August 03, 2021

Meet ‘Firebows’ Have you ever seen a stacked spectrum of color stretched above the sky, something that looks like a rainbow but there’s no arc—and it appears on a sunny day? Well, what you saw wasn’t a rainbow; rather, it was a “firebow,” or a circumhorizon arc. They form when the sun is fairly high in the sky—more than 58 degrees above the horizon—and sunlight refracts off of the ice crystals in high-altitude clouds. And they aren’t the only colorful potential residents of the sunny sky either.  READ MORE → Italy’s ‘Museum of Abandonment’ Italy is full of ruins, ancient, yes, but modern as well. Italy has developed a fastidious approach to heritage preservation, and the government’s cultural heritage department imposes renovation restrictions on many, many buildings. Combined with the country’s legendary red tape, erecting new buildings may be easier than renovating protected sites, which results in countless places being left behind. No accurate statistics exist, but Italian media has estimated the country has between two and 14 million abandoned buildings. Enter a new outdoor museum: the In Loco Widespread Museum of Abandonment.  READ MORE → ATLAS OBSCURA COURSES Fall Feasts: Foraging & Folklore Join herbalist and forager Felicity Roberts alongside farmer and culinarian Ryley Bucek for a global celebration of the harvest season through space and time. Over the course of four sessions, we’ll learn about foraging wherever we are (including in the urban wild) and preparing your harvest through the lens of mythology and festivals both ancient and contemporary. ENROLL NOW → BROOKLYN, NEW YORK The Leaning Brownstone Walking past 633 Union Street, you may not notice anything’s amiss at first. But if you step back and take another look, you may notice that the building is off-kilter. A closer inspection also shows mismatched brickwork that curves slightly inward on the right side. An awning on the front of the building identifies it as the Leaning Brownstone.  READ MORE → FROM THE ARCHIVES New England’s Stone Walls Walk into a patch of forest in New England, and chances are you will—almost literally—stumble across a stone wall. Thigh-high, perhaps, it is cobbled together with stones of various shapes and sizes, with splotches of lichen and spongy moss instead of mortar. Robert Thorson, a landscape geologist at University of Connecticut, estimates that there are more than 100,000 miles of old, disused stone walls out there, or enough to circle the globe four times.  READ MORE → THE ATLAS OBSCURA PODCAST Salton Sea In this episode of The Atlas Obscura podcast, we visit the Salton Sea to hear the story of how humans desperate for water created a lake the size of the city of Los Angeles—and how that thirst turned toxic.  Earth’s Rudest Places  Rudeness comes in many flavors. Sometimes it’s crass, scatological humor. Other times, it’s the product of a petty, persistent grudge. In still other cases, it can be utterly accidental—but no less provocative for it. Sometimes it gets permanently inscribed, in the form of, say, flamboyantly fecal sculptures, or skinny structures designed to stymie a pretty view, or no-harm-intended statues that ended up bugging a lot of people. Here are a few of our favorite uncouth places.  READ MORE → FROM THE ARCHIVES Food Truck Fit For a Prince Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia has his own pasta truck—a shiny, royal blue colossus streaked with the colors of the Italian flag—called the Prince of Venice. This is notable for several reasons—Filiberto is the first person to put a fresh pasta machine in a commercial food truck, for one. And then, of course, there’s the fact that Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia is the grandson of Umberto II, the last king of Italy. In other words, Filiberto is literally the Prince of Venice.  READ MORE → ATLAS OBSCURA EXPERIENCES Special Access: The Entomology Collection The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philadelphia boasts a collection of over four million insects from around the world, representing about 100,000 species. Go behind-the-scenes for a Special Access look at this wonderous collection with Senior Director of Exhibits and Public Spaces, Jennifer Sontchi, and Curator of Entomology, Jon Gelhaus.  GET TICKETS → AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS Normaal Amsterdams Peil The infrastructure of Amsterdam depends on a stone at the center of Dam Square. The stone caps a bolt that marks Amsterdam’s zero-level, or sea level, based on high tide in the summer of nearby Zuiderzee Bay. The reference point, called Amsterdam Ordnance Datum (which translates to Normaal Amsterdams Peil, or NAP), is the heart of the European network of national leveling networks. In other words, the NAP is the prime meridian of elevation.  READ MORE → CAMDENTON, MISSOURI Ha Ha Tonka Castle Ruins Sitting on a bluff in the oddly-named Ha Ha Tonka State Park (supposedly translating to “laughing waters”), the ruins of a businessman’s mansion appear to belong to a bygone fairytale kingdom, but are really the remains of a dead man’s dream. READ MORE → GASTRO OBSCURA TRIPS In the Cradle of Wine On this mouthwatering gastronomic adventure, we’ll explore in and around the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, paying homage to Svetitskhovloba, the country’s holiest site, before dipping into some of the finest wine from one of the most underrated wine regions in the world. We’ll spend two days in the stunning Alazani Valley, where we’ll experience the deep reverence for winemaking that defines this land. Along the way, we’ll take in unique performances, visit little-known spots, and to cap things off, learn to cook our own Georgian feast, or supra. BOOK NOW →