied by “an old crone” and her “bedridden husband” who, for the “drop of half-a-crown” would show visitors the “ghastly relics of the crimes”. These included “a huge crimson stain” on the floor, “the fading imprints of a bloody hand on the wall”, and some pencil scratched graffiti purportedly left behind by the killer. Such “ghastly relics” were ultimately destroyed when, in 1928, the property was demolished to make way for the rebuilding of Spitalfields Market. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/5-GettyImages-145262286-5b9ade9-e1773938831936.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white sketch depicting a tall, three-storey building with several windows. Telegraph poles and lines stand outside the building, and the street out front has lots of people walking around" title="HH Holmes’ infamous ‘Murder Castle’ in Chicago. The three-storey structure, long since demolished, was rumoured to contain a network of secret passageways (Image by Getty Images)" /> 5. 'Murder Castle', Chicago, United States At around the same time that Jack the Ripper was roving the streets of Victorian London, another pseudonymous serial killer was wreaking havoc across the pond in Chicago. Operating under the alias ‘HH Holmes’, Herman Webster Mudgett was a conman posing as a pharmacist, who, between the years of 1891 and 1894, lured as many as 200 men and women to their deaths. But where the Ripper seemingly killed for the sheer thrill of it, Holmes had ulterior motives – namely money. Most of his victims were the unwitting targets of insurance schemes and romance scams. And unlike his British counterpart, who committed all but one of his crimes outdoors, the nefarious ‘Dr Holmes’ preferred the privacy of his own home: 601–603 West 63rd Street, a sprawling three-storey structure, aptly dubbed the ‘Murder Castle’ by the Windy City press. Having been gutted by fire shortly after his arrest in the autumn of 1894, Holmes’s ‘Murder Castle’ is a bit of an enigma. According to contemporary reports, it possessed a labyrinthine layout, replete with secret passageways, soundproof rooms and a network of chutes and trapdoors purportedly designed for the fast disposal of dead bodies. But was it purpose-built for murder? The oft-repeated story that Holmes hired new building crews each week to ensure that no single person knew the property’s layout is likely apocryphal. Instead, he was probably attempting to cheat his contractors out of fair pay. Holmes’s astonishingly high body count may too have been exaggerated – he confessed to 27 murders, of which only nine have been confirmed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/6-BordenHouse92SecondStFallRiverMassachusetts1892-24f9fc3-e1773938890143.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Black‑and‑white photo of a two‑storey wooden house with a gabled roof and a leafless tree in front" title="230 Second Street, Fall River – where 32-year-old Lizzie Borden allegedly murdered her father and stepmother – is one of America’s most notorious addresses" /> 6. The Lizzie Borden House, Fall River, Massachusetts, United States 230 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts. At first glance, this modest clapboard cottage hardly stands out in a city where the streets are lined with Victorian buildings – many of them far grander than this home. But this is actually Fall River’s most famous landmark: the Lizzie Borden House. Almost all Americans know of the alleged crimes of the accused axe-murderer Lizzie Borden. Outside of America, however, Lizzie is perhaps less well-known. And yet, most will be familiar with this little ditty: Lizzie Borden took an axe Gave her mother forty whacks. She gave her father forty-one. Andrew Borden now is dead, Lizzie hit him on the head. Up in heaven he will sing, On the gallows she will swing. But if all you know of Lizzie is the morbid nursery rhyme, you don’t know much. On the morning of 4 August 1892, Lizzie Borden, the 32-year-old daughter of Andrew Borden, a wealthy yet miserly property developer, allegedly killed her stepmother, Abby, using a hatchet. Lizzie struck 18 (not 40) blows to Abby’s head in an upstairs bedroom. When her father returned home from work for a mid-morning nap on the parlour sofa, Lizzie killed him with a more conservative 11 whacks as he slept. Read more | These are four of the most brutal Victorian murders. Were women really the perpetrators? The second verse gets it wrong too. Lizzie was acquitted of the murder charges in 1893, thus escaping the gallows. She then lived out the rest of her days in a larger, more luxurious home purchased with her father’s fortune – worth about $9.5 million (£7.5 million) in today’s money. And if we are to believe the reports of thrill-seeking tourists, Andrew is hardly singing up in heaven. He’s moaning right here on earth, forever stuck in his former home, now known as the Lizzie Borden House, a murder-themed bed and breakfast since 1996. Ghost-hunting guests claim to have encountered Andrew, Abby, their family maid Bridget – and even Lizzie herself – in the house. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/7-GettyImages-51096199-6211f5a-e1773938947804.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Black‑and‑white photo of a patterned wallpapered wall with dark stains and a closed double door." title="The basement room at the Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg, where the Romanovs met their end. The wall has been torn apart by investigators looking for bullets and other evidence of the crimes committed there (Image by Getty Images)" /> 7. The Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg, Russia The fall of the House of Romanov, the imperial family that ruled Russia from 1613 to 1917, irrevocably shaped the history of their country – and indeed, the world. As anyone with even the faintest recollection of their secondary school history lessons will recall, the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and subsequent execution of his entire family laid the foundations for the first socialist state in history. What most of us will be less familiar with is the house that hosted that fall: the Ipatiev House, a fairly unassuming former merchant’s home in the city of Yekaterinburg. Built in the 1880s for mining industrialist Ivan Redikortsev, the two-storey neoclassical manor would have been perfectly in keeping for a man of Redikortsev’s station, just as it was for subsequent owners: gold-dealer IG Sharaviev and military engineer Nikolai Nikolayevich Ipatiev. But for a family who had once resided in some of the most resplendent residences in Russia – including the 2.5-million-square-foot Winter Palace in St Petersburg – it was something of a downgrade. In the spring of 1918, Tsar Nicholas, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, their five children and household staff were moved into the house, where they would spend 78 days confined to just four upper-storey rooms. Under the watchful eye of Bolshevik guards, the prisoners were occasionally permitted time outdoors – though the house’s modest grounds with their oppressively high fences would have paled in comparison to the Tsarina’s private garden at the Winter Palace. Finally, on 17 July, the family was ordered to the Ipatiev’s basement where they were executed by firing squad. Meanwhile, the house itself wouldn’t fall until 1977 when it was demolished under the orders of the Soviet government. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Church on the Blood was erected on its site, with a cross marking the exact location of the Romanov murders. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/8-JohnSowdenHouseLosAngeles-e1773939013743.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A geometric, reddish‑brown building partially hidden behind dense tropical plants, including palms and large-leafed greenery" title="Despite its impressive architecture, Sowden House is best known for being the former home of George Hodel – the prime suspect in the infamous ‘Black Dahlia’ murder" /> 8. Sowden House, Los Angeles, United States Like many old Hollywood mansions, Sowden House is steeped in a long and colourful history. Constructed in 1926 for its namesake, artist John Sowden, for nearly a century the property has played host to lavish parties, film crews and fashion shoots. It’s featured in Oscar-winning films like LA Confidential and The Aviator, and reality TV programmes like America’s Next Top Model. But did it also bear witness to one of the most notorious unsolved murders in American history? On the night of 14 January 1947, did the enigmatic ‘Black Dahlia’ take her final breath in the bowels of this 5,600-square-foot fortress of luxury? Maybe… Located in Los Feliz, a hillside community east of Hollywood, Sowden House is one of countless mansions in this upscale district. Yet, even in a sea of swanky properties, it sticks out – partly owing to its unusual appearance. Composed of giant concrete blocks configurated and carved in designs meant to mimic an ancient Maya step pyramid, the house is perhaps the most iconic example of the Mayan Revival Movement of the early 20th century. It is widely regarded as the pinnacle of achievement for architect Lloyd Wright (not to be confused with his more famous father, Frank Lloyd Wright). Surprisingly, however, none of these things are what Sowden is best known for. Its main claim to fame is for being the former home of one Dr George Hodel, a prominent LA physician and prime suspect in the 1947 slaying of Elizabeth Short – a 22-year-old budding starlet (christened the ‘Black Dahlia’ in the press on account of her raven hair), whose mutilated and dismembered body was found in a vacant lot, six and a half miles south of Sowden House. Aside from his surgical skill and supposed sadomasochistic interests, there’s actually very little to connect Hodel to the crime. Still, legions of armchair detectives are convinced of his guilt. His own son, Steve Hoddel – a 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department – is adamant that the Dahlia’s dismemberment took place in the basement of his childhood home. Caitlin Blackwell Baines is an art historian and author who specialises in Georgian art and architecture. She is the author of How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession (Profile Books, 2025)
I've just been inside a Nazi monster's mansion – and what I found there was deeply haunting
Earlier this year, Keith Lowe was granted access to the home of one of the Nazi regime’s most notorious war criminals. Here, he reveals what he discovered within the chateau’s crumbling walls – and the challenges of separating a building from its disturbing past
It’s the summer of 2025 and I find myself standing at the entrance of an old, abandoned mansion just outside Prague. It looks like a stereotypical haunted house. On either side of the wrought-iron gates is a Gothic statue of a wild boar, glowering towards the road as if to deter all visitors. Beyond lies an overgrown garden and an austere-looking building with crumbling walls and dark windows. Just looking at this place sends a shiver down my spine – not because of the Scooby Doo atmosphere, but because I know its history. It was once the home of a Jewish industrialist, who used to hold lavish parties here for the cream of Czech society. But at the beginning of the Second World War it was requisitioned by the Nazis, who made it the official residence of one of their most notorious war criminals: Reinhard Heydrich. It has taken months to gain access. I first came here in September 2024 with a small group of historians from the US National World War II Museum in New Orleans. We had been tasked with scouting out sites related to Heydrich, but the Czech tourist office told us that this particular place would be impossible to visit because it was private property. Undeterred, my colleagues did a little detective work and managed to locate the owner, and after months of negotiation he finally agreed to give us exclusive access. And so here we are again – only this time the chateau’s gates are open, and we are allowed to go in. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/HeydrichGettyImages-107425114-31d8c6f-e1764247394375.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a man in full military uniform. He has right hand on his hip" title="Reinhard Heydrich pictured in 1942. The top-ranking Nazi was one of the chief architects of the ‘Final Solution’ (Image by Getty Images)" /> Portrait of a killer The historical significance of this site cannot be overstated. Its owner, Reinhard Heydrich, was one of the most important men in the Nazi hierarchy. He was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst, the much-feared intelligence service of the Nazi party. Between 1934 and 1936 he was also head of the Gestapo. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was promoted to head up the Reich Security Main Office, the umbrella organisation that oversaw all police and security operations throughout Hitler’s empire. As such, he was one of the most feared men in the whole of Europe. Tall, blond and athletic, Heydrich was the very picture of the Nazi ideal. He was also utterly ruthless: Hitler himself described him as “the man with the iron heart”. In the first three years of the war, he organised mass killings calmly, efficiently and without compunction. For example, after the invasion of Poland in 1939 he planned the arrest and murder of more than 60,000 intellectuals and community leaders, for no other reason than that they might one day pose a threat to Nazi rule. Later, under the cover of Hitler’s ‘Night and Fog’ decree, he masterminded the ‘disappearance’ of thousands of suspected Resistance members in occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Families were deliberately kept in the dark about the fate of their loved ones. The purpose was to spread uncertainty and terror amongst the general population. Read more | Did Hitler have a secret Jewish grandfather? Our DNA research has solved the mystery But it was Heydrich’s actions against the Jews that made him most notorious. In 1938 he helped to organise Kristallnacht. The following year he supervised the creation of the Einsatzgruppen, who followed in the wake of the German Army in eastern Europe, murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews by firing squad as they went. It was Heydrich who organised the Wannsee Conference. WATCH | Laurence Rees gives an expert overview of the Holocaust View Green Video on the source website From atrocity to assassination Heydrich spent the last nine months of his life in Prague. By this time, he had been made the de facto ruler of Bohemia and Moravia, and was living a life of luxury at the expense of the Czech people. His offices were in Prague Castle and the nearby Czernin Palace, but his official residence was in the village of Panenské Břežany, just a few miles outside the city. In those days his chateau was far more glamorous than it is today: it had 50 rooms, including offices, servants’ quarters and at least a dozen bedrooms. The double staircase leading to the upper floor had red marble walls, and all the hallways were paved with elaborate mosaic tiles. At the top of the stairs was a sumptuous ballroom with views over the extensive grounds. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/11Ballroom-20250512144741-Ballroom-03-69e4d34-e1764243055312.