A 3D Animation Reveals What Paris Looked Like When It Was a Roman Town

in History | July 5th, 2023

The stan­dard tour of Paris feels like a jour­ney back through time: the Eif­fel Tow­er stands for the eigh­teen-eight­ies, the Arc de Tri­om­phe for the turn of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, Les Invalides for the turn of the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, Notre-Dame for the mid-four­teenth cen­tu­ry, Sainte-Chapelle for the mid-thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, and so on. But of course, this is much too sim­ple a way of see­ing it, since so many of France’s his­tor­i­cal land­marks have been repeat­ed­ly expand­ed, ren­o­vat­ed, or mod­i­fied over the cen­turies. (The Lou­vre, for exam­ple, bog­gles the mind with not just its sheer scale, but also the span of eras embod­ied by its con­struc­tion.)

Paris’ his­to­ry also goes much deep­er than many tourists imag­ine. To dis­cov­er it, they must go deep­er in a lit­er­al sense, down into the Crypte Arche­ologique de l’île de la Cité. Con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed right next to Notre-Dame, this under­ground muse­um con­tains arti­facts of the city as it was 2,000 years ago, when it was a rel­a­tive­ly mod­est Gal­lo-Roman town called Lute­tia, or in French, Lutèce.

On dis­play there as well are some of the ani­ma­tions seen in the video above, which recon­struct Lutèce at the height of the Roman Empire in 3D. The aer­i­al view it pro­vides shows the Ile de la Cité, rec­og­niz­able today in form but not func­tion: 1,300 years before the com­ple­tion of Notre-Dame, it had yet even to be occu­pied by the fortress of its Roman gov­er­nor.

Long gone is the dom­i­nant fea­ture of Lutèce’s built envi­ron­ment: its Roman forum, which was locat­ed on a choice piece of real estate between the cur­rent Boule­vard Saint-Michel and Rue Saint-Jacques. But one impor­tant frag­ment of Luté­cien pub­lic life does sur­vive: the Arènes de Lutèce, l’orgueil de la cité, which host­ed spec­ta­cles both reli­gious and impe­r­i­al, as well as no few glad­i­a­to­r­i­al con­tests. In this longer broad­cast of Des Racines et des Ailes, you can see the 3D recon­struc­tion of the amphithe­ater woven in with footage of its remains as they look in the mod­ern day. Fran­coph­o­nes should note that it also includes an inter­view with Sylvie Robin, a con­ser­va­tor from the Musée Car­navalet — anoth­er essen­tial des­ti­na­tion for any­one with a seri­ous inter­est in Parisian time trav­el.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Roman Roads of Gaul Visu­al­ized as a Mod­ern Sub­way Map

Take an Aer­i­al Tour of Medieval Paris

A 3D Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Paris: Take a Visu­al Jour­ney from Ancient Times to 1900

Paris in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Eif­fel Tow­er, Notre Dame, The Pan­théon, and More (1890)

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Frederick Douglass’s Fiery 1852 Speech, “The Meaning of July 4th for the Negro,” Read by James Earl Jones

in History | July 4th, 2023

Every year on this day, Fred­er­ick Douglass’s fiery, uncom­pro­mis­ing 1852 speech, “The Mean­ing of July 4th for the Negro,” gets a new hear­ing, and takes on added res­o­nance in the con­text of con­tem­po­rary pol­i­tics. It has nev­er ceased to speak direct­ly to those for whom the cel­e­bra­tions can seem like a hol­low mock­ery of free­dom and inde­pen­dence. The Amer­i­can hol­i­day com­mem­o­rates the adop­tion of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence—next to the Con­sti­tu­tion, the U.S.A.’s most cher­ished found­ing doc­u­ment, and a text, for all its rhetor­i­cal ele­gance, which can­not escape the irony that it was writ­ten by a slave­hold­er for an emerg­ing slave nation.

