Worn at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, the necklace has possible links to the downfall of Marie Antoinette
A mysterious diamond-laden necklace with possible links to a scandal that contributed to the downfall of Marie Antoinette has sold for $4.8m (£3.8m) at an auction in Geneva.
The 18th-century item of jewellery containing approximately 300 carats of diamonds had been estimated to sell at the Sotheby’s Royal and Noble Jewels sale for $1.8-2.8m.
Continue reading...Tickets to visit ruins buried by Mount Vesuvius, seen by 4 million this summer, to be capped at 20,000 a day
Pompeii plans to limit visitor numbers to 20,000 a day and introduce personalised tickets from next week in an effort to cope with overtourism and protect the world heritage site, officials said.
This summer, a record 4 million people visited the remains of the ancient Roman city, buried under ash and rock after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.
Continue reading...£4.3m hoard acquired for the nation by South West Heritage Trust will be displayed at British Museum next month
It began with a speculative trip to a soggy field in south-west England by a seven-strong band of metal detectorists more intent on figuring out how to use some new kit rather than unearthing anything of great historical importance.
But the friends came upon an astonishing hoard of coins – 2,584 silver pennies – from the time of the Norman conquest, which has been valued at £4.3m, making it the highest-value treasure find ever in England.
Continue reading...Bunker built in 1950s has no electricity or running water, but could be used as a wine cellar, auctioneer suggests
Online auctions are usually filled with fragile antiques and niche memorabilia that ought not to be touched. Those looking for something a bit more durable are now in luck.
An underground bunker with no running water or electricity but built to help survive a nuclear attack is to go on sale next month.
Continue reading...Researchers hope to uncover how people died and how diseases have developed over 1,000 years
Deep beneath the streets of Paris, the dead are having their last word. They are recounting 1,000 years of death in the city: how many are buried in the labyrinth of tunnels that make up Les Catacombes, what killed them and how the diseases that may have led to their demise have developed over the centuries.
In the first ever scientific study of the site, a team of archeologists, anthropologists, biologists and doctors is examining some of the skeletons of an estimated 5-6 million people whose bones were literally dumped down quarry shafts at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th.
Continue reading...Date for official opening still not announced for $1bn-plus mega-project more than a decade in the making
Egypt’s vast and much-delayed antiquities museum will partly open its main galleries on Wednesday, including 12 halls that exhibit aspects of ancient Egypt.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, a mega-project near the famed Giza pyramids that has cost considerably more than $1bn (£765m) so far, will open its halls to 4,000 visitors as a trial run until the official opening date, which is yet to be announced, according to Al-Tayeb Abbas, assistant to the minister of antiquities.
Continue reading...Building opened in 1904 and featured on Smiths album sleeve needs ‘urgent cash injection’ as grant income falls
Salford Lads Club, the youth centre immortalised by the Smiths on the sleeve of their third studio album The Queen Is Dead, is under threat of closure.
The rising costs of maintaining and running the Grade II-listed building, as well as a drop in grant funding, have left it with a shortfall of about £250,000.
Continue reading...Composite images of Endurance compiled from 25,000 digital scans mapped by underwater robots
More than a century after it sank below the icy Weddell Sea in Antarctica, forcing its crew to embark on one of the most celebrated survival quests in history, new images have revealed the remarkable state of preservation of Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance.
The famed vessel, which sank in 1915 after becoming stuck in pack ice, was discovered in 2022 resting at a depth of 3km below what Shackleton called “the worst portion of the worst sea in the world”.
Endurance will be at London film festival on 12 October, in UK cinemas on 14 October and on Disney+ later this year.
Continue reading...Enclosure older than Salisbury monument found under late novelist’s garden is given heritage protection
When the author Thomas Hardy was writing Tess of the D’Urbervilles in 1891, he chose to set the novel’s dramatic conclusion at Stonehenge, where Tess sleeps on one of the stones the night before she is arrested for murder.
What the author did not know, as he wrote in the study of his home, Max Gate in Dorchester, was that he was sitting right in the heart of a large henge-like enclosure that was even older than the famous monument on Salisbury Plain.
Continue reading...Some jewellery historians believe it features diamonds from infamous piece at centre of Marie Antoinette scandal
An antique diamond necklace worn at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation and may be linked to a French scandal involving Marie Antoinette could fetch as much as £2m at auction.
The necklace, made of 300 carats, was also worn to King George VI’s coronation by members of the Marquess of Anglesey family, who owned the diamonds until the 1960s when they sold them.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Ken Ludwig gives Shakespeare Birthplace Trust largest private donation in its 177-year history
The charity that cares for historic Shakespeare sites in Stratford-upon-Avon has received an unprecedented donation of £1m from the Olivier award-winning US playwright Ken Ludwig.