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A large room with several windows on the right hand side, with billowing white curtains. On the floor are two large blue carpets and there is a long wooden table with maroon chairs" title="The former ballroom at Panenské Břežany, photographed by the author. The chateau once boasted 50 rooms, including offices, servants’ quarters and at least a dozen bedrooms (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> As soon as he arrived in Bohemia, Heydrich began treating the Czechs in the same way that he had already treated the Poles and the French. One of the first things he did was to declare martial law, and within just a few months he had already executed more than 400 suspected dissidents. His sentiments were quite clear: in comments to his aides, he announced his intention to “Germanise the Czech vermin”. Heydrich worked closely with his secretary of state, a Sudeten German called Karl Hermann Frank, who lived in the same village as Heydrich. The two men were well suited to one another. Frank, like Heydrich, was a vicious antisemite and seemingly addicted to brutality. During the day, this pair would plan repressive police actions against the Czech population, but in the evening they both would return to Panenské Břežany, to one or other of their luxurious mansions, where they would socialise with other senior Nazis and SS officers. All of this came to a dramatic end on the morning of 27 May 1942. That day, Heydrich set out from his chateau on his daily commute into Prague around 10am, just as he always did. He rode in an open top car, driven by an SS driver named Johannes Klein. He had no escort – he was arrogant enough to believe that he did not need one – and he followed the same route that he always took on the way to Prague Castle. It was this complacency that led to his downfall. Over the previous months, British and Czech intelligence had been observing Heydrich’s movements and had formulated an assassination plan, codenamed Operation Anthropoid. Having worked out his daily routine, they knew exactly where and when to ambush him. This particular morning, as his car slowed down at a bend in the road on the outskirts of Prague, a pair of Czech Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents were waiting for him. One of them, a man named Josef Gabčik, tried to fire a Sten gun at him, but it jammed. His partner, Jan Kubiš, then threw a specially prepared grenade at Heydrich’s car. Read more | The rise of the Nazis and the importance of heeding warnings Rather than speed away from the ambush, Heydrich ordered his driver to stop, drew his pistol and stood up in the car to confront his attackers. It was thanks to his arrogance that shrapnel from the exploding grenade tore into his body, mortally wounding him. He died several days later, in hospital, of sepsis. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/8-AssasinationGettyImages-104419725-be43add-e1764243103902.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white image of an open top car with a flat back tyre and extensive damage to the side facing the camera" title="Heydrich’s heavily damaged Mercedes-Benz following the grenade attack of 27 May 1942. Although Heydrich survived the initial blast, he succumbed to his injuries eight days later (Image by Getty Images)" /> Grim reprisals Heydrich’s assassination took the whole of the Nazi hierarchy by surprise, but when they finally gathered themselves, their reaction was typically brutal. Hitler called for the murder of 10,000 Czechs in reprisal and was only dissuaded from this by the need to keep Czech workers producing for the German war effort. Meanwhile, Heydrich’s subordinate, Karl Hermann Frank, was determined to track down and punish anyone even remotely linked to the assassination. He arrested and tortured hundreds of civilians in an attempt to find someone who could reveal where the assassins were hiding. On 10 June, he went a step further. Frank’s security forces surrounded the village of Lidice and executed all 173 men and boys they found there. More than 300 women and children were then rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where around half of them also died. As a final act of viciousness, the village itself was burned down and levelled, as if it had never existed at all. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/LidiceFFRH60-afccb73-e1764247521981.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white image of a burning village, with large clouds of smoke covering it" title="Smoke rises from the village of Lidice during its destruction by Nazi forces, June 1942. Hundreds of residents were murdered as ‘punishment’ for Heydrich’s assassination (Image by Alamy)" /> Lidice was chosen because several known Czech army officers happened to come from here, and it was assumed that they must have had something to do with the assassination – but in actual fact, the people of Lidice were entirely innocent in this respect. Two weeks later, a second village, Ležáky, suffered a similar fate. There was no attempt to hide these crimes. In fact, the Nazis openly publicised every stage of the massacres. This was designed to be a message to all potential resisters about the fate that awaited them and their communities if they ever attempted to defy the Nazis in future. Unfortunately, Frank’s brutality paid off. Appalled by the massacre, one of the special forces team voluntarily gave himself up to the Gestapo. In return for one million Reichsmarks and the promise of a new identity, he revealed the whereabouts of some of the other operatives in the Czech resistance network. After more arrests, and more torture, Heydrich’s assassins were finally tracked down, hiding in the crypt of Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral in Prague. The church was surrounded and a massive firefight ensured, but eventually, to avoid capture, the surviving Czech resistance fighters took their own lives. Abandoned to time After Heydrich’s assassination, his widow, Lina, continued to live in the chateau at Panenské Břežany. For the next three years she ran the house and its estate like a mini concentration camp. She was given a workforce of 150 or so slave labourers from the Theresienstadt ghetto and from Flossenbürg concentration camp. It turned out that this woman had many of the same psychopathic tendencies as her husband: those of her prisoners who survived the war later testified that she had personally subjected them to physical abuse. At the end of the war, Lina and her family finally fled the chateau to escape the advancing Red Army. They returned to Germany where she lived out her years on a generous army pension. Despite being found guilty of complicity in war crimes by a Czech court, she was never extradited. Meanwhile, her glamorous home and its lands were taken over by the Czech state. Over the next 50 years, a series of workshops were built in its grounds, and it became a kind of minor industrial estate. The chateau itself was used by the Metal Research Institute, before eventually being abandoned. As I walk around the building today, all these different layers of history are on display. Some of the rooms have ornate plasterwork ceilings that betray the house’s lavish past, while others are lined with functional tiles and electric cables left over from its time as a technical institute. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/13-Ruins-20250512141953-61f32b5-e1764243186292.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="The chateau has fallen into a severe state of disrepair, with few of its lavish interiors still intact (Image by Keith Lowe)" title="The chateau has fallen into a severe state of disrepair, with few of its lavish interiors still intact (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> Some of the original features are still there. In the huge, vaulted entrance hall there is an ornate stone fireplace where Heydrich’s guests would have warmed themselves before proceeding up the staircase to the ballroom on the first floor. The marble walls and mosaic floors are intact, but the artworks and 19th-century furniture are gone. The walls are deeply cracked, with peeling paint, and exposed pipes and beams where some of the ceilings have collapsed. Everything is in a state of disrepair. An uncertain future It is difficult to know what is to be done with this place today. The current owner wants to restore the building but is struggling to find the time or the money to do it justice. When we met him, he expressed a desire to preserve the place as an important cultural site and a place of Czech memory. But he is also a businessman, and needs to find a way to make it pay for itself. Read more | "We need to understand the Nazis as human beings": Richard J Evans on the motivations of Hitler's followers One idea is to make the house into a museum. This is what happened to Karl Hermann Frank’s villa nearby, which was originally part of the same estate. That building now houses a permanent exhibition devoted to the history of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and the atrocities that were committed by Frank after Heydrich’s assassination. The owner is keen to do something similar with this place, but is not sure if a small village like Panenské Břežany can sustain a second museum devoted to a very similar subject. Alternatively, he could make it into some kind of exhibition space, or even a hotel. This would bring other concerns: it is not clear what kind of guests would want to take weekend breaks in the former home of a Nazi mass-killer. The last thing he wants to do is to create a pilgrimage site for Holocaust deniers. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2-Main-Entrance20240918122145-Main-entrance-9512b18-e1764243226544.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Plans to turn the site into a museum or hotel are complicated by fears that it could become a tourist destination for Nazi sympathisers (Image by Keith Lowe)" title="Plans to turn the site into a museum or hotel are complicated by fears that it could become a tourist destination for Nazi sympathisers (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> Until he has made up his mind, the building is likely to remain in a state of serious disrepair. As I walk around its dilapidated rooms and echoing corridors, I can’t help feeling that perhaps this is no bad thing. We are so used to having our thoughts and emotions curated for us that it is actually quite refreshing to visit a memorial site where you are free to imagine the past for yourself. I also wonder if there is something quite apt about how derelict this building has become. When they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, the Nazis made this place the centre of their power and authority over the Czech people; the fact that it is now a virtual ruin feels satisfyingly appropriate. I can think of no better epitaph for the evil man who lived here and the hollow ideology that created him. Keith Lowe is an author and former military history publisher who has spent more than 20 years writing about the Second World War and its aftermath. His most recent book is Naples 1944: War, Liberation and Chaos (William Collins, 2024)
Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise
Edward J Watts, author of The Romans: A 2,000-Year History, shares 25 things you need to know about one of the greatest civilisations of the ancient world – from their incredible feats of engineering to their sporting spectacles
1. The Romans lived in an independent state for more than 2,200 years According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BC, shortly after the beginning of the Italian Iron Age. Its inhabitants were Latin-speaking pagans who lived along the river Tiber in what is now central Italy. The empire of Trebizond, the last independent Roman kingdom descended from that state, was captured in 1461 by an Ottoman army equipped with gunpowder weapons. The people living in Trebizond also called themselves ‘Roman’, but they were Christians who lived in a city on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey and spoke a language they called Romeika (which translates as 'Roman', but which we now call Greek). 2. The Roman empire once included all, or part of, nearly 50 countries At the empire’s greatest extent in AD 117, Roman territory stretched from what is now the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Persian Gulf beaches in Kuwait, from southern Egypt near the current Sudanese border to northern England, and from just south of Casablanca in Morocco to the Caspian Sea shores of Azerbaijan. The land area of the Roman empire was smaller than Australia, but if one included the territorial waters controlled by Rome (as is customary with modern states) the empire would rank as the fifth-largest country on earth if it existed today. 3. As much as one-third of the world’s population lived under Roman control Late during the reign of the emperor Trajan (ruled AD 98–117), it is thought that the Roman empire reached a population of 80 million, out of a total world population of around 230 million. In modern terms, Rome’s share of the world population at that moment would be nearly equivalent to a country with the combined populations of India and China. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2GettyImages-1369193411-fa1bfb0-e1764241964618.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A yellow, blue and red map showing the Roman empire" title="The Roman empire reached its maximum territorial extent in the early second century AD, during the reign of the emperor Trajan. The empire would rank as the fifth-largest country in the world if it existed today (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. Rome was the first city in the world with a million residents Rome reached a population of 1 million during the first century BC, and aside from temporary population decreases caused by plagues or natural disasters, did not fall below that level until the end of the fourth century AD. This is even more remarkable considering that poor sanitation and crowded conditions meant that the city lost as much as 3 per cent of its population each year to disease – a number far greater than the birthrate. Rome’s massive population was sustained through large-scale migration from other parts of the empire, nearly every year, for five centuries. 5. Hadrian’s Wall was NOT the longest Roman wall – and nor was it the most northern Almost everyone has heard of Hadrian’s Wall, the defensive structure that once stretched 73 miles across what is now northern England. However, an even longer fortification built under Hadrian and his successor, Antoninus Pius, extended nearly 190 miles across southern Germany. It began roughly where the Rhine turns west at Mainz, and extended to meet the Danube near Regensburg. Antoninus Pius also ordered the construction of the empire’s northernmost wall – the eponymous Antonine Wall – which stretched 39 miles across what is now Scotland, from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Forth. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/3GettyImages-639158628-7d65967-e1764242013260.