Slav­ery had always been a con­tentious sub­ject among the colonists. And yet the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion was a war waged for the full free­dom and enfran­chise­ment of only a very few white men of prop­er­ty. Not only were black peo­ple exclud­ed from the nation’s free­doms, but so too were con­quered Native Amer­i­can nations, and in great part, poor white men and women who could not vote—though they were not chained in per­pet­u­al servi­tude as human chat­tel, with lit­tle hope of lib­er­ty for them­selves or their descen­dants.

Dou­glass gave the speech in Rochester, NY, sev­en­ty-six years after the first July 4th and at a time when the coun­try was riv­en with irrec­on­cil­able ten­sions between abo­li­tion­ists, free-soil­ers, and the slave­hold­ing South. The Com­pro­mise of 1850 and the Fugi­tive Slave Act—at least, in hindsight—made the impend­ing Civ­il War all but inevitable. The speech reveals the cel­e­bra­tion as a sham for those who were or had been enslaved, and who could not con­sid­er them­selves Amer­i­can cit­i­zens regard­less of their sta­tus (as Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice Roger B. Taney would affirm five years lat­er.)

Just above, you can hear a pow­er­ful read­ing of Douglass’s speech by James Earl Jones, deliv­ered as part of Howard Zinn’s Voic­es of a People’s His­to­ry of the Unit­ed States. Read an excerpt of the speech below.

What, to the Amer­i­can slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all oth­er days of the year, the gross injus­tice and cru­el­ty to which he is a con­stant vic­tim. To him, your cel­e­bra­tion is a sham; your boast­ed lib­er­ty, an unholy license; your nation­al great­ness, swelling van­i­ty; your sounds of rejoic­ing are emp­ty and heart­less; your denun­ci­a­tion of tyrants, brass front­ed impu­dence; your shouts of lib­er­ty and equal­i­ty, hol­low mock­ery; your prayers and hymns, your ser­mons and thanks­giv­ings, with all your reli­gious parade and solem­ni­ty, are, to Him, mere bom­bast, fraud, decep­tion, impi­ety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cov­er up crimes that would dis­grace a nation of sav­ages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of prac­tices more shock­ing and bloody than are the peo­ple of these Unit­ed States at this very hour.

Douglass’s speech con­demned the “scorch­ing irony” of Amer­i­can inde­pen­dence even after the Civ­il War, as racist ter­ror­ism and Jim Crow destroyed the promise of Recon­struc­tion. In our present time, writes Pulitzer Prize-win­ning author and pro­fes­sor Isabel Wilk­er­son, amidst the rash of high pro­file police killings and an ensu­ing lack of jus­tice, events “have forced us to con­front our place in a coun­try where we were enslaved for far longer than we have been free. Forced us to face the dispir­it­ing ero­sion that we have wit­nessed in recent years—from the birther assaults on a sit­ting black pres­i­dent to the gut­ting of the Vot­ing Rights Act that we had believed was carved in gran­ite.” We might add to this list the resump­tion of the failed “War on Drugs” and the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s announce­ments that it would do lit­tle to safe­guard civ­il rights nor to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute the surge of white suprema­cist vio­lence.

And yet the “self evi­dent” mythol­o­gy of Amer­i­can free­dom and equality—and of Amer­i­can innocence—remains potent and seduc­tive to many peo­ple in the coun­try. As the con­ser­v­a­tive think tank Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute put it a few days ago, “The birth of the Unit­ed States was unique because it was a nation found­ed not on blood or eth­nic­i­ty, but on ideas.” To this ahis­tor­i­cal fic­tion, which man­ages to erase the founders’ own state­ments on race, the col­o­niza­tion of indige­nous lands, and even the bloody Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War in its strange­ly des­per­ate zeal to sweep the past away, Dou­glass would reply: “The feel­ing of the nation must be quick­ened; the con­science of the nation must be roused; the pro­pri­ety of the nation must be star­tled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be pro­claimed and denounced.”

