Relics: Did you mean...?

In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas is a Trojan prince and the legendary founder of the Romans. He is the son of Anchises, a member of the Trojan royal family, and the goddess Aphrodite/Venus. Aeneas was one of the few Trojan heroes who escaped...

Chang'an, located near modern Xian in Shaanxi Province, was the capital of several dynasties of ancient China from the Zhou to the Tang and eventually became one of the world's great metropolises. With regular tree-lined avenues, high walls...

Edessa (modern Urfa), located today in south-east Turkey but once part of upper Mesopotamia on the frontier of the Syrian desert, was an important city throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. A city within the Seleucid Empire, then capital...

The Counter-Reformation (also known as the Catholic Reformation, 1545 to c. 1700) was the Catholic Church's response to the Protestant Reformation (1517-1648). It is usually dated from the Council of Trent in 1545 to the end of the Great...

The architecture of the Byzantine Empire (4th - 15th century CE) continued its early Roman traditions but architects also added new structures to their already formidable repertoire, notably improved fortification walls and domed churches...

Byzantine art (4th - 15th century CE) is generally characterised by a move away from the naturalism of the Classical tradition towards the more abstract and universal, there is a definite preference for two-dimensional representations, and...

Magadha was an ancient kingdom located on the Indo-Gangetic plains in eastern India and spread over what is today the modern state of Bihar. At the height of its power, it claimed suzerainty over the entire eastern part of the country (roughly...

This map illustrates the changing patterns of Christian pilgrimage during the Middle Ages: for most Europeans the long, perilous, and costly journey to the Holy Land was too far, dangerous, and forbiddingly expensive, so devotion redirected...

Swords used by Japanese samurai were renowned for the craftsmanship which produced strong yet flexible curved steel blades with a single, super-sharp cutting edge. Produced from the 8th century CE onwards and symbolic of the samurai's elevated...

The Indian Princely states (aka Native States or Princely India) were those states in the Indian subcontinent the British did not conquer but which were typically bound by treaty first to the East India Company and then to the British Crown...