Moments
Moments.
Locations in human history rendered as 360° panoramas, with the context behind each scene.
prehistoric
Prehistoric
25th century BC · Sindh
Mohenjo-daro
Around 2500 BC, Mohenjo-daro is one of the world's first great cities: a grid of fired-brick streets, a watertight Great Bath and covered sewers on the Indus plain, built by a civilisation whose writing has never been read and whose name for itself is unknown.
70th century BC · Konya Province, central Anatolia
Çatalhöyük
Around 7000 BC in central Anatolia, the densely packed houses of Çatalhöyük are entered only through hatches in the roof: there are no streets, only rooftops.
1323 BC · Theban West Bank, Upper Egypt
Valley of the Kings
In 1323 BC, the funeral procession of the young pharaoh Tutankhamun arrives at the cliff face of the Valley of the Kings to deposit him in tomb KV62, where he will lie undisturbed until 1922.
95th century BC · Şanlıurfa Province, Anatolia
Göbekli Tepe
Around 9500 BC, hunter-gatherers raise a five-meter T-shaped limestone pillar at the oldest known monumental sanctuary on Earth, eleven millennia before the pyramids.
2670s BC · Memphis necropolis, Lower Egypt
Saqqara
Around 2670 BC, the architect Imhotep raises the first monumental stone structure in history: the six-stepped pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser at Saqqara, ancestor of all later Egyptian pyramids.
2560s BC · Giza Plateau, Lower Egypt
Giza
Around 2560 BC, tens of thousands of paid workers build Khufu's pyramid at Giza, already three-quarters complete in this scene, the largest stone structure in the world for the next four millennia.
25th century BC · Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire
Stonehenge
Around 2500 BC on Salisbury Plain, Neolithic Britons heave the first sarsen monoliths into vertical position, building what will become Stonehenge.
1600s BC · Thera (Santorini), Cyclades
Akrotiri, Thera
Around 1600 BC, a Plinian eruption of the Thera volcano begins to bury the prosperous Minoan port of Akrotiri under meters of ash and pumice, ending one of the Aegean's great Bronze Age centers.
ancient
Ancient
700s BC · Nineveh, northern Mesopotamia
Nineveh
Around 700 BC, King Sennacherib of Assyria irrigates his terraced hanging gardens at his Southwest Palace in Nineveh, almost certainly the source of the legend later misattributed to Babylon.
9th century BC · Tabasco, Gulf coast lowlands
La Venta
Around 900 BC, Olmec sculptors on the humid Gulf coast of Mexico carve a colossal stone portrait head of a ruler from a single multi-ton basalt boulder.
510s BC · Fars Province, southern Iran
Persepolis
Around 515 BC, sculptors from across the Persian Empire carve the Procession of Nations relief on the Apadana staircase at Persepolis, capital of Darius I's empire.
classical
Classical antiquity
2nd century AD · Homs
Palmyra
Around 200 AD, Palmyra is a fabulously rich caravan city in the Syrian desert: a kilometre-long avenue of columns linking the great Temple of Bel to the city gates, an oasis where the trade of Rome, Persia and the East all met.
3rd century BC · Alexandria
Pharos lighthouse, Great Harbour of Alexandria
Around 280 BC, ships entering Alexandria's Great Harbour pass beneath the Pharos: a three-tiered stone tower well over a hundred metres tall, its mirrored flame visible far out at sea, the tallest building of its world and one of the Seven Wonders of antiquity.
3rd century BC · River Nile State
Pyramids of Meroë
Around 250 BC, the kings and queens of Kush are buried beneath dozens of steep, narrow pyramids on the Nile in what is now Sudan: a desert necropolis of an African civilisation that once ruled Egypt itself, with more pyramids than Egypt has.
2nd century AD · Bekaa Valley
Temple of Jupiter, Baalbek
Around 150 AD, the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek is one of the largest temples in the Roman world: columns nearly twenty metres tall on a platform of stone blocks weighing eight hundred tonnes, beside a quarry holding the heaviest cut stones ever moved.
120s · Rome
Roman Forum, Rome
Around 120 AD, the Roman Forum is the crowded heart of an empire of fifty million: temples, basilicas and triumphal arches packed along the Sacred Way beneath the Capitol, with Trajan's new column and forum rising alongside.
438 BC · Attica
Parthenon, Acropolis of Athens
In the summer of 438 BC, Athens dedicates the finished Parthenon at the Great Panathenaia: its Pentelic marble still bright with painted red, blue and gold, and inside stands Phidias's twelve-metre Athena of gold and ivory, at the peak of the city's brief golden age.