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2017.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Civ­il War & Recon­struc­tion: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Take Free Cours­es on African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry from Yale and Stan­ford: From Eman­ci­pa­tion, to the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, and Beyond

1.5 Mil­lion Slav­ery Era Doc­u­ments Will Be Dig­i­tized, Help­ing African Amer­i­cans to Learn About Their Lost Ances­tors

Albert Ein­stein Explains How Slav­ery Has Crip­pled Everyone’s Abil­i­ty (Even Aristotle’s) to Think Clear­ly About Racism

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Footage from New York City’s First Gay Pride March (1970)

in Film, History | July 3rd, 2023

The fore­cast­ed rain held off, the poor air qual­i­ty caused by Cana­di­an wild­fires had abat­ed, and the world’s largest Pride parade stepped off with­out inci­dent in New York City on the final Sun­day in June.

It’s grown quite a bit since the last Sun­day of June 1970, when Christo­pher Street Lib­er­a­tion Day March par­tic­i­pants parad­ed from Sheri­dan Square to Cen­tral Park’s Sheep Mead­ow.

Seek­ing to com­mem­o­rate the one year anniver­sary of the Stonewall Upris­ing, when a police raid touched off a riot at the Green­wich Vil­lage gay bar, the even­t’s plan­ners took inspi­ra­tion from the orga­nized resis­tance to the Viet­nam War and Annu­al Reminders, a year­ly call for equal­i­ty from the Philadel­phia-based East­ern Region­al Con­fer­ence of Homophile Orga­ni­za­tions.

Parade co-orga­niz­er Craig Rod­well imag­ined a more free­wheel­ing pub­lic event involv­ing larg­er num­bers than Annu­al Reminders, some­thing that could  “encom­pass the ideas and ideals of the larg­er strug­gle in which we are engaged—that of our fun­da­men­tal human rights.”

In the lead up to the parade, Gay Lib­er­a­tion Front News report­ed that soci­ety stacked the deck against open­ly gay indi­vid­u­als, an obser­va­tion echoed by a marcher in les­bian activist Lil­li M. Vin­cenz’s doc­u­men­tary footage, above:

At first I was very guilty, and then I real­ized that all the things that are taught you, not only by soci­ety but by psy­chi­a­trists are just to fit you in a mold and I’ve just reject­ed the mold. And when I reject­ed the mold, I was hap­pi­er.

Look care­ful­ly for plac­ards from var­i­ous par­tic­i­pat­ing groups, includ­ing the Mat­ta­chine Soci­eties of Wash­ing­ton and New York, Laven­der Men­ace, the Gay Activists Alliance, a church, and gay stu­dent groups at Rut­gers and Yale.

Esti­mates place the crowd at any­where from 3,000 to 20,000. In addi­tion to marchers, the parade drew plen­ty of onlook­ers, some voic­ing sup­port like a uni­formed sol­dier sta­tioned at Fort Dix who says “Great, man, do your thing!”. Oth­ers came pre­pared to voice their vig­or­ous oppo­si­tion.

“He’s a clos­et queen and you can find him in Howard Johnson’s any night,” a marcher cracks when asked his opin­ion of a counter demon­stra­tor bran­dish­ing a sign invok­ing Sodom and Gomor­rah.

Pre­sum­ably the sec­ond part of this marcher’s com­ment was not intend­ed to sig­ni­fy that the gent in ques­tion had a pow­er­ful attrac­tion to the ven­er­a­ble Times Square diner’s fried clams, but rather its upstairs neigh­bor, the all-male Gai­ety strip club.

Com­pared to the flashy fes­tive cos­tumes and boom­ing club music that have become a sta­ple of this millennia’s Pride March­es, 1970’s pro­ceed­ings were a com­par­a­tive­ly mod­est affair. Marchers chant­ed in uni­son, pro­cess­ing uptown in street clothes — hip­pie-style duds of the peri­od with a cou­ple of square suits and fedo­ras in the mix.

A clean cut young man in a wind­break­er and nat­ty star-span­gled tie expressed frank dis­ap­point­ment that May­or John Lind­say and oth­er polit­i­cal fig­ures had kept their dis­tance.

Younger read­ers may be tak­en aback to hear Vin­cenz ask­ing him how long he had been gay, but grat­i­fied when he responds, “I was born homo­sex­u­al, it’s beau­ti­ful.”