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A modern illustration depicting Hadrian’s Wall as it may have appeared during the second century AD. The 73-mile-long fortification stretched from what is now Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria to Wallsend in Tyne and Wear (Image by Getty Images)" title="A modern illustration depicting Hadrian’s Wall as it may have appeared during the second century AD. The 73-mile-long fortification stretched from what is now Bowness-on-Solway in Cumbria to Wallsend in Tyne and Wear (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. The Romans produced more than 25 million coins each year Following a reform instituted by joint emperors Diocletian and Maximian in AD 294, the Romans established a network of 15 mints across the empire – all the way from Londinium (London) to the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Although production slowed around 100 years later, no state in the world would again match Rome’s numismatic productivity until the 19th century. Read more | How the Romans "reversed circumcision" and 5 other shocking medical realities from the ancient empire 7. Rome’s ‘eighth hill’ is a load of old rubbish… literally The Testaccio region of Rome is now famous for its nightlife, but it takes its name from Monte Testaccio, an artificial hill that is 35 metres tall and created from the remains of ceramic shipping containers offloaded from barges along the Tiber. Most of the pottery has been dated to the period between AD 140 and 250, though the base of the hill may be much older. Despite its unusual provenance, Monte Testaccio is sometimes described as Rome’s ‘eighth hill’, in addition to the seven other hills within the city walls: the Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal and Viminal hills. WATCH | Dr David Musgrove finds out what the Romans really got up to on the loo View Green Video on the source website 8. The Pantheon is the oldest intact, continually used building in the world Originally created in the style of a conventional Roman temple in the first century BC, the Pantheon was rebuilt under the direction of the emperor Hadrian in the AD 120s. The ground level was originally much lower than it is today, and when one approached the structure from the front, it appeared to be a normal temple because the structure’s 43-metre-wide dome was obscured by its triangular pediment (gable). Nearly two millennia later, the Pantheon’s dome remains the largest of its kind in the world – its survival no doubt linked to the decision to convert the building into a Christian church in AD 609. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/4GettyImages-1211436528-b8e4a0d-e1764242052537.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An aerial photograph of the Pantheon in Rome. It has a large dome roof with a hole in the top and is surrounded by several other red roofed buildings" title="Despite being nearly 2,000 years old, the Pantheon boasts the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world (Image by Getty Images)" /> 9. There was once a giant city plan, carved on marble blocks, that showed every street and building in Rome Between AD 203 and 211, the emperor Septimius Severus ordered the creation of a 234-metre-square map of the city of Rome that included accurate renderings of the ground-floor architectural plans for every building in the city. Carved on marble blocks, the map was hung on a wall of the Temple of Peace, which now forms the northern exterior of the Basilica of St Cosmas and Damian. As of 2025, more than a thousand fragments of the Severan Marble Plan have been discovered since the Renaissance, representing around 10 per cent of the original map. Because many of these include the name of the building they represent, it has been extremely useful for archaeologists looking to identify newly discovered architectural remains. Today, the fragments are on display in the new Museo della Forma Urbis on Rome’s Caelian Hill. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/5GettyImages-1925908763-d918fdc-e1764242087895.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of large white stone fragments with inscriptions on them" title="More than a thousand fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae (‘The Shape of the City of Rome’) have been discovered, giving researchers a remarkable window into early third-century AD Rome (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. Rome is still surrounded by its ancient walls The Aurelian Walls that surround the city of Rome were built in the AD 270s, but they continued to be used by the city’s defenders until the late 19th century. The breaching of the walls by the army of the Kingdom of Italy in September of 1870 represented the final step in Italian unification. 11. You can find an ancient wall in McDonald’s The Servian Walls of the fourth century BC may be less famous than the Aurelian Walls, but they have much more character. Stretching around 12 miles, multiple fragments of the walls still speckle the modern city of Rome. The largest fragment can be found next to Termini Station, but the most memorable remains are now found in the McDonald’s restaurant on the train station’s lower level. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/6Termini-McDonalds5-c5a8b6d-e1764242135272.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of a McDonald's ordering screen and behind it there is a large, old brick wall" title="Burger, fries… and a fourth-century BC wall? Visitors to the Roma Termini station branch of McDonald’s can marvel at a feat of ancient engineering while they get their fast food fix (Image by Edward J Watts)" /> 12. Rome’s walls were formidable… but Constantinople’s were MUCH more difficult to breach Rome has been captured numerous times since the Aurelian Walls were built, but the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) – which became the Roman empire’s eastern capital in AD 330 – has fallen to invaders on just three occasions. The city remained under Roman control for nearly 900 years until its walls were breached by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, before being recaptured by the Romans in 1261. It then fell to the Ottomans in 1453, but has not been seized since. 13. The Roman empire was home to one of the most fought-over cities in the world Although only 134 miles from Constantinople, Adrianople (modern Edirne, Turkey) has been the site of at least 15 different battles and sieges. The last two occurred in 1913 when Bulgaria captured the city from the Ottoman empire before losing it again later that year. 14. The Colosseum was the largest (but not the only) amphitheatre Rome’s Flavian Amphitheatre, or Colosseum, was once capable of seating 50,000 people, making it almost 30 per cent larger than the empire’s next-largest arena in Capua. But the Colosseum was unique because of its remarkable size, not because amphitheatres were rare. In fact, the remains of more than 230 amphitheatres have been found in former Roman cities, stretching all the way from Britain to Israel. One such example in Cahors, France, was discovered during the construction of a car park that is now aptly named the Parking Amphithéâtre. Another, found in suburban Paris, now serves as the courtyard for a high school. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1451938726-d5b4185-e1764246957408.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A computer generated image of the Colosseum, a large circular building with several arches" title="A computer-generated image depicting the Colosseum during its ancient heyday. The amphitheatre is now a World Heritage Site and a symbol of both modern Italy and ancient Rome (Image by Getty Images)" /> 15. Arenas weren’t just for gladiator fights Thanks in part to the 2000 movie Gladiator and its recent sequel, Roman amphitheatres are now commonly associated with clashes between sandal-wearing warriors. However, gladiator battles weren’t the only events to take place in these ancient arenas. In fact, spectators were as interested in events that displayed exotic wild animals like rhinos, lions and ‘camel-leopards’ (giraffes). The largest games on record – the 100 days of spectacles marking the opening of the Colosseum in AD 81 – saw upwards of 9,000 animals killed. Read more | Sharks in the arena? Gladiator II's real history and historical accuracy explained 16. Commodus was a much better fighter than Hollywood would have us believe In comparison to Maximus (Russell Crowe), Gladiator’s main antagonist, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), is depicted as an unremarkable fighter – but this is a distortion of the truth. Following a failed assassination plot orchestrated by his sister Lucilla, the real-life Commodus sent for instructors from around the world to teach him how to shoot arrows, throw javelins, and excel in hand-to-hand combat. As his skills increased, Commodus wanted to show his subjects what he could do. In one memorable display in the Colosseum, the senator Cassius Dio witnessed the emperor “dispatching, with his own hands, five hippos and two elephants in two days. He also killed rhinos and a camel-leopard”. Another time, Commodus arranged for “a hundred lions to appear in one group” and then “killed the entire hundred with exactly one hundred javelins” so that “no one saw a single extra javelin.” While Dio did not approve of these displays, even Commodus’s worst critics could not deny his talent. WATCH | Historian Alison Futrell discusses the real history behind Gladiator II View Green Video on the source website 17. Chariot racing was HUGELY popular The Circus Maximus in Rome, the main site for chariot races, adjoined the imperial palace and had seating for at least 150,000 people. On competition days, 800 horses could race in as many as 24 different contests. The last races held in the Circus Maximus took place in AD 549, but racing continued at Constantinople’s 100,000-seater Hippodrome into the 13th century. 18. Chariot racing was the football of its day Rome originally had four charioteer teams: the Reds, Whites, Greens and Blues. The Reds and Whites were the most historic, but they were surpassed in prominence by the Greens and Blues during the first century AD. The teams had franchises that competed in major cities across the empire and even boasted organised groups of supporters (akin to modern football ultras) prone to riotous behaviour. Star drivers, who could often change teams during their careers, frequently earned enormous amounts of money. The tombstone of Gaius Appuleius Diocles, one of the greatest charioteers of the second century AD, mentions that he won 1,462 races and earned 35,863,120 sesterces in prizes across a 24-year career spent racing for the Reds, Whites and Greens. Although he is believed to have died at the age of 42 and would have kept only a portion of his winnings, his career earnings exceeded the fortunes of most Roman senators. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-520726031-6041b74-e1764247102231.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A chariot race in the Circus Maximus depicted by 19th-century painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Star drivers could earn huge sums of money (Image by Getty Images)" title="A chariot race in the Circus Maximus depicted by 19th-century painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Star drivers could earn huge sums of money (Image by Getty Images)" /> 19. Rome became the first large empire to enact universal citizenship In AD 212, the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus – better known by his nickname, Caracalla – issued a law making all free people in the empire Roman citizens. The new citizens had to legally change their names to honour their new benefactor, flooding the Roman bureaucracy with tens of millions of people now bearing the name ‘Aurelius’. The reason for Caracalla’s generosity? He wanted everyone in the empire to celebrate the murder of Geta, Caracalla’s brother and co-emperor who was killed in his mother’s arms. 20. Roman trade across the Indian Ocean was hugely lucrative When we think of ancient trade, the Silk Road – the sprawling network of trade routes stretching some 4,000 miles between China and the Mediterranean – often springs to mind. Yet, it wasn’t the only source of wealth for the Romans. Merchants also travelled across the Indian Ocean to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, carrying gold coins and bringing back spices and exotic animals. At times, the demand for Roman coins in India and Sri Lanka so exceeded the supply that Indian mints struck their own coins featuring the portraits of Roman imperial figures and legends written in Latin. 21. The Romans developed a sophisticated financial system From the second century BC, Roman bankers managed investment accounts that their clients could use for depositing money and making transfers. The system was so sophisticated that emperor Trajan used subsidised government loans to fund social welfare programmes in the second century AD. 22. The Romans invented some truly terrifying military technology The Romans developed a napalm-like substance commonly known as ‘Greek fire’ which was placed in hand grenades or sprayed from hoses equipped with special nozzles – usually against enemy naval forces. When the substance ignited, it even burned on water. The technology was first deployed in AD 672 and was used for more than 500 years against the navies of the Bulgars, Rus’ and Arabs. The empire lost the ability to manufacture Greek fire just before AD 1200, although no one really knows why. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/9Greekfire-madridskylitzes1-760acd4-e1764242423636.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration of two boats with men in them. The boat on the left are blowing fire over the one of the right" title="A 12th-century AD depiction of Greek fire being used against the rebel Thomas the Slav in AD 821. The exact composition of this devastating incendiary substance has been lost" /> 23. The longest-serving Roman emperor was actually pretty unremarkable He ruled for 66 years between AD 962–1028, but Constantine VIII’s passions for fine food and horses meant that he took little interest in state affairs until the last three years of his life. He instead trusted his older brother and co-emperor – the much more famous and capable emperor Basil II – to govern the empire for most of their lives. Coincidentally, Basil’s term in office (AD 960–1025), is the second-longest in Roman history. Read more | Step inside the ancient Roman empire's gladiatorial arenas, and witness 24 hours of shocking violence 24. TWO emperors share the record for the shortest reign Father-and-son duo Gordian I and Gordian II ruled for a mere 22 days in AD 238. The Gordians, who were governing a province in north Africa without an army stationed there, foolishly rebelled against Maximinus Thrax – one of four other men who also claimed to be emperor that year. Although the Gordians received senatorial support in Rome, they were quickly dispatched by a general loyal to Maximinus. As for the second-shortest reign, the emperor Nepotian barely outlasted the two Gordians by holding Rome for 28 days in June of AD 350. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/10Gordian-II-238-ADEdward-Watts--Author-1d53219-e1764242478419.jpeg" width="850" height="413" alt="Coins issued by the emperor Gordian II, who – along with his father, Gordian I – ruled for just 22 days in AD 238 (Image by Edward J Watts)" title="Coins issued by the emperor Gordian II, who – along with his father, Gordian I – ruled for just 22 days in AD 238 (Image by Edward J Watts)" /> 25. It took a VERY long time for the Romans to adopt Christianity When Constantine I famously converted to Christianity in AD 312, the territory he ruled was only around 10 per cent Christian. In fact, the Roman empire did not become a Christian-majority state until the AD 390s, and some pagan-majority communities lasted long enough that they negotiated the surrender of their cities to Muslim generals in the AD 630s. The Syrian city of Harran (now part of modern Turkey) even maintained temples dedicated to its moon god into the 11th century AD. Edward J Watts is Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the The Romans: A 2,000-Year History (John Murray Press/Basic Books, 2025)
When was the White House built – and why is it white?