430s BC · Elis
Sanctuary of Zeus, Olympia
Around 430 BC, the sanctuary of Olympia holds a new wonder: Phidias's gold-and-ivory Zeus, a seated god twelve metres high filling his temple, while every four years the games in his honour bring the whole Greek world to the stadium beyond the sacred grove.
400s · Tigray, northern Ethiopian highlands
Aksum
Around 400 AD, masons of King Ezana of Aksum raise a 24-meter granite stele carved to resemble a multi-story house: a monumental tradition unique to the Aksumite kingdom of Ethiopia.
79 · Campania, southern Italy
Pompeii
On a late October afternoon in 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius unleashes a Plinian eruption that buries Pompeii under meters of pumice and ash within hours.
331 BC · Babil, central Mesopotamia
Babylon
In October 331 BC, Alexander the Great rides into Babylon through the cobalt-blue Ishtar Gate, welcomed by priests as the city surrenders without a fight three weeks after his victory at Gaugamela.
80 · Rome, Latium
Colosseum, Rome
In 80 AD, Emperor Titus opens the Flavian Amphitheatre (the Colosseum) with 100 days of games, including the rare flooding of the arena for a mock naval battle.
3rd century AD · Valley of Mexico
Teotihuacan
Around 250 AD, Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico is at its peak; its 2.5-kilometer Avenue of the Dead lined with brightly painted stepped temples and dominated by the Pyramid of the Moon.
125 · Rome, Latium
Pantheon, Rome
Around 125 AD, Emperor Hadrian completes his rebuild of the Pantheon: a 43-meter unreinforced concrete dome that will remain the largest of its kind for 1300 years.
1st century AD · Petra, Edomite highlands
Petra
Around 100 AD, a caravan from southern Arabia emerges from the narrow Siq canyon of Petra to face the freshly carved 40-meter facade of Al-Khazneh, the Nabataean treasury or royal tomb.
medieval
The Middle Ages
13th century AD · Normandy
Mont-Saint-Michel
Around 1300, the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel rises tier upon tier from a rocky tidal island off Normandy: a Gothic church on the summit ringed by some of the strongest tides in Europe, which turn the mount into an island twice a day.
1150s · Angkor (Siem Reap)
Angkor Wat at dawn
Around 1150, Angkor Wat is newly finished: the largest religious monument ever built, five lotus-bud towers rising beyond a vast moat in the Khmer capital, a temple-mountain to the god Vishnu that still draws crowds to its dawn today.
8th century AD · La Paz Department
Tiwanaku, Lake Titicaca
Around 800, on the high plain south of Lake Titicaca, Tiwanaku is the ceremonial heart of an Andean civilisation: precision-cut stone temples and a monolithic gateway carved from a single block, almost four kilometres above the sea, six centuries before the Inca and now utterly vanished.
1320s · Tombouctou Region
Djinguereber Mosque, Timbuktu
Around 1327, on the southern edge of the Sahara, the great mud-brick Djinguereber Mosque rises in Timbuktu, commissioned by Mansa Musa of Mali, whose gold and salt caravans and famous pilgrimage to Mecca made his empire a byword for wealth and learning.
1350s · Andalusia
Alhambra, Granada
Around 1350, the Alhambra crowns its hill above Granada: the palace-citadel of the last Muslim kingdom in Spain, its courts of slender columns, carved-stucco lace and reflecting pools set against the snows of the Sierra Nevada.
1250s · Colorado
Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde
Around 1250, the Ancestral Puebloans build Cliff Palace into a sandstone alcove high in a Colorado canyon wall: over a hundred and fifty rooms and two dozen round ceremonial kivas tucked beneath an overhang, the largest cliff dwelling in North America.
10th century AD · Yucatán
El Castillo, Chichén Itzá
Around 1000, El Castillo dominates the Maya city of Chichén Itzá: a four-sided step-pyramid to the feathered serpent Kukulcán with 365 stairs, built so that twice a year the equinox sun throws a serpent of shadow rippling down its edge.
11th century AD · Illinois
Monks Mound, Cahokia
Around 1100, Cahokia is the largest city north of Mexico: some fifteen thousand people, around a hundred and twenty earthen mounds, and a flat-topped pyramid of packed earth thirty metres high whose base covers as much ground as the Great Pyramid of Giza.
14th century AD · Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Pacific
Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
Around 1400 AD, Rapa Nui islanders "walk" a 9-meter basalt moai statue upright across the volcanic landscape from the quarry at Rano Raraku toward a coastal ahu platform.