By the time the marchers reached the Sheep Mead­ow, a num­ber of men had shed their shirts. The parade mor­phed into a pas­toral cel­e­bra­tion in which rev­el­ers can be seen play­ing Ring Around the Rosie, pluck­ing weeds to dec­o­rate each other’s hair, and attempt­ing to break the record for longest kiss.

A man whose bib over­alls have been cus­tomized with iron-on let­ters arranged to spell out Stud Farm express­es regret that he spent so many years in the clos­et.

Co-orga­niz­er Fos­ter Gun­ni­son Jr.’s wish was for every queer par­tic­i­pant to leave the parade with “a new feel­ing of pride and self-con­fi­dence … to raise the con­sciences of par­tic­i­pat­ing homo­sex­u­als-to devel­op courage, and feel­ings of dig­ni­ty and self-worth.”

That first parade’s mar­shal, Mark Segal, cofounder of Gay Lib­er­a­tion Front, summed it up on the 50th anniver­sary of the orig­i­nal event:

The march was a reflec­tion of us: out, loud and proud.

Enjoy a glimpse of 2023’s New York City Pride March here.

Via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Untold Sto­ry of Dis­co and Its Black, Lati­no & LGBTQ Roots

Dif­fer­ent From the Oth­ers (1919): The First Gay Rights Movie Ever … Lat­er Destroyed by the Nazis

Sig­mund Freud Writes to Con­cerned Moth­er: “Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is Noth­ing to Be Ashamed Of” (1935)

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Brief History of Japanese Art: From Prehistoric Pottery to Yayoi Kusama in Half an Hour

in Art, History | June 29th, 2023

The ear­li­est known works of Japan­ese art date from the Jōmon peri­od, which last­ed from 10,500 to 300 BC. In fact, the peri­od’s very name comes from the pat­terns its pot­ters cre­at­ed by press­ing twist­ed cords into clay, result­ing in a pre­de­ces­sor of the “wave pat­terns” that have been much used since. In the Heian peri­od, which began in 794, a new aris­to­crat­ic class arose, and with it a new form of art: Yamato‑e, an ele­gant paint­ing style ded­i­cat­ed to the depic­tion of Japan­ese land­scapes, poet­ry, his­to­ry, and mythol­o­gy, usu­al­ly on fold­ing screens or scrolls (the best known of which illus­trates The Tale of Gen­ji, known as the first nov­el ever writ­ten).

This is the begin­ning of the sto­ry of Japan­ese art as told in the half-hour-long Behind the Mas­ter­piece video above. It con­tin­ues in 1185 with the Kamaku­ra peri­od, whose brew­ing sociopo­lit­i­cal tur­moil inten­si­fied in the sub­se­quent Nan­boku­cho peri­od, which began in 1333. As life in Japan became more chaot­ic, Bud­dhism gained pop­u­lar­i­ty, and along with that Indi­an reli­gion spread a shift in pref­er­ences toward more vital, real­is­tic art, includ­ing cel­e­bra­tions of rig­or­ous samu­rai virtues and depic­tions of Bud­dhas. In this time arose the form of sumi‑e, lit­er­al­ly “ink pic­ture,” whose tran­quil mono­chro­mat­ic min­i­mal­ism stands in the minds of many still today for Japan­ese art itself.

Japan’s long his­to­ry of frac­tious­ness came to an end in 1568, when the feu­dal lord Oda Nobuna­ga made deci­sive moves that would result in the uni­fi­ca­tion of the coun­try. This began the Azuchi-Momoya­ma peri­od, named for the cas­tles occu­pied by Nobuna­ga and his suc­ces­sor Toy­oto­mi Hideyoshi. The cas­tle walls were lav­ish­ly dec­o­rat­ed with large-scale paint­ings that would define the Kanō school. Tra­di­tion­al Japan itself came to an end in the long, and mil­i­tary-gov­erned Edo peri­od, which last­ed from 1615 to 1868. The sta­bil­i­ty and pros­per­i­ty of that era gave rise to the best-known of all clas­si­cal Japan­ese art forms: kabu­ki the­atre, haiku poet­ry, and ukiyo‑e wood­block prints.