How much do you know about the history of the White House in Washington, DC, which has been home to all US presidents since John Adams in 1800?
Inscribed on the stone fireplace of the State Dining Room of the White House are the words: “I pray to Heaven bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” The blessing, which was engraved there in 1945, came from a letter written by John Adams to his wife Abigail in 1800. He was the second man to be president of the United States, but the first to reside in the world-famous home of the presidency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, in Washington, DC. A decade earlier, there had been no such place as Washington, DC, on the Potomac River. Founded by the Residence Act of 1790, the new capital would be a modern metropolis laid out in a grid system and with grand boulevards and public spaces everywhere. In the short term, though, it was not a promising place to live: if not hectic with the constant building works, there was nothing around but forests and some wetlands, where sanitation was poor and conditions were cold to freezing. Still, this would be the home of the president. George Washington, the first man elected to the office, personally chose the site for what would be the White House along with city planner Pierre Charles L’Enfant, and launched a competition for the building’s design. When was the White House built? Construction of the White House got underway with the laying of the cornerstone on 13 October 1792. But the the so-called ‘Presidential Palace' would not be finished until after Washington had left office. Even by 1800, when Adams moved in, the building was far from complete. It would be added to, repaired and extended many times throughout the years, not least when it had to be reconstructed following the War of 1812. The photogenic South Portico was added in 1824, followed by the North Portico, completed in 1830. The West Wing was added in 1902 and within, in 1909, the first iteration of the Oval Office. The East Wing was developed in 1942 – it is the focus of a sweeping renovation by President Trump that will see a 90,000-square-foot ballroom added to the building. The White House currently boasts a total of 132 rooms. White House facts: seven things you need to know Here, White House historian Lindsay M Chervinsky explains everything you need to know about the home of the US president… Why is the White House called the White House? The home of the President of the United States is called the White House in reference to its covering with lime-based whitewash to protect the porous sandstone it is built from. By President Jimmy Carter’s administration (1977–81), the paint was so thick that visitors couldn’t see the carving details above the windows and doors, or any of the beautiful molding. The White House underwent a significant external renovation to strip the many layers of paint, which took 20 years and wasn’t completed until President Bill Clinton’s administration (1993–2001). When finished, over 45 coats of paint had been removed from the exterior walls. Read more: American history myths: 7 things people get wrong Who built the White House? The White House was designed by Irish-born architect, James Hoban – whose vision of a neoclassical mansion in the Palladian style won him Washington's competition – but it was built by hundreds of workers, including enslaved people. Over the next eight years, a mix of free African-American and white wage labourers, enslaved workers, and skilled craftsmen built the White House. They worked in a variety of positions, including basic labourers, overseers, sawyers, carpenters, stone workers, and bricklayers. Some of the enslaved workers were owned by the city commissioners charged with overseeing the project, or by Hoban himself. The vast majority, however, were hired out from their owners in Washington, DC, as well as Virginia, and Maryland, who then pocketed the enslaved peoples’ wages. The construction crews were often shuttled back and forth between the White House and the Capitol building sites (which were also built using enslaved labour), depending on which location needed labour or had available materials at any given moment. Was the White House set on fire by the British? Yes. In August 1814, British forces marched into Washington, DC and burned all public buildings in retaliation for the destruction of York [now Toronto, Canada], the year prior. After enjoying a lavish meal laid out by First Lady Dolley Madison, the British forces set fire to the White House. Urban legend suggests that a rain storm arrived and saved the White House. The truth, however, is that the rain actually made the damage worse. While the wet weather saved the surrounding buildings from catching fire, it nearly destroyed the walls of the White House. The stone walls were incredibly hot from the fire and the cold rain caused them to shrink rapidly and crack. Congress quickly appointed a commission to investigate the damage and rebuild the White House. The investigators discovered that almost everything inside had been destroyed except for a few pots and pans in the basement kitchens, but their report concealed the extent of the damage to get the rebuilding process started immediately. Read more: Why does the United States of America celebrate Independence Day on 4 July? Some officials wanted to move the capital to a more developed city – like Philadelphia, New York, or Charleston – because lodging, food, and entertainment options were still quite limited in DC. Furthermore, representatives from states far away from DC, like New Hampshire or Georgia, wanted to shorten their travelling time. They saw the destruction of the White House as an opportunity to move the capital. Eager to maintain a historic link with the earlier presidents, Presidents James Madison and James Monroe rushed to rebuild the White House exactly as before. They even hired the same architect, James Hoban, to complete the renovation. Boston Tea Party: Igniting a Revolution Member exclusive | Discover the causes, tensions, and violent origins of the Boston Tea Party. Join leading experts as they explain the key players involved in the plan – and why tea was so important to the story. Listen to all episodes now Many animals have lived at the White House Most people are familiar with the dogs that have lived in the White House – such as Bo and Sunny Obama, or President George W Bush and First Lady Laura Bush’s Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley. But there have been a menagerie of animals that have called the grounds home. President Woodrow Wilson welcomed a herd of sheep to the South Lawn and they donated their wool to the Red Cross to create uniforms for soldiers during the First World War. One particularly adventuresome ram named Hi caused a bit of trouble when he repeatedly broke into the Oval Office. John F Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, had a pet pony named Macaroni; First Lady Grace Coolidge had a raccoon named Rebecca; and President William H Taft had a cow, Pauline Wayne, which roamed in front of the Old Executive Office Building. Perhaps best of all, Alice Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter) had a garter snake named Emily Spinach that she carried around in her purse and pulled out as a conversation piece at parties. Anne Boleyn’s lapdog and John Quincy Adams’s alligator: 10 famous people in history and their bizarre pets The White House is bigger than you might think it is While the building appears to be two stories from the street, there are actually six floors. There are three floors above ground (the State Floor and two floors for the residence), and three floors below ground. While much of the State Floor and residence layout has remained the same since its construction, many other areas of the White House have changed dramatically. When you enter the White House today, you would probably enter on the Ground Floor, or the first of the basement floors. Until 1901, this floor was primarily a work space. Instead of the China Room, the Vermeil Room, the Library, and the Diplomatic Reception Room, there would have been a kitchen, a laundry room, a storage space for food and dishware, and sleeping spaces for the enslaved or free servants. The basement was notoriously damp and frequently infested with vermin and rodents. Read more: Life after the White House: what the US presidents did next There are other spaces that have been lost to history as well. The White House had a series of stables to house the president’s horses, carriages, coachmen, and grooms. The final and most elaborate stable was converted into a garage in 1909. The attic has also undergone many renovations. In its early years, it was used for storage, sleeping quarters for free or enslaved servants, and a hiding place for the presidents’ children. In 1913 First Lady Ellen Wilson added guestrooms and a painting studio for her own private use. During the Coolidge administration, engineers discovered problems with the roof structure. They installed a sunroom (now the solarium), larger guest and service rooms, and a new steel and concrete roof. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/11/WhiteHouseFloorPlanGettyImages-640477071-b94d8bf-e1761584579153.jpg" width="1500" height="1002" alt="Floor Plan of the second storey of the White House" title="A 1901 drawing by FD Owen of the floor plan of the second story in the White House, which was originally deisgned by architect James Hoban in 1792 (Photo by Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)" /> The White House grounds were once open to anyone When President John Adams moved into the White House on 1 November 1800, there was no fence or gate, and the grounds were open to pedestrians. President Thomas Jefferson added a fence that enclosed the grounds, but they remained open for common use. In 1873, President Ulysses S Grant began closing the grounds at sunset for additional security and in 1893, President Grover Cleveland closed the South Grounds, typically the first family’s garden, after strangers tried to take a picture of his young daughter, Esther. The North and South Grounds were closed permanently during Calvin Coolidge’s presidency at the recommendation of the United States Secret Service. The president’s cabinet hasn’t always had a home at the White House Every president has consulted a cabinet since President George Washington convened the first full cabinet meeting on 26 November 1791. While President John Adams was the first to live in the White House, President Thomas Jefferson was the first to meet with his cabinet in the White House and gathered the department secretaries in his private study on the first floor (now the State Dining Room). By the time of the Civil War, the president’s study had moved to the second floor and Abraham Lincoln met with the secretaries in his office in the south-east corner of the second floor (now the Lincoln Bedroom). Read more: American presidents: 9 things you (probably) didn’t know Theodore Roosevelt built the West Wing to provide more work space for his staff, and to give his large family more room on the second floor of the original building. In 1909, President Taft expanded the West Wing, added the Oval Office, and an official Cabinet room. The Oval Office was moved to its present location during President Franklin D Roosevelt’s presidency. Since then, most cabinets have used the Cabinet room for official cabinet meetings and elected to meet with individual department secretaries in the Oval Office. Lindsay M Chervinsky, PhD is White House Historian at the White House Historical Association, a non-profit dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of the White House. She is the author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution
Your history guide to Frogmore Cottage: who has lived there before?
How much do you know about the history of Frogmore Cottage, previously home to Prince Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex? Who has lived there before, and why was it built?
