Fascinating photos of abandoned Italian churches

A look at some of the world's most unique churches

From a skeleton-adorned church in the Czech Republic to wooden churches built without nails in Russia, this video explores some of Christianity's most intriguing architectural feats. These places of worship were built in remote areas throughout history, and show amazing innovation. See a fascinating glimpse into the overlooked structures, along with stories of how and why they came to be.

Photographing abandoned structures in the southeastern US

Leland Kent is a photographer and historian who has captured hundreds of buildings across the southeast United States over the last 10 years in order to preserve the past before it's too late. His subjects include decommissioned power plants, closed youth jails, vacant plantation homes, and more, and he has published several city-focused books. Get lost in Kent's dramatic portrayals of once-lively structures in this extensive and gripping gallery.

The art and architecture of the devastated Pompeii

Long buried under feet of ash, the city of Pompeii's discovery millennia later sparked a world of imagination and tragedy. See a collection of paintings, buildings, and photographs from the city all in one easy-to-browse gallery.

Wildlife use Rome's sprawling archaeological sites as urban havens

The Italian capital features some of the world's most famous monuments as the inheritor of ancient Rome's grandeur. This photo essay explores the city's vibrant collection of wildlife, including long-concealed native crabs, peregrine falcons, and the beaver-like nutria.

'Ghost towns' are rarely known for ghost sightings

Instead, they're places an industry has abandoned, leaving many of the town's buildings decrepit and abandoned. That doesn't mean they're completely empty; some folks prefer the pace and look of ghost towns, which often lean into their Old West aesthetics. The Vox documentary explores ghost towns in Nevada, which is home to more than 600.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

Abandoned malls prompt 'liminal' vibes of being stuck in time

A Toronto-area tour of empty malls brings participants face-to-face with the past. Part nostalgia, part archaeology, this meditation on the "liminal" spaces of a bygone era provokes eerie reflections on our relationship to time and place.

The Chora Church, the height of Byzantine art

The Palaeologan Renaissance took place in the final centuries of Byzantium, and in the face of steep political and economic decline. Perhaps the movement’s most famous artistic product is the Chora Church in Istanbul. Renovated in the early fourteenth century by Theodore Metochites, a learned court official, the church features remarkably vibrant mosaics and frescoes. Although the building was recently reconverted into a mosque, most of its decorations are still visible.

Some of the oldest photographs in the world

Scholar and artist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey ventured around the Mediterranean with some of the earliest photographic equipment in tow. He captured hundreds of images during his tour of Rome, Venice, Cairo, and more, in what would become...

Leaning Italian tower could fall after nine centuries

Italian officials have secured the area around one of two 12th Century towers in Bologna, fearing its leaning could lead to collapse. Could it fall? Read up on the city's efforts to secure it here.

A gallery of places without addresses on Google Street View

Google Street View records billions of images of streets across the world. Within those photos are many "unplaces," locations that appear to have some purpose or former history but do not have an address. This site curates some of those images and seeks further information from users. You can peruse the odd, fascinating locations spread across both rural and urban areas.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

See the winning photos from a major European nature photography contest

Selected from nearly 9,000 submissions by 546 photographers across 15 countries, the honored images range from clashing Alpine ibexes to a wolf feeding on flower nectar, captured by the grand prize winner, 20-year-old Luca Lorenz.

A virtual visit to La Sagrada Família

La Sagrada Familia is Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí’s magnum opus. The ornate Catholic church has been under construction since 1882, and the main structure isn’t expected to be completed until 2026. Decorative detailing won’t be finished until 2034. Even though it’s a work-in-progress, it’s open for tours, including from a computer screen. Click the link for a 360 view of the iconic church from 10 different vantage points.

Tombaroli steal precious items from ancient people's tombs in central Italy

The tombaroli, or tomb-robbers, raid ancient Etruscan tombs in the dark hours of the night to recover vases, statuettes, mirrors, ornaments, jewellery, and other objects in gold, bronze, and terracotta. Read a firsthand account of a tombarolo who made a living handing stolen items to middlemen who sold them to wealthy buyers abroad. The lives and practices of tombaroli are also explored in the 2023 film "La Chimera."