With their large mar­ket of mer­chant-class buy­ers, ukiyo‑e artists had to be pro­lif­ic. Many of their works sur­vive still today, the most rec­og­niz­able being those of mas­ters like Uta­maro, Hoku­sai, and Hiroshige. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Hoku­sai’s series Thir­ty-Six Views of Mount Fuji as well as its famous install­ment The Great Wave Off Kana­gawa. As Japan opened up to the west from the mid­dle of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, the var­i­ous styles of ukiyo‑e became prime ingre­di­ents of the Japon­isme trend, which extend­ed the influ­ence of Japan­ese art to the work of major West­ern artists like Degas, Manet, Mon­et, van Gogh, and Toulouse-Lautrec.

The Mei­ji Restora­tion of 1868 opened the long-iso­lat­ed Japan to world trade, re-estab­lished impe­r­i­al rule, and also, for his­tor­i­cal pur­pos­es, marked the coun­try’s entry into moder­ni­ty. This inspired an explo­sion of new artis­tic tech­niques and move­ments includ­ing Yōga, whose par­tic­i­pants ren­dered Japan­ese sub­ject mat­ter with Euro­pean tech­niques and mate­ri­als. Born ear­ly in the Shōwa era but still active in her nineties, Yay­oi Kusama now stands (and in Paris, at enor­mous scale in stat­ue form) as the most promi­nent Japan­ese artist in the world. The rich psy­che­delia of her work belongs obvi­ous­ly to no sin­gle cul­ture or tra­di­tion — but then again, could an artist of any oth­er coun­try have come up with it?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load 215,000 Japan­ese Wood­block Prints by Mas­ters Span­ning the Tradition’s 350-Year His­to­ry

Down­load Vin­cent van Gogh’s Col­lec­tion of 500 Japan­ese Prints, Which Inspired Him to Cre­ate “the Art of the Future”

Japan­ese Com­put­er Artist Makes “Dig­i­tal Mon­dri­ans” in 1964: When Giant Main­frame Com­put­ers Were First Used to Cre­ate Art

How to Paint Like Yay­oi Kusama, the Avant-Garde Japan­ese Artist

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

The His­to­ry of West­ern Art in 23 Min­utes: From the Pre­his­toric to the Con­tem­po­rary

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Newly-Discovered Fresco in Pompeii Reveals a Precursor to Pizza

in Archaeology, Art, Food & Drink, History | June 29th, 2023

Archae­ol­o­gists dig­ging in Pom­peii have unearthed a fres­co con­tain­ing what may be a “dis­tant ances­tor” of the mod­ern piz­za. The fres­co fea­tures a plat­ter with wine, fruit, and a piece of flat focac­cia. Accord­ing to Pom­peii archae­ol­o­gists, the focac­cia does­n’t have toma­toes and moz­zarel­la on top. Rather, it seem­ing­ly sports “pome­gran­ate,” spices, per­haps a type of pesto, and “pos­si­bly condiments”–which is just a short hop, skip and a jump away to piz­za.

Found in the atri­um of a house con­nect­ed to a bak­ery, the fine­ly-detailed fres­co grew out of a Greek tra­di­tion (called xenia) where gifts of hos­pi­tal­i­ty, includ­ing food, are offered to vis­i­tors. Nat­u­ral­ly, the fres­co was entombed (and pre­served) for cen­turies by the erup­tion of Mt. Vesu­vius in 79 A.D.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Explore the Roman Cook­book, De Re Coquinar­ia, the Old­est Known Cook­book in Exis­tence

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread from 79 AD: A Video Intro­duc­tion

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

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Why Hasn’t the Pantheon’s Dome Collapsed?: How the Romans Engineered the Dome to Last 19 Centuries and Counting

in Architecture, History | June 27th, 2023

In Rome, one does­n’t have to look ter­ri­bly hard to find ancient build­ings. But even in the Eter­nal City, not all ancient build­ings have come down to us in equal­ly good shape, and prac­ti­cal­ly none of them have held up as well as the Pan­theon. Once a Roman tem­ple and now a Catholic church (as well as a for­mi­da­ble tourist attrac­tion), it gives its vis­i­tors the clear­est and most direct sense pos­si­ble of the majesty of antiq­ui­ty. But how has it man­aged to remain intact for nine­teen cen­turies and count­ing when so much else in ancient Rome’s built envi­ron­ment has been lost? Ancient-his­to­ry Youtu­ber Gar­rett Ryan explains that in the video above.

