Sydney used to have one of the largest metropolitan tram fleets in the world. This all changed in the 1950s when trams were progressively replaced with buses. Rozelle Tram Depot still houses six of the original trams that used to run on the network, though they are woefully neglected and have been subject to extensive… [Read more…]
October 22, 2009
These strange structures found in southern Peru are called chullpas and belong to the nobility of a pre-Incan people.
October 19, 2009
The Red Fort of Agra is an immense fortress-palace and was the seat of government of the Mughal Empire for much of its existence. It sits not far from the Taj Mahal, near the banks of the Yamuna river. Famously, it also served as the prison of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, imprisoned there by… [Read more…]
October 19, 2009
The Tomb of Humayun is an early example of the Mughal style that would culminate in masterpieces such as the Taj Mahal. Herein lies the second of the Great Mughals.
October 19, 2009
The Inca settlement of Ollantaymbo was a focal point of Inca resistance during the Spanish conquest of Peru. The adjacent town of the same name is one of the most intact Inca towns still in existence, with houses, streets and drainage systems almost entirely unchanged from the time of the Incas, some five hundred years… [Read more…]
October 18, 2009
The immense yet intricate masonry of the Inca sacred site Sacsayhuaman, on the outskirts of Cuzco, Peru. The unfinished look to the tops of the walls show where the Spaniards took stone to build their own religious structures in the newly conquered Inca capital of Cuzco.
October 17, 2009
October 17, 2009
An Evzone soldier stands guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Athens, Greece. The Scots did not have a monopoly on going to war in skirts. The ceremonial uniform of the Evzones is derived from that of the Greek bandits and guerillas that resisted Ottoman Turkish occupation prior to independence in the early… [Read more…]
October 17, 2009
Off the coast of Normandy in northern France. Surrounded by some of the fastest tides in Europe, the thousand year old abbey and fortified island is famous for holding out against the English during the Hundred Years’ War.
October 17, 2009
Built between five hundred to a thousand years ago, the monks and hermits of the Greek Orthodox Church sought ever more remote and difficult-to-reach places from where to pray and contemplate. Hence their position amongst these spectacular sandstone rock formations in central Greece. Nowadays a sealed road links all the monasteries and they are as… [Read more…]
October 17, 2009
The iconostasis of the Church of St George, within the grounds of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in Istanbul. The Greek presence in Turkey is now small, but the Ecumenicl Patriarchate still serves at the spiritual home of the Greek Orthodox Church for believers in Greece and scattered all over the world. It claims its… [Read more…]
October 16, 2009
Hagia Sophia. Santa Sophia. Aya Sofya. Church of Holy Wisdom. Has any other church in the world been witness to so many monumental events in history? The eruption of the Great Schism. The sacking of Constantinople by the Crusaders. The fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks. Rebuilt many times over the years,… [Read more…]
October 16, 2009
August 27, 2009
This Escher-like structure is part of the Taman Sari or Water Castle in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, built originally for the pleasure of the Royal Family of Yogyakarta.
August 27, 2009
On 12 October 2002, several bombs exploded in the heart of Kuta, Bali’s main backpacker district, killing 202 people, including 152 foreigners. 88 Australians were also killed, making it the second largest single loss of Australian life in peacetime, exceeded only by 2009′s Black Saturday bushfires. Militant Islamist group Jemaah Islamiyah claimed responsibility and most… [Read more…]
January 7, 2011
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