The houses have eyes
The houses in the Transylvanian city Sibiu are watching you.
Category: Architecture
Bridges of the Euro
The bridges depicted on the Euro banknotes were fictional… until the Dutch city Spijkenisse built them all.
Wind on the tower
In 1978 the structural engineer of the Citigroup Center skyscraper learned of a fatal flaw in the design that could cause the tower to topple in high winds. Over the next three months a team raced to secretly repair it at night.
Churches of Antarctica
Antarctica has eight churches: four Catholic, one non-denominational, and three Eastern orthodox.
Spite houses
Some people will go to absurd lengths to get revenge on their neighbours – including building houses purely out of spite.
Solomon’s laser
The shamir is described in the Talmud and Midrash as a tool capable of slicing through solid stone, iron, and diamond – but was it a worm, a laser, or a radioactive rock?
Coney Island to the moon
One of the earliest amusement park dark rides was a trip from Coney Island to the Moon and back.
Parthenon mosque
In 1687 Ottoman-controlled Athens, the Venetians blew up the Parthenon. The Ottomans built a mosque from its ruins.
First vanishing point
Masaccio’s Holy Trinity is possibly the earliest surviving work of art to use a single vanishing point. His work and that of Brunelleschi triggered a Renaissance explosion of mathematical perspective in art.
Under Beijing
Underneath Beijing is a vast network of tunnels built during the Cold War to shelter three million people during a nuclear attack.
Cursed stone city
Al-Khazneh, the temple carved out of a cliff in Petra, is the most famous remnant of the Nabataean Kingdom. But to its south lies Hegra, the cursed stoneland city.
Smallest skyscraper
In 1919, a construction firm led by J. D. McMahon got investors to commit huge amounts of money for a skyscraper in Wichita Falls, Texas. They thought it would be 480 feet high… but they got 480 inches instead.
Reef of heaven
Between 1200 and 1500 CE, the city of Nan Madol was built on a series of artificial islands and a coral reef in what is now eastern Micronesia.
The Mason Labyrinth
Italian publisher Franco Maria Ricci, inspired by fabulists Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, built the largest maze in the world.
Ancient dioramas
We all know that Egyptian tombs contained models of servants, boats, and animals to accompany the deceased in the afterlife. But they sometimes also contained model gardens, granaries, bakeries, breweries, stables, and slaughterhouses.
Largest brick arch
Tāq Kasrā, one of the last surviving buildings of the ancient Sasanian Empire’s capital city, has the largest unreinforced brick arch in the world.