Category Archives: Heritage

Firefighters in Sicily rescue 400 rare library books from precipice after landslide

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Landslide in Niscemi in January tore away entire slope of town and carved 4km chasm

Firefighters in Sicily have rescued about 400 rare books from a library in Niscemi that hangs on the edge of a mudflow, after a devastating landslide in January tore away an entire slope of the town and carved a 4km chasm.

The library stands on the lip of the precipice gouged out by the landslide, with part of the building in effect hanging in mid-air. The recovery operation, which began on Monday, was preceded by a detailed study of floor plans and interior photographs to map the position of the books.

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Firefighters in Sicily rescue 400 rare library books from precipice after landslide

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Landslide in Niscemi in January tore away entire slope of town and carved 4km chasm

Firefighters in Sicily have rescued about 400 rare books from a library in Niscemi that hangs on the edge of a mudflow, after a devastating landslide in January tore away an entire slope of the town and carved a 4km chasm.

The library stands on the lip of the precipice gouged out by the landslide, with part of the building in effect hanging in mid-air. The recovery operation, which began on Monday, was preceded by a detailed study of floor plans and interior photographs to map the position of the books.

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Royal Artillery under fire after denying access to looted Asante treasure

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‘Extraordinary’ golden lamb’s head pillaged in 1874 from what is now Ghana remains hidden in officers’ mess

The Royal Artillery is facing criticism after it emerged they are refusing public access to an “extraordinary object” looted by the British army in the 19th century from the Asante people in modern-day Ghana.

The glistening golden ram’s head would seemingly be worthy of any museum, but it remains hidden within the regiment’s mess at Larkhill in Wiltshire.

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Rare bronze and iron age log boats reveal details of Cambridgeshire prehistory

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Well-preserved oak and maple boats used for transport and fishing to be displayed in Peterborough

After lying undisturbed in mud for more than 3,000 years, three rare bronze and iron age log boats have emerged to offer fresh insights into prehistoric life.

The boats were among nine discovered in a Cambridgeshire quarry 13 years ago – the largest group of prehistoric boats found in the same UK site. Most were well preserved, with one still able to float despite its long incarceration.

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Bad Bridgets podcast about crime among Irish women in US inspires film

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Margot Robbie’s company to make movie based on Northern Ireland academics’ stories of poverty and prison

It started as a trawl of dusty archives for an academic project about female Irish emigrants in Canada and the US by two history professors, a worthy but perhaps niche topic for research.

The subjects, after all, were human flotsam from Ireland’s diaspora whose existence was often barely recorded, let alone remembered.

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Garden shed of vaccine pioneer Edward Jenner added to heritage at risk register

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Hut where father of immunology trialled first smallpox vaccine among 138 additions to Historic England list

A rustic, ordinary-looking English garden hut regarded as the birthplace of immunology – revolutionising global public health and saving countless lives – has been added to the nation’s heritage at risk register.

The hut belonged to Edward Jenner (1749-1823, regarded as someone who has saved more lives than any other human. It was there that he first trialled a vaccine for smallpox in the late 18th century.

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Rome: worker trapped and one injured after part of medieval tower collapses

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Three others rescued at the Torre dei Conti, which was undergoing restoration works

A medieval tower in central Rome has partly collapsed twice during renovations, injuring one worker and trapping another.

Falling debris from the initial collapse of the Torre dei Conti, just after 11.30am (0930 GMT), close to the Roman Forum ruins, hit a 64-year-old worker, the Ansa news agency reported. He was taken to San Giovanni hospital in a critical condition although Francesco Rocca, Lazio’s regional president, said his injuries were not life threatening.

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Egypt’s vast $1bn museum to open in Cairo after two-decade build

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Grand Egyptian Museum next to pyramids of Giza billed as world’s largest archaeological facility for single civilisation

A vast $1bn museum billed as the world’s largest archaeological facility dedicated to a single civilisation will open outside Cairo on Saturday, after countless delays over the course of its two-decade construction.

The Grand Egyptian Museum, located a mile away from the pyramids of Giza, covers an area of 470,000 sq metres. The complex was announced in 1992 but it was not until 2005 that construction began. Some areas of the museum opened in a soft launch in 2024.

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Bronze age gold jewellery stolen in raid on St Fagans museum in Cardiff

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South Wales police issue public appeal for information after burglary at one of Wales’s most beloved museums

Raiders have broken into one of Wales’s most beloved museums and stolen gold jewellery from the bronze age.

Staff at St Fagans National Museum of History in Cardiff said its “Wales is …” gallery was specifically targeted in the burglary, which was discovered in the early hours of Monday.

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New research may rewrite origins of the Book of Kells, says academic

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Exclusive: Author challenges assumption monks on Iona created manuscript, instead positing its origins are Pictish

The Book of Kells was likely to have been created 1,200 years ago in Pictish eastern Scotland, rather than on the island of Iona, according to research that challenges long-held assumptions about one of the world’s most famous medieval manuscripts.

The Book of Kells is an intricate, illuminated account of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that was long thought to have been started in the late eighth century at the monastery on Iona before being taken in the 9th century to the monastery of Kells in County Meath, Ireland, after a Viking raid.

