HistoryExtra Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast 2026-10-16T15:54:00.000Z https://www.historyextra.com/topic/architecture/feed/atom Lauren Good <![CDATA[The country house at war]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-country-house-at-war/ 2026-10-16T15:54:00.000Z 2026-10-14T10:53:16.000Z It might be assumed that the owners of Britain's country houses weren't hugely affected by the Second World War, and that they continued to live in luxury in their vast estates. However, as Judith S Lewis explains to Lauren Good, that wasn't the case. From the conscription of upper-class women to stories of great loss, she charts the roles that country houses and their occupants really played in the war effort.

]]> Dan Jones <![CDATA[This Celtic castle was so terrifying that even the Romans were too scared to attack it]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/this-celtic-castle-was-so-terrifying-that-even-the-romans-were-too-scared-to-attack-it/ 2026-10-12T14:31:04.000Z 2026-10-12T14:30:52.000Z 1. Maiden Castle

This Dorset hillfort was a marvel of Iron Age engineering

In AD 43, Roman legions landed in Britannia on a mission to push the borders of their empire to the edge of the known world. They were not keen to go. Britannia was uncharted territory, inhabited by tribal peoples known for their ferocity in battle. Roman writers described how these ‘barbarians’ wore their hair and moustaches long, painted their skin blue, and were adept at guerrilla warfare, launching quick-fire ambushes then retreating to fortified hilltops that resisted assault. Today we know these lofty redoubts as hillforts.

Thousands of Iron Age hillforts were in use when the Romans arrived. One of the largest hillforts in Britain – indeed, across all of Europe – is known as Maiden Castle, a vast site in Dorset where the brutal reality of warfare can still be felt today.

Archaeologists have found evidence here showing that, on a hilltop some 130 metres above sea level, people of the Durotriges tribe built roundhouses, baked bread and made jewellery. To protect themselves, the Durotriges maintained huge stepped earthworks, begun in c600 BC and extended 200 years later, that hindered assailants ascending the hillside. They also designed complex, narrow approach routes and installed gatehouses to guard their huge compound. And they dug storage pits to hold the standard ammunition of the day: slingshots.

The slingshot, a simple weapon made from woven cord or leather, was used to hurl river pebbles or pieces of clay at adversaries. At least 30,000 of these smooth stones have been found buried at Maiden Castle, hinting at a time when an approaching enemy would have had to endure a vicious hail of shot to get anywhere near the hillfort’s fenced-off summit. The Roman historian Tacitus described how the great general Agricola had to march at the front of his men “to inspire [them] to march with equal courage” when they attacked tribal folk dug in on high ground.

If slingshots and earthworks failed to deter attackers, and fighting came to close quarters, it could be horrific. During the 1930s, the first major archaeological dig at Maiden Castle unearthed a ‘war cemetery’ containing dozens of skeletons dating from the two centuries before the Roman conquest. Many had been buried hastily, having suffered terrible injuries: cracked skulls, broken noses, shattered hands.

So hillforts were not invincible, but the Romans judged them impressive enough to take over several to be repurposed as barracks. By Tudor times, the sheer size of these hillforts, and the folk memories of the battles that had occurred around them, birthed a legend that it was on such a hilltop where King Arthur kept his court of Camelot.

2. Tower of London

How a gleaming projection of Norman domination became a potent emblem of the new regime’s power

When William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson at the battle of Hastings in 1066, it was said that the earth was “drenched in blood”. That clash marked the beginning of a brutal campaign of Norman colonisation in which the key piece of military technology was the castle.

Just weeks after Hastings, when William marched on London and accepted the terrified citizens’ surrender, one of his first actions was to install a wooden fortress in the city’s south-eastern corner, to keep watch over his new people and on traffic on the Thames. Over time, this timber sentry-point became the Tower of London: the world’s most famous castle.

The Normans were expert castle builders whose best-known fortification style was the motte-and-bailey castle. This consisted of a mound topped by a wood or stone tower – the motte – enclosed by a fence or wall surrounding the bailey, an area of protected land studded with outbuildings. The Bayeux Tapestry provides a vivid snapshot of such a fortress in action, showing the defenders of a castle at Dinan hurling spears at attackers from their tower, while the assailants try to set the castle on fire.

Given the threat that fire posed to wooden structures, stone was considered the best material for making durable castles. So, from 1078, William had the Tower of London rebuilt, its new walls incorporating creamy, gleaming stone quarried near the Norman city of Caen. The central building, now known as the White Tower, would have soared over the city. It was equipped with state-of-the-art facilities: a chapel, a water well and, of course, latrines that emptied out over the walls.

The Tower was built to garrison knights and project armed power and, as it expanded over the centuries, it retained its military function. However, like many of the scores of castles founded by the Normans in England and Wales, it quickly became more than just a base for troops who could ride out to impose discipline on the local area.

It was a residence, a prison and the site of executions. It housed a mint and a zoo. It was a storehouse for weapons and treasure including the crown jewels. Above all, it was a symbol of the new regime’s authority. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle summed this up in a gloomy line describing the first phase of the Conquest: “And they [the Normans] built castles widely throughout this nation, and oppressed the wretched people, and afterwards it always grew very much worse.”

• Read more | What's it like to be Ravenmaster at the Tower of London?

3. Krak des Chevaliers

A soaring crusader castle redefined fortresses for the ages

As Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade at Clermont in 1095, he can scarcely have had an inkling of the events he was setting in train. Over half a millennium, crusading reshaped medieval Christianity and created a new geopolitics across Europe and the eastern Mediterranean. It also gave rise to a monumental new age in castle-building.

The finest castles of the crusader states established in the near east were built by the military orders: the Knights Templar and Hospitaller. Handed responsibility for protecting the Holy Land after the Third Crusade, in the 13th century they constructed fortresses on a vast scale, with cutting-edge designs.

Structures such as Krak des Chevaliers (literally ‘Fortress of the Knights’), built by the Hospitallers on a 650-metre-high plateau some 25 miles west of Homs in Syria, boasted radical improvements on the old Norman motte-and-bailey design.

Taking inspiration from Byzantine castles, they consisted of circuits of internally vaulted walls connecting large stone towers. These towers were fitted with arrow slits and topped with the jagged, tooth-like defences known as crenellations, making it easier for defenders to shoot arrows from cover. Another ingenious development was the machicolation – a structure projecting from an outer wall, with a hole in the bottom from which stones or boiling liquids could be dropped on attackers.

Krak des Chevaliers was massive – as it needed to be. In its 2.4 hectares lived 60 Hospitaller knights and a support staff of 2,000 men who controlled the trade road that connected Homs with the coastal city of Tripoli. The castle’s facilities included industrial-sized brick-built ovens, stable blocks and a water-management system. It was effectively a self-contained military town – but its inhabitants never forgot their Christian mission. A Latin inscription on the wall of the Hospitallers’ central hall can be translated as: “You may have wealth, wisdom and beauty, but beware of pride, which spoils all it touches.”

The Hospitallers quit Krak des Chevaliers when the Holy Land fell to the Mamluks in the late 13th century. But it was as impressive as ever in 1909, when Lawrence of Arabia visited it on his 21st birthday. “The finest castle in the world, certainly the most picturesque,” he wrote. He thought that it summed up the architectural elegance of Europe married with the military functionality of the crusader states.

The castle has been considered a useful stronghold in more recent conflicts: during the Syrian civil war, anti-government forces used it as a defensive position.

4. Château Gaillard

This Normandy landmark was an expression of an English king’s swagger

When Richard the Lionheart toured the construction site of Châsteau Gaillard in Normandy one day in the late 1190s, it began to rain. Cries of disgust and terror rang out – because the liquid falling from the clouds was not water but blood.

This story of a bizarre natural phenomenon, related by the chronicler William of Newburgh, was intended to illustrate Richard’s obsessive drive to build a castle that matched his own personal swagger and reputation. This bastion was constructed in the borderlands between Richard’s territories and those of his great rival, the French king Philip II Augustus. The Lionheart’s desire to put one over on Philip was such that he drove his workers on with a near-demonic urgency. “Even if an angel from heaven had told him to abandon [the castle],” wrote William, “he would have cursed that angel.”

Richard imported the latest thinking on castle-building from the east, where he had led the war against Saladin on the Third Crusade. Gaillard’s round towers connected directly with one another like flower-petals, presenting no weak point for enemy catapults to batter. It was also the first European castle to feature machicolations.

But this was more than just a military building: it was an expression of chivalry, the prevailing martial culture of the age. Chivalry demanded soldierly skill and courtesy, but it also prized bravado. In building Château Gaillard, Richard was making a statement about his self-appointed status as the leading prince in Europe. Gaillard meant ‘saucy’ – and the castle was a cheeky thumb to the nose in the direction of the French. When Philip Augustus came to spy on the building site, and saw what a colossal fortress was being created, he said that he wished it was built from iron so that, when he finally conquered it, his satisfaction would be all the greater.

When this was relayed to Richard, he uttered his famous line: “By God’s throat, if that castle were made entirely of butter, never mind iron or stone, I would have no doubt at all that I would be able to defend it stoutly against him [Philip] and all his forces.”

That may well have been true, but Richard wasn’t to get the chance to prove it. He died of gangrene in 1199, having been shot with a crossbow bolt while besieging another castle. His brother and successor, King John, managed to lose Château Gaillard within five years, thereby revealing an eternal truth about castles: no matter how thick their walls, they are only ever as strong as the person defending them.

• Read more | King John was a monster – but did he really murder his own nephew?

5. Great Wall of China

China’s vast but vulnerable barrier proves that size isn’t everything

Throughout the ages, when empires have been threatened by outsiders, their leaders have often constructed boundary walls to keep out would-be intruders. In the second century AD, the Romans built Hadrian’s Wall to keep the Caledonian tribes of northern Britannia at bay. In the fifth and sixth centuries AD, the Persians built the Great Wall of Gorgan to protect their lands from the nomadic tribes known as the White Huns. In the 20th century, the French built the Maginot Line to protect themselves against German armies. In a sense, we can see history’s great walls as attempts to make a castle of an entire realm.

At many times during China’s long history, emperors decided to build or extend the network of fortifications and barriers that ran through the borderlands between China and the tribes of the steppe to the north.

The styles and materials used in the Great Wall of China varied enormously over time. In the third century BC, the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, sent hundreds of thousands of labourers, mostly peasants and convicts, to build a 3,000-mile ‘Long Wall’ consisting of rammed earth and rubble, and making use of existing territorial obstacles such as mountain ridges. The scale was so vast that later observers thought that a huge dragon had fallen from the sky and turned into a wall where it lay.

Spectacular as it was, however, that wall was porous. Its most famous failure came in the 13th century AD when northern China – then ruled by the Jurchen Jin – was attacked by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, whose lightning horseback raids were likened by one chronicler to “thunder pealing and wind blowing”. The Mongols sent raiding parties around the wall and through mountain passes. Later that century, they took control of all China.

The most iconic section of the Great Wall was built by the Ming dynasty in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was a brick and stone-built barrier but also a causeway allowing rapid horse and troop movements along its length. Yet it, too, failed, when the Ming were overthrown in a revolution in 1644. The gates in the wall were thrown open, allowing the Manchus of the northern steppe to rush through and take control of the empire. “The Great Wall of China is a monument to fear,” wrote Voltaire, sniffily. To enemies undaunted by its vast size, it was never as robust a defensive line as it looked.

6. Castel Sant'Angelo

Renaissance ideas inspired a new era of castle artistry in the heart of Rome

In May 1481, miraculous news arrived in Rome: the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II, scourge of Christendom, was dead. To celebrate, night parties were held around the city, with fires lit, trumpets blown and guns fired. Some of this took place on the terrace of the looming papal fortress known as the Castel Sant’Angelo.

