New designation of the Land of Standing-Up Rocks, known for its historic rock spires, passed with bipartisan support
An area of towering rock spires in south-eastern Arizona known among Native Americans as the Land of Standing-Up Rocks has become the nation’s newest national park.
Legislation to create Chiricahua national park was sent to the White House and Donald Trump signed it on Tuesday. It passed Congress with bipartisan backing and is now the 64th US national park.
Continue reading...Rights groups say the planned 1.4km route, which ends at compound run by far-right settler group Elad, will displace Palestinians and reshape the cultural landscape
A fifth foreign company has pulled out of a plan to build a cable car from West to East Jerusalem that threatens to involve the seizure of land and property rights from dozens of Palestinian families along its route, but local authorities insist the scheme is proceeding as planned.
The project appeared to have stalled for four years until late September, just weeks before Israel’s 27 October elections, when the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA) issued a notice of intent to award a contract without a public tender to ROPES, a cable car engineering consultancy based in South Tyrol, Italy.
Continue reading...Lyrical lines printed on side of city’s fleet of rubbish trucks now recognised as one of Netherlands’ proud traditions
It is best known for its rich migration history and striking modern architecture. But now the Dutch city of Rotterdam is seeking recognition for a rather different characteristic: its tradition of printing poetry on bin trucks.
Since a poetry festival first came up with the idea in 1988, lines of verse have been printed on all of the city’s waste vehicles. The practice was this week elevated to the status of intangible cultural heritage, with formal recognition from a Dutch body that guards the nation’s traditions.
Continue reading...Kyriakos Mitsotakis says his UK counterpart, Andy Burnham, has been supportive of restitution efforts in the past
The Greek prime minister has vowed to “ramp up” his country’s claims to get back the Parthenon marbles from the British Museum, emphasising that his UK counterpart, Andy Burnham, was hugely supportive of restitution efforts before he moved into Downing Street.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he would raise the issue in the strongest of terms when he met Burnham, who was culture secretary in a previous Labour government.
Continue reading...Greek PM hopes handover of Tsar Samuel to Bulgaria will persuade Britain that time has come for ‘truth, reason, justice and morality’
In a ceremony replete with the sort of fanfare usually reserved for great events, Greece and Bulgaria have formally exchanged “a treasury” of relics and bones, sealing a cultural deal negotiated over decades.
The handover involved priceless religious objects removed from Greece at the height of the first world war, as well as remains thought to belong to Tsar Samuel, Bulgaria’s revered medieval warrior ruler.
Continue reading...Community-funded archaeological excavations of ‘really important’ sixth-century monastery also rewrite story of Lismore
To the residents of the Scottish island of Lismore, population 190, history is never very far away. The tiny island near Oban in Argyll has no row of shops or even a pub – if islanders want to meet for a coffee, the only place to do so is in the lively Gaelic heritage centre that records the many centuries of community life on the island.
This quiet place, documentary evidence records, was home to a monastic settlement in the sixth century AD, when missionaries from Ireland were first moving into northern Britain to spread Christianity. But apart from a few fragments of an early carved cross, there was almost nothing to see from this period of history.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Restoration work at Bath Assembly Rooms unearths Roman ditches containing pottery, coins and fragments of a military helmet
The restoration of a Georgian building in Bath once frequented by Jane Austen has unexpectedly provided a tantalising glimpse into the life of the city’s Roman suburbanites.
A network of Roman ditches containing pottery, coins, glassware and a fragment of a military helmet has been found beneath Bath Assembly Rooms in the north of the city.
Continue reading...Monarch tells Emmanuel Macron at the British Museum in London that the two nations will share a future ‘woven together’ by history and shared values
The loan of the Bayeux tapestry was “the best possible symbol” of the “entente amicale” between France and the UK, King Charles said, as he visited the famous embroidered masterpiece at the British Museum in London.
Though the tapestry recounts a conflict, “here it is today, nearly 1,000 years later, as a precious symbol of trust, at a time when trust seems sadly to be in short supply between nations,” he said.
Continue reading...Police hunt two suspects after historic 200-carat piece is snatched from Austrian museum during opening hours
Austrian police are hunting two men alleged to have stolen a 200-carat platinum necklace encrusted with 673 diamonds that was on loan to a museum in Vienna and once belonged to Egyptian royalty.
Authorities in the capital released pictures of the suspects captured by security cameras during the heist at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK), amid a rash of spectacular smash-and-grab thefts from European cultural institutions.
Continue reading...Gold collection known as Treasure of Villena, worth at least €1.7m, is target of ‘very well planned’ raid
Thieves in Spain have raided the Treasure of Villena – a stunning collection of bronze age gold artefacts that has been described as the most important prehistoric trove in Europe – in the latest high-profile smash-and-grab heist on the continent.