“Any answer has to begin with con­crete,” Ryan says, the Roman vari­ety of which “cured incred­i­bly hard, even under­wa­ter. Sea water, in fact, made it stronger.” Its strength “enabled the cre­ation of vaults and domes that rev­o­lu­tion­ized archi­tec­ture,” not least the still-sub­lime dome of the Pan­theon itself.

Anoth­er impor­tant fac­tor is the Roman bricks, “more like thick tiles than mod­ern rec­tan­gu­lar bricks,” used to con­struct the arch­es in its walls. These “helped to direct the gar­gan­tu­an weight of the rotun­da toward the mason­ry ‘piers’ between the recess­es. And since the arch­es, made almost entire­ly of brick, set much more quick­ly than the con­crete fill in which they were embed­ded, they stiff­ened the struc­ture as it rose.”

This has­n’t kept the Pan­theon’s floor from sink­ing, cracks from open­ing in its walls, but such com­par­a­tive­ly minor defects could hard­ly dis­tract from the spec­ta­cle of the dome (a feat not equaled until Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi came along about 1300 years lat­er). “The archi­tect of the Pan­theon man­aged hor­i­zon­tal thrust — that is, pre­vent­ed the dome from spread­ing or push­ing out the build­ing beneath it – by mak­ing the wall of the rotun­da extreme­ly thick and embed­ding the low­er third of the dome in their mass.” Even the ocu­lus at the very top strength­ens it, “both by obvi­at­ing the need for a struc­tural­ly dan­ger­ous crown and through its mason­ry rim, which func­tioned like the key­stone of an arch.” We may no longer pay trib­ute to the gods or emper­ors to whom it was first ded­i­cat­ed, but as an object of archi­tec­tur­al wor­ship, the Pan­theon will sure­ly out­last many gen­er­a­tions to come.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

How to Make Roman Con­crete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Last­ing Build­ing Mate­ri­als

A Street Musi­cian Plays Pink Floyd’s “Time” in Front of the 1,900-Year-Old Pan­theon in Rome

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved: Why Has Roman Con­crete Been So Durable?

Build­ing The Colos­se­um: The Icon of Rome

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A Stand-Up Comedy Routine Discovered in a Medieval Manuscript: Monty Python Before Monty Python (1480)

in Books, Comedy, History, Literature | June 27th, 2023

A fun­ny thing hap­pened on the way to the 15th cen­tu­ry…

Dr. James Wade, a spe­cial­ist in ear­ly Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, was doing research at the Nation­al Library of Scot­land when he noticed some­thing extra­or­di­nary about the first of the nine mis­cel­la­neous book­lets com­pris­ing the Heege Man­u­script.

Most sur­viv­ing medieval man­u­scripts are the stuff of high art. The first part of the Heege Man­u­script is fun­ny.

The usu­al tales of romance and hero­ism, allu­sions to ancient Rome, lofty poet­ry and dra­mat­ic inter­ludes… even the dash­ing adven­tures of Robin Hood are con­spic­u­ous­ly absent.

Instead it’s awash with the sta­ples of con­tem­po­rary stand up com­e­dy — top­i­cal obser­va­tions, humor­ous over­shar­ing, roast­ing emi­nent pub­lic fig­ures, razz­ing the audi­ence, flat­ter­ing the audi­ence by bust­ing on the denizens of near­by com­mu­ni­ties, shag­gy dog tales, absur­di­ties and non-sequiturs.

Repeat­ed ref­er­ences to pass­ing the cup con­jure an open mic type sce­nario.

The man­u­script was cre­at­ed by cler­ic Richard Heege and entered into the col­lec­tion of his employ­ers, the wealthy Sher­brooke fam­i­ly.