1350s · Masvingo, southern African plateau
Great Zimbabwe
Around 1350 AD, Great Zimbabwe is the capital of a prosperous Shona kingdom controlling gold trade with the Indian Ocean: its elliptical dry-stone walls and conical tower the largest stone structure in sub-Saharan Africa before the modern era.
1200s · Angkor, Khmer Empire
Bayon temple, Angkor Thom
Around 1200 AD, a royal procession of the Khmer king Jayavarman VII winds through the Bayon temple at the heart of Angkor Thom, surrounded by the smiling stone faces that crown its 54 towers.
537 · Constantinople, Eastern Roman Empire
Hagia Sophia, Constantinople
On December 27, 537 AD, Emperor Justinian I dedicates the newly built Hagia Sophia in Constantinople: its 32-meter dome rising on pendentives in a structural feat that defines Byzantine architecture.
12th century AD · Hawaii (then uninhabited)
Kealakekua / Big Island, Hawaii
Around 1200 AD, a Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe from the Marquesas Islands makes landfall on the unpopulated Big Island of Hawaii after navigating 4,000 km of open Pacific.
770s · Central Java, Sailendra kingdom
Borobudur, Central Java
In the late 8th century, the Sailendra dynasty of central Java builds Borobudur: a stepped andesite stupa-mountain of nine levels, the largest Buddhist monument in the world.
12th century AD · North Wollo, Amhara highlands
Lalibela, Ethiopia
Around 1200 AD, masons of the Zagwe king Gebre Mesqel Lalibela carve the church of Bete Giyorgis from the living rock in the form of a Greek cross, a structure cut from the top down with no joints or seams.
1066 · East Sussex, England
Senlac Hill (Battle), Sussex
On 14 October 1066, William of Normandy defeats King Harold Godwinson on Senlac Hill in Sussex: the last successful invasion of England, fought eight months after the year's other omen, the appearance of Halley's Comet.
renaissance
Renaissance
1500s · Cusco
Sacsayhuamán, above Cusco
Around 1500, above the Inca capital of Cusco, the great terraces of Sacsayhuamán rise in zigzag walls of polygonal stone: boulders weighing over a hundred tonnes cut and fitted without mortar so tightly a knife-blade won't pass between them.
15th century AD · Hebei
Great Wall of China, Jinshanling
Around 1500, Ming China rebuilds the Great Wall in brick and stone across the mountain ridges north of Beijing: a battlemented rampart with watchtowers that climbs and plunges over the peaks as far as the eye can see, the most ambitious fortification ever built.
1420 · Beijing
Forbidden City, Beijing
In 1420, the Yongle Emperor's new palace is finished at the heart of Beijing: the Forbidden City, nearly a thousand timber halls behind a moat and vermilion walls, the largest palace complex on Earth and the seat of Chinese emperors for the next five centuries.
1450s · Rhineland
Gutenberg's workshop, Mainz
Around 1450 in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg pulls the first sheets from a printing press of movable metal type: the workshop where the printed book is born, and with it the fastest spread of ideas in human history.
1560s · Vatican City
St. Peter's Basilica under construction, Vatican
Around 1560, the new St. Peter's is a colossal building site at the heart of Rome: the old basilica half-demolished, vast new piers and arches rising, and the aged Michelangelo driving up the great drum that will carry the largest dome in Christendom.
1453 · Constantinople (Theodosian Walls)
Theodosian Walls of Constantinople
On May 29, 1453, Mehmed II's Ottoman army breaches the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople with the giant bombards of the Hungarian engineer Orban, ending 1,123 years of Byzantine rule.
1450s · Cusco, Vilcabamba range, Andes
Machu Picchu
Around 1450 AD, Inca masons build the royal estate of Pachacuti at Machu Picchu, fitting andesite blocks without mortar so precisely that a knife blade cannot enter the joints.
1444 · Florence, Tuscany
Florence Cathedral, Florence
In 1444, Brunelleschi's revolutionary double-shell brick dome over Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence approaches completion: the largest masonry dome in the world, raised without scaffolding.
1500s · Karnataka, southern India
Hampi (Vijayanagara)
Around 1500 AD, the Vijayanagara empire reigns from Hampi (the largest Hindu state in Indian history) and its bazaars throng with Arabian horse merchants and diamond dealers from across the Indian Ocean.
