The short story Rip Van Winkle , written in 1819 by the American writer Washington Irving, is about a man who woke up after a sleep of more than two decades. Although such a work of fiction is a...
Located near the village of Shiyan Beicun in Zhejiang province, China, lie the Longyou Caves - an extensive, magnificent and rare ancient underground world considered in China to be “the ninth wonder...
The Juroku-no-i, or Sixteen Wells in English, is a group of sacred wells at the Kaizo-ji Temple in Kamakura , Japan. The Sixteen Wells are located in a small grotto near the back of the temple. As...
For many centuries Sicily was part of the wider Greek world and this can be seen in the many spectacular monuments and ruins on the island. One of these is the Greek theatre at Syracuse. Syracuse was...
The Flaming Mountains of Turpan (also known as Turfan ) are located in the Tian Shan Mountain range in China’s Xinjiang province. These mountains lie to the east of the city of Turpan, which is...
Many stories have been told about hidden underground cities or realms. Examples from fiction include the underground compound inhabited by the Morlocks in H.G. Well’s, The Time Machine and the...
Located just some 60 miles of the coast of Sicily, smack in the middle of the Mediterranean lie the Maltese Islands. The three small islands are Malta, it's sister island of Gozo and the small island...
When archaeologists found a cache of medieval mummies in a Lebanese cave, the amazing discovery took their breath away. The remarkably well-preserved bodies of eight people who were buried in Qadisha...
The Mogao Grottoes, known also as the Mogao Caves, the Dunhuang Caves, or the Thousand Buddha Caves, are a network of Buddhist cave temples in China. This site is located near the city of Dunhuang in...
From ancient cisterns and water systems to mysterious caves, underground crypts, subterranean temples and even entire cities built beneath the earth, what our ancient ancestors have achieved is both...
Ninety-nine per cent of the shells that were used in the Margate shell grotto (eg mussels, oysters, clams, whelk, razors and limpet) are from shellfish that occur along the English coast. Only in the...
Thirty-five miles north of Dover, a 40 minutes drive, one can find the English town Margate in Kent - a coastal town with 57,000 inhabitants and a proud maritime history. Since 1760 Margate has been...