Stories
True stories from the world's great places, and where to stand to see them.
Rio de Janeiro
Why did the Portuguese royal family move to Brazil?
To escape Napoleon. Portugal wouldn't turn on Britain, so his army marched on Lisbon, and in 1807 the court sailed for Brazil under British escort.
Paris
Is the Eiffel Tower good for kids?
Yes, above all for ages 7 to 11. Four people put in each rivet and a boy heated them, so a child can find the rivets and follow the builders' story.
Rome
Is the Colosseum good for kids?
Yes, with its story: a hundred days of opening games, prize balls thrown to the crowd, perhaps a sea in the arena, and a fight both fighters won.
London
Is the Tower of London good for kids?
Yes. For 600 years it was the king's zoo too. Children can hunt for wire sculptures of its lions, polar bear and elephant, then meet the ravens.
New York
How did they build Central Park?
Almost entirely by hand. From 1857, more than 3,800 men at a time blasted rock, drained swamps and moved nearly ten million cartloads of earth and stone.
Barcelona
Why is the Sagrada Familia taking so long?
The Sagrada Família is paid for only by gifts, Gaudí built it to be handed on, and a 1936 fire burned his plans. The main front is due around 2035.
Rio de Janeiro
Was Christ the Redeemer a gift from France?
No. Brazilians paid for it with donations and a Rio engineer designed it. Only two Frenchmen worked on it, and its sculptor never came to Brazil.
Paris
What happened in Montmartre?
The Paris Commune began there on 18 March 1871, when troops sent to seize the hill's cannons had no horses to move them and refused to fire on the crowd.
Rome
How does the Trevi Fountain work?
By gravity. The Trevi Fountain ends the Aqua Virgo, a Roman aqueduct of 19 BC that slopes gently for 20 km, mostly underground. Pumps recirculate its pool.
London
Who is buried in Westminster Abbey?
More than 3,300 people: thirty kings and queens, writers from Chaucer to Dickens, Newton, Darwin and Hawking, and a soldier whose name nobody knows.
New York
How did they build the Brooklyn Bridge underwater?
Each tower stands on a caisson, a huge upside-down timber box. Compressed air kept the river out while men dug away the riverbed and the tower sank.
Paris
Why was the Palace of Versailles built?
Louis XIV turned his father's hunting château into a palace so he could rule France from outside Paris, a city he'd feared since fleeing it as a boy.
Rome
Was Trastevere the Jewish ghetto?
No. Rome's ghetto was across the river, walled in by Pope Paul IV in 1555. Before that, Rome's Jews had lived in Trastevere for well over a thousand years.
London
Why does the British Museum have the Rosetta Stone?
British troops took it from the French army in Egypt under the surrender of 1801, and George III gave it to the museum in 1802. Many in Egypt want it back.
New York
Why does the Statue of Liberty have chains on her feet?
A broken shackle and chain lie at her feet to celebrate the end of slavery after the Civil War. They sit 150 feet up, too high to see from the ground.
Paris
Why is the Mona Lisa in the Louvre?
Leonardo never delivered the Mona Lisa. He took her to France, Francis I very probably bought her, and the Revolution gave the kings' art to the Louvre.
Rome
What is under St Peter's Basilica?
A buried Roman cemetery. Under the altar, a shrine of about AD 160 marks the grave Romans honoured as Peter's, beside bones believed to be his.
London
Why does the Tower of London have ravens?
Probably as Victorian props. The first on record, in 1883, stood by an execution memorial. The legend that Britain falls without them dates from 1944.
Paris
What happened to Notre-Dame in 2019?
In April 2019 fire destroyed Notre-Dame's medieval oak roof and its spire. Firefighters saved the towers, and it reopened, rebuilt as it was, in 2024.
Rome
Who founded the Vatican Museums?
Pope Julius II, in 1506. He bought the Laocoön, an ancient statue just dug out of a Roman vineyard, and set it in his palace's statue garden.
Paris
Why is the Mona Lisa so famous?
Leonardo painted a masterpiece, but her theft from the Louvre in 1911 made her a household name, and tourism and advertising have kept her one.
Rome
How was the Colosseum paid for?
At least in part with treasure Rome looted from Jerusalem in AD 70. The peg holes of its lost bronze letters seem to say so: from the spoils of war.
Paris
Why does the Eiffel Tower look like that?
Because of the wind. Its legs spread wide and curve inward as Eiffel's wind calculations required, and its open lattice lets storms blow through.
Rome
Who is buried in the Roman Forum?
Nobody famous. Julius Caesar was burned there in 44 BC, not buried. The only graves found date from the 10th century BC, before the Forum existed.
Rome
Why does the Colosseum have holes?
The holes mark where iron clamps once held the stone blocks together. After the games ended, Romans chiselled the iron out, one clamp at a time.
Rome
Who is buried in the Pantheon?
The painter Raphael, who chose it for his grave, and Italy's first two kings, Victor Emmanuel II and Umberto I, with Queen Margherita, among others.
Rome
Why is the Roman Forum so low?
It's a valley. Floods and soil from the hills buried it for centuries, until cows grazed metres above the Roman paving. Since 1803 it has been dug out.
Rome
Why is the Colosseum half broken?
The Colosseum's south side stood on soft ground. Settling and earthquakes brought it down, and Rome carted the stone off for centuries, some to St Peter's.
Rome
Why does the Pantheon have a hole in the roof?
No Roman wrote down why. The oculus is the room's only direct sunlight, it removes the dome's weakest point, and it opens the vault to the real sky.