1519 · Valley of Mexico, Aztec Empire
Iztapalapa causeway, Tenochtitlán
On November 8, 1519, Hernán Cortés and 400 Spanish conquistadors meet the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II on the southern causeway of Tenochtitlán, the meeting of two civilizations that have never seen each other.
1492 · Bahamas (Guanahani / San Salvador Island)
Guanahani (San Salvador Island), Bahamas
At dawn on 12 October 1492, Christopher Columbus and about 40 Spanish sailors land at a Lucayan-Taíno island in the Bahamas they will rename *San Salvador*: the encounter that begins five centuries of Atlantic exchange and the destruction of indigenous Caribbean populations.
1511 · Vatican City, Rome
Sistine Chapel, Vatican
In 1511, Michelangelo Buonarroti paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; currently working on the Creation of Adam fresco while standing on his custom flat-bridge scaffolding.
early_modern
Early modern
1640s · Uttar Pradesh
Taj Mahal under construction, Agra
Around 1640, the white marble dome of the Taj Mahal rises on its riverside platform at Agra: some twenty thousand workers and a thousand elephants raising Shah Jahan's tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, partway through a project that will take more than twenty years.
1650s · Edo period, Tōkaidō
Tōkaidō road, Mt. Fuji
Around 1650 AD, a daimyō and his retinue of 2,000 retainers march along the Tōkaidō road past Mt. Fuji on the mandatory alternate-year residence journey to Edo: the Tokugawa shogunate's masterstroke of social control.
1683 · Vienna, Holy Roman Empire
Kahlenberg slopes, Vienna
On September 12, 1683, 3,000 Polish Winged Hussars under King Jan III Sobieski charge from the slopes of Kahlenberg into the rear of the Ottoman siege army before Vienna, the largest cavalry charge in European history.
1789 · Paris, Faubourg Saint-Antoine
Bastille, Paris
On July 14, 1789, a Parisian crowd of about 1,000 storms the medieval Bastille fortress-prison, killing the governor de Launay and inaugurating the French Revolution.
1755 · Lisbon, Estremadura
Praça do Comércio, Lisbon
On November 1, 1755, a magnitude 8.5+ earthquake strikes Lisbon during All Saints' Day Mass, followed by fire and a 6-meter tsunami up the Tagus, killing perhaps 50,000 in a city of 200,000.
industrial
The industrial age
1888 · Champ de Mars, Paris
Champ de Mars, Paris
In the summer of 1888, the Eiffel Tower is two-thirds complete on the Champ de Mars: Gustave Eiffel's wrought-iron lattice tower rising toward what will be the tallest structure in the world.
1863 · Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Soldiers' National Cemetery, Gettysburg
On 19 November 1863, four months after the Civil War's largest battle, President Lincoln delivers a 272-word address at the dedication of the new *Soldiers' National Cemetery* in Gettysburg: the speech that redefines the war's purpose.
1886 · New York Harbor, Bedloe's Island
Bedloe's Island, New York Harbor
On October 28, 1886, the Statue of Liberty is unveiled on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor, her copper sheath still bright and shining, decades before the famous green patina forms.
1804 · Paris, Île de la Cité
Notre-Dame de Paris
On 2 December 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of the French inside Notre-Dame de Paris, taking the gold laurel wreath from Pope Pius VII's hands and placing it on his own head, the gesture David captured in the most famous coronation painting of the nineteenth century.
1851 · Hyde Park, London
Crystal Palace, Hyde Park
On May 1, 1851, Queen Victoria opens the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in Joseph Paxton's 564-meter glass-and-iron Crystal Palace, the first world's fair.
1898 · Alaska-British Columbia border
Chilkoot Pass
In the winter of 1897–98, an endless single-file line of stampeders carry one ton of supplies up the icy Chilkoot Pass on the way to the Klondike gold fields, one of the most distinctive queue formations in human history.
1883 · Sunda Strait, Indonesia
Krakatoa, Sunda Strait
On 27 August 1883, the volcanic island of *Krakatoa* in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra destroys itself in four explosions audible 4 800 kilometres away: the loudest sound in recorded human history.
modern_early
The early 20th century
1931 · Rio de Janeiro
Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro
In October 1931, the newly finished statue of Christ the Redeemer is unveiled atop the Corcovado peak above Rio de Janeiro: a thirty-metre figure with arms outstretched over the city, bay and Sugarloaf, that becomes the emblem of Brazil.
1945 · Manhattan, New York
Times Square, New York
Late afternoon on August 14, 1945, sailor George Mendonsa grabs and kisses dental assistant Greta Friedman in Times Square as news of Japan's surrender breaks; Alfred Eisenstaedt's iconic Life photograph.
