Category Archives: Heritage

‘Like knocking down the Eiffel tower’: battle to save historic Prague bridge

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A plan from Czech railways to replace the emblematic landmark with a modern structure is facing an impassioned backlash

A historic Prague railway bridge, whose importance to the city’s landscape has been compared to the Eiffel tower in Paris, has been earmarked for demolition in a move denounced by architects and preservationists.

The much-photographed Vyšehrad bridge – instantly recognisable for its parabolic lattice steel structure – is unfit to carry an anticipated rising volume of rail traffic, claims Czech Railways, which plans to replace it with a modern structure.

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US-born princess vows to stay in Rome villa despite eviction order

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Saga continues over property housing Caravaggio’s only ceiling fresco as fifth auction fails to attract bids

A princess living in a villa in Rome that contains the only ceiling fresco ever painted by Caravaggio has said she would “vigorously defend” her right to stay in the sprawling property after a judge ordered her eviction.

The US-born Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, the only occupant of the 16th-century Villa Aurora, has been embroiled in a long-running inheritance dispute with the three sons of her late husband, Prince Nicolò Boncompagni Ludovisi, who was the property’s last owner.

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C of E’s historic slavery fund – worth £100m but how far will it stretch across communities?

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Clerical leaders hope for ‘lasting legacy’ to serve places affected by past slavery trade, but fund may spread thinly across all of west Africa and Caribbean

The Church of England’s decision to set up a £100m fund for communities adversely affected by historic slavery is the latest – and biggest – step it has taken over the past few years to “address past wrongs” relating to its links to the slave trade.

The report on the origins of the C of E’s healthy £9bn-plus endowment fund correctly describes the 17th century slave trade as “abhorrent” and a source of misery and injustice.

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Is Iceland’s language a Norse code – or legacy of Celtic settlers?

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Gaelic origins of Icelandic words and landmarks challenge orthodox view of Viking heritage, says author

According to folklore, a Gaelic-speaking warrior queen called Aud was among Iceland’s earliest settlers. Her story is central to an emerging theory that Scottish and Irish Celts played a far bigger role in Iceland’s history than realised.

A book by Thorvaldur Fridriksson, an Icelandic archaeologist and journalist, argues that Gaelic-speaking Celtic settlers from Ireland and western Scotland had a profound impact on the Icelandic language, landscape and early literature.

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Pope Francis orders Parthenon marbles held by Vatican be returned to Greece

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Three 2,500-year-old pieces will be ‘donated’ to Greece’s Archbishop Ieronymos II amid wider conversation about future of Parthenon marbles held by Britain

Pope Francis has decided to return to Greece three 2,500-year-old pieces of the Parthenon that have been in the papal collections of the Vatican Museums for two centuries.

The Vatican said in a brief statement that the pope was giving them to Archbishop Ieronymos II, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church and Greece’s spiritual leader, as a “donation” and “a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth”.

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German police recover 31 items stolen in 2019 Dresden jewel heist

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‘Considerable portion’ of priceless treasures from Green Vault museum recovered amid trial of suspects

German authorities said they have found a “considerable portion” of items stolen in a spectacular 2019 robbery of priceless 18th-century jewels from a state museum.

The authorities retrieved 31 individual items in the capital, Berlin, the police and prosecutors said.

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British Museum hints at ‘complete reimagination’ and a net zero carbon future

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Chair of the museum, George Osborne, says it no longer wants to be a ‘destination for climate protest’

The future for the British Museum could be very different indeed. That was the message from the organisation’s chair George Osborne in his annual speech to Trustees last month, in which he announced a “complete reimagination” of the museum, under a billion-pound masterplan that will be revealed next year.

Among the hints of potential loans of its exhibits, leading to further speculation over the Parthenon marbles, was one explicit promise on energy. “Our goal is to be a net zero carbon museum,” said Osborne, “no longer a destination for climate protest but instead an example of climate solution”.

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No 10 rules out law change for return of Parthenon marbles

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No plans to amend legislation that could stop removal back to Greece, after secret talks held over their future

Rishi Sunak has ruled out changing a law that could prevent the British Museum from handing the Parthenon marbles back to Greece, after it emerged that trustees have held secret talks with the Greek prime minister about the future of the artefacts.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson said there were no plans to amend legislation under which a museum can dispose of objects within its collection only in very limited circumstances. However, it could decide to lend part of the collection to Greece.

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Greece in ‘preliminary’ talks with British Museum about Parthenon marbles

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Officials say they have met with George Osborne, and are keen to see the masterpieces back in Athens

Senior Greek officials have been in “preliminary” talks with the British Museum in what could amount to a tectonic shift in resolving the world’s longest-running cultural dispute: the repatriation of the 5th-century BC Parthenon marbles to Athens.

Revelations about the negotiations were first reported on Saturday by Ta Nea, which said that officials including the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, had met George Osborne, the chair of the British Museum, in a five-star London hotel as recently as Monday.

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Ancient barn conversion with steam room found at Roman villa in Rutland

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Fresh evidence of owners’ lavish lifestyle discovered at same site as rare Iliad mosaic

If you thought barn conversions were a relatively recent development for the property-owning classes, you’d be wrong – probably by 16 or 17 centuries.

Archaeologists at the site of a Roman villa complex in the east Midlands have discovered that its wealthy owners converted an agricultural timber barn into a dwelling featuring a bathing suite with a hot steam room, a warm room and a cold plunge pool.