A later legend reimagined the blasts of guns as a colourful firework display designed by Michelangelo Buonarroti. In fact, Michelangelo was only six years old at the time, but the myth had the ring of truth – because during the Italian Renaissance, castles were undergoing huge transformations, inside and out. Sweeping changes to both military technology and artistic techniques spread across Europe. Fortress defences were reconceived to respond to the rise of gunpowder weapons, which had appeared in Europe in the 14th century. Their chambers were decorated by the new artistic masters of a revolutionary age.

The Castel Sant’Angelo captured the spirit of this age. It was originally built as Hadrian’s Mausoleum, a huge tomb for the funerary urns of dead Roman emperors. During the Renaissance, when the classical world was revived to delight the modern, it was fitted with bastions – angled, protruding towers from which artillery could be fired in any direction, including enfilading fire along the wall’s length. A passageway known as the Passetto was built to allow popes to flee directly to the castle from the Vatican should the city come under siege or bombardment. (As it often did amid the turbulent politics of the Reformation.) Meanwhile, the papal apartments inside were renovated and brilliantly decorated by artists including the renowned painter Pinturicchio.

As the Renaissance unfolded, and cannon began to render the classic medieval castle obsolete, great artists turned their minds to military design. In c1482, Leonardo da Vinci wrote to the Duke of Milan offering his services as a builder of siege weapons and boasting of his “plans for destroying every fortress or other stronghold even if it were founded on rock”. He was employed to survey the defences of the duke’s Sforza Castle. Michelangelo, meanwhile, was hired to redesign the walls of Florence, drawing up plans for jagged artillery platforms, with dozens of sharp angles for gunners to exploit, though those schemes were never brought to fruition.

By the end of the 16th century, the age of the classic medieval castle was over. Modern warfare demanded fortresses built with gunpowder in mind. This new age was awe-inspiring: one observer who saw the guns of a Venetian fortress firing wrote that “it seemed as if the world had burst to pieces… the fortress, with all those flaming cannon, had the appearance of a volcano and of hell itself”.

• Read more | Michelangelo: the Renaissance polymath who transformed Western art

7. Fort Pulaski

New cannon technology signalled the end of the castle – as a famous American general discovered to his cost

In 1829, a promising young West Point graduate, Robert E Lee, was posted to Savannah, Georgia, to assist with building a defensive fortress guarding access to the city. Named Fort Pulaski, it was part of the Third System of American fortifications conceived to protect the Atlantic seaboard after the disastrous War of 1812 against the British. The new bastion was being built on an island surrounded by sea and marshes. Its brick walls were to be more than 2 metres thick, backed by masonry pillars, and would be unbreachable by any known artillery. As one US army officer later remarked: “You may as well bombard the Rocky Mountains.”

In 1861, Lee returned to Fort Pulaski – though now as a general in the Confederate army, fighting for independence for the South in the US Civil War. The fortress was in Confederate hands but a Union assault was expected, and Lee was tasked with upgrading the defences further. After advising on gun placements and reinforcing earthworks, Lee considered the job done. The nearest point on land was more than 1,500 metres away, and accepted military wisdom of the time held that cannon could not penetrate masonry from more than 800 yards (about 730 metres) away. “They will make it very warm for you with shells,” Lee told the fort commander. “But they cannot breach at that distance.”

Lee was wrong. In spring 1862, Union forces brought a new weapon to Savannah: rifled cannon, which fired exploding shells farther and more accurately than traditional smoothbore guns. Fort Pulaski was reduced to wreckage by the 30-hour bombardment. Over the months that followed, more Confederate forts suffered the same treatment. “The result of this bombardment must cause… a change in the construction of fortifications,” wrote Union general David Hunter. The artillery fort had died an abrupt death.

By the end of the US Civil War, the shape of forts had changed entirely. In 1864, at the battle of Petersburg in Virginia, fighting was conducted between trenches. The earthwork and timber-clad gun positions dug into the ground were officially known as Fort Sedgwick and Fort Mahone, but troops called them “Fort Hell” and “Fort Damnation”. It was a grim foreshadowing of the trenches of the western front in the First World War – and a return to an era of castle-building last seen in the hillforts of Iron Age Britannia.

This article was first published in the November 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine

]]> Hilary Mitchell <![CDATA[Are these the world’s oldest cities? Inside the megasites that Soviet authorities didn’t want you to see]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/are-these-the-worlds-oldest-cities-inside-the-megasites-that-soviet-authorities-didnt-want-you-to-see/ 2026-10-09T13:30:57.000Z 2026-10-11T15:00:04.000Z If you were taking a quiz and were asked what the ‘world’s oldest city’ is, you’d probably get a point for answering Uruk, the ancient metropolis in what is now Iraq. It’s thought that this famous site, renowned for its monumental architecture, administrative sophistication and early use of writing, may have had an impressive 40,000 residents by its final phase in 3100 BC.

At that time, Uruk was home to people who didn’t have to sully their noble hands by farming. They were true urbanites who obtained their food from the surrounding hinterland – one of the features that many archaeologists consider to be an essential characteristic of a city.

Another site, Çatalhöyük in modern-day Turkey, also has a claim to the title of ‘world’s oldest city’, though it would appear quite strange to modern eyes: a streetless mass of houses clustered back-to-back with roof access into the buildings. Founded in around 7100 BC and abandoned in 5700 BC, it was certainly a significant and long-lasting settlement, as was Jericho in Palestine.

Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of more than 20 successive settlements in Jericho, the first of which dates back 11,000 years to 9000 BC. By 7370 BC, Jericho was a well-established town of small, round mud brick houses surrounded by a 12-foot-high stone wall with a defensive tower. UNESCO describes Jericho as the “oldest fortified city in the world.”

The existence of these famous and extremely well-documented sites gave rise to the belief that the first cities emerged in Mesopotamia, and that the area was, essentially, the cradle of urban civilisation.

However, recent research has challenged that long-held assumption.

Are these really the world’s oldest cities?

Around 6,500 years ago, an enigmatic society flourished across the forest-steppe expanse of present-day Ukraine, Moldova and Romania.

Known as the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture, or – more poetically – as “the last great Chalcolithic civilization of Europe,” (Mantu et al., 1997) its people constructed vast settlements that more than rival – in both size and organisation – the other proto-cities mentioned above.

The largest Cucuteni-Trypillia megasite is Talianki in Ukraine, which covered an area of around 450 hectares and is thought to have housed up to 21,000 inhabitants. Other significant megasites include Maidanetske (250 hectares/17,500 inhabitants), Dobrovody (250 hectares/16,200 inhabitants) and Nebelivka (275 hectares/15,000 inhabitants).

Megasites like Talianki weren’t just a random agglomeration of buildings: they appear to have been as meticulously planned out as any mass-produced postwar British suburb, with rows of houses radiating in concentric circles around a central open area, which may have been a space for community gatherings, perhaps fulfilling a similar purpose to a Roman forum.

The discovery of the Cucuteni-Trypillia megasites

In the 1960s, Russian military topographer Konstantin Shishkin was examining some aerial photographs of Ukraine when he noticed unusual shadows materialising on the ground in the vicinity of Kyiv. He saw ghostly rings in the soil, caused by differences in plant growth due to buried archaeological remains. In total, Shishkin identified what looked to be more than 250 examples of these strange shadows – all of them eerie traces of long-vanished structures.

Subsequent excavations and research confirmed that these communities represented some of the earliest examples of large-scale, low-density urban planning. And while Mesopotamian cities such as Uruk were celebrated for their temples and palaces, these sites tell a different story.

For more than 2,000 years, the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture made pots, hunted and gathered, farmed, and lived in huge settlements where all the houses were almost exactly the same size.

There were no signs of palaces, monumental tombs, or, in fact, graves of any kind. No one knows what these people did with their dead, which makes it harder to construct a clear picture of their religious beliefs or rituals.

But the lack of grave goods for most of the culture’s history may itself shed some light on the society’s world view. Instead of being buried with their owners, metal objects may have – more practically – been melted down and reused.

All houses were roughly five metres wide and up to 14 metres long. Constructed of wood and clay and resembling modern half-timbered buildings, they showed a striking degree of standardisation. “The architecture is reminiscent of Lego,” observed archaeologist Johannes Müller of Kiel University in Germany, who has studied the sites extensively since 2011.

This equality and uniformity piqued the interest of Soviet authorities at the time, who saw in these sites an almost perfect example of an idealised past: a truly classless society in line with Marxist ideology. Speaking to the BBC in 2021, Mykhailo Videiko, an archaeologist at Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University in Ukraine, explained why the authorities later went out of their way to suppress further scientific research and cover up the discovery.

• Read more | An ancient mystery is hiding under one of Scotland's major archaeological sites – and it's about to be dug up

It was thought that “Trypillia was a wonderful illustration of a pre-class, classless society or primitive communism,” said Videiko.

“As archaeologists are digging more, they start discovering megasites of Trypillia civilisation. They start finding all these huge buildings. And the question arises: Could this all be done by a classless society?” he added. Some interpreted the large structures, some over 700 square metres in size, as temples. Others thought they were more likely to be storehouses for grain.

Whatever they were, they didn’t align with the authorities’ vision of an ancient, social hierarchy-free Marxist utopia, so they cracked down on the project. Some archaeologists were convicted as being members of a terrorist spy organisation; others fled the country.

Books that furthered the study of Trypillia were published elsewhere but, Videiko explained: “Those books never reached Ukraine. They were researching something but almost no one here knew about it. Those who knew, remained silent.”

The renaissance of Cucuteni-Trypillia research

In the mid-1990s, archaeologist Roland Fletcher drew global attention to an overlooked prehistoric phenomenon: vast Neolithic-Chalcolithic settlements in Eastern Europe that appeared to defy the usual constraints of early agricultural communities.

His 1995 book The Limits of Settlement Growth describes the Cucuteni-Trypillia megasites as the sole known exception to his global model for the way in which all early settlements were limited in size and complexity.

Fletcher’s analysis highlighted a critical point: the enormous scale of these sites, some covering hundreds of hectares, would have made it virtually impossible for all inhabitants to remain in regular, face-to-face contact. This suggested either a sophisticated level of internal organisation, perhaps with designated areas, or possibly an early form of writing that aided communication.

A major step forward came in 2009, when a collaborative research team from Frankfurt and Kiel universities launched a comprehensive study of several key Cucuteni-Trypillia sites. These included Nebelivka, Talianki, Maidanetske and Dobrovody, among the most prominent mega-settlements, as well as the smaller site of Apolianka.

This ambitious project, detailed in a 2014 issue of the European Journal of Archaeology, employed cutting-edge geophysical methods to investigate the sites more thoroughly than ever before using more advanced magnetic gradiometry.

The Frankfurt-Kiel team were able to confirm that these settlements were laid out in concentric circles, suggesting an impressive degree of organisation. This suggests that all of the structures were carefully planned out before any construction began, strengthening the case that Talianki and similar megasites deserve to be called the oldest cities in history.

• Read more | The Amazon rainforest is hiding an ancient secret – and scientists now know what it is

University of Kiel archaeologist Johannes Müller has put his cards on the table and confirmed that he considers them to be cities, saying: “When I started researching the Tripillia sites in 2012, I never thought I would call them ‘cities’.” Müller continued that now “that is beyond question for me. A city requires a concept. And here, planning is evident from the very beginning.”

“The decisive factor for me is not that they are huge settlements, but that you no longer know the people who live 1.5 kilometers away in the same settlement,” he added.

Why did the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture burn their houses?

The Frankfurt-Kiel team’s research also confirmed a particularly baffling element of the megasite mystery: the fate of the ‘Lego’ houses themselves. Many appear to have been deliberately burned, often every 60 to 80 years, leaving behind squares of ash containing magnetic oxides.

Some researchers suggest the burnings had a symbolic or ritual motive, perhaps linked to death or rebirth. Others think they served a more pragmatic purpose: perhaps hardening clay walls or clearing land for rebuilding.