1917 · Petrograd (St. Petersburg)
Palace Square, Winter Palace
On the night of October 25, 1917 (November 7 New Style), Bolshevik forces cross Palace Square in Petrograd to arrest the Provisional Government inside the Winter Palace; Sergei Eisenstein's later film would mythologize this as a heroic charge.
1922 · Theban West Bank, Upper Egypt
KV62, Valley of the Kings
At the end of November 1922 in the Valley of the Kings, British archaeologist Howard Carter peers through a small hole in the sealed door of tomb KV62 and sees "wonderful things": the intact tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
1919 · Versailles, Île-de-France
Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles
On June 28, 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, exactly five years after the Sarajevo assassination, German delegates sign the Treaty of Versailles ending the First World War.
1912 · North Atlantic, off Newfoundland
Sinking position of RMS Titanic
At 2:17 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic, split in half, has her stern rising vertically against the cold North Atlantic sky in her last minutes before plunging to the seabed.
1945 · Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands
Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima
At midday on February 23, 1945, six United States Marines raise a larger replacement American flag on a length of iron pipe atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima, captured in Joe Rosenthal's photograph.
1914 · Ypres Salient, West Flanders
No man's land near Ploegsteert, Belgium
On Christmas Day 1914, an estimated 100 000 British and German soldiers across the Western Front spontaneously declare their own truce, meeting in no-man's-land to exchange tobacco, sing carols, bury their dead, and in places play football with empty bully- beef tins.
1941 · Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii
Battleship Row, Pearl Harbor
At 8:06 a.m. on December 7, 1941, the USS Arizona's forward magazine detonates during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, sending a 300-meter black plume vertically into the Hawaiian sky.
modern_postwar
The post-war era
1953 · Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest), Solukhumbu
Summit of Mount Everest
At 11:30 on 29 May 1953, the New Zealand beekeeper *Edmund Hillary* and the Nepalese Sherpa *Tenzing Norgay* stand on the 8 849-metre summit of *Mount Everest*: the first humans confirmed to reach the highest point on Earth.
1989 · Berlin, Brandenburg Gate
Brandenburg Gate, Berlin
On the night of November 9–10, 1989, East and West Berliners climb the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate, chipping at the concrete with hammers and dancing on top: the symbolic collapse of the Iron Curtain.
1975 · Saigon, southern Vietnam
22 Gia Long Street (Pittman Apartments), Saigon
On April 29, 1975, evacuees climb a wobbly wooden ladder to a UH-1 Huey on the narrow rooftop "elevator-shaft" platform at 22 Gia Long Street in Saigon: the iconic image of the Fall of Saigon, often misattributed to the US Embassy.
1980 · Gdańsk, Pomerania
Lenin Shipyard, Gate No. 2, Gdańsk
On August 31, 1980, Lech Wałęsa signs the 21 Demands with a giant souvenir pen at Gate No. 2 of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk: the agreement that legalizes the Solidarity trade union and begins the unraveling of communism in Eastern Europe.
1949 · Beijing, North China
Tiananmen Gate, Beijing
At 3:00 p.m. on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China from the rostrum atop Tiananmen Gate above 300,000 people in the square below.
1948 · Berlin (West), Tempelhof
Tempelhof Airport, West Berlin
For 462 days between June 1948 and September 1949, British and American transport aircraft fly food and coal into blockaded West Berlin: one plane landing at Tempelhof every 90 seconds at the peak.
1986 · Chernobyl, Kyiv Oblast
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Reactor 4
In the small hours of April 26, 1986, the destroyed Reactor 4 at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant emits a pillar of ionizing blue light from its open core while liquidators in basic firefighting gear work on the adjacent reactor 3 roof.
contemporary
Contemporary
present
The present day
2020 · Manhattan, New York
Times Square, New York
In late March 2020, the LED billboards of Times Square glow for an empty city. New York's COVID-19 lockdown has emptied "the crossroads of the world" of the millions who would normally fill it.
2019 · Paris, Île de la Cité
Notre-Dame de Paris
At 7:53 p.m. on April 15, 2019, the 96-meter wooden flèche of Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral collapses through the burning roof; Parisians on the bridges and quays kneel and sing Ave Maria.
2011 · Cairo, central Egypt
Tahrir Square, Cairo
Just after 6:00 p.m. on February 11, 2011, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians in Tahrir Square erupt in celebration as Vice-President Omar Suleiman announces that President Hosni Mubarak has resigned after 30 years.