You Can Now See the Parthenon Without Scaffolding for the First Time in 200 Years

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If you’ve made the jour­ney to Athens, you prob­a­bly took the time to vis­it its most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tion, the Acrop­o­lis. On that mon­u­ment-rich hill, you more than like­ly paid spe­cial atten­tion to the Parthenon, the ancient tem­ple ded­i­cat­ed to the city’s name­sake, the god­dess Athena Parthenos. But no mat­ter how much time you spent…

The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 Theories on What Caused the Poet’s Demise

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One of my very first acts as a new New York­er many years ago was to make the jour­ney across three bor­oughs to Wood­lawn Ceme­tery in the Bronx. My pur­pose: a pil­grim­age to Her­man Melville’s grave. I came not to wor­ship a hero, exact­ly, but—as Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Angela O’Donnell writes—“to…

How Did The World Get So Ugly?: Then Versus Now

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More than a few of us might be inter­est­ed in the oppor­tu­ni­ty to spend a day in Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don. But very few of us indeed who’ve ever read, say, a Charles Dick­ens nov­el would ever elect to live there. “Lon­don’s lit­tle lanes are charm­ing now,” says Shee­han Quirke, the host of the video above,…

Explore 1,100 Works of Art by Georgia O’Keeffe: They’re Digitized and Free to View Online

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Lake George Reflec­tion (cir­ca 1921) via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

What comes to mind when you think of Geor­gia O’Keeffe?

Bleached skulls in the desert?

Aer­i­al views of clouds, almost car­toon­ish in their puffi­ness?

Volup­tuous flow­ers (freight­ed with an erot­ic charge the artist may not have intend­ed)?

Prob­a­bly…

The 135 Movies You Must See to Understand Cinema

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If you wish to become a cinephile wor­thy of the title, you must first pledge nev­er to refuse to watch a film for any of the fol­low­ing rea­sons. First, that it is in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage and sub­ti­tled; sec­ond, that it is too old; third, that it is too slow; fourth, that it is too…