Oth­er schol­ars have con­cen­trat­ed on the man­u­scrip­t’s phys­i­cal con­struc­tion, most­ly refrain­ing from com­ment on the nature of its con­tents.

Dr. Wade sus­pects that the first book­let is the result of Heege hav­ing paid close atten­tion to an anony­mous trav­el­ing minstrel’s per­for­mance, per­haps going so far as to con­sult the performer’s own notes.

Heege quipped that he was the author owing to the fact that he “was at that feast and did not have a drink” — mean­ing he was the only one sober enough to retain the min­strel’s jokes and inven­tive plot­lines.

Dr. Wade describes how the com­ic por­tion of the Heege Man­u­script is bro­ken down into three parts, the first of which is sure to grat­i­fy fans of Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail:

…it’s a nar­ra­tive account of a bunch of peas­ants who try to hunt a hare, and it all ends dis­as­trous­ly, where they beat each oth­er up and the wives have to come with wheel­bar­rows and hold them home. 

That hare turns out to be one fierce bad rab­bit, so much so that the tale’s pro­le­tar­i­an hero, the pro­saical­ly named Jack Wade, wor­ries she could rip out his throat.

Dr. Wade learned that Sir Wal­ter Scott, author of Ivan­hoe, was aware of The Hunt­ing of the Hare, view­ing it as a stur­dy spoof of high mind­ed romance, “stu­dious­ly filled with grotesque, absurd, and extrav­a­gant char­ac­ters.”

The killer bun­ny yarn is fol­lowed by a mock ser­mon  - If thou have a great black bowl in thy hand and it be full of good ale and thou leave any­thing there­in, thou puttest thy soul into greater pain —  and a non­sense poem about a feast where every­one gets ham­mered and chaos ensues.

Crowd-pleas­ing mate­r­i­al in 1480.

With a few 21st-cen­tu­ry tweaks, an enter­pris­ing young come­di­an might wring laughs from it yet.

(Pag­ing Tyler Gun­ther, of Greedy Peas­ant fame…)

As to the true author of these rou­tines, Dr. Wade spec­u­lates that he may have been a “pro­fes­sion­al trav­el­ing min­strel or a local ama­teur per­former.” Pos­si­bly even both:

A ‘pro­fes­sion­al’ min­strel might have a day job and go gig­ging at night, and so be, in a sense, semi-pro­fes­sion­al, just as a ‘trav­el­ling’ min­strel may well be also ‘local’, work­ing a beat of near­by vil­lages and gen­er­al­ly known in the area. On bal­ance, the texts in this book­let sug­gest a min­strel of this vari­ety: some­one whose mate­r­i­al includes sev­er­al local place-names, but also whose mate­r­i­al is made to trav­el, with the lack of deter­mi­na­cy designed to com­i­cal­ly engage audi­ences regard­less of spe­cif­ic locale.

Learn more about the Heege Man­u­script in  Dr. Wade’s arti­cle, Enter­tain­ments from a Medieval Minstrel’s Reper­toire Book in The Review of Eng­lish Stud­ies.

Leaf through a dig­i­tal fac­sim­i­le of the Heege Man­u­script here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Killer Rab­bits in Medieval Man­u­scripts: Why So Many Draw­ings in the Mar­gins Depict Bun­nies Going Bad

A List of 1,065 Medieval Dog Names: Nose­wise, Gar­lik, Have­g­ood­day & More

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Footage of Claude Monet Painting in His Famous Garden at Giverny (1915)

in Art, Film, History | June 26th, 2023

What could be more charm­ing­ly idyl­lic than a glimpse of snowy-beard­ed Impres­sion­ist Claude Mon­et calm­ly paint­ing en plein-air in his gar­den at Giverny?

A wide-brimmed hat and two lux­u­ri­ous­ly large patio-type umbrel­las pro­vide shade, while the artist stays cool in a pris­tine white suit.

His can­vas is off cam­era for the most part, but giv­en the coor­di­nates, it seems safe to assume the subject’s got some­thing to do with the famous Japan­ese foot­bridge span­ning Monet’s equal­ly famous lily pond.