Where is Frogmore Cottage? Frogmore Cottage, set in the grounds of Frogmore House, is part of the Frogmore estate in Windsor, Berkshire. Frogmore is situated around half a mile south of Windsor Castle, within Home Park (the private estate of the castle). It’s close to the river Thames and built upon historically wet marsh ground, which led to the estate’s name; the low-lying plot attracts a high number of frogs from the nearby riverbank. Today the cottage, nestled in a quiet corner of the estate grounds, is a private residence, and served as the British home of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, from 2019 when it was gifted to them by the late Queen Elizabeth II. Prince Harry and Meghan were requested to vacate their British base in March 2023, as they took an official step back from participation in royal duties. It is owned by the Crown Estate, though there are no current residents based at the house, royal or otherwise. It was reported in October 2025 that Prince Andrew, younger brother to King Charles III, is considering Frogmore as his residence after leaving Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park. Read more | Why has the British monarchy survived – and thrived? Can people visit Frogmore Cottage? The cottage is not open to the public, though Frogmore House and estate can be visited on a number of charity days held each year. When and why was Frogmore Cottage built? The cottage has served as a royal refuge since it was built in 1801. It was commissioned by Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, who bought the Frogmore estate as a country retreat for herself and her unmarried daughters in 1792. Her husband, often referred as ‘Mad King George’, ruled Great Britain and Ireland from 1760–1820 and suffered from an illness (sometimes attributed as porphyria, a rare hereditary disease) that prompted episodes of eccentric behaviour. Historian Sean Lang explains how the king once ordered his carriage to stop in Windsor Great Park while he popped out to have a chat with an oak tree, apparently under the impression it was the King of Prussia. The royal couple had 15 children over the course of their marriage, and historian Helen Rappaport has suggested that Frogmore Cottage was designed to provide respite for the king’s family. “The king had episodes of frenzy. He was most likely very hard to live with and [Queen Charlotte] presumably utilised Frogmore Cottage as a retreat.” Who else has lived in Frogmore Cottage? Another famous resident of the cottage on the estate was Abdul Karim, an Indian Muslim clerk who became a close confidant and teacher to Queen Victoria. Karim was sent to England to wait at the queen’s table during the 1887 golden jubilee celebrations when the 68-year-old monarch wanted servants who reminded her of her status as Empress of India. She was taken by the handsome young man and Karim quickly rose within Victoria’s affections, as well as in status to the title of ‘Munshi’ (teacher or clerk), teaching the queen Hindustani and advising on all matters concerning India. The relationship between queen and clerk, recently explored in a book by historian Shrabani Basu and dramatised in the film Victoria and Abdul, is just one story of a steady stream of Indian migrants coming to Britain during the 19th century. As Basu told History Extra, “[it’s] fascinating that a young Indian Muslim man was at the centre of the royal court at a time when the British empire was at its height. It is a part of history that the royal family tried to destroy after Queen Victoria’s death.” Karim lived in Frogmore cottage with his family, and refurbished the property in 1893. The queen visited him at the house “each second day”, explains Basu. Yet following the queen’s death in 1901, Karim was forced to return to India by Victoria’s son and successor, Edward VII, who had “abhorred” his mother’s companion. Read more | Queen Victoria's Indian confidant: an interview with Shrabani Basu A home to royal refugees? In the early 20th century, the cottage also hosted royal refugees from Russia. Following the killing of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in July 1918, who were shot by their Bolshevik guards, some relatives of the tsar fled the country. One such royal group was offered sanctuary in Frogmore Cottage by King George V, and included the king's cousin Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna. The royal refugees' financial situation meant the cottage soon fell into disrepair, and when King Edward VIII offered Xenia and her family Wilderness House (in the grounds of Hampton Court to the south-west of London), the family left Frogmore. What else can be found on the Frogmore estate? Frogmore House itself dates from 1680–84, built by an architect of Charles II for the king’s nephew. It was later the home of Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, for more than 20 years from 1840, and artworks by both the duchess and Queen Victoria are on display in the house. A teahouse built for Queen Victoria also remains on the estate, alongside a 18th-century summerhouse in the form of a Gothic ruin designed by English architect James Wyatt. The estate has long been a bolthole for the royal family. King George VI and his wife Elizabeth spent part of their honeymoon at Frogmore in 1923, and it’s reportedly where the late Queen Elizabeth II walked her beloved corgis. The house hosted the wedding reception of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in May 2018, as well as that of the Queen’s eldest grandchild, Peter Phillips, and Autumn Kelly in 2008. Read more | Retiring royals: 9 rulers and royals who stepped down through history The Frogmore estate is also the site of the Frogmore Mausoleum, the burial place of Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert. The mausoleum, not open to the public during tours of the estate, is currently undergoing restoration works to protect against ongoing damp problems due to its riverside location. The site on the west side of the gardens at Frogmore House was chosen by the queen just four days after Albert’s death at the age of 42 in 1861, and construction began three months later. Following her death at Osborne on the Isle of Wight and a state funeral, Queen Victoria was buried at Frogmore on 4 February 1901. King Edward VII and his grandson, the six-year-old future Edward VIII, knelt as the queen was slowly lowered in to the crypt to be laid to rest beside her beloved husband. View Green Video on the source website
Kavita Puri's hidden histories: the enduring appeal of archaeological sites
"Nothing beats feeling the earth in your hands and uncovering the past", writes Kavita Puri
It was late morning, but already hot enough to warrant wearing a sun hat and sticking to the shade. I was in a quiet part of Andalucía, looking at an archaeological treasure that I visit regularly. However, this time there was more activity than usual. There were scores of people digging, others with notepads, some wearing gloves – all situated in different parts of the site. It was July and students had come from across Europe to take part in excavations. A 35-minute drive from Granada in southern Spain, the hill town of Tózar is located close to La Ruta del Califato (the Route of the Caliphate). Here, the local council recently purchased the archaeological area from a private owner. Investigations started on the land in 2012 when a Mozarabic cemetery was found. Eighty tombs of Christians who lived under Muslim rule in al-Andalus (the Iberian peninsula) were carved into the rock on the highland projecting into the surrounding landscapes. The site was believed to have been used as a cemetery between the ninth and 12th centuries. If you walk below, archaeologists have found another burial chamber, known as Dólmen Pileta de la Zorra, dating from sometime between the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. There are also remnants of ancient agricultural terraces and irrigation systems. Further below is a Mozarabic village. I chatted to the lead archaeologist who told me they recently found a small refuse dump, which she excitedly said revealed what people had eaten, the utensils they used, the tools they worked with. Clues of life. And then she led me to what was once a dwelling. In the ground were three small rectangular holes. Two weeks ago, they discovered the remains of a child in one. She says they think these were graves for babies who had died before they had been baptised, which meant they were buried in the home, rather than in the cemetery above. As she spoke, enthused by the find, she described the moment of discovery, and what it could reveal about the practices and beliefs of the past. It raised so many questions from our group: would it not have been hard for the mother to live so close to her deceased child? Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history And not far away are trenches and fortifications used during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Tózar was on the Nationalist side, supporting General Franco. It was a frontline town, where the population would have been constantly aware of the presence of Republican soldiers from nearby Moclín. In one small place is so much history. Yet very few people know much about it, as it is way off the tourist trail. In the years that I have been visiting, it is now better maintained and looked after, with signs explaining the finds. The University of Granada is now one of several institutions funding the summer dig, and there seems to be renewed interest in the area and in its historical importance. With advances in digital archaeology such as three-dimensional modelling, the use of databases and virtual reality to aid analysis as well as interpretation, it is an exciting time to be an archaeologist. Applying information technology has, for example, helped in the reconstruction of the Palmyra Arch at the Temple of Baalshamin in Syria. It is also playing a critical role at the site of Herculaneum in Italy, which was preserved in volcanic ash after Mount Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago. Through the virtual unwrapping of its carbonised scrolls, scholars have been able to work out texts without damaging the delicate artefacts. But as my adventures in Spain remind me, nothing beats the thrill of feeling the earth in your hands and uncovering a remnant from the past – that magical encounter between now and then. This column was first published in the October 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Designs for life: the lasting impact of Art Deco
In the interwar era, artists and designers embraced a sleek modern style that embodied the optimism and elegance of the age. On the centenary of the Paris expo that launched Art Deco on the international stage, Emma Bastin explores its origins and lasting impacts
On a cold, wintry December day in 1935, the Duke and Duchess of York arrived in Bexhill-on-Sea to open a new public venue. Lining the route were well-wishers of all ages, from Brownies and Cubs to war veterans wearing campaign medals. By the time the royal couple reached their destination, the crowd numbered in their thousands; no doubt the duke and duchess found it difficult to fully appreciate the building. With its unadorned cream walls, acres of glass and sleek lines, the De La Warr Pavilion did not so much proclaim its modernity but shout it out loud. The stylish façade hid a welded steel frame, the first of its kind in Britain. Inside were an auditorium seating 1,300, a restaurant and a library, all for “the common enjoyment of the people”. Quickly dubbed ‘The People’s Palace’, it was – and still is – an iconic embodiment of Art Deco style. Art Deco – a shortened, anglicised version of arts décoratifs – was never referred to as such in its heyday in the 1920s and 30s. Like most art movements, it gained its name long after its popularity had waned. The first use of the term as we use it now was by art historian Bevis Hillier in 1968. Facade of the Folies Bergère, Paris Maurice Pico, 1926 The dancer Lila Nikolska was the model for the gold bas-relief facade of the most famous cabaret in Paris – the Folies Bergère. Dancers were important to Art Deco sculptors, their bodies epitomising fluidity and strength. Here, movement is emphasised by the sequences of lines that surround the model, which also suggest that strident, modern music is playing. As with many other forms of art and design before and since, Art Deco was a response to the social, cultural and economic climate in which it emerged. It drew inspiration from a diverse range of sources, from ancient Egypt to the avant-garde, incorporating motifs from nature as well as concepts of mass-production using artificial materials. As a result, defining Art Deco is notoriously difficult. Some art historians have proposed that, rather than seeing it as a style, we should view Art Deco as a celebration of the imagination and creativity of the interwar years. Yet there is something distinctive and recognisable about its character. The form of an Art Deco object is usually simplified, often incorporating geometric shapes; functionality is important. Decorative features are stripped back to the essentials, but popular motifs include chevrons, sunrays, plants and human figures. Century of style By the time the De La Warr Pavilion was opened, the style had been growing in prominence for more than a decade. For many historians and enthusiasts, 2025 is being celebrated as the centenary year of Art Deco. That was the year when L’Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes (usually loosely translated as the International Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts) was held in Paris. The organisers had declared that exhibits must show “modern inspiration and a real originality”, and the expo brought together the best in contemporary design from around the world. Vogue cover Pierre Mourgue, 1930 As the foremost fashion magazine in the US, Britain and France, Vogue led the way with stylish, avant-garde cover illustrations produced by a talented roster of artists. Pierre Mourgue, one of several artists Condé Nast discovered in France, relocated to the US where he produced several covers for Vogue. This example from 1930 exudes elegance, shows off the latest fashions, and references the modern skyscrapers springing up in New York City in that era. However, the roots of Art Deco date from as early as the 1910s, when French artists began to move away from the intricate detailing of Art Nouveau and towards a simpler style. Luxury French fashion magazines like Gazette du Bon Ton and Femina commissioned artists including Paul Iribe and Georges Lepape to illustrate the latest avant-garde fashions by couturiers such as Paul Poiret. Outside of France, there were moves towards simplified architecture by Austrian Josef Hoffmann and Scot Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Styles of modern art that developed in the years before the First World War, such