Mirjana Stevanovic, an archaeologist from Serbia, has argued that the structures inside the burned house horizon “were destroyed by deliberate burning and most likely for reasons of a symbolic nature.” A Trypillia scholar, Vikentiy Khvoyka, believes that the houses were burned down when their inhabitants passed away, turning them from dwellings of the living into what he called “homes of the dead.”

However, Russian archaeologist Evgeniy Yuryevich Krichevski had a different take on the practice. He thought that the inhabitants weren’t destroying their homes, just reinforcing them. He believed that the heat of the flames would have hardened the clay walls into a ceramic surface, while the smoke would have fumigated the living space.

In 2018, a team of Ukrainian and British archaeologists decided to put this theory to the test.

They recreated two Cucuteni-Trypillia type houses, building them from scratch from the same clay and wood materials used thousands of years ago. Although wooden elements such as the roof were destroyed, the team found that the walls of both buildings were left intact, along with various clay items and ritual items the researchers had placed inside.

• Read more | These Iron Age bodies were all buried in the same bizarre way. What does it mean?

What artefacts are associated with the Cucuteni-Trypillia people?

Wherever Cucuteni-Trypillia people lived, archaeologists have found stylised, small female figurines, with distinctive geometric designs on their curvy bodies.

In the 1970s, Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, working at UCLA, California, published several influential books suggesting that the female figures were goddesses, and that the Cucuteni-Trypillia people, along with other early societies of ‘Old Europe’, were led by women – though these days, Gimbutas’s work is considered to be highly speculative.

However, whether it points to a wide-reaching, goddess-worshipping matriarchal culture or not, the material legacy of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture is deeply compelling. Cucuteni–Trypillia pottery in particular – yellow-hued and decorated in stunning swirling patterns and vibrant colours – speaks of a deeply sophisticated artistic tradition.

Archaeologist Mykhailo Videiko has explained that the people of Trypillia “managed to implement almost all technological innovations of their time,” using kilns that were very advanced for that period.

In an attempt to raise awareness about the extraordinary craftsmanship of her ancestors, in 2021, Ukrainian fashion designer Svitlana Bevza created a line of Trypillia-influenced clothing and jewellery as a way of celebrating this – as the Frankfurt-Kiel team put it – “persistently overlooked” ancient civilisation.

Bevza told the BBC she found it unjust that “this great culture is not that well-known in the world, as Egyptian, for instance. There was no voice to the world who could talk about this culture.”

In the five years since she created her evocative collection, more light has been shed on these extraordinary settlements, and they are finally beginning to get the recognition they deserve.

In a field where terminology is often debated and definitions evolve, one thing is becoming clearer: the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture – once viewed as peripheral to early urban development – is now rightfully taking centre stage in our understanding of how cities first emerged.

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[I visited one of America's "most haunted" historical sites. What I found there astonished me]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/i-visited-one-of-americas-most-haunted-historical-sites-what-i-found-there-astonished-me/ 2026-07-30T09:30:22.000Z 2026-08-09T14:30:02.000Z In August 2024, my husband and I embarked on an eccentric adventure: a week-long, 1,500-mile road trip through the American South, visiting supposedly haunted landmarks along the way. The primary impetus for this eerie excursion was to experience in person some of the properties that would feature in my book How to Build a Haunted House (Profile Books, 2025).

To be clear, I wasn’t on the hunt for ghosts per se. Rather, I was in search of an explanation for why certain historic houses develop the reputation for being haunted – and why we can’t seem to get enough of them. I knew that in the US – below the Mason-Dixon Line demarking the former divide between free North and enslaving South, especially – there were numerous examples.

It was this quest that brought my husband and me to the small town of St Francisville, Louisiana for a night’s stay at the notoriously haunted Myrtles Plantation. What we found there astonished us.

Spiritual awakening

Standing in a fertile upland region flanking the Mississippi River, Myrtles Plantation is 30 miles north of the state capital, Baton Rouge, and some 100 miles from the region’s cultural capital, New Orleans.

Constructed in 1796 for General David Bradford, the 22-room mansion once sat at the centre of a thriving 1,600-hectare (4,000-acre) cotton and indigo plantation. Before the abolition of slavery in the US in 1865, the plantation’s extensive fields were worked by as many as 500 enslaved Black labourers.

Over a century and a half, the property was occupied by a succession of owners, most of whom enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle financed by the cotton industry. Since at least the 1950s, though, the house and grounds have been open to the public – and the mansion earned a reputation as one of the most haunted homes in America.

The earliest recorded references to spiritual presences at the plantation date to the 1940s, in publications such as Louisiana: A Guide to the State (1941) and Ghosts Along the Mississippi (1948). Notably, these early accounts mention only one resident spectre: an unknown white woman described as “a little old French lady in a green bonnet”.

Over the ensuing decades, however, the Myrtles’ ghost population would not only grow but diversify. By the early 1980s, at least five spirits had been reported: an enslaved female, a Union soldier, a pair of adolescent smallpox victims and a murdered estate manager – William Drew Winter, the only apparition with a firm identity, who was shot by an unknown assailant on the front porch in 1871. At present, there are said to be no fewer than 12 supernatural entities active on the property – the most famous of whom is known as Chloe.

• Read more | What is Juneteenth, and why is it celebrated? A historian explains the significance of the holiday today

As the story goes, Chloe was a beautiful young enslaved woman who got caught eavesdropping through the keyhole of her master’s office. As punishment, he lopped off her left ear and banished her from the mansion to toil in the blistering heat of the nearby cookhouse.

In revenge – or, in some versions of the story, a misguided attempt to get invited back into the mansion to care for the family – Chloe baked a poison-laced birthday cake, which killed the master’s wife and two of his children. The penalty was death: she was hanged from the bow of a live oak tree on the front lawn. Unsurprisingly, her ghost is said to have haunted the plantation ever since.

Today, Chloe is the star attraction at the Myrtles. Indeed, a large black-and-white photo purportedly capturing her ghostly silhouette greets visitors at the main entrance to the mansion. Aside from that grainy image, though, there is very little evidence to support her existence – living or dead. Like so many other legends attached to haunted houses, the historical record suggests that her story is, in fact, a synthesis of real and imagined individuals and events that have coalesced over time to create a compelling narrative.

• Read more | From tragic Tudor queens to restless Roman soldiers: Britain's 8 most haunted houses

Ominous omens

I can’t say that I feared encountering the infamous Chloe during our stay at the Myrtles, but I was slightly apprehensive about the visit. It probably didn’t help that our first introduction to Louisiana bore all the hallmarks of a horror film.

On the last leg of our days’ long drive through the heart of the South, just as we passed over the Mississippi-Louisiana border, the hazy late-summer sky suddenly blackened. In an instant the heavens opened, unleashing a deluge so heavy that it nearly obscured our vision through the windscreen. Thunder rumbled; fork-lightning cracked.

It was an appropriately ominous start to a night spent at a haunted house. By the time we finally pulled up to the plantation gates and made our way down the oak-lined drive, though, the rain had subsided. And here we were more than a little surprised to find that the property didn’t quite live up to the stereotypical haunted house of our imagination.

Rather than a derelict old wreck, the Myrtles Plantation is a bustling tourist enterprise. We arrived on a Friday night, and the place was teeming with visitors. Some had come for a celebratory meal at Restaurant 1796, the plantation’s high-end eatery, others for a tour. A few, including my husband and me, had booked a night’s stay in the boutique bed and breakfast.

The main house, where we would be staying, was not nearly as imposing as I had expected. A relatively compact one-and-a-half-storey clapboard structure with seafoam-green shutters and delicate ironwork railings, it appeared less haunted mansion and more quaint country cottage.

• Read more | The profits of slavery: the dire impact of empire on Britain's countryside

Alongside the house stood a noticeably older, more rustic building. Once the original farmstead, it has been converted into a brightly lit cafe and gift shop. Nearby, a centuries-old carriage house has been similarly retrofitted into a funky modern eatery.

Beyond that stretches landscaped parkland, whimsically illuminated by twinkling fairy lights strung from the branches of the plantation’s signature crepe myrtles. The excited shrieks and peals of laughter of guests on one of the evening’s two scheduled ghost tours reached us through the still night air.

It was an oddly incongruous scene at a property steeped in a very dark history. Its very existence was the direct result of the institution of slavery. What’s more, as a heritage attraction, its main claim to fame was being haunted by tortured enslaved people, murder victims and assorted other casualties of disease and war.

Yet, far from a sombre setting, the atmosphere at the Myrtles was almost jubilant. It welcomed a throng of happy holidaymakers enjoying decadent Southern cuisine, playful ghost stories and plush accommodation.

Allure of the eerie

How did this former enslaver’s home come to be transformed into a multi-million-dollar leisure business attracting some 60,000 visitors annually? It seems a strange turn of events for a historical setting seemingly mired in misery. Yet the Myrtles Plantation is by no means an anomaly. It’s just one of hundreds of heritage sites across the American South capitalising on the rise of so-called ‘dark tourism’.

Simply put, dark tourism is the recreational practice of visiting sites associated with death and suffering – places such as historic crime scenes, battlefields, prisons, sanitoriums and cemeteries. Such sites can be found across the globe and, to some extent, have always drawn the morbidly curious: consider, for example, the ancient Roman Colosseum or the Tyburn Gallows in the 18th century. But over the past few decades, dark tourism has experienced a notable boom in the Southern states.

In dark tourism epicentres such as New Orleans and Savannah, Georgia, visitors looking for a scare are spoiled for choice, with literally dozens of tour companies catering to their needs. In these settings, the most popular form of dark recreation is the ghost tour – a walking tour of a historical house or city that highlights the location’s macabre past and paranormal pedigree, typically focussing on slavery-related narratives. The tone of the tour is often light-hearted or darkly humorous, and the stories are sometimes accompanied by other forms of recreational activity such as the consumption of alcohol.

Unsurprisingly, such tours have attracted a fair amount of scrutiny, with many critics questioning their value, ethics and impact on the public understanding of the past. But even the most vocal opponents are usually able to recognise the motives behind the practice. Beyond simple voyeurism, dark tourism in the South reflects a popular desire to engage with the history of slavery, tempered by a reluctance to face its horrors head-on.

“Without slavery there is no South, as a region or an idea,” says Tiya Miles, a bestselling author and Harvard history professor specialising in African-American studies. “But if vacationing tourists must somehow confront the ugliness that repels as well as attracts their notice, they would probably rather do so from a safe emotional distance.”

Hence the ghost tour – and the proliferation of stories similar to the one told about Chloe at the Myrtles Plantation. These tales are just detailed enough to lend them an air of historical authenticity, but sufficiently vague and fanciful enough to allow us to dismiss them as fiction should we wish.

And if we still can’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that, even if Chloe never existed, someone like her certainly did, and suffered equally – well, we can distract ourselves with a tour guide’s gallows humour, or perhaps a cocktail or two.

Suffice to say, neither my husband nor I met a ghost at the Myrtles Plantation. But we did experience something frighteningly uncanny: an enjoyable night’s stay in a setting that once witnessed the true horrors of slavery.

Caitlin Blackwell Baines is an art historian and author who specialises in Georgian art and architecture. She is the author of How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession (Profile Books, 2025)

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[What was the greatest invention in history? 9 experts share their opinions]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/what-was-the-greatest-invention-in-history-9-experts-share-their-opinions/ 2026-05-11T14:31:03.000Z 2026-05-11T14:30:25.000Z Writing

Spreading the word – and nationalism

Were it not for the invention of writing, I would be offering this answer via megaphone. Writing is nowhere near as old as humanity’s 300,000-year history, but it is old: the first writing system emerged in Mesopotamia around 3200 BC. Separate systems developed in Micronesia in the 1800s BC, Shang Dynasty China around 1300 BC, and
in Mesoamerica after 900 BC.

Although writing did not supplant oral tradition, it did dramatically extend the reach of communications, and allow groups to write down and diffuse their histories, ideas, lore and laws. The invention and refinement of writing changed the relationship between memory and record, as well as people’s sense of the reachable world.

