An eighteenth-century imperial seal that was taken from the Summer Palace in Beijing in the nineteenth century has been sold by a French auction house despite protests from the Chinese government.

Public toilets thought to have been used as bunkers during the Spanish Civil War have been found beneath the streets of the town of Berja.   

The National Archaeological Museum in Naples will reopen its fresco section after a ten-year renovation project. More than 400 wall paintings from Pompeii are now arranged in chronological and thematic order.  

Here’s an introduction to the great Hobbit debate.  

National Geographic News has picked up the story about the “Dark Age” (1200 to 900 B.C.) temple unearthed in southeastern Turkey at Tell Ta’yinat, where archaeologists have found evidence suggesting that the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age may not have been as turbulent as written sources indicate. “We are filling in a cultural and a political history of this era,” said Timothy Harrison of the University of Toronto.  

Learn a few more details about the millefiori dish discovered in a Roman grave in London in this article from Reuters. “For it to have survived intact is amazing. In fact, it is unprecedented in the western Roman world,” said Jenny Hall, curator of the Roman collection at the Museum of London.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, April 30, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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