The sun’s still high when he puts down his cat’s tongue brush and heads back to the house with his lit­tle dog at his heels, no doubt antic­i­pat­ing a deli­cious, relaxed lun­cheon.

Even in black-and-white, it’s an irre­sistible pas­toral vision!

And quite a con­trast to the recent scene some 300 km away in Ypres, where Ger­man troops weaponized chlo­rine gas for the first time, releas­ing it in the Allied trench­es the same year the above footage of Mon­et was shot.

Lendon Payne, a British sap­per, was an eye­wit­ness to some of the may­hem:

When the gas attack was over and the all clear was sound­ed I decid­ed to go out for a breath of fresh air and see what was hap­pen­ing. But I could hard­ly believe my eyes when I looked along the bank. The bank was absolute­ly cov­ered with bod­ies of gassed men. Must have been over 1,000 of them. And down in the stream, a lit­tle bit fur­ther along the canal bank, the stream there was also full of bod­ies as well. They were grad­u­al­ly gath­ered up and all put in a huge pile after being iden­ti­fied in a place called Hos­pi­tal Farm on the left of Ypres.  And whilst they were in there the ADMS came along to make his report and whilst he was siz­ing up the sit­u­a­tion a shell burst and killed him.

The ear­ly days of the Great War are what spurred direc­tor Sacha Gui­try, seen chat­ting with Mon­et above, to vis­it the 82-year-old artist as part of his 22-minute silent doc­u­men­tary, Ceux de Chez Nous (Those of Our Land).

The entire project was an act of resis­tance.

With Ger­man intel­lec­tu­als trum­pet­ing the supe­ri­or­i­ty of Ger­man­ic cul­ture, the Russ­ian-born Gui­t­ry, a suc­cess­ful actor and play­wright, sought out audi­ences with aging French lumi­nar­ies, to pre­serve for future gen­er­a­tions.

In addi­tion to Mon­et, these include appear­ances by painters Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas, sculp­tor Auguste Rodin, writer Ana­tole France, com­pos­er Camille Saint-Saens, and actor Sarah Bern­hardt.

Although Ceux de Chez Nous was silent, Gui­t­ry care­ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed the con­tent of each inter­view, revis­it­ing them in 1952 for the expand­ed ver­sion with com­men­tary, below.

Beneath his placid exte­ri­or, Mon­et, too, was quite con­sumed by the hor­rors unfold­ing near­by.

James Payne, cre­ator of the web series Great Art Explained, views Monet’s final eight water lily paint­ings as a “direct response to the most sav­age and apoc­a­lyp­tic peri­od of mod­ern history…a war memo­r­i­al to the mil­lions of lives trag­i­cal­ly lost in the First World War.”


In 1914, Mon­et wrote that while paint­ing helped take his mind off “these sad times” he also felt “ashamed to think about my lit­tle research­es into form and colour while so many peo­ple are suf­fer­ing and dying for us.”

As cura­tor Ann Dumas notes in RA Mag­a­zine:

The peace of his gar­den was some­times shat­tered by the sound of gun­fire from the bat­tle­fields only 50 kilo­me­tres away. His step­son was fight­ing at the front and his own son Michel was called up in 1915. Many of the inhab­i­tants of Giverny fled to safe­ty but Mon­et stayed behind: “…if those sav­ages must kill me, it will be in the mid­dle of my can­vas­es, in front of all my life’s work.” Paint­ing was what he did and he saw it, in a way, as his patri­ot­ic con­tri­bu­tion. A group of paint­ings of the weep­ing wil­low, a tra­di­tion­al sym­bol of mourn­ing, was Monet’s most imme­di­ate response to the war, the tree’s long, sweep­ing branch­es hang­ing over the water, an elo­quent expres­sion of grief and loss.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

1540 Mon­et Paint­ings in a Two Hour Video

Why Mon­et Paint­ed The Same Haystacks 25 Times

Monet’s Water Lilies: How World War I Inspired Mon­et to Paint His Final Mas­ter­pieces & Cre­ate “the World’s First Art Instal­la­tion”

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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