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French team to build replica of William the Conqueror’s warship

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Viking-style vessel is based on the one that launched invasion of England in 1066 and its makers hope to sail it across Channel

On 27 September 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, set sail in La Mora, the flagship of a huge fleet that would invade and conquer England. Now a historical society on France’s Normandy coast is going to re-create the ship that launched almost 1,000 years of cross-Channel enmity.

The Bayeux tapestry, a 70 metre-long (230ft) embroidered account of the Norman Conquest, depicts La Mora as a Viking-style longship with a striped red and gold sail flying the papal banner on its masthead. On board was William, his most trusted knights, their entourage and horses, and 60 oarsmen.

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‘It’s as if we found oil’: Tuscan town savours discovery of spa trove

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San Casciano dei Bagni’s fortunes expected to change after opulent Etruscan-Roman sanctuary found

Since she was a child, Martina Canuti has been venturing down the steep hill flanking the Tuscan town of San Casciano dei Bagni, known by residents as “the sacred mountain”, to take a dip in the two ancient hot springs famed for their therapeutic benefits.

Little did she know that just a few metres away lay a sanctuary built by the Etruscans in the second century BC, containing a trove of treasures that could now reverse the fortunes of this relatively isolated town of 1,400 inhabitants near Siena.

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Digital Benin project reunites bronzes looted by British soldiers

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Comprehensive database of Benin bronzes held by museums raises questions about where they belong

Cheerfully gnashing their magnificent fangs as they stand side by side, the two bronze leopards look back on a journey that was as adventurous as it was cruelly absurd.

Looted by British soldiers on a punitive expedition to the west African kingdom of Benin in 1897, the bronzes were shipped to the UK, where they spent some time guarding the fireplace of army captain George William Neville’s Weybridge home. They were later put in display at Moma in New York and bought by a French art collector – who eventually sold them back to the colonial administration in Lagos in 1952 with a considerable mark-up.

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John Singer Sargent sketch to return to National Trust house where it was created

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Oil sketch of Elsie Palmer to go on display at Ightham Mote in Kent after being acquired by trust

An oil sketch by John Singer Sargent of one of his most famous models will be returned to the English country house where it was painted after being acquired by the National Trust.

Sargent’s sketch of Elsie Palmer, which was done in preparation for his masterpiece A Lady in White, will go on display at Ightham Mote in Kent, where the Palmer family lived and hosted artistic and literary gatherings for the likes of the actor Ellen Terry and the novelist Henry James in the late 1890s.

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‘Holy moly!’ drought-hit Mississippi River reveals 19th-century trading ship

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Baton Rouge resident Patrick Ford discovers sunken Brookhill trading ship as lack of rainfall creates record-low water levels

Remains of a 19th-century ship were found in Louisiana’s capital as widespread drought creates record-low water levels in the Mississippi River.

Baton Rouge resident Patrick Ford discovered the trading ship during one of his daily searches of the Mississippi riverfront for artifacts, the local news station WBRZ reported.

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NSW redevelopment plan poses ‘very real threat’ to Sydney’s Central station, National Trust says

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The Trust’s state conservation director wrote letters to the public and organisations citing concerns over the plan’s scale and impact

The National Trust has criticised the New South Wales government’s plan to revamp and reimagine Sydney’s Central station, claiming that the scheme “presents a genuine and very real threat to Australia’s greatest station”.

The trust’s NSW conservation director, David Burdon, wrote to members of the public and organisations for “help in saving the iconic Sydney Central station”, citing concerns over the scale and impact of the plan that would build over a portion of the heritage-listed site.

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English Heritage to host ghost story tours at five monasteries

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Tours at sites in north of England aim to be academically rigorous and shed light on the ruins’ deeper histories

“It is autumnal isn’t it, you can feel the death and decay,” said the clearly delighted historian Michael Carter as he prepared to embark on a new venture at some of England’s most spectacular and atmospheric ruins.

English Heritage will this weekend begin a new series of ghost story tours at five of its northern monasteries.

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Tintagel among castles at risk unless England can hold back the tide

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English Heritage identifies six most vulnerable sites as climate change intensifies coastal erosion

The wonderful wildness of the spot, a rocky Cornish headland pounded relentlessly by Atlantic breakers, has inspired poets, artists and dreamers for many a century.

But Tintagel, immortalised in British mythology as the place of King Arthur’s conception, is one of a string of castles at risk of tumbling into the sea as climate change increases the pace of coastal erosion.

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Posties’ paths: Britons who delivered mail by foot sought for new book

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Author Alan Cleaver collecting stories of rural postal workers who walked miles each week, and the routes they took

The last surviving rural postal workers who delivered mail by foot are being sought for a forthcoming book celebrating their lives and mapping their often arduous daily journeys.

Delivering mail by foot ended in the countryside in 1970 with the adoption of postal vans, and it is now feared that the postal paths and the history of those who trod them are disappearing from living memory.

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Volunteers sail Roman boat replica along Danube to Budapest

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Boat built by Friedrich-Alexander University as part of EU-funded history project visits Hungary’s capital

A replica of a Roman-era boat of the kind that once sailed along the Danube from Germany to the river’s delta at the Black Sea is cruising in Hungary this week, stopping along its journey in the Hungarian capital, Budapest.

The Danuvia Alacris is crewed by volunteers wearing Roman tunics and the expedition is part of an EU-funded project to raise awareness of the region’s Roman past.

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