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) can now pay for crucial conservation work on Hall’s Croft, the home of Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna and her physician husband, John Hall, who is believed to have advised his father-in-law on medical matters.
Continue reading...Residents tell of ‘apocalyptic scenes’ after more than 60mm of rainfall falls on Italian capital in less than an hour
Lightning has struck the Constantine Arch near the Colosseum in Rome during a violent thunderstorm, breaking off fragments from the ancient structure, officials have said.
The fragments were immediately gathered and secured by workers at the Colosseum Archeological Park, authorities in the Italian capital said. The extent of the damage, which occurred on Tuesday, was being evaluated.
“The recovery work by technicians was timely. Our workers arrived immediately after the lightning strike. All of the fragments were recovered and secured,” the park said in a statement.
Rome was hit by a sudden and powerful storm that dumped more than 60mm of rain in less than an hour, equivalent to a month’s rainfall in autumn. The city’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, described it as a “downburst”.
Continue reading...First salvage expedition in years captures more than 2m high-resolution images of 1912 shipwreck
A bronze statue from the Titanic – not seen in decades and feared to be lost for good – is among the discoveries made by the company with salvage rights to the wreck site on its first expedition there in many years.
RMS Titanic Inc, a Georgia-based company that holds the legal rights to the 112-year-old wreck, has completed its first trip since 2010 and released images from the expedition on Monday. The pictures show a site that continues to change more than a century later.
Continue reading...Lidded vessel is star object in rich Galloway Hoard and came from silver mine in what is now Iran
It is a star object of the Galloway Hoard, the richest collection of Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland, buried in AD900 and unearthed in a field in Scotland. Now a lidded silver vessel has been identified as being of west Asian origin, transported halfway around the world more than 1,000 years ago.
When it emerged from the ground a decade ago, the vessel was still wrapped in its ancient textiles, whose survival is extremely rare. Its surface could be seen only through X-ray scans. Since then, the textiles have been partially removed and preserved and the vessel has had laser cleaning to remove green corrosion over much of its silver surface. It has also undergone scientific analysis.
Continue reading...Highway that consolidated Roman empire joins modernist Romanian sculptures as latest sites added to list
Italy’s Via Appia Antica, or Appian Way, the earliest and most important road built by the ancient Romans, has been named a Unesco world heritage site, making Italy the country with the world’s highest number of locations on the coveted list.
Known as the Regina Viarum, or Queen of Roads, it connected Rome with the port of Brindisi in the south and marked a revolution in the construction of roads.
Continue reading...Artefacts sent by farmer, who made the ‘absolutely mad’ discovery while cutting silage
When the national museum of Ireland received two 4,000-year-old axe heads, “thoughtfully” wrapped in foam inside a porridge box, from an anonymous source last month, it put out an appeal. The objects were “significant” and “exciting”, it said, but experts needed to know more about where exactly they had been found.
Now they have their answer: a farmer from County Westmeath has come forward as the mysterious sender, saying he made the “absolutely mad” discovery while using a metal detector on his land.
Continue reading...Cargo of vessel capsized near Sweden in 19th century also includes mineral water, say Polish divers
Divers have discovered a 19th-century shipwreck off the Swedish coast “loaded to the brim” with champagne.
The group, from Poland, were diving in the Baltic 20 nautical miles (37km) south of the island of Öland when they found the boat, believed to be a merchant vessel, by chance last week.
Continue reading...Amid calls to return antiquities, historian finds documents that reveal many were not result of imperial plunder
The British Museum boasts one of the biggest collections of Chinese antiquities in the west, but it has faced repeated calls to return them to China. Now historical documents reveal that many of the antiquities were acquired with the full cooperation of Chinese officials in the last century.
US historian Justin M Jacobs has unearthed evidence that shows the Chinese government “willingly and enthusiastically helped them remove these treasures from their lands” because they wanted closer ties with the west and appreciated new scholarship.
Continue reading...City authorities say blaze in spire contained after plume of smoke seen rising from 12th-century gothic building
Firefighters in the Normandy city of Rouen have managed to bring a fire in its world-famous gothic cathedral under control, calming fears of another disaster at one of France’s architectural jewels five years after the devastation of Notre Dame.
Initial television images showed a dark plume of smoke rising from the cathedral spire and people in the streets below looking up in horror.
Continue reading...Popular Dig Where You Stand project using Sheffield City Archives is bringing past to life in exhibitions around city
The word “archive” may usually conjure images of dusty boxes, white gloves and hushed silences. But a growing number of artists are finding that underneath the layers of protective paper there’s rich source material.
“Archives are like time travel,” says Désirée Reynolds, an artist in residence at Sheffield City Archives, who has been burrowing into the thousands of items in the northern city’s annals in search of black history since 2021.
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