Restoration: Did you mean...?

Athens, Greece, with its famous Acropolis, has come to symbolize the whole of the country in the popular imagination, and not without cause. It not only has its iconic ruins and the famous port of Piraeus but, thanks to ancient writers, its...

Augustus Caesar (27 BCE - 14 CE) was the name of the first and, by most accounts, greatest Roman emperor. Augustus was born Gaius Octavius Thurinus on 23 September 63 BCE. Octavian was adopted by his great-uncle Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, and...

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was a Corsican-born French general and politician who reigned as Emperor of the French with the regnal name Napoleon I from 1804 to 1814 and then again briefly in 1815. He established the largest continental...

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian Renaissance artist, architect, engineer, and scientist. He is renowned for his ability to observe and capture nature, scientific phenomena, and human emotions in all media. Leonardo’s innovative...

Ramesses II (r. 1279-1213 BCE, alternative spellings: Ramses, Rameses) was known to the Egyptians as Userma'atre'setepenre, which means 'Keeper of Harmony and Balance, Strong in Right, Elect of Ra'. He is also known also as Ozymandias and...

Sargon of Akkad (reign 2334-2279 BCE) was the king of the Akkadian Empire of Mesopotamia, the first multinational empire in history, who united the disparate kingdoms of the region under a central authority. He is equally famous today as...

The Great Pyramid of Giza is a defining symbol of Egypt and the last of the ancient Seven Wonders of the World. It is located on the Giza plateau near the modern city of Cairo and was built over a twenty-year period during the reign of the...

A ziggurat is a form of monumental architecture originating in ancient Mesopotamia, which usually had a rectangular base and was built in a series of steps up to a flat platform upon which a temple was raised. The ziggurat was an artificial...

The Edo period refers to the years from 1603 until 1868 when the Tokugawa family ruled Japan. The era is named after the city of Edo, modern-day Tokyo, where the Tokugawa shogunate had its government. It is also sometimes referred to as the...

The Ark of the Covenant refers to the box-like container that held the tablets of the Law received by Moses on Mount Sinai. Tradition claimed that it contained two stone tablets, carved by God, listing the first ten commandments given to...