Complex societies existed before and apart from the development of writing, but writing made societies easier to administer over distance. For better or worse, it allowed the development of bureaucracy.

The esteemed political scientist Benedict Anderson saw it as fundamental to how communities understood themselves in place and time. He argued that the emergence of print media in the modern era – writing circulated fast and far – produced a simultaneity of experience that allowed people to see themselves as part of a cohesive community even when they could not encounter everyone in it. In other words, as set out in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983), it allowed for the emergence of nationalism. That has had global consequences.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, associate professor of history at Duke University

Roman concrete

Mixing things up to build bigger and better

The Pantheon in Rome should not exist. Or, at least, not in the form we see today. Its perfect concrete dome, spanning 43 metres and pierced by a great oculus ‘eye’, still stands almost two millennia after it was poured, and remains the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. Step inside and you confront not only Roman architectural brilliance, but the single most transformative invention in Roman history: Roman concrete.

Concrete itself was not a Roman discovery. Nabataean builders were using early forms of it as far back as 6500 BC. But around 300 BC, Roman engineers revolutionised the material by mixing volcanic ash (pozzolana) with lime and water, often transported from the Bay of Naples. This created a hydraulic concrete that could set underwater and, remarkably, grow stronger over time. The Pantheon’s immense, unsupported dome is the most dramatic advertisement of this achievement. It’s a structure that has resisted earthquakes, fires, invasions and centuries of continuous use, all thanks to the material’s durability. The material is even able to ‘self-heal’ when exposed to water.

Once armed with concrete, Roman builders were no longer bound by the limitations of cut stone. They created vast basilicas, monumental bath complexes, sweeping amphitheatres such as the Colosseum, and harbours. Concrete turned Rome into a vertical metropolis of multi-storey insulae (apartment buildings), housing tens of thousands of residents. It also enabled the construction of aqueducts, bridges and warehouses to create infrastructure that stitched the empire together. Roman concrete was the foundation of an architectural revolution, one that shaped the physical world of the Romans and continues to astonish and inspire us today.

Jess Venner, ancient historian, presenter and author

• Read more | The ingenious Roman invention that sparked the ancient empire’s obsession with luxury

Antibiotics

Antibacterial life-savers that transformed medicine

Of all the incredible inventions that have benefited humanity over the centuries, none has been more important, or saved more lives, than the creation of antibiotic medicines. Before antibiotics you could die from even the smallest of infections: a paper cut could kill you. Women routinely died in childbirth, often from infection.

Their children fared no better. In 1900, one in five children in the UK died before they were five years old. Many diseases had no cure. The biggest killer in the late 19th century was tuberculosis. It infected up to 90 per cent of the urban population in Europe and North America, and the only treatment for it was fresh air.

All of this changed with the invention of antibiotics. After sulphur-based antibiotics were first introduced in the US in the 1930s, deaths during childbirth dropped by a third, and deaths from scarlet fever by two thirds. The mass production of penicillin in the 1940s had even more impressive results. For the first time, silent killers such as tuberculosis could be completely cured – along with a whole list of other diseases too long to mention.

According to one study, antibiotics have added an average of 20 years to our life expectancies across the globe. But one can have too much of a good thing. Because antibiotics were so effective, they were over-prescribed right from the start. Some bacteria are now developing resistance to our drugs. Unless we are careful, we risk a return to the days when a simple cough or a paper cut could be the prelude to something much, much worse.

Keith Lowe, author of The Fear and the Freedom: How the Second World War Changed Us (Viking, 2017)

The steam engine

Hot stuff! History’s most pumped-up changemaker

The invention of steam power was in many ways iterative, but the production of a steam engine by Baptist preacher and ironmonger Thomas Newcomen in 1712 was a transformative moment.

Born in Devon, Newcomen was acutely aware of the problems of flooding in tin mines in the south west, and the first steam engine was designed to pump water out of the mines. In 1765, his design was refined by James Watt, who added a separate vessel for condensation. This meant an engine’s main cylinder could remain hot while steam condensed in a separate, cold chamber. As a result, machines could be both scaled down and made more powerful. Over the next 150 years, refinements were made and the principles of thermodynamics came to be further understood, paving the way for modern engineering and cosmology.

The steam engine, of course, powered the industrial revolution. Factories, trains and ships were all driven by steam power, and it ushered in political, social and cultural transformations. In many ways, steam facilitated Britain’s global dominance.

Patterns of labour were turned on their head, and many courageously protested as they found wages lowered, inequalities exacerbated and capital concentrated in the hands of those who owned the technology.

Hannah Skoda, associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oxford

• Read more | From family to factory: women's lives during the Industrial Revolution

The World Wide Web

The brainchild of Britain’s greatest surfer dude

The most important invention of my own lifetime has been the World Wide Web. At university in the early 1990s, it was essentially the preserve of computing enthusiasts and science students. By the end of the decade, even the most dry-as-dust history professors had been persuaded of the benefits of Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s big idea.

It’s easy to see why. As more of the world’s archives have been put online, research has been transformed out of all recognition. The most obscure book or article can be located in seconds. Voluminous texts that would have taken months to wade through can be searched in an instant. Information and ideas can be shared in real time between scholars working on opposite sides of the globe.

Alas, in the past decade or so, we have seen the downsides. A tool designed for the sharing of information can also be used to spread misinformation. Algorithms are tweaked so that the truth is suppressed and propaganda is promoted. Malevolent actors can rig elections, distort polls and even topple governments. The internet has led to measurable increases in division, racism and fascism.

Will the good outweigh the bad? Right now, as was famously, but mistakenly, said of the French Revolution, it is too soon to tell. Either way, when historians of the future are asked to name transformative inventions, the World Wide Web will be towards the top of their lists.

Marc Morris, medieval historian, writer and broadcaster

The printing press

How movable type moved the world’s discourse

The invention of the printing press by a German goldsmith, Johannes Gutenberg, around 1440, changed the world forever. Modelled on the humble screw press, an innovation from the Roman era initially used to crush grapes and olives, the new, movable printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per day, compared to 40 by hand-printing and a few by hand-copying.

This sparked a printing revolution that spread from Gutenberg’s workshop in Mainz to more than 200 cities across Europe. By 1500, more than 20 million books had been produced by the new printing presses, and during the 16th century their output rose to an estimated 150–200 million copies.

The invention of the printing press coincided with a sharp rise in learning and literacy among the middle classes, which in turn led to an increased demand for books. Traditional medieval scribes simply couldn’t have kept up.

Arguably the greatest impact of the printing press was the democratisation of knowledge. People across society now had ready access to ideas and information. Debate and dissent followed. From 1518–20, 300,000 copies of Martin Luther’s tracts were distributed, sparking the Reformation. The English Civil War, American and French revolutions, industrial revolution and the spread of the scientific method had their roots in the dissemination of ideas and information that printing facilitated.

Tracy Borman, author, historian and broadcaster

• Read more | How William Caxton printed the first-ever book in English

The Socratic method

The philosophical creation of a questioning mind

A mode of philosophical enquiry may not sound too exciting, but the Socratic method was a new way of seeking knowledge. As pioneered by the man who gave the approach its name, the fifth-century BC Athenian philosopher Socrates, it involved one person outlining a belief or assumption, and then another person asking questions about the belief in order to ascertain its truth or nature as fact.

By asking questions, the elements of the original belief or assumption could be challenged, updated, refined and reissued – leading to a better, more factual and more truthful understanding of an issue.

It sounds pretty straightforward, but the Socratic method was a game-changing approach to enquiry. It defined philosophical approaches to the nature of knowledge and truth for centuries – and still does today.

Not that his method did Socrates himself much good. His habit of always asking questions annoyed the great and the good of Athens – often because those questions showed them up as not knowing much about what they claimed to know about. He was put on trial for moral corruption and impiety.

According to Plato, part of Socrates’s defence was that he was the mýops or ‘gadfly’ of Athens. Yes, he was irritating and easy to swat, but his constant questioning helped guard Athens against complacency. Socrates, history records, was sentenced to death.

Michael Scott, professor in classics and ancient history at the University of Warwick

The railway

The future comes down the tracks

Historians of the 19th century are spoiled for choice when it comes to world-changing inventions. Technologies such as the telegraph, phonograph, camera, light bulb, bicycle and internal combustion engine all transformed everyday life. Yet one development stands above the rest: the railway.

The world’s first standard gauge, steam-hauled public railway, between Stockton and Darlington, opened to passengers in 1825. Over the following decades, Britain was gripped by ‘railway mania’, as enormous sums of money were invested in rapidly laying thousands of miles of track. Other countries quickly followed suit.

The arrival of the railway had a huge economic impact. It propelled the industrial revolution by allowing goods, raw materials and people to be transported both more quickly and more cheaply. It also accelerated the spread of news and information, carrying letters and newspapers across the country at unprecedented speeds. Its impact even extended to timekeeping, leading to the adoption of standardised national ‘railway time’, replacing local sundials.

The effects were not limited to industry and commerce. Railways enabled people to travel further for leisure, fuelling the growth of seaside resorts such as Brighton, Blackpool and Scarborough, whose beaches filled with legions of day trippers. At the same time, the rise of railway commuting reshaped patterns of living and created new markets for publishers. Some enterprising magazines even targeted regular travellers by offering free life insurance schemes, paying out to families of readers killed in railway accidents, provided they were carrying that week’s paper when they died.

In short, the railways didn’t just change the way we travelled, they transformed how we lived.

Bob Nicholson, writer, broadcaster and historian at Edge Hill University

The mouldboard plough

A farming tool pulled by animals

There can only be one choice and it’s the sexiest invention imaginable: the mouldboard plough. You’re probably getting hot under the collar already, but try to control yourself. Simple scratch ploughs were fine for the light, gravelly soils of the Middle East and around the Mediterranean. But it was the mouldboard plough, first developed in China more than 2,000 years ago, that would revolutionise farming.

There are strong arguments for connecting the mouldboard plough to the population growth and urbanisation in northern Europe, especially between 900 and 1300 AD. The advantage of the mouldboard plough was that it could cut long strips of soil and turn them over as it moved along the field. In the wet, heavy soils of northern Europe, this was hugely beneficial. The new ploughs improved drainage and buried weeds deep. This led to increased productivity and economic growth.

The mouldboard plough was also heavy, and needed a large team of animals – oxen, horses – to pull it. This eventually led to more community-based farming. This in time would lead to the manorial system, which might be summarised as one bigwig at the top, many smallwigs below.

Today, it’s still possible to see evidence of the mouldboard plough’s impact in fields that are no longer used for crops: the ghostly outline of lines and dips known as ‘ridge and furrow’. Being married to a fellow early medieval historian, our road trips are an absolute riot. We squeal, “RIDGEANDFURROW!” whenever we clock that distinctive corrugated pattern, while our children groan in the back of the car.

Eleanor Barraclough, historian, broadcaster and author of Embers of the Hands (Profile, 2024)

This article was first published in the April 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine

]]> Kavita Puri <![CDATA[The Tudor village that time left behind]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-tudor-village-that-time-left-behind/ 2026-05-01T15:31:04.000Z 2026-05-01T15:30:23.000Z Lavenham is one of Britain's best-preserved medieval and Tudor villages. Roaming its narrow streets, past crooked timber-framed houses with steep gables, you feel as if you’ve stepped back in time.

Henry III gave this Suffolk settlement a market charter in 1257, stimulating the local economy, and Lavenham soon became a major hub for the wool trade. By the late 15th century, it was one of the richest towns in England, that status reflected in magnificent buildings built by prosperous merchant families. By 1524, it was the 14th-wealthiest place in the kingdom, paying more tax than large cities including Lincoln or York.

The village was famed for its prestigious ‘Lavenham blue’ cloth. This was coloured at the raw wool stage using a natural dye from a plant called woad, then spun into yarn before being woven into fabric. Woollen cloth and raw wool were Britain’s most important exports during the Middle Ages. Continental Europe – especially towns such as Bruges and Ghent – depended on English wool to fuel their textile industries, and Lavenham was a significant contributor.