as Cubism, Vorticism and Futurism also influenced Art Deco style. Unsurprisingly, advances in art and design were temporarily halted during the war but quickly leapt forward in the following years, driven largely by the desire to forget – to make a break with what had gone before – and for modernity. Read more | Michelangelo: the Renaissance polymath who transformed Western art Seven years after the end of the war, the 1925 Paris expo established Art Deco as a mainstream style. Some 16 million visitors passed through its doors in the seven months it was open – importantly, that included tastemakers, buyers, designers and journalists from around the world. Articles in the press raved about the “dream city” that had been created with temporary pavilions. The impermanent nature of these buildings, along with the expectation that the style should emphasise the modern, inspired architects to produce groundbreaking designs. Postcards and photographs showed off the astonishing assembly of buildings to a global audience. For those present, elaborate arrangements of searchlights illuminated the pavilions and grounds at night, and extraordinary sights – such as a 15-metre-tall crystal fountain by jewellery designer René Lalique – enhanced this vision of modernity. Ekco A76 radio c1934 In the 1930s, Ekco radios combined innovative design with the latest technology; today, they’re highly sought after by collectors. Radio ownership boomed in the interwar years, when the use of Bakelite (an early plastic) allowed Ekco to create alternatives to earlier square wooden cases. Well-known architects and designers such as Serge Chermayeff and Wells Coates were commissioned to create new ranges, introducing Art Deco design into homes across the nation. Conspicuous consumption The Paris expo hosted 15,000 exhibitors, many of which were businesses promoting themselves and selling their wares. The organisers wanted to showcase design not just in terms of production but also consumption. Large department stores such as Galeries Lafayette occupied their own pavilions, and luxury boutiques lined the Pont Alexandre III across the Seine. The French wanted to highlight the skills of their artists, and a model French embassy was created in which sumptuous interiors and furnishings were displayed. This was Art Deco for the elite, not the masses, designed to appeal to those with deep pockets. But in an age when trends percolated down, many of the designers fully expected that the style they had developed would be taken up by the lower classes, albeit at a later date and in more economical forms. Mass consumerism, faster communications and new technologies enabled Art Deco to spread both widely and rapidly. Thanks to the variety of ways in which this style could be applied, it appeared in myriad forms – one of the most imposing and widely visible being architecture. London Underground poster Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1931 Inspired by Futurism, this ultra-modern poster was seen by hundreds of thousands of travellers in the early 1930s, when such a combination of image and text was still a novelty. One of the boldest artists commissioned by London Transport, McKnight Kauffer – who used an airbrush to create the 3D effect on the numbers 6 and 12 – was also one of the most prolific, producing nearly 100 posters. Businesses keen to show their inventiveness employed forward-looking architects to create factories and headquarters in the most modern style. Along the Great West Road in London, an array of cutting-edge buildings sprang up, among them modern factories for Firestone, Gillette and Coty cosmetics. The Hoover Building was erected in Perivale, and the Oxo Tower on the south bank of the Thames in central London. Outside the capital, Littlewoods built a vast modern headquarters in Liverpool, and Scotland welcomed Art Deco buildings such as India of Inchinnan, and Luma Tower in Glasgow. Retailers also realised the commercial potential of Art Deco: the simple lines and large areas of glazing allowed their products to shine. Burton and Marks and Spencer both favoured an Art Deco-inspired neoclassicism, with grand pillars and repeated motifs. Their buildings can still be seen today on high streets in towns and cities such as London, York, Halifax and Swansea. Read more | Michael Wood on the New Angel | "Few works of 20th-century art have such a distinguished list of past owners" The streamlined style of Art Deco was perfect for railway stations and airports, too, its sleek lines evoking speed and efficiency, and its wide open spaces accommodating large numbers of passengers. Dozens of Art Deco tube stations built in suburban London in the 1920s and 1930s were designed by Charles Holden, who enjoyed an excellent working relationship with Frank Pick, the man who modernised and united the London Transport network. Together they created a unified look for stations and their interiors across the network. Often beacons of modernity in a land of mock-Tudor semis, their stations welcomed hundreds of thousands of passengers every day in places such as Acton Town, Cockfosters and East Finchley, which is still guarded by Eric Aumonier’s Art Deco Archer statue. Group of Four Nudes Tamara de Lempicka, 1925 This Polish-born artist’s work is instantly recognisable, pushing boundaries of style and subject. This painting blends Cubism with the traditional: bodies are drawn in strong, angular lines, but beautifully toned shading and colours give a sense of depth. Intensely erotic, it was deemed shocking at the time. Picture palaces Cinema proved to be a potent force in the spread of Art Deco. The explosion in movie-going fuelled demand for a large number of new venues, many of which were built in the latest style. From their gleaming white exteriors to their modern foyers and plush interiors, cinemas allowed the audience to lose themselves in fantasy for a few hours. It was not only the cinema buildings that were Art Deco: the films themselves were also heavily influenced by the movement. From the 1920s, the industry led the way in fusing modernity and glamour. Hollywood art director Cedric Gibbons, who visited the 1925 expo, became the master of Art Deco styling in films. The MGM movies on which he worked in the interwar period showcased his vision of heightened luxury and elegance, particularly his interior sets, such as those in Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Grand Hotel (1932). In the 1930s, musicals developed the ‘Gibbons look’, and vast Art Deco sets with high ceilings, repeated motifs and sweeping lines were created for films like Top Hat (1935). Hollywood shared this glossy style with a global audience of around 80 million people each week, helping to create consumers with aspirations to live like their favourite movie stars. Eltham Palace entrance hall Rolf Engströmer, 1936 When Stephen and Virginia Courtauld added an Art Deco extension to the existing medieval hall of Eltham Palace, south-east London, Swedish designer Rolf Engströmer was commissioned to create the circular entrance hall. Natural light floods through the domed glass roof to illuminate exquisite marquetry walls, modern furniture and a rug designed by textile artist Marion Dorn. Modernity prevailed throughout the new section of the house, which boasted underfloor heating, multi-room sound systems and a centralised vacuum cleaner. Need for speed Beyond the cinema, Art Deco adorned advertising boards, magazines and newspapers. Graphic designers embraced the new style, recognising that simplicity and ease of reading were essential for capturing the public’s attention; French poster designer Paul Colin noted that the best advertising “must be readable at 100km an hour”. The intricate drawings and acres of text found in Victorian and Edwardian adverts were swept away, replaced with striking, pared-back visuals creating an efficient and dynamic look. Frank Pick at London Transport advocated this modern look, commissioning commercial artists such as Edward McKnight Kauffer, André Édouard Marty and Dora M Batty to create posters displayed across the transport network. Like movies, these posters had a huge audience, and the public soon became familiar with this modern style – consciously or not. Seeing the success of the London Transport posters, other businesses began to use Art Deco in their own marketing material. Railway companies and shipping lines produced some of the most iconic advertising, but this new form of graphic design was also used to market clothing, make-up, cars, food – almost anything, in fact. Manufacturers quickly realised that Art Deco was a style that could easily be reproduced en masse. Its simplicity of form and design allowed objects such as radios, telephones, mirrors, china and printed fabrics to be created easily, often using mass-production techniques. There was a ready market for these goods, too – the number of people with disposable incomes was growing, and products that offered a sense of modernity along with ease of living were in demand. Cartier brooch c1925 Art Deco jewellery was dazzling – and no one created dazzle quite like Cartier. This brooch has a jadeite background showcasing diamonds and sapphires set in a geometric design. Jade had long been used in the far east, and this brooch demonstrates how inspiration from other cultures was mixed with modernity to create a brand new style. In Britain, geometric clocks and photo frames appeared on mantlepieces, as did brightly coloured ornaments. Potteries employed forward-thinking artists such as Clarice Cliff to decorate their tableware, and furniture became more streamlined. Even those on limited incomes could buy into the look: Littlewoods offered Art Deco tea sets, electric light pendants and dressing-table trinkets for as little as 10 shillings, payable in instalments. Read more | Beauty before durability: the interwar beginnings of fast fashion Reclaiming the past The heyday of Art Deco ended with the outbreak of the Second World War. Quickly, utility and practicality replaced consumerism and design. The style was largely relegated to the doldrums during the reign of stark Modernism and Brutalism in the 1950s and early 1960s, but by 1965 a tentative revival had begun. The 1920s and 1930s represented a period before the living memory of younger members of society but, in their desire for self-expression, they looked to the interwar era as a golden age of individualism, youth and newly liberated sexuality. This interest was fuelled by the emergence of design studies, and the idea that Art Deco could not be simply dismissed as commercialised and lightweight. Exhibitions were staged, and books and articles were written on the subject. Fashion designers and retailers such as Biba took the glamour of Art Deco and reinterpreted it for a new audience. Postmodernism and pop art borrowed the bright colours, geometrics and fun to break with the austerity of postwar Modernism, and original Art Deco items became sought after by collectors. Chrysler Building, New York City William Van Alen, 1930 When completed, the Chrysler Building was the world’s first supertall skyscraper – the loftiest building in the world, soaring 319 metres into the New York City sky. It’s an Art Deco icon, largely due to its terraced ‘crown’ featuring concentric arches and radiating sunbursts. Typical of the style, ornamentation is exuberant – stylised hub caps, oversized Chrysler hood ornaments and radiator caps all reference the source of the wealth that underwrote this building: making and selling cars. The centenary of the Paris expo has sparked another resurgence of interest, as designers look to the past for inspiration. There are efforts to preserve Art Deco heritage around the world, and celebrations and exhibitions celebrating the innovations it made. Art Deco has proved to be timeless. Its sleek aesthetic transcends shifts in fashions, and the glamour and luxury it epitomises remain desirable. It changed the way we view art and design: no longer the preserve of the rich and urbane, mass produced objects were beautiful, fun and functional, accessible to all. Today, the ideal of Art Deco – melding beauty with utility – remains a guiding principle in design and its consumption. Dr Emma Bastin is a historian of the early 20th century, particularly focusing on the interwar period. She explores material and cultural history, including fashion and retail This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Wanderlust: Bettany Hughes on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were daring and dazzling constructions that have burned bright in the human imagination right up to the modern day. Bettany Hughes follows in the footsteps of the ancients to tell their remarkable stories
Crawling underneath Egypt’s Great Pyramid, 70 metres down, is an unforgettable experience. On hands and knees in the sand, as the descending tunnel gets narrower and deeper, the bedrock of the Giza Plateau presses in so close you can actually taste it. The rock is salty, because 50 million years ago this was all sea. I am not the first to have had this visceral, time-travelling experience. As well as the Greek and Roman tourists who left graffiti here, this subterranean tunnel, and the chamber which it led to, was described by the ‘father of history’ Herodotus, and some 2,300 years later was explored by the Italian tomb-raider Giovanni Battista Caviglia. Other passages in the Great Pyramid – a huge burial place for Egypt’s King Khufu – were charted by medieval Arabic scientists and desecrated by off-duty Napoleonic soldiers. Built more than 45 centuries ago, this pyramid, the oldest of the famous Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, has always been a catalyst for awe. And it is not alone. Across time, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – the Pyramids at Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria – have really mattered. They mattered so much that, in the epoch after Alexander the Great’s death, a bespoke catalogue, the Laterculi Alexandrini, was generated to group them together. Written in papyrus about 150 BC, it is our oldest extant evidence for a catalogue. We are not sure who created the list, but we do know that it was copied and shared, and that it has inspired poetry, prose and works of art for millennia. Don't miss... Bettany's new three-part docuseries Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is airing on Channel 5 from Saturday 2 August 2025 The precise entries vary a little: in some versions, the walls or an obelisk of Babylon are included; later, the Colosseum is mentioned; the Lighthouse has sometimes been left out. The Laterculi Alexandrini also lists the seven greatest rivers, the seven best mountains, the seven finest artists and the seven best lakes. The fact the Wonders deserved to be listed in a group of seven proved that not only were these exemplars of their age, projects of pioneering ambition that made extraordinary incursions into the landscape, but that they each encapsulated something special and important about the human experience. Marvellous news The word wonder (from the Old German wuntar) means ‘something marvellous’. Originally in the Greek, these attractions were described as thaumata – works that needed to be seen. Crucially, and this is a fact that is too often overlooked, all seven were connected. In some cases, the same artists worked on them. They also reference one another’s designs. Some of antiquity’s greatest names, including Alexander the Great, visited many of the sites. Ahead of writing my new book on the Seven Wonders, I set myself the task of travelling to the location where each once stood. This, I reasoned, was the best way to get a feel for what these creations meant to the women and men of antiquity who designed them, built them, worshipped in them, fought over them, wrote about them, maintained, cherished, loved and looted them, and made perilous journeys to visit and to tick them off their bucket lists. Following in their footsteps took me on a journey through both ancient and modern landscapes. 