Explore the system of ancient Roman roads with this interactive

The Itiner-e map includes unpaved secondary roads that connected farms and towns to the empire's primary routes. Explore routes, view three-dimensional elevation, and compare the old roads to contemporary ones with this sprawling interactive project.

A medieval Italian visits Constantinople

In the tenth century, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I sent Liudprand of Cremona, an Italian bishop, to Constantinople on a diplomatic mission. He was not successful. But the very undiplomatic report he sent back to the emperor about his experiences provides a unique – and often very entertaining – look at life and ceremony in the Byzantine capital, dramatically different from anything in Liudprand’s Italy.

The ancient origins of focaccia

Focaccia, the Italian flat oven-baked bread that’s often a canvas for delightful culinary artwork, has been around for thousands of years. Archeologists have recently discovered evidence of flatbreads similar to today’s focaccia dating back to the Late Neolithic period in the Fertile Crescent. Researchers believe that communities from present-day Syria and Turkey made these distinctive loaves for large gatherings. Learn more about the bread’s history in this Archeology News article.

Monks and peasants once used cobwebs as canvases for painting

The tradition goes back to the 16th century, when the delicate canvases were hung in churches and cloisters. The difficulty in painting on the cobwebs was intended to illustrate one's devotion to their faith.

See the last known image of the Titanic afloat (1912)

Three days before the tragedy unfolded, this photo was taken by an Irish Jesuit priest who sailed with the ship for the first part of its journey from England to Ireland.

A list of the world's best pizzerias

Italy may be pizza's ancestral home, but it's not the only place where you can get a top-notch slice. This guide, compiled by a team of anonymous judges, ranks the 50 best pizzerias in the world, Italy, the US, and more, offering a bucket list for pizza-loving completists.

The claims that Jesus was buried in the Shroud of Turin, preserved since 1578

The 14-foot linen cloth bears a faint image of a crucified man and is the most scientifically studied relic in history. The core dispute hasn't moved much: 1988 radiocarbon dating placed it in the 13th-14th century, while defenders argue the sample was contaminated by medieval repairs. No one disputes that scientists can't explain how the image was formed, which acts like a photographic negative and has no trace of paint or dye.

The story behind the little Scottish village in the Italian Alps

High in the Italian Alps is Gurro, a small village with a distinct Scottish flair that can be found in its food, clothing, language, and music. At first glance, it may seem like a curiosity, but, as one resident explains in this short video documentary, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for how an Italian town became known as a Scottish hamlet.

The mystery of Sandby Borg: an Iron Age massacre

Sandby Borg, Sweden, was the site of a 5th-century slaughter where victims were left to rot where they fell. This article details how scientists are working to solve the prehistoric murder mystery and find out what happened to the Sandby Borg...

The land where Greece's ancient language survives

In a remote corner of Turkey, locals speak Romeyka, a language with no written form and an "impressive" similarity to ancient Greek. This article details how the language may have survived and highlights the roughly 5,000 Romeyka speakers in the area. Research shows that Romeyka bears a startling resemblance to the Koine Greek spoken at the height of ancient Greek influence between fourth century BCE and fourth century CE.

How Lucia Moholy's photography captured the Bauhaus aesthetic

The photographer was one of the few affiliated with the school who photographed its locations, documenting the modern style long after the Nazis had driven its artists from Germany. This podcast episode explores why she went uncredited for so many years.

Spanish Colonial Revival favors red clay roofs, white stucco, decorative ironwork

The style recalls the motifs of structures in both Europe and in colonial Spain. Beyond clay roofs and stucco, the design also showcases arches and arcades, painted tiles, towers, and more.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

The first horror movie is believed to be George Méliès' 1986 short 'The Haunted Castle,' which pioneered the use of special effects

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

Corals are themselves not coral reefs—the term refers to the tiny marine invertebrates that build the rigid reef.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.