A glimpse of the lost art of painted wooden synagogues popularized among Eastern European Jewish communities in the 17th and 18th centuries
ARCHES
The discovery of the Antikythera shipwreck was the first of a series of ancient shipwrecks to be identified in the Eastern Mediterranean over the course of the 20th century.
Underwater archaeology and the Antikythera Shipwreck
Learn why the Byzantines argued about images for over a century.
Byzantine Iconoclasm and the Triumph of Orthodoxy
The lasting effects of Napoleon's appropriations can still be observed today in churches and public buildings in Perugia, which remain bereft of the treasures that had once adorned them.
Napoleon’s appropriation of Italian cultural treasures
Bayt Farhi, a Sephardic palace in Ottoman Damascus, helps us to learn about the complex history of Damascus's Jewish quarter and ongoing challenges with contemporary restorations
Bayt Farhi, a Jewish house in Damascus
There are two sides to every story, and so it is here.
Fact and fiction: The explosion of ...
The Parthenon has echoed through history, but what part of that history do we prize, and which do we ignore?
Destruction, Memory, and Monuments: The Many Lives ...
Views of Rome have long fired human imagination, eliciting reactions that lead to contemplation and argue for conservation
Views of past and present: the Forum ...
The remains of thousands of enslaved New Yorkers lay below the streets, sidewalks, and towers of lower Manhattan
Unearthing New York’s history of slavery
Learn about the complex history of a 19th-century Kwakwaka'wakw belt and its relationship to Kwakwaka'wakw cultural revitalization, World's Fairs, and photographic manipulation.
Ceremonial belt (Kwakwaka’wakw)
Not all tangible cultural heritage is in need of preservation, and sometimes a community requires, even celebrates, the destruction of cultural objects.
Submerged, burned, and scattered: celebrating the destruction ...
Manuscripts have complex lives—learn about the mutilation, dispersal, and framing, of two important Iranian manuscripts
Making and Mutilating Manuscripts of the Shahnama
Alexander, the Mongols, and the great epic of Iran.
Folio from a Shahnama, The Bier of ...
Producing this lush miniature involved many Persian artists—and likely some familiarity with Chinese sources.
The Court of Gayumars
After a century in storage, this “Whale Rider” got a visit from his descendants—and received a token of their love.
Paikea at the American Museum of Natural ...
A tomb, a prison, the site of a miracle, papal apartments — this building has as many layers as Rome itself.
Rome’s layered history — the Castel Sant’Angelo
Ruins function as political and private symbols even in the modern era
The Roman Forum: Part 3, Ruins in ...
How can the destruction of an artifact also be an act of preservation?
Destruction as Preservation: Ai Weiwei’s Dropping a ...
We dread the loss of our culture even as we take it for granted
Blow it up: cultural heritage and film
The forgotten abattoir
Browse Smarthistory images for teaching & learning!