1. The Great Pyramid at Giza Egypt’s giant resurrection machine Built at least 4,500 years ago, the Great Pyramid is the oldest of all the Wonders, and yet still stands today almost intact. And it could be even older than previously thought: the 2013 discovery of 1,000 fragmented papyri documents on the Red Sea coast potentially pushes its date back a further 100 years. The pyramid was built over a span of 20–23 years as a giant resurrection machine for Khufu, the king of a united Egypt, helping to transport him to the afterlife. As such, it was conceived as a means for the ancient Egyptians to try to understand the place of humans in the cosmos and the possibilities of both mortality and immortality. Read more | Were the pyramids built by aliens? The real history that debunks the conspiracy The pyramid’s mathematical precision is astonishing (it is close to geometrically perfect – just 2cm out in some places). Constructed of 2.3 million limestone blocks, rising 146.6 metres high, it was originally cased in gleaming, polished, white Tura stone. A few slabs still remain on the Giza plateau, surveyed by bored camels waiting for their tourist burdens. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/02/BAL611268web-203f90e.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A 20th-century drawing of the construction of the pyramid. The enormous tomb took more than 20 years to build. (Image from Bridgeman)" title="A 20th-century drawing of the construction of the pyramid. The enormous tomb took more than 20 years to build. (Image from Bridgeman)" /> As the site of the pyramid was originally lapped by the Nile for 6–8 weeks of the year during the time of inundation, we now think that ancient Egyptian builders may have used the river’s rise and fall to move the pyramid’s stone building blocks into place. Listen | Ancient Egyptian pyramids: everything you wanted to know 2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon Botanical booty takes centre stage Created sometime between 691 and 550 BC, the Hanging Gardens are the most elusive of all the Wonders. No indisputable archaeological evidence for them exists, and we have filled this gap with our imaginations. Therefore, while the Hanging Gardens have left behind the least hard evidence in the ground, they are, ironically, the most famous, and the most commonly cited of all the ancient seven. Built either by King Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon or by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in Nineveh, they almost certainly employed ingenious watering schemes (including palm tree trunks lined with waterproof bitumen) running up a series of staggered planting ledges, all kept hydrated by machines that were an early version of Archimedes’s screw. Exotic plants and trees were showcased here – many seized as botanical booty on campaigns of expansion by either Assyrian or Babylonian monarchs. Read more | A guide to ancient gardening A venue for hosting visiting dignitaries, for displaying wealth, and possibly a location to sit and be healed by the night-time power of the stars, the gardens seem to be the ancient world’s attempt to replicate (and control) nature itself. Exploring the story of the Hanging Gardens is important because it reminds us to privilege eastern as well as western sources for the Wonder monuments. Crucially, we learn from Babylonian and Assyrian records that both the concept of ‘wonders’ and the symbolic power of seven stretches right back to the beginnings of history itself. Seven was a potent number because it connected the four elements of the Earth (earth, air, fire and water) with the three of the heavens (the sun, the moon and the stars). So we hear of seven heavens, seven hells and seven ages of man in Middle Eastern cultures. Grouping objects or ideas into lists of seven gives us meaning because they suggest human culture has a predictable pattern. Whereas the Great Pyramid was a gargantuan imposition on the landscape by a king and his people seeking to understand their connection to the chemistry of space and the cycle of life and death, the Hanging Gardens celebrated both the beauty of nature and the possibilities of humankind’s dominion over it. 3. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus A place of refuge... and murder This Wonder was subsidised in the sixth century BC by the famously rich King Croesus of Lydia. Yet the temple, sited near the western coast of modern-day Turkey, was accessible not just to kings but to commoners. And as well as honouring an eastern deity, Artemis – who protected animals and virgins alike – it was renowned as a place of sanctuary. Many sought refuge here, including Cleopatra’s sister Arsinoe (who was double-crossed and murdered on the temple’s steps). Recent archaeological excavations have shown the stalls where refuge-seekers slept. The temple was destroyed in the mid-fourth century BC (21 July 356BC) – before being rebuilt, in even grander form, in c340 BC (this later version would itself succumb to fire, earthquake and plunder). Gargantuan in scale, the temple’s double row of columns would become the model for Greek temples across three continents. In fact, a number of the artists employed on the later building would go on to work on other Wonders, such as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. And a building inspired by the Temple of Artemis would house another of the Wonders: the Statue of Zeus... 4. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia Where man met the divine The imposing ivory and gold Statue of Zeus, seated in his temple home, overlooked the stadium of the sanctuary of Olympia in southern Greece. The statue was an incarnation not just of divine, but of human potential. Built around 430 BC, at a time in the classical world when pioneers like Socrates were declaring the power of philosophy, human agency and the human mind, this bearded, muscle-bound male god was built to celebrate the potency of agnostic competition, of striving and of winning. The ancients would have experienced this ferocious artwork, whose forehead was said to glower like a thunderstorm, after arriving at the site as religious pilgrims. I travelled to Olympia along the sacred route that connected it to the city of Elis, during lockdown. Without the mechanical sounds of the modern world around, Zeus’s sanctuary was thick with birdsong and with the rustle of sacred olive trees. The statue itself is now, however, long gone – it’s believed that it was taken to Constantinople in the early centuries AD, where it was probably lost in a fire. At the time Zeus’s sanctuary was built, it would also have resounded with the hum of 50,000–100,000 visitors – Greeks summoned from everywhere from the Black Sea to Byzantium to praise the king of the Olympian Gods with displays of athletic prowess. 5. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus A site of death and glory Standing at more than 45 metres high, this gigantic building gave its name to mausoleums all over the world and has been mimicked in the cenotaphs and tombs of everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Vladimir Lenin. The mausoleum (which was ultimately destroyed by war and earthquake) reveals much about the cosmopolitan nature of life around the Mediterranean 2,300 years ago. Built by the Karian ruler Mausolos with his wife (and sister), Artemisia, in c351 BC, its wonderful hybrid of styles included Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Karian. It would have exploded like a firework on the coast of what is now Bodrum. While researching the building techniques of the mausoleum, I was fortunate enough to be allowed 5 metres below ground into a grave commissioned by Mausolos for his father, Hekatomnos, in nearby Mylas. Hekatomnos’s sarcophagus demonstrates the exquisite nature of the stone-carving that would have decorated Mausolos’s own burial place. It was covered with scenes of Hekatomnos’s family, including portraits of Mausolos and Artemisia, and a lion hunt. Artemisia has become infamous through history thanks to an anecdote handed down from Roman times. According to the author Aulus Gellius, Artemisia missed her brother-husband so much that after his death she ground down his bones to drink them, together with the ash from his funeral, and then pined away. But there is a strong chance, given we know gladiators drank bone-meal for strength, that Artemisia actually sought to steal Mausolos’s power. Whatever her intentions, Artemisia completed this vast, richly painted grave after her husband’s death, and was buried in her own chamber in the mausoleum. Five centuries later, the essayist Lucian of Samosta imagined a dialogue between Diogenes the Cynic and Mausolos in the underworld. The king boasted that because he was tall, handsome and a superb warrior, he needed to be commemorated with the most splendid tomb in the world. Diogenes quietly pointed out that the ruler’s hairless, skinless, eyeless skull would now look the same as his own. In fact, Diogenes added, Mausolos would look worse, as Halicarnassus’s mausoleum was a dead weight bearing down on the king’s corpse. 6. The Colossus of Rhodes Greece’s second sun The colossus was a gargantuan celebration of a moment in history when conflict sharpened into diplomacy. Wipe from your minds the popular image of a massive, kitsch statue, legs akimbo, straddling two of Rhodes’s harbours. That would have been structurally impossible. In reality, Rhodes’s towering representation of the sun-god Helios (with a face reminiscent of Alexander the Great) was probably erected high on the island overlooking the sanctuary of Helios where the Helian games were held in the god’s honour. The colossus was built (in c302/292 BC) after a pitiless siege of Rhodes by the son of one of Alexander the Great’s generals, Demetrius the Besieger. Legend has it that much of the raw material to make the figure derived from the melted down weapons and siege engines used to break through heavy walls and gates, which were surrendered following a truce. Yet those raw materials also, it seems, came from below the ground. The author Philo of Byzantium wrote: “The artist used so much bronze for the work there was almost a shortage of metals, for all the Earth’s mines were exploited in carrying out the project... for in the world a second sun stood to face the first.” Indeed, ice cores from Greenland show pollution levels soaring in the Hellenistic and Roman ages, caused by the process of larger-than- life-size metal statues being produced to prove man’s dominion over cities and far-flung territories. All of the Seven Wonders prove the fevered possibilities of the human imagination – and the harsh demands of making our dreams flesh. By building a statue more than 30 metres tall honouring the sun, the Colossus of Rhodes’s creators set in train a history of humans plundering the Earth’s resources, and a heating of the planet, which now threatens us all. 7. The Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria History’s greatest warning beacon? The Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria guided sailors to safety along one of the most perilous coastlines of northern Egypt. Built in c297 BC, it also acted as a warning beacon in times of distress – and, with an articulated decoration on its summit, may have been the world’s first weathervane. It was also, clearly, beautiful. Standing at 120 metres tall (until its collapse, as a result of earthquakes, in the Middle Ages), the lighthouse played with a sequence of geometrical shapes: oblong, circular and square. It was decorated with the same pink granite that lined Khufu’s burial chamber in the Great Pyramid. Some of these blocks are still in situ, re-used as door frames and as thresholds in the fort of Qaitbey, which now swamps the lighthouse’s footprint. Lucian (one of my favourite authors of antiquity) was inspired by a hidden inscription on the Pharos Lighthouse, left by its architect, Sostratus of Knidos, as an allegory for the writing of history itself. The visible inscription praised the pharaohs who had commissioned the Pharos. But when the gypsum covering was washed away, we are told that underneath was a dedication commemorating Sostratus’s hope for the safety of sailors. As Lucian wrote: “History should be written in that spirit, with truthfulness and an eye to future expectations rather than with adulation and a view to the pleasure of present praise.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/02/GettyImages-89164073web-93219a5.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="This block from the lighthouse would originally have been decorated in a glowing pink colour. (Photo by DEA / C. SAPPA/De Agostini via Getty Images)" title="This block from the lighthouse would originally have been decorated in a glowing pink colour. (Photo by DEA / C. SAPPA/De Agostini via Getty Images)" /> In an 1,800-year-old work of science fiction (also written by Lucian), an ancient astronaut staring down from the Moon recognises Earth, thanks to a sighting of the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Colossus of Rhodes. Today, courtesy of satellite imagery, we really can look down on Earth from space. But even though we’d only be able to see one of the Seven Ancient Wonders standing in situ, their power to fire our intellect and capture our imaginations still burns disproportionately bright. This article was first published in the February 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine. You can listen to Bettany Hughes explore the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in a this podcast episode. Bettany is the presenter of a new three-part docuseries Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The first episode airs on Channel 5 at 6.30pm on 1 August 2025. The series will explore the history and significance of the ancient wonders, combining archaeological access, new research, and digital reconstructions.