The Book of Kells by Victoria Whitworth (Bloomsbury Publishing, £35). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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Archaeologists scramble to evacuate Gaza artefacts threatened by Israeli strike

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Officials hurriedly remove nearly three decades of finds in ‘high-risk operation’

An official in charge of nearly three decades of archaeological finds in Gaza has described how the artefacts were hurriedly evacuated from a Gaza City building threatened by an Israeli strike.

“This was a high-risk operation, carried out in an extremely dangerous context for everyone involved – a real last-minute rescue,” said Olivier Poquillon, director of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF), which housed the relics.

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Old master painting looted by Nazis disappears from home in Argentina

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Search for artwork seen in estate agent’s photo continues after police raid on house finds tapestry hanging in its place

Argentinian police have said they will continue hunting for an old master painting looted by the Nazis and spotted by chance in an estate agent’s listing after a search of the property in the seaside town of Mar del Plata failed to uncover the work.

“The painting is not in the house … but we’re going to keep searching for it,” the federal prosecutor Carlos Martínez told local media. He said items that could be useful for the investigation, including two firearms, engravings and prints, had been seized.

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Old master painting looted by Nazis spotted in Argentinian property listing

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Dutch newspaper AD says it has traced Giuseppe Ghislandi’s Portrait of a Lady to house near Buenos Aires

More than 80 years after it was looted by the Nazis from a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam, a portrait by an Italian master has been spotted on the website of an estate agent advertising a house for sale in Argentina.

A photo shows the painting, Portrait of a Lady (Contessa Colleoni) by the late-baroque portraitist Giuseppe Ghislandi, also known as Fra’ Galgario, hanging above a sofa in the living room of the property, in a seaside town near Buenos Aires.

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The ‘big church move’: Swedish town begins to roll historic building 5km

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Kiruna Kyrka’s slow journey is part of effort to stop town being swallowed by Europe’s biggest underground mine

After eight years of planning, a cost of more than 500m kronor (£39m) and an early morning blessing, a church in northern Sweden began a slow-motion 5km journey on Tuesday to make way for the expansion of Europe’s biggest underground mine.

The 672-tonne Kiruna Kyrka, a Swedish Lutheran church inaugurated in 1912, is to be slowly rolled to its new home over two days, at a pace of half-a-kilometre an hour.

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Ancient manuscripts return to Timbuktu 13 years after jihadist takeover

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Malian city welcomes return of hundreds of crates of treasures after more than a decade stored in capital Bamako

Political and religious figures in Malian city of Timbuktu have welcomed the return of ancient manuscripts that were removed to the capital, Bamako, more than a decade ago to prevent them from falling into the hands of militants linked to al-Qaida.

According to a UN expert mission, jihadists destroyed more than 4,000 manuscripts and as many as nine mausoleums after occupying the desert city in 2012. Workers at the state-run Ahmed Baba Institute used rice sacks to smuggle the remaining documents out of the city a number of ways, including by donkey cart and motorcycle.

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Sticky end? The British pudding faces extinction, English Heritage warns

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Not just boiled or steamed desserts in danger, charity finds, households also rarely make fruit pies and crumbles

At the end of the 17th century a French travel writer who crossed the Channel was clearly impressed by the sweet, comforting treats offered to him, declaring with relish: “Ah! What an excellent thing is an English pudding!”

More than three centuries on, English Heritage has sounded the alarm that the good old British pudding is facing extinction.

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Homes of ‘working-class Romans’ discovered during Rome metro dig

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Experts say the relics at Piazza Venezia appear to resemble a multistorey complex of homes and shops

The remains of homes believed to have been lived in by working-class people around the time of the early Roman empire have been found by workers building an underground station in the city’s historic centre.

The relics are the first to emerge from beneath the bustling Piazza Venezia since work began in 2023 on the station that will form part of the Italian capital’s Metro C underground line.

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Neolithic long cairn in Yorkshire given extra protection after walkers remove stones

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Dudderhouse Hill in dales is thought to be one of first structures in UK to be communally constructed by humans

A rare and remarkable 5,000-year-old monument that is an example of one of the earliest visible structures in England is to receive extra protection because walkers, sometimes innocently, have been removing and moving stones.

The Dudderhouse Hill long cairn in the Yorkshire Dales has been granted “scheduled monument” status by the government, making it a site of national importance with greater legal protection.

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‘Now or never’ to save replica of American revolutionary war vessel, say French campaigners

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Fresh plea for funds to repair €26m copy of frigate that carried Louis XVI’s promise of aid in war of independence

French maritime enthusiasts are battling to save a replica of an 18th-century warship that became a symbol of the country’s historic relationship with America.

The copy of L’Hermione, a three-mast, 32-gun frigate that carried the Marquis de Lafayette across the Atlantic to announce France’s support for American independence from Great Britain in the revolutionary war, has been in dry dock at Anglet, near Bayonne, since its oak hull was found to be riddled with fungus four years ago.

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Pioneering project releases more lost Irish records spanning 700 years

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Newly restored material from vast archive destroyed in civil war takes in Anglo-Norman conquest and 1798 rebellion

Seven centuries of lost historical records covering espionage, political corruption and the lives of ordinary people in Ireland have been recovered and are being released.

A pioneering project to fill gaps in Irish history is making 175,000 more records and millions more words of searchable content freely available to researchers and members of the public.

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