The raid on Thursday morning of the 66 mostly gold objects in the Spanish town of Villena lasted just minutes, officials said.
Continue reading...The Light aims to bring art of international significance to north-east England
Works by Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen and Olafur Eliasson have gone on display at a new contemporary art gallery and museum in north-east England which aims to show works of international significance.
The Light is a £17m redevelopment of a museum in Durham that closed 10 years ago to considerable local uproar.
Continue reading...Meta chief executive paid roughly €20m for gothic-style mansion built in 1830 and its surroundings
It stretches the definition of pied-à-terre but Mark Zuckerberg now has a pad in Ireland: Strancally castle.
The Meta chief executive and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have bought the gothic-style mansion and its 178-hectare (440-acre) estate in county Waterford to use as a base during visits to Ireland.
Continue reading...Power cable linking UK and Ireland now passes near Bronze Age human burial remains instead of fictional grave on Welsh beach
Harry Potter fans have forced a new multimillion-pound power cable between the UK and Ireland to be relocated after complaining it would desecrate the “grave” of Dobby, a fictional elf.
The character was laid to rest on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, in the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Fans of the wizard series come to leave stones reading “Here Lies Dobby” despite being asked not to by the land owner, the National Trust, because the beach is an ecologically sensitive site.
Continue reading...Mythical home of the ancient Greek gods designated alongside the D-day landing beaches in Normandy
After a 12-year wait, Mount Olympus, the mythical home of the ancient Greek gods, has been inducted into a hall of more modern fame as Unesco announced it would be added to its world heritage list.
Greece’s highest mountain made the list alongside the second world war D-day landing beaches in northern France and the ancient Japanese capitals of Asuka and Fujiwara. South Sudan’s Boma-Badingilo landscape, host to one of the world’s largest land mammal migrations, also won a designation – a first for the east African country.
Continue reading...Jewellery made from BC Iran worn at Odyssey photocall throws spotlight on the trade of rare archeological finds
The Odyssey has stormed cinemas, but while its take on the Homeric epic has created ripples among western classicists, it is an actor’s earrings that have made waves further afield.
Zendaya, who portrays the goddess Athena in the movie, provoked outrage when she appeared at a London photocall wearing earrings that were allegedly made from Iranian artefacts dating back to the 1st millennium BC.
Continue reading...Medieval artwork safely delivered to British Museum before display from September in carefully controlled conditions
The Bayeux tapestry has survived myriad perils, from cathedral fires to its potential destruction for use as wagon covers. Now, with the embroidery about to be displayed in a blockbuster London exhibition, experts must contend with a host of more insidious dangers.
The arrival of the tapestry at the British Museum in the small hours of Friday morning was a historic moment – albeit less dramatic than the landing of William the Conqueror it portrays.
Continue reading...One of 11 surviving copies of ‘Exeter printing’ and only one known outside US was taken from American privateer ship
For Michael Scurr, a volunteer at the National Archives in Kew, west London, it was “just a boring old Thursday morning” when he sat down in late May to catalogue a collection of documents from the British national collection that had never previously been recorded in detail.
As he opened a volume of 18th-century Royal Navy correspondence, however, Scurr unfolded a document whose opening words he recognised. “In Congress, July 4, 1776. A declaration by the representatives of the United States of America …”
Continue reading...People flee historic district of ancient city after airstrikes hit residential areas and damage archaeological sites
Israel has bombed the city of Tyre, killing eight and injuring at least 32 people, and struck dozens of other villages in south Lebanon as it issued forced evacuation orders for the historic Christian quarter of the ancient city for the first time.
Israel struck the al-Masaken neighbourhood without warning on Tuesday morning, sending smoke plumes high above the city’s buildings and igniting fires. Further airstrikes were carried out across the city and a series of bombings hit Abbasieh, a village north of Tyre.
Continue reading...Bodies were buried in Happisburgh after HMS Invincible sank in 1801 on way to join Nelson at Battle of Copenhagen
A mass grave for 119 sailors who drowned more than 200 years ago could be exhumed to avoid their remains being exposed by coastal erosion.
HMS Invincible sank off the Norfolk coast in 1801 on its way to join Horatio Nelson’s fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen. The recovered bodies of those who drowned were buried at St Mary’s church in Happisburgh, the nearest village to the shipwreck.
Continue reading...Exclusive: First shipwrecks found in Nassau harbour on New Providence, once the hideout of Blackbeard and Calico Jack
The first shipwrecks linked to the real pirates of the Caribbean in the Bahamas have been discovered by an international team co-directed by a British marine archaeologist.
Blackbeard and Calico Jack Rackham were among pirates who, between the 1690s and 1720s, turned Nassau on the island of New Providence into a hideout where they plotted their next heists on the high seas and divided up their plunder.
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