• Read more | Want to understand modern Britain? Look towards its villages

However, the village’s fortunes declined precipitously during the 16th century. Flemish weavers arrived in nearby Colchester and began to weave cheaper, lighter and more fashionable cloth, with a greater variety of dye colours, using new techniques. Lavenham failed to adapt to these newer methods, or to diversify its industry beyond the wool trade. As that income dwindled, money was no longer available to update village houses in newer styles, and Lavenham essentially became preserved largely as it was five centuries ago.

One building in particular reflects the changing fortunes of the village and wider society: the Guildhall. Five guildhalls are recorded as being built for wealthy cloth and wool merchants from Lavenham over the years, but only one survives to this day. When built in 1530, it was called the Guildhall of Corpus Christi. The religious guilds, which dated back to the 11th century, were originally associated with the monasteries. By the 14th century, though, as well as their role in raising funds for Catholic priests’ duties and celebrating patron saints, the guilds also took on community responsibilities that included repairing roads, and establishing schools and almshouses.

After the Reformation, Protestants ensured that such guilds were abolished through acts of parliament in 1545 and 1547. Luckily, the Guildhall that still stands today in Lavenham was then repurposed for various uses. In later years, it operated as a workhouse to help the poor of the village and others who’d fallen on hard times. Up to 40 people lived and worked there, mostly spinning yarn, and were trained as housemaids or apprentices to help them find jobs.

• Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the Tudors

From 1785, another part of the Guildhall was used as a ‘bridewell’, or jail. One moving story from the records of that time tells of a young girl called Ann Baker. Probably no more than 10 years old when she was apprehended, Ann was whipped and locked in the jail with others who had fallen foul of the often harsh laws of the time. Convicted of larceny, this “incorrigible rogue” was sentenced to seven years’ transportation to the penal colony in New South Wales (now in Australia). She survived the arduous seven-month voyage, arriving in June 1790, but died there at the age of just 29.

Over time, the Guildhall also served as a Methodist chapel, a pub, a grain store and a social meeting place for US soldiers stationed nearby during the Second World War. Today, it’s one of the finest timber-framed buildings in England, managed by the National Trust.

Unsurprisingly, given its exceptionally coherent medieval and Tudor architecture, Lavenham has featured in many film and television productions, perhaps most notably being transformed into the wizarding village of Godric’s Hollow for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Lavenham has experienced both great fortune and sad decline – and the Guildhall reflects the many stages in its rich history.

This article was first published in the April 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[History's most notorious crime scenes: from Lizzie Borden's lair to HH Holmes's 'murder castle']]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/historys-most-notorious-crime-scenes-from-lizzie-bordens-lair-to-hh-holmess-murder-castle/ 2026-03-19T18:27:20.000Z 2026-03-22T15:30:10.000Z 1. Canterbury Cathedral, Kent, United Kingdom

Founded in AD 597, Canterbury Cathedral is Britain’s oldest and most important religious complex: the ‘mother church’ of the Anglican faith and seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

With its soaring 250-foot central tower and 13,000 square feet of stained-glass windows, the cathedral draws more than a million visitors each year – some who come to worship, others simply to marvel at its serene majesty. Such a setting would seem an unlikely place for a murder, but, ironically, that murder has been a big part of the pull for the past 850 or so years.

The victim was Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, on the night of 29 December 1170, was hacked to death in the cathedral’s northwest transept. Once a royal favourite – Henry II’s chancellor and closest confidant – Becket ran afoul of the monarch soon after being ordained in 1162. By refusing to uphold the king’s authority over that of the church in the following years, the archbishop effectively sealed his fate.

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Henry is reported to have ranted to his courtiers. Interpreting this as a kind of kingly hit order, four of his knights stole away under the cover of night, travelling in secret from Normandy to Canterbury, where they accosted Becket as he entered the cathedral.

At first, the knights attempted to arrest the cleric, but when he refused to accompany them, a violent scuffle broke out. As Becket desperately clung to a column, the knights slashed at him with their swords, eventually striking a fatal blow to the top of his head, spraying blood and gore across the cathedral floor.

The gruesome crime shocked the whole of Christendom, quickly transforming victim into martyr, and crime scene into pilgrimage site.

2. Čachtice Castle, Slovakia

You’ve probably heard of Castle Dracula, the seat of the titular character in Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel. But have you heard of Čachtice Castle? It is the setting for a real-life horror story far more frightening than anything dreamed up in Gothic fiction.

Now a crumbling ruin, teetering on a rocky outcrop in the Trenchin region of western Slovakia, the castle was once home to Countess Elizabeth Báthory – purportedly the most prolific female serial killer in history.

Čachtice Castle began its existence as a 13th-century fortress built to defend the western border of the Kingdom of Hungary. Over the centuries, it was expanded and transformed into a stately home. Passing through several hands, it eventually came into the possession of nobleman Francis Nádasdy II, who, in 1575, gifted it to his 14-year-old bride, Elizabeth Báthory, as a wedding present.

By all accounts, the marriage of Francis and Elizabeth was a happy one. Home life at Čachtice Castle, on the other hand, was not exactly the picture of domestic bliss. With Francis frequently away on military campaigns against the Ottoman Turks, Elizabeth was left behind to manage the family’s household and vast estates, and in her husband’s absence, the countess seems to have taken up an unusual hobby: the torture and murder of her servants.

Her many victims – a revolving door of peasant girls recruited from nearby villages – were variously cut, burnt, bitten, beaten, starved and even frozen to death. Posthumous rumours that Báthory bathed in the blood of her prey to preserve her youth have never been proven, but the available evidence suggests that her actions went far beyond that of a harsh mistress.

• Read more | Elizabeth Báthory: a 17th-century 'serial killer'

She was a sadistic killer whose position of power and relative isolation at Čachtice Castle allowed her to operate unchecked for over two decades. During this time, she is estimated to have killed as many as 600 young women and girls.

Had the cruel countess stuck to her original victim pool of poor servants, she may have escaped capture. Indeed, it was only when several young noblewomen invited to the castle to attend a gynaeceum (finishing school) went missing that the authorities finally took notice.

In December 1610, Čachtice Castle was raided on the orders of King Matthias II. Báthory was seized during a post-Christmas feast – and not, as it was later claimed, in the middle of a murder. Owing to her high station, however, she managed to avoid trial (and inevitable execution) and was instead placed on house arrest in her castle. She died there four years later.

3. LaLaurie Mansion, New Orleans, United States

Sadistic slave-owning socialite Delphine LaLaurie might just be New Orleans’ answer to Countess Báthory. If ever you travel to the city, you will inevitably hear of the notorious madame and her house of horrors. It is a stately three-storey French empire-style townhouse located on Royal Street in the heart of the historic French Quarter, the city’s main tourist district.

On 10 April 1834, the mansion caught fire, attracting a large crowd of curious onlookers. At the time, the LaLaurie Mansion was renowned for its lavish interiors and decadent soirees – as well as for something more sinister.

Rumour had it that the mistress of the manor treated her slaves exceptionally cruelly – which spoke volumes, given that most slave-owners thought nothing of whipping their workers at the time. These rumours would soon prove to be true.

When concerned members of the community entered the house to help extinguish the flames, they made a horrific discovery. According to reports, behind the padlocked door of the attic, they found “seven slaves more or less horribly mutilated… suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to another”. So shocking was the scene that the once-respected society hostess was run out of town by an angry mob.

Nearly 200 years later, the legend of Madame LaLaurie lives on as one of the darkest chapters in the city’s pre-Civil War history. Though privately owned and publicly inaccessible, the present-day LaLaurie Mansion (rebuilt three years after the fire) still manages to draw hordes of tourists, who come to gawk at its paradoxically elegant exterior.

4. 13 Miller's Court, London, United Kingdom

No list of historical true crime would be complete without an entry on Jack the Ripper, the pseudonymous serial killer responsible for the brutal slayings of at least five women in London's Whitechapel district between August and November 1888.

Easily the most infamous unsolved murders in global history, there’s no shortage of Ripper-related content out there: books, films, TV shows, websites – and even historical walking tours offering the opportunity to follow in the mysterious murderer’s footsteps. Of course, there’s not much for the modern Ripper tourist to see.

The gritty East End streets that comprised the killer’s hunting grounds were long ago transformed as part of a series of early 20th-century improvement projects designed to eradicate the scourge that was the Whitechapel slums. But before this modern uplift, at least a few intrepid explorers were able to visit the crime scenes and view them much as the killer would have done.

• Read more | He's the Victorian serial killer you've never heard of – and we may now know who he was

On 20 December 1890, The Birmingham Mail published the account of one journalist’s journey through Jack the Ripper’s East London. The highlight of his adventures in so-called ‘Murderland’ was a trip to 13 Miller’s Court – the site of the last (and most ghastly) of the canonical Ripper murders.

It was inside this squalid one room tenement that, just two years earlier, Mary Jane Kelly – a sex worker in her mid-20s – was found mutilated beyond all recognition. According to the journalist, “for a long time after the murder [the room] was vacant. Nobody would take it, owing to the rumour that it was haunted by Jack’s victim”.

But, by the time of the journalist’s visit, it was occupied by “an old crone” and her “bedridden husband” who, for the “drop of half-a-crown” would show visitors the “ghastly relics of the crimes”. These included “a huge crimson stain” on the floor, “the fading imprints of a bloody hand on the wall”, and some pencil scratched graffiti purportedly left behind by the killer.

Such “ghastly relics” were ultimately destroyed when, in 1928, the property was demolished to make way for the rebuilding of Spitalfields Market.

5. 'Murder Castle', Chicago, United States

At around the same time that Jack the Ripper was roving the streets of Victorian London, another pseudonymous serial killer was wreaking havoc across the pond in Chicago. Operating under the alias ‘HH Holmes’, Herman Webster Mudgett was a conman posing as a pharmacist, who, between the years of 1891 and 1894, lured as many as 200 men and women to their deaths.

But where the Ripper seemingly killed for the sheer thrill of it, Holmes had ulterior motives – namely money. Most of his victims were the unwitting targets of insurance schemes and romance scams.

And unlike his British counterpart, who committed all but one of his crimes outdoors, the nefarious ‘Dr Holmes’ preferred the privacy of his own home: 601–603 West 63rd Street, a sprawling three-storey structure, aptly dubbed the ‘Murder Castle’ by the Windy City press.

Having been gutted by fire shortly after his arrest in the autumn of 1894, Holmes’s ‘Murder Castle’ is a bit of an enigma. According to contemporary reports, it possessed a labyrinthine layout, replete with secret passageways, soundproof rooms and a network of chutes and trapdoors purportedly designed for the fast disposal of dead bodies.

But was it purpose-built for murder? The oft-repeated story that Holmes hired new building crews each week to ensure that no single person knew the property’s layout is likely apocryphal. Instead, he was probably attempting to cheat his contractors out of fair pay. Holmes’s astonishingly high body count may too have been exaggerated – he confessed to 27 murders, of which only nine have been confirmed.

6. The Lizzie Borden House, Fall River, Massachusetts, United States

230 Second Street, Fall River, Massachusetts. At first glance, this modest clapboard cottage hardly stands out in a city where the streets are lined with Victorian buildings – many of them far grander than this home. But this is actually Fall River’s most famous landmark: the Lizzie Borden House.

Almost all Americans know of the alleged crimes of the accused axe-murderer Lizzie Borden. Outside of America, however, Lizzie is perhaps less well-known. And yet, most will be familiar with this little ditty:

Lizzie Borden took an axe

Gave her mother forty whacks.

She gave her father forty-one.

Andrew Borden now is dead,

Lizzie hit him on the head.

Up in heaven he will sing,

On the gallows she will swing.

But if all you know of Lizzie is the morbid nursery rhyme, you don’t know much. On the morning of 4 August 1892, Lizzie Borden, the 32-year-old daughter of Andrew Borden, a wealthy yet miserly property developer, allegedly killed her stepmother, Abby, using a hatchet.