Michael Wood on the struggle of memory against forgetting | "Place names are signposts to the past"
"Place names are signposts to the past. And how revealing they are", writes Michael Wood
I was recently back in Devon. Long ago, on childhood holidays from the industrial north, this seemed to me the ‘real’ England. Still today, a rusting cast-iron signpost peeping through the foliage in a sunken lane gives me an inexplicable thrill. It’s the idea that the deep past might still be touched, just around the corner. Place names are signposts to the past. Chulmleigh, Woolfardisworthy, Nymet Rowland… what names! And how revealing they are. Take Ipplepen, a village with Roman and Iron Age roots in the hills near Torquay. A recent dig here turned up a small post-Roman cemetery, in use till the eighth century, and a Roman butchers shop, with coins and broken amphorae that once held olive oil, wine and fish sauce imported from the Mediterranean. The name Ipplepen was first recorded in the 10th century, and contains a personal name that appears to be Roman-British or Celtic: Epilus or Ipela. In a region where the Celtic (pre-Welsh) language may have died out only after 1066, the name of the pre-English landowner was, incredibly, passed down. Read more | The Romans were blamed for massacring these Iron Age warriors. But did they actually murder themselves? In the Home Counties, ancient British (or Welsh) place names are mainly gone – except for river names. Here they linger, from the Thames to smaller watercourses such as the wonderfully named Rib, Beane and Maran (or Mimram) in Hertfordshire. Sometimes English newcomers didn’t understand these words. Avon, of course, has the same derivation as afon, Welsh for river. Bredon Hill includes no fewer than three words with the same meaning: bre is Welsh and dun is Old English, both translating as ‘hill’. So: Hill-hill Hill! Some place names tell of events. You can track the first phase of Viking settlement in hybrid names such as Grimston, denoting an English settlement (or village) taken by Grim, a leading member of the Great Army that invaded Britain from 865. Then, with the second wave of migration, came the names ending in ‘by’, meaning farm – Grimsby, for example. Finally, there are the ‘thorp’ names, meaning homestead, as in Scunthorpe. These names were left by third-wave immigrants who were forced to open up poorer land on the fringes. Place names show how the dominant language takes over, in whichever way it happens. Across the world, the pattern was the same – especially in the age of imperialism. Think of the overlay of English names in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand or the US. There the indigenous inhabitants were wiped out or pushed into corners, yet place names associated with them still populate the landscape, from Alabama to Wyoming. Take Michigan, which is ‘big lake’ in the speech of the Ottawa tribe; or Mississippi, ‘Big River’ in Algonquin. From Malibu to the Napa Valley, telltale signposts remain, despite ethnic cleansing by European settlers and colonialists. In Ireland as recently as 2005, the Placenames Commission issued a list of 2,000 Gaelic equivalents to English place names. And, of course, people in power are still at it – witness Donald Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. Read more | The real Viking Age: when did the era of Norse expansion start and end? A revealing example is told in Sacred Landscape (2002), a remarkable book by the Israeli writer, historian and political scientist Meron Benvenisti. His father was an Israeli geographer on the Government Names Commission tasked after 1948 with giving Palestinian villages and landscapes names linked to Israel’s biblical homeland. New Hebrew place names, resonating with the biblical story of the Holy Land, replaced the Arabic names of more than 9,000 natural features, villages and even ruins in the new Israel. Benvenisti’s story shows first-hand how place names were used to help change an earlier Arab landscape into the modern Israeli state. Of course, such things have happened throughout history. Centuries after the Moors were expelled from Spain, today’s tourists can still detect the contours of Muslim Spain, from the Alhambra to Granada’s Zacatín (clothes-sellers) Street – still a clothes market. Yet a Palestinian returning now to his ancestral landscape after seven decades away would often be hard pushed to identify the sites of his erstwhile home. The signposts are gone. The story Benvenisti tells is about a battle over the “signposts of memory” that are essential to all human beings. As the novelist Milan Kundera said, “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Often slowly, imperceptibly, over time – but sometimes at a stroke – history is erased. But sometimes it still magically endures, even over millennia. People have long memories. Ask the folk in Ipplepen. This column was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Michelangelo: the Renaissance polymath who transformed Western art
Sculptor, painter, architect: Michelangelo was the archetypal Renaissance man who found immense fame in his lifetime and is still remembered as one of the most influential artists in world history. Matt Elton explores the creator of such iconic works as David and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni – better known simply as Michelangelo – was an Italian Renaissance polymath whose iconic sculptures, paintings, architecture and poetry had a profound influence on Western art. Works like the marble statue of David or his awe-inspiring ceiling for the Sistine Chapel, in the Vatican, cemented his status as one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance. Arguably, the only names that can come close are those of his rivals, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. So revered was he in his lifetime that he became known as ‘Il Divino’ (The Divine One). What was Michelangelo’s early life like? Michelangelo was born on 6 March 1475 in the small town of Caprese, Italy, not too far from Florence. He had quite a turbulent childhood. “His mother died when he was six,” says Renaissance historian Catherine Fletcher, who was speaking to HistoryExtra on this episode of our Life of the Week podcast series. “He spent some of his early life in the care of a nanny living near a marble quarry that his father owned.” Far from setting the young boy back, however, Fletcher suggests this upbringing in the town of Settignano may have been one of the factors that contributed to his later success. “Michelangelo went on to become a great sculptor in marble, having grown up seeing stone being cut and dug every day. It was a great start to his future life.” What are Michelangelo’s most famous works? Pietà, a marble sculpture of the grieving Virgin Mary holding the body of Jesus Christ, now in Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. It is the only piece that Michelangelo ever signed The statue of David, sculpted between 1501 and 1504 and depicting the Biblical figure of David. More than five metres tall, it is the centrepiece of the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence The Sistine Chapel ceiling, a monumental artwork of scenes from the Book of Genesis – most famously, The Creation of Adam – created in the Vatican chapel between 1508 and 1512 The Laurentian Library in Florence, commissioned in 1523 to hold the Medici family’s private collection. Construction began two years later, but the library would not be opened until 1571, after Michelangelo’s death The Last Judgment, an enormous fresco covering the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. The scenes of the Second Coming of Christ and God’s eternal judgement were added to accompany the ceiling between 1536 and 1541 The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, created in the pope’s official residence in Vatican City in the late 1540s. Showing the saint and first bishop of Rome being raised on to the cross, it is Michelangelo’s final fresco How did Michelangelo become an artist? As a boy, Michelangelo had the fortune of being sent to live in Florence, the heart of the Italian Renaissance. At 13, he was apprenticed to the leading Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio, who was already involved in painting the walls of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. “Michelangelo came to prominence very quickly within Ghirlandaio's workshop,” says Fletcher. “In fact, unusually for an apprentice, he started getting paid.” By the age of 15, a clearly gifted Michelangelo had been selected to attend an academy run by the city’s ruling Medici family. A prominent member was Lorenzo de' Medici, known as ‘the Magnificent’. This gave him access to the enviable Medici art collection, as well as a powerful patron. Read more | “They were on a level with today’s billionaires” – your guide to the Medici: bankers to the Pope, rulers of Florence, patrons of the Renaissance “Lorenzo wasn't officially the lord or the duke of the city,” Fletcher notes. “This is an important detail, because the relationship with the Medici became a matter of contention later on in Michelangelo's career. But the Medici were massive patrons of art, and really important in creating Florence’s cultural environment.” While studying philosophy and the humanities at the Platonic Academy, Michelangelo also began sculpting. It was there that he created two stunning marble panels that demonstrated his skill even at an early age. Shortly afterwards, however, Lorenzo’s death in 1492 signalled a turning point in Michelangelo’s life. Amid the political upheavals of the coming years, he headed first to Venice and then Bologna, intermittently returning to Florence. In June 1496, he travelled to Rome and took a commission from a cardinal for a statue of the ancient Roman god of wine, Bacchus. This was followed by his Pietà, which he had finished by the age of 24. Hailed as a masterpiece, but Michelangelo supposedly heard someone credit another artist with the piece, and so added his name to the sash running across Mary’s chest. How did Michelangelo create the statue of David? Having relocated to Florence in 1499 now a famous artist, Michelangelo was approached to complete a huge statue of the Biblical figure David. It had originally been commissioned 40 years earlier as part of a series of statues intended for the Florence Cathedral, but had gone through a number of sculptors without much progress. “At this point, a huge block of marble had been lying around and worked on a bit, but [was mostly] sitting there… trying to find somebody to do something with it,” says Fletcher. “Michelangelo had made his reputation with the incredible Pietà statue, so he got the job.” Created between 1501 and 1504. Michelangelo’s David is considered a Renaissance masterpiece. He did a huge amount of preparation to sculpt the statue out of the colossal block of marble, known as ‘the giant’, and the work required an enormous scaffold. “The way he worked was very precise,” Fletcher says. “This wasn’t something you could just dive in and sculpt directly: there was a lot of drawing and planning with models in advance. Eventually, Michelangelo was so keen to get it right that he [began] making his own tools. He wasn’t going to go into a shop and buy a chisel; he was going to sort out his own tools to do the sculpting.” The finished David stood at 5.18 metres (17ft) tall. “Of course, it was too heavy to go on the roof where it was meant to go, so there was then an argument about where they were going to put it.” It was eventually decided that David should stand in Florence’s main square, outside the Palazzo della Signoria (now known as Palazzo Vecchio), which was the headquarters of the ruling body of the Republic of Florence. Did Michelangelo’s David suggest dislike of the Medici family? The subject of Michelangelo’s marble statue was the Biblical figure of David, who as a young Israelite shepherd defeated a giant named Goliath in single combat, using nothing but a sling and a stone. “The statue was very important in the iconography of Florence at the time: it represented the city’s liberty,” says Fletcher. “In the political context, you can see that it was actually a critique of the Medici and their foreign backers, because they were the tyrants who wanted to come and take over the city.” From the beginning, David was a symbol of freedom and liberty, and for the Florentine Republic. “And, as lots of other countries around the world fought for freedom and liberty and for their own republics against the monarchy, this example of Florence and its fight against the Medici had real political importance,” Fletcher adds. Were Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci rivals? The two great artists first encountered each other in 1504, when Leonardo da Vinci was asked to join the committee tasked with deciding where Michelangelo’s David should be placed. Despite being from different generations, a rivalry flourished between them. Over the years, Michelangelo and Leonard continued to be aware of each other’s work. When Michelangelo was asked in 1549 about the long-standing debate about the ranking of the various arts, he wrote: “As to that man [Leonardo] who wrote saying that painting was more noble than sculpture, if he had known as much about the other subjects on which he has written, why my serving maid could have written better!”. Read more | Leonardo & Michelangelo: rivalry and inspiration Yet beyond the rivalry, the two men had a more complex relationship, and they would influence and push each other throughout their careers. What did Michelangelo paint in the Sistine Chapel? Following the success of David, Michelangelo was increasingly called upon to work on large-scale projects. Pope Julius II invited the artist to Rome to create 40 life-sized statues for his elaborate tomb. Commissioned in 1505, the project dragged on for four decades as Michelangelo regularly turned his attention to other works. The most significant of these would undoubtedly be the two frescoes created for the Sistine Chapel: on the ceiling, between 1508 and 1512, and The Last Judgment, from 1536 to 1541. The Sistine Chapel ceiling, especially, is one of the most iconic works of Renaissance art. It includes the instantly recognisable image of God reaching out to touch Adam, which is in the centre of eight other scenes from the Book of Genesis and figures from classical mythology. It was a mammoth undertaking. “It does seem to have been a very, very tough piece of work to do,” says Fletcher. “Michelangelo himself describes coming out of it being bent like a bow.” Fletcher addresses the debate about the degree to which Michelangelo had assistance. “In one of the documents [from the period], we get the sense that he did hire 12 assistants. But then there's a question of what he actually allowed [them to do], because he was a bit of a micromanager.” What do we know about Michelangelo’s sexuality and personal life? Since Michelangelo’s life was largely solitary, it remains difficult to confirm his sexuality, admits Fletcher. “He didn't have anyone with whom he was at all romantically connected until quite a lot later in his life.” It was then that we know he wrote an extensive sequence of sonnets to a much younger man, an Italian noble named Tommaso dei Cavalieri. “As with any historic same-sex relationship, people always ask whether they were actually a couple or just friends,” says Fletcher. “In this case you have to decide whether the sense of attraction in the sonnets was enough to outweigh the religious belief that sodomy was a sin.” But Fletcher does argue that the erotic nature of the sonnets that Michelangelo wrote does suggest that he was sexually attracted to men. How did Michelangelo die? Michelangelo died following a brief illness in Rome on 18 February 1564, at the age of 88. He had been working on a sculpture, the Rondanini Pietà, just six days earlier. In his last two decades, he had focussed more on architecture, most notably working to complete St Peter’s Basilica. Where is Michelangelo buried? Rather than being buried in Rome, Michelangelo was laid to rest in the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence. This holds a pantheon of famous Florentine and Italian people, big monuments for Machiavelli and, later, Galileo Galilei. “And there was Michelangelo, back in his home city of Florence,” says Fletcher. “I think this says something about his attachment to it, even though he didn’t live there for much of his later life.”