Lizzie struck 18 (not 40) blows to Abby’s head in an upstairs bedroom. When her father returned home from work for a mid-morning nap on the parlour sofa, Lizzie killed him with a more conservative 11 whacks as he slept.

• Read more | These are four of the most brutal Victorian murders. Were women really the perpetrators?

The second verse gets it wrong too. Lizzie was acquitted of the murder charges in 1893, thus escaping the gallows. She then lived out the rest of her days in a larger, more luxurious home purchased with her father’s fortune – worth about $9.5 million (£7.5 million) in today’s money.

And if we are to believe the reports of thrill-seeking tourists, Andrew is hardly singing up in heaven. He’s moaning right here on earth, forever stuck in his former home, now known as the Lizzie Borden House, a murder-themed bed and breakfast since 1996. Ghost-hunting guests claim to have encountered Andrew, Abby, their family maid Bridget – and even Lizzie herself – in the house.

7. The Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg, Russia

The fall of the House of Romanov, the imperial family that ruled Russia from 1613 to 1917, irrevocably shaped the history of their country – and indeed, the world. As anyone with even the faintest recollection of their secondary school history lessons will recall, the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and subsequent execution of his entire family laid the foundations for the first socialist state in history.

What most of us will be less familiar with is the house that hosted that fall: the Ipatiev House, a fairly unassuming former merchant’s home in the city of Yekaterinburg.

Built in the 1880s for mining industrialist Ivan Redikortsev, the two-storey neoclassical manor would have been perfectly in keeping for a man of Redikortsev’s station, just as it was for subsequent owners: gold-dealer IG Sharaviev and military engineer Nikolai Nikolayevich Ipatiev.

But for a family who had once resided in some of the most resplendent residences in Russia – including the 2.5-million-square-foot Winter Palace in St Petersburg – it was something of a downgrade.

In the spring of 1918, Tsar Nicholas, his wife Tsarina Alexandra, their five children and household staff were moved into the house, where they would spend 78 days confined to just four upper-storey rooms.

Under the watchful eye of Bolshevik guards, the prisoners were occasionally permitted time outdoors – though the house’s modest grounds with their oppressively high fences would have paled in comparison to the Tsarina’s private garden at the Winter Palace.

Finally, on 17 July, the family was ordered to the Ipatiev’s basement where they were executed by firing squad. Meanwhile, the house itself wouldn’t fall until 1977 when it was demolished under the orders of the Soviet government. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Church on the Blood was erected on its site, with a cross marking the exact location of the Romanov murders.

8. Sowden House, Los Angeles, United States

Like many old Hollywood mansions, Sowden House is steeped in a long and colourful history. Constructed in 1926 for its namesake, artist John Sowden, for nearly a century the property has played host to lavish parties, film crews and fashion shoots. It’s featured in Oscar-winning films like LA Confidential and The Aviator, and reality TV programmes like America’s Next Top Model.

But did it also bear witness to one of the most notorious unsolved murders in American history? On the night of 14 January 1947, did the enigmatic ‘Black Dahlia’ take her final breath in the bowels of this 5,600-square-foot fortress of luxury? Maybe…

Located in Los Feliz, a hillside community east of Hollywood, Sowden House is one of countless mansions in this upscale district. Yet, even in a sea of swanky properties, it sticks out – partly owing to its unusual appearance.

Composed of giant concrete blocks configurated and carved in designs meant to mimic an ancient Maya step pyramid, the house is perhaps the most iconic example of the Mayan Revival Movement of the early 20th century. It is widely regarded as the pinnacle of achievement for architect Lloyd Wright (not to be confused with his more famous father, Frank Lloyd Wright).

Surprisingly, however, none of these things are what Sowden is best known for. Its main claim to fame is for being the former home of one Dr George Hodel, a prominent LA physician and prime suspect in the 1947 slaying of Elizabeth Short – a 22-year-old budding starlet (christened the ‘Black Dahlia’ in the press on account of her raven hair), whose mutilated and dismembered body was found in a vacant lot, six and a half miles south of Sowden House.

Aside from his surgical skill and supposed sadomasochistic interests, there’s actually very little to connect Hodel to the crime. Still, legions of armchair detectives are convinced of his guilt. His own son, Steve Hoddel – a 30-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department – is adamant that the Dahlia’s dismemberment took place in the basement of his childhood home.

Caitlin Blackwell Baines is an art historian and author who specialises in Georgian art and architecture. She is the author of How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession (Profile Books, 2025)

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[I've just been inside a Nazi monster's mansion – and what I found there was deeply haunting]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/ive-just-been-inside-a-nazi-monsters-mansion-and-what-i-found-there-was-deeply-haunting/ 2025-11-28T18:01:04.000Z 2025-11-28T18:00:32.000Z It’s the summer of 2025 and I find myself standing at the entrance of an old, abandoned mansion just outside Prague. It looks like a stereotypical haunted house. On either side of the wrought-iron gates is a Gothic statue of a wild boar, glowering towards the road as if to deter all visitors. Beyond lies an overgrown garden and an austere-looking building with crumbling walls and dark windows.

Just looking at this place sends a shiver down my spine – not because of the Scooby Doo atmosphere, but because I know its history. It was once the home of a Jewish industrialist, who used to hold lavish parties here for the cream of Czech society. But at the beginning of the Second World War it was requisitioned by the Nazis, who made it the official residence of one of their most notorious war criminals: Reinhard Heydrich.

It has taken months to gain access. I first came here in September 2024 with a small group of historians from the US National World War II Museum in New Orleans. We had been tasked with scouting out sites related to Heydrich, but the Czech tourist office told us that this particular place would be impossible to visit because it was private property. Undeterred, my colleagues did a little detective work and managed to locate the owner, and after months of negotiation he finally agreed to give us exclusive access. And so here we are again – only this time the chateau’s gates are open, and we are allowed to go in.

Portrait of a killer

The historical significance of this site cannot be overstated. Its owner, Reinhard Heydrich, was one of the most important men in the Nazi hierarchy. He was the founding head of the Sicherheitsdienst, the much-feared intelligence service of the Nazi party. Between 1934 and 1936 he was also head of the Gestapo. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was promoted to head up the Reich Security Main Office, the umbrella organisation that oversaw all police and security operations throughout Hitler’s empire. As such, he was one of the most feared men in the whole of Europe.

Tall, blond and athletic, Heydrich was the very picture of the Nazi ideal. He was also utterly ruthless: Hitler himself described him as “the man with the iron heart”. In the first three years of the war, he organised mass killings calmly, efficiently and without compunction. For example, after the invasion of Poland in 1939 he planned the arrest and murder of more than 60,000 intellectuals and community leaders, for no other reason than that they might one day pose a threat to Nazi rule. Later, under the cover of Hitler’s ‘Night and Fog’ decree, he masterminded the ‘disappearance’ of thousands of suspected Resistance members in occupied France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Families were deliberately kept in the dark about the fate of their loved ones. The purpose was to spread uncertainty and terror amongst the general population.

• Read more | Did Hitler have a secret Jewish grandfather? Our DNA research has solved the mystery

But it was Heydrich’s actions against the Jews that made him most notorious. In 1938 he helped to organise Kristallnacht. The following year he supervised the creation of the Einsatzgruppen, who followed in the wake of the German Army in eastern Europe, murdering hundreds of thousands of Jews by firing squad as they went. It was Heydrich who organised the Wannsee Conference.

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From atrocity to assassination

Heydrich spent the last nine months of his life in Prague. By this time, he had been made the de facto ruler of Bohemia and Moravia, and was living a life of luxury at the expense of the Czech people. His offices were in Prague Castle and the nearby Czernin Palace, but his official residence was in the village of Panenské Břežany, just a few miles outside the city. In those days his chateau was far more glamorous than it is today: it had 50 rooms, including offices, servants’ quarters and at least a dozen bedrooms. The double staircase leading to the upper floor had red marble walls, and all the hallways were paved with elaborate mosaic tiles. At the top of the stairs was a sumptuous ballroom with views over the extensive grounds.

As soon as he arrived in Bohemia, Heydrich began treating the Czechs in the same way that he had already treated the Poles and the French. One of the first things he did was to declare martial law, and within just a few months he had already executed more than 400 suspected dissidents. His sentiments were quite clear: in comments to his aides, he announced his intention to “Germanise the Czech vermin”.

Heydrich worked closely with his secretary of state, a Sudeten German called Karl Hermann Frank, who lived in the same village as Heydrich. The two men were well suited to one another. Frank, like Heydrich, was a vicious antisemite and seemingly addicted to brutality. During the day, this pair would plan repressive police actions against the Czech population, but in the evening they both would return to Panenské Břežany, to one or other of their luxurious mansions, where they would socialise with other senior Nazis and SS officers.

All of this came to a dramatic end on the morning of 27 May 1942. That day, Heydrich set out from his chateau on his daily commute into Prague around 10am, just as he always did. He rode in an open top car, driven by an SS driver named Johannes Klein. He had no escort – he was arrogant enough to believe that he did not need one – and he followed the same route that he always took on the way to Prague Castle.

It was this complacency that led to his downfall. Over the previous months, British and Czech intelligence had been observing Heydrich’s movements and had formulated an assassination plan, codenamed Operation Anthropoid. Having worked out his daily routine, they knew exactly where and when to ambush him.

This particular morning, as his car slowed down at a bend in the road on the outskirts of Prague, a pair of Czech Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents were waiting for him. One of them, a man named Josef Gabčik, tried to fire a Sten gun at him, but it jammed. His partner, Jan Kubiš, then threw a specially prepared grenade at Heydrich’s car.

• Read more | The rise of the Nazis and the importance of heeding warnings

Rather than speed away from the ambush, Heydrich ordered his driver to stop, drew his pistol and stood up in the car to confront his attackers. It was thanks to his arrogance that shrapnel from the exploding grenade tore into his body, mortally wounding him. He died several days later, in hospital, of sepsis.

Grim reprisals

Heydrich’s assassination took the whole of the Nazi hierarchy by surprise, but when they finally gathered themselves, their reaction was typically brutal. Hitler called for the murder of 10,000 Czechs in reprisal and was only dissuaded from this by the need to keep Czech workers producing for the German war effort. Meanwhile, Heydrich’s subordinate, Karl Hermann Frank, was determined to track down and punish anyone even remotely linked to the assassination. He arrested and tortured hundreds of civilians in an attempt to find someone who could reveal where the assassins were hiding.

On 10 June, he went a step further. Frank’s security forces surrounded the village of Lidice and executed all 173 men and boys they found there. More than 300 women and children were then rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where around half of them also died. As a final act of viciousness, the village itself was burned down and levelled, as if it had never existed at all.

Lidice was chosen because several known Czech army officers happened to come from here, and it was assumed that they must have had something to do with the assassination – but in actual fact, the people of Lidice were entirely innocent in this respect. Two weeks later, a second village, Ležáky, suffered a similar fate. There was no attempt to hide these crimes. In fact, the Nazis openly publicised every stage of the massacres. This was designed to be a message to all potential resisters about the fate that awaited them and their communities if they ever attempted to defy the Nazis in future.

Unfortunately, Frank’s brutality paid off. Appalled by the massacre, one of the special forces team voluntarily gave himself up to the Gestapo. In return for one million Reichsmarks and the promise of a new identity, he revealed the whereabouts of some of the other operatives in the Czech resistance network. After more arrests, and more torture, Heydrich’s assassins were finally tracked down, hiding in the crypt of Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral in Prague. The church was surrounded and a massive firefight ensured, but eventually, to avoid capture, the surviving Czech resistance fighters took their own lives.

Abandoned to time

After Heydrich’s assassination, his widow, Lina, continued to live in the chateau at Panenské Břežany. For the next three years she ran the house and its estate like a mini concentration camp. She was given a workforce of 150 or so slave labourers from the Theresienstadt ghetto and from Flossenbürg concentration camp. It turned out that this woman had many of the same psychopathic tendencies as her husband: those of her prisoners who survived the war later testified that she had personally subjected them to physical abuse.

At the end of the war, Lina and her family finally fled the chateau to escape the advancing Red Army. They returned to Germany where she lived out her years on a generous army pension. Despite being found guilty of complicity in war crimes by a Czech court, she was never extradited.

Meanwhile, her glamorous home and its lands were taken over by the Czech state. Over the next 50 years, a series of workshops were built in its grounds, and it became a kind of minor industrial estate. The chateau itself was used by the Metal Research Institute, before eventually being abandoned.

As I walk around the building today, all these different layers of history are on display. Some of the rooms have ornate plasterwork ceilings that betray the house’s lavish past, while others are lined with functional tiles and electric cables left over from its time as a technical institute.

Some of the original features are still there. In the huge, vaulted entrance hall there is an ornate stone fireplace where Heydrich’s guests would have warmed themselves before proceeding up the staircase to the ballroom on the first floor. The marble walls and mosaic floors are intact, but the artworks and 19th-century furniture are gone. The walls are deeply cracked, with peeling paint, and exposed pipes and beams where some of the ceilings have collapsed. Everything is in a state of disrepair.

An uncertain future

It is difficult to know what is to be done with this place today. The current owner wants to restore the building but is struggling to find the time or the money to do it justice. When we met him, he expressed a desire to preserve the place as an important cultural site and a place of Czech memory. But he is also a businessman, and needs to find a way to make it pay for itself.

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One idea is to make the house into a museum. This is what happened to Karl Hermann Frank’s villa nearby, which was originally part of the same estate. That building now houses a permanent exhibition devoted to the history of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and the atrocities that were committed by Frank after Heydrich’s assassination. The owner is keen to do something similar with this place, but is not sure if a small village like Panenské Břežany can sustain a second museum devoted to a very similar subject.

Alternatively, he could make it into some kind of exhibition space, or even a hotel. This would bring other concerns: it is not clear what kind of guests would want to take weekend breaks in the former home of a Nazi mass-killer. The last thing he wants to do is to create a pilgrimage site for Holocaust deniers.

Until he has made up his mind, the building is likely to remain in a state of serious disrepair. As I walk around its dilapidated rooms and echoing corridors, I can’t help feeling that perhaps this is no bad thing. We are so used to having our thoughts and emotions curated for us that it is actually quite refreshing to visit a memorial site where you are free to imagine the past for yourself.

I also wonder if there is something quite apt about how derelict this building has become. When they invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, the Nazis made this place the centre of their power and authority over the Czech people; the fact that it is now a virtual ruin feels satisfyingly appropriate. I can think of no better epitaph for the evil man who lived here and the hollow ideology that created him.

Keith Lowe is an author and former military history publisher who has spent more than 20 years writing about the Second World War and its aftermath. His most recent book is Naples 1944: War, Liberation and Chaos (William Collins, 2024)

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/think-you-know-everything-about-ancient-rome-these-25-facts-will-prove-otherwise/ 2025-12-22T12:07:28.000Z 2025-11-28T13:02:32.000Z 1. The Romans lived in an independent state for more than 2,200 years

According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BC, shortly after the beginning of the Italian Iron Age. Its inhabitants were Latin-speaking pagans who lived along the river Tiber in what is now central Italy. The empire of Trebizond, the last independent Roman kingdom descended from that state, was captured in 1461 by an Ottoman army equipped with gunpowder weapons. The people living in Trebizond also called themselves ‘Roman’, but they were Christians who lived in a city on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey and spoke a language they called Romeika (which translates as 'Roman', but which we now call Greek).

2. The Roman empire once included all, or part of, nearly 50 countries

At the empire’s greatest extent in AD 117, Roman territory stretched from what is now the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Persian Gulf beaches in Kuwait, from southern Egypt near the current Sudanese border to northern England, and from just south of Casablanca in Morocco to the Caspian Sea shores of Azerbaijan. The land area of the Roman empire was smaller than Australia, but if one included the territorial waters controlled by Rome (as is customary with modern states) the empire would rank as the fifth-largest country on earth if it existed today.

3. As much as one-third of the world’s population lived under Roman control

Late during the reign of the emperor Trajan (ruled AD 98–117), it is thought that the Roman empire reached a population of 80 million, out of a total world population of around 230 million. In modern terms, Rome’s share of the world population at that moment would be nearly equivalent to a country with the combined populations of India and China.

4. Rome was the first city in the world with a million residents

Rome reached a population of 1 million during the first century BC, and aside from temporary population decreases caused by plagues or natural disasters, did not fall below that level until the end of the fourth century AD. This is even more remarkable considering that poor sanitation and crowded conditions meant that the city lost as much as 3 per cent of its population each year to disease – a number far greater than the birthrate. Rome’s massive population was sustained through large-scale migration from other parts of the empire, nearly every year, for five centuries.

5. Hadrian’s Wall was NOT the longest Roman wall – and nor was it the most northern

Almost everyone has heard of Hadrian’s Wall, the defensive structure that once stretched 73 miles across what is now northern England. However, an even longer fortification built under Hadrian and his successor, Antoninus Pius, extended nearly 190 miles across southern Germany. It began roughly where the Rhine turns west at Mainz, and extended to meet the Danube near Regensburg.

Antoninus Pius also ordered the construction of the empire’s northernmost wall – the eponymous Antonine Wall – which stretched 39 miles across what is now Scotland, from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Forth.

6. The Romans produced more than 25 million coins each year

Following a reform instituted by joint emperors Diocletian and Maximian in AD 294, the Romans established a network of 15 mints across the empire – all the way from Londinium (London) to the Egyptian city of Alexandria. Although production slowed around 100 years later, no state in the world would again match Rome’s numismatic productivity until the 19th century.

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7. Rome’s ‘eighth hill’ is a load of old rubbish… literally

The Testaccio region of Rome is now famous for its nightlife, but it takes its name from Monte Testaccio, an artificial hill that is 35 metres tall and created from the remains of ceramic shipping containers offloaded from barges along the Tiber. Most of the pottery has been dated to the period between AD 140 and 250, though the base of the hill may be much older.

Despite its unusual provenance, Monte Testaccio is sometimes described as Rome’s ‘eighth hill’, in addition to the seven other hills within the city walls: the Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal and Viminal hills.

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8. The Pantheon is the oldest intact, continually used building in the world

Originally created in the style of a conventional Roman temple in the first century BC, the Pantheon was rebuilt under the direction of the emperor Hadrian in the AD 120s. The ground level was originally much lower than it is today, and when one approached the structure from the front, it appeared to be a normal temple because the structure’s 43-metre-wide dome was obscured by its triangular pediment (gable).

Nearly two millennia later, the Pantheon’s dome remains the largest of its kind in the world – its survival no doubt linked to the decision to convert the building into a Christian church in AD 609.

9. There was once a giant city plan, carved on marble blocks, that showed every street and building in Rome

Between AD 203 and 211, the emperor Septimius Severus ordered the creation of a 234-metre-square map of the city of Rome that included accurate renderings of the ground-floor architectural plans for every building in the city. Carved on marble blocks, the map was hung on a wall of the Temple of Peace, which now forms the northern exterior of the Basilica of St Cosmas and Damian.

As of 2025, more than a thousand fragments of the Severan Marble Plan have been discovered since the Renaissance, representing around 10 per cent of the original map. Because many of these include the name of the building they represent, it has been extremely useful for archaeologists looking to identify newly discovered architectural remains. Today, the fragments are on display in the new Museo della Forma Urbis on Rome’s Caelian Hill.

10. Rome is still surrounded by its ancient walls

The Aurelian Walls that surround the city of Rome were built in the AD 270s, but they continued to be used by the city’s defenders until the late 19th century. The breaching of the walls by the army of the Kingdom of Italy in September of 1870 represented the final step in Italian unification.

11. You can find an ancient wall in McDonald’s

The Servian Walls of the fourth century BC may be less famous than the Aurelian Walls, but they have much more character. Stretching around 12 miles, multiple fragments of the walls still speckle the modern city of Rome. The largest fragment can be found next to Termini Station, but the most memorable remains are now found in the McDonald’s restaurant on the train station’s lower level.

12. Rome’s walls were formidable… but Constantinople’s were MUCH more difficult to breach

Rome has been captured numerous times since the Aurelian Walls were built, but the city of Constantinople (modern Istanbul, Turkey) – which became the Roman empire’s eastern capital in AD 330 – has fallen to invaders on just three occasions. The city remained under Roman control for nearly 900 years until its walls were breached by the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, before being recaptured by the Romans in 1261. It then fell to the Ottomans in 1453, but has not been seized since.

13. The Roman empire was home to one of the most fought-over cities in the world

Although only 134 miles from Constantinople, Adrianople (modern Edirne, Turkey) has been the site of at least 15 different battles and sieges. The last two occurred in 1913 when Bulgaria captured the city from the Ottoman empire before losing it again later that year.

14. The Colosseum was the largest (but not the only) amphitheatre

Rome’s Flavian Amphitheatre, or Colosseum, was once capable of seating 50,000 people, making it almost 30 per cent larger than the empire’s next-largest arena in Capua. But the Colosseum was unique because of its remarkable size, not because amphitheatres were rare. In fact, the remains of more than 230 amphitheatres have been found in former Roman cities, stretching all the way from Britain to Israel. One such example in Cahors, France, was discovered during the construction of a car park that is now aptly named the Parking Amphithéâtre. Another, found in suburban Paris, now serves as the courtyard for a high school.

15. Arenas weren’t just for gladiator fights

Thanks in part to the 2000 movie Gladiator and its recent sequel, Roman amphitheatres are now commonly associated with clashes between sandal-wearing warriors. However, gladiator battles weren’t the only events to take place in these ancient arenas. In fact, spectators were as interested in events that displayed exotic wild animals like rhinos, lions and ‘camel-leopards’ (giraffes). The largest games on record – the 100 days of spectacles marking the opening of the Colosseum in AD 81 – saw upwards of 9,000 animals killed.

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16. Commodus was a much better fighter than Hollywood would have us believe

In comparison to Maximus (Russell Crowe), Gladiator’s main antagonist, Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), is depicted as an unremarkable fighter – but this is a distortion of the truth. Following a failed assassination plot orchestrated by his sister Lucilla, the real-life Commodus sent for instructors from around the world to teach him how to shoot arrows, throw javelins, and excel in hand-to-hand combat. As his skills increased, Commodus wanted to show his subjects what he could do. In one memorable display in the Colosseum, the senator Cassius Dio witnessed the emperor “dispatching, with his own hands, five hippos and two elephants in two days. He also killed rhinos and a camel-leopard”.

Another time, Commodus arranged for “a hundred lions to appear in one group” and then “killed the entire hundred with exactly one hundred javelins” so that “no one saw a single extra javelin.” While Dio did not approve of these displays, even Commodus’s worst critics could not deny his talent.

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17. Chariot racing was HUGELY popular

The Circus Maximus in Rome, the main site for chariot races, adjoined the imperial palace and had seating for at least 150,000 people. On competition days, 800 horses could race in as many as 24 different contests. The last races held in the Circus Maximus took place in AD 549, but racing continued at Constantinople’s 100,000-seater Hippodrome into the 13th century.

18. Chariot racing was the football of its day

Rome originally had four charioteer teams: the Reds, Whites, Greens and Blues. The Reds and Whites were the most historic, but they were surpassed in prominence by the Greens and Blues during the first century AD. The teams had franchises that competed in major cities across the empire and even boasted organised groups of supporters (akin to modern football ultras) prone to riotous behaviour.

Star drivers, who could often change teams during their careers, frequently earned enormous amounts of money. The tombstone of Gaius Appuleius Diocles, one of the greatest charioteers of the second century AD, mentions that he won 1,462 races and earned 35,863,120 sesterces in prizes across a 24-year career spent racing for the Reds, Whites and Greens. Although he is believed to have died at the age of 42 and would have kept only a portion of his winnings, his career earnings exceeded the fortunes of most Roman senators.

19. Rome became the first large empire to enact universal citizenship

In AD 212, the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus – better known by his nickname, Caracalla – issued a law making all free people in the empire Roman citizens. The new citizens had to legally change their names to honour their new benefactor, flooding the Roman bureaucracy with tens of millions of people now bearing the name ‘Aurelius’.

The reason for Caracalla’s generosity? He wanted everyone in the empire to celebrate the murder of Geta, Caracalla’s brother and co-emperor who was killed in his mother’s arms.

20. Roman trade across the Indian Ocean was hugely lucrative

When we think of ancient trade, the Silk Road – the sprawling network of trade routes stretching some 4,000 miles between China and the Mediterranean – often springs to mind. Yet, it wasn’t the only source of wealth for the Romans. Merchants also travelled across the Indian Ocean to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, carrying gold coins and bringing back spices and exotic animals.

At times, the demand for Roman coins in India and Sri Lanka so exceeded the supply that Indian mints struck their own coins featuring the portraits of Roman imperial figures and legends written in Latin.

21. The Romans developed a sophisticated financial system

From the second century BC, Roman bankers managed investment accounts that their clients could use for depositing money and making transfers. The system was so sophisticated that emperor Trajan used subsidised government loans to fund social welfare programmes in the second century AD.

22. The Romans invented some truly terrifying military technology

The Romans developed a napalm-like substance commonly known as ‘Greek fire’ which was placed in hand grenades or sprayed from hoses equipped with special nozzles – usually against enemy naval forces. When the substance ignited, it even burned on water.

The technology was first deployed in AD 672 and was used for more than 500 years against the navies of the Bulgars, Rus’ and Arabs. The empire lost the ability to manufacture Greek fire just before AD 1200, although no one really knows why.

23. The longest-serving Roman emperor was actually pretty unremarkable

He ruled for 66 years between AD 962–1028, but Constantine VIII’s passions for fine food and horses meant that he took little interest in state affairs until the last three years of his life. He instead trusted his older brother and co-emperor – the much more famous and capable emperor Basil II – to govern the empire for most of their lives. Coincidentally, Basil’s term in office (AD 960–1025), is the second-longest in Roman history.

• Read more | Step inside the ancient Roman empire's gladiatorial arenas, and witness 24 hours of shocking violence

24. TWO emperors share the record for the shortest reign

Father-and-son duo Gordian I and Gordian II ruled for a mere 22 days in AD 238. The Gordians, who were governing a province in north Africa without an army stationed there, foolishly rebelled against Maximinus Thrax – one of four other men who also claimed to be emperor that year. Although the Gordians received senatorial support in Rome, they were quickly dispatched by a general loyal to Maximinus.

As for the second-shortest reign, the emperor Nepotian barely outlasted the two Gordians by holding Rome for 28 days in June of AD 350.

25. It took a VERY long time for the Romans to adopt Christianity

When Constantine I famously converted to Christianity in AD 312, the territory he ruled was only around 10 per cent Christian. In fact, the Roman empire did not become a Christian-majority state until the AD 390s, and some pagan-majority communities lasted long enough that they negotiated the surrender of their cities to Muslim generals in the AD 630s. The Syrian city of Harran (now part of modern Turkey) even maintained temples dedicated to its moon god into the 11th century AD.

Edward J Watts is Alkiviadis Vassiliadis Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of the The Romans: A 2,000-Year History (John Murray Press/Basic Books, 2025)

]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[When was the White House built – and why is it white?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/21st-century/white-house-facts-president-usa-american-history-when-was-built-washington-rooms-donald-trump-fire/ 2025-10-27T19:05:50.000Z 2025-10-27T17:06:42.000Z Inscribed on the stone fireplace of the State Dining Room of the White House are the words: “I pray to Heaven bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.”

The blessing, which was engraved there in 1945, came from a letter written by John Adams to his wife Abigail in 1800. He was the second man to be president of the United States, but the first to reside in the world-famous home of the presidency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, in Washington, DC.

A decade earlier, there had been no such place as Washington, DC, on the Potomac River. Founded by the Residence Act of 1790, the new capital would be a modern metropolis laid out in a grid system and with grand boulevards and public spaces everywhere. In the short term, though, it was not a promising place to live: if not hectic with the constant building works, there was nothing around but forests and some wetlands, where sanitation was poor and conditions were cold to freezing.

Still, this would be the home of the president. George Washington, the first man elected to the office, personally chose the site for what would be the White House along with city planner Pierre Charles L’Enfant, and launched a competition for the building’s design.

When was the White House built?

Construction of the White House got underway with the laying of the cornerstone on 13 October 1792. But the the so-called ‘Presidential Palace' would not be finished until after Washington had left office. 

Even by 1800, when Adams moved in, the building was far from complete. It would be added to, repaired and extended many times throughout the years, not least when it had to be reconstructed following the War of 1812.

The photogenic South Portico was added in 1824, followed by the North Portico, completed in 1830. The West Wing was added in 1902 and within, in 1909, the first iteration of the Oval Office. The East Wing was developed in 1942 – it is the focus of a sweeping renovation by President Trump that will see a 90,000-square-foot ballroom added to the building. The White House currently boasts a total of 132 rooms.

White House facts: seven things you need to know

Here, White House historian Lindsay M Chervinsky explains everything you need to know about the home of the US president…

Why is the White House called the White House?

The home of the President of the United States is called the White House in reference to its covering with lime-based whitewash to protect the porous sandstone it is built from. 

By President Jimmy Carter’s administration (1977–81), the paint was so thick that visitors couldn’t see the carving details above the windows and doors, or any of the beautiful molding.

The White House underwent a significant external renovation to strip the many layers of paint, which took 20 years and wasn’t completed until President Bill Clinton’s administration (1993–2001). When finished, over 45 coats of paint had been removed from the exterior walls.

• Read more: American history myths: 7 things people get wrong

Who built the White House?

The White House was designed by Irish-born architect, James Hoban – whose vision of a neoclassical mansion in the Palladian style won him Washington's competition – but it was built by hundreds of workers, including enslaved people.

Over the next eight years, a mix of free African-American and white wage labourers, enslaved workers, and skilled craftsmen built the White House. They worked in a variety of positions, including basic labourers, overseers, sawyers, carpenters, stone workers, and bricklayers.

Some of the enslaved workers were owned by the city commissioners charged with overseeing the project, or by Hoban himself. The vast majority, however, were hired out from their owners in Washington, DC, as well as Virginia, and Maryland, who then pocketed the enslaved peoples’ wages.

The construction crews were often shuttled back and forth between the White House and the Capitol building sites (which were also built using enslaved labour), depending on which location needed labour or had available materials at any given moment.

Was the White House set on fire by the British?

Yes. In August 1814, British forces marched into Washington, DC and burned all public buildings in retaliation for the destruction of York [now Toronto, Canada], the year prior. After enjoying a lavish meal laid out by First Lady Dolley Madison, the British forces set fire to the White House.

Urban legend suggests that a rain storm arrived and saved the White House. The truth, however, is that the rain actually made the damage worse. While the wet weather saved the surrounding buildings from catching fire, it nearly destroyed the walls of the White House. The stone walls were incredibly hot from the fire and the cold rain caused them to shrink rapidly and crack.

Congress quickly appointed a commission to investigate the damage and rebuild the White House. The investigators discovered that almost everything inside had been destroyed except for a few pots and pans in the basement kitchens, but their report concealed the extent of the damage to get the rebuilding process started immediately.

• Read more: Why does the United States of America celebrate Independence Day on 4 July?

Some officials wanted to move the capital to a more developed city – like Philadelphia, New York, or Charleston – because lodging, food, and entertainment options were still quite limited in DC. Furthermore, representatives from states far away from DC, like New Hampshire or Georgia, wanted to shorten their travelling time. They saw the destruction of the White House as an opportunity to move the capital. Eager to maintain a historic link with the earlier presidents, Presidents James Madison and James Monroe rushed to rebuild the White House exactly as before. They even hired the same architect, James Hoban, to complete the renovation.

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Many animals have lived at the White House

Most people are familiar with the dogs that have lived in the White House – such as Bo and Sunny Obama, or President George W Bush and First Lady Laura Bush’s Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley. But there have been a menagerie of animals that have called the grounds home.

President Woodrow Wilson welcomed a herd of sheep to the South Lawn and they donated their wool to the Red Cross to create uniforms for soldiers during the First World War. One particularly adventuresome ram named Hi caused a bit of trouble when he repeatedly broke into the Oval Office.

John F Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, had a pet pony named Macaroni; First Lady Grace Coolidge had a raccoon named Rebecca; and President William H Taft had a cow, Pauline Wayne*,* which roamed in front of the Old Executive Office Building.

Perhaps best of all, Alice Roosevelt (Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter) had a garter snake named Emily Spinach that she carried around in her purse and pulled out as a conversation piece at parties.

• Anne Boleyn’s lapdog and John Quincy Adams’s alligator: 10 famous people in history and their bizarre pets

The White House is bigger than you might think it is

While the building appears to be two stories from the street, there are actually six floors.

There are three floors above ground (the State Floor and two floors for the residence), and three floors below ground. While much of the State Floor and residence layout has remained the same since its construction, many other areas of the White House have changed dramatically.

When you enter the White House today, you would probably enter on the Ground Floor, or the first of the basement floors. Until 1901, this floor was primarily a work space. Instead of the China Room, the Vermeil Room, the Library, and the Diplomatic Reception Room, there would have been a kitchen, a laundry room, a storage space for food and dishware, and sleeping spaces for the enslaved or free servants. The basement was notoriously damp and frequently infested with vermin and rodents.

• Read more: Life after the White House: what the US presidents did next

There are other spaces that have been lost to history as well. The White House had a series of stables to house the president’s horses, carriages, coachmen, and grooms. The final and most elaborate stable was converted into a garage in 1909.

The attic has also undergone many renovations. In its early years, it was used for storage, sleeping quarters for free or enslaved servants, and a hiding place for the presidents’ children. In 1913 First Lady Ellen Wilson added guestrooms and a painting studio for her own private use. During the Coolidge administration, engineers discovered problems with the roof structure. They installed a sunroom (now the solarium), larger guest and service rooms, and a new steel and concrete roof.

The White House grounds were once open to anyone

When President John Adams moved into the White House on 1 November 1800, there was no fence or gate, and the grounds were open to pedestrians. President Thomas Jefferson added a fence that enclosed the grounds, but they remained open for common use.

In 1873, President Ulysses S Grant began closing the grounds at sunset for additional security and in 1893, President Grover Cleveland closed the South Grounds, typically the first family’s garden, after strangers tried to take a picture of his young daughter, Esther. The North and South Grounds were closed permanently during Calvin Coolidge’s presidency at the recommendation of the United States Secret Service.

The president’s cabinet hasn’t always had a home at the White House

Every president has consulted a cabinet since President George Washington convened the first full cabinet meeting on 26 November 1791. While President John Adams was the first to live in the White House, President Thomas Jefferson was the first to meet with his cabinet in the White House and gathered the department secretaries in his private study on the first floor (now the State Dining Room).

By the time of the Civil War, the president’s study had moved to the second floor and Abraham Lincoln met with the secretaries in his office in the south-east corner of the second floor (now the Lincoln Bedroom).

• Read more: American presidents: 9 things you (probably) didn’t know

Theodore Roosevelt built the West Wing to provide more work space for his staff, and to give his large family more room on the second floor of the original building. In 1909, President Taft expanded the West Wing, added the Oval Office, and an official Cabinet room.

The Oval Office was moved to its present location during President Franklin D Roosevelt’s presidency. Since then, most cabinets have used the Cabinet room for official cabinet meetings and elected to meet with individual department secretaries in the Oval Office.

Lindsay M Chervinsky, PhD is White House Historian at the White House Historical Association, a non-profit dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of the White House. She is the author of The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution

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