The small spa town Bad Schandau is split into two levels, one at the base of the mountain and one higher up on the peak. The solution to connect the two halves of the town is an elevator, a particularly beautiful one.
The art nouveau elevator was inaugurated on Easter of 1905 after one full year of construction. The "Personenaufzug Bad Schandau" is the "little brother" of the Hammetschwand Elevator in Switzerland, constructed to look exactly the same but much smaller.
The idea came from local hotelier Rudolf Sendig, who financed the entire feat. Mr. Sendig wanted his guests to have an easy and fast way from the town center to the guest houses and back.
The elevator tower, which stands roughly 172 feet high, remains largely unchanged from its original construction, minus a few updates to its mechanical engine. It is still the fastest and most convenient to connect Bad Schandau to its suburb Ostrau, just as it was more than a century ago. Hikers also use the elevator to access trails, and small platform at the top station offers a picturesque view of the surrounding Elbe valley.
For the past four years, Atlas Obscura and Green-Wood Cemetery have teamed up each fall to present Into the Veil, a nighttime soiree in which 1,500 guests are invited to explore the Victorian-era garden cemetery's expansive grounds and ornate mausoleums by the light of the moon.
Attendees are given maps upon arrival and encouraged to venture into the night, choosing their own paths through the grounds to discover a series of atmospheric performances and installations. One of this year's high points was a surprise set by the legendary Sun Ra Arkestra within the cemetery catacombs—the intergalactic-inspired set saw the audience joyously agreeing that "space is the place." Addison Post and P. Nick Curran of Loroto Productions captured the ambiance beautifully in the above video.
If you missed out this year, stay informed about future Atlas Obscura events by joining our New York and Philadelphia mailing lists. Next fall's Into the Veil event will be taking place at both Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and at Philadelphia's historic Laurel Hill.
One of the three largest limestone caverns in Japan, Ryūsendō Cave features expansive subterranean galleries arching over deep sunless lakes filled with breathtakingly clear blue water. The complex has been designated as a natural monument by the Japanese government since 1934, thanks not only to its remarkable size and enchanting aquatic features, but also because of the unique varieties of bats that call the cave home.
Surveys of Ryūsendō Cave began in 1920, and thus far, some 3600m (about 2 miles) have been explored and mapped, of which 700m (a half mile) can be visited by the public. Exploration is ongoing, however, and it is believed that the full extent of the cave is likely 5000m (3 miles) or more. Additionally, eight underground lakes have been found in Ryūsendō, fed by underground river of crystal-clear spring water constantly gushing forth from the bedrock.
Three of these lakes are accessible to visitors and feature submerged lighting that illuminates that chambers with the brilliant blues and greens of the limestone-filtered waters—colors pleasingly saturated thanks to the clarity and depth of the waters. A fourth lake that is not included in the tour reaches an impressive depth of 120m (almost 400 feet), making it the deepest underground lake in Japan as well as one of the most transparent lakes in the world.
Elevated walkways, bridges, and stairs conduct visitors through a 30-minute tour that ranges from the water's surface to the cavern roof, where those intrepid enough can view the watery depths from amidst stalactites high above. While up there, one might even come face-to-face with some of the rare bats that populate the cave, including Brown long-eared bats, Eastern long-fingered bats, Hilgendorf's tube-nosed bats, and Greater horseshoe bats.
The history of the abandoned Glen Jean School is unclear, at best. There are reports that it had been used as an elementary school and a high school. Some of the remnants that are left on the wall suggest that its last incarnation may have been (at least partially) an elementary school. There are even some reports that it was used as a hospital for a short period, which contribute to a few local legends.
This structure, along with the McKell Bank, which sits just down the road, is one of the few remaining structures left from the early days of the New River mining. However, unlike the bank, the school sits abandoned with lots of remnants to be found, including some graffiti from 1966.
The town of Glen Jean, West Virginia was founded by Thomas McKell, the bitter rival of Captain William Thurmond, founder of neighboring Thurmond (now a ghost town). In order to compete in the coal mining trade with his neighbor, McKell needed to start building a community for his workers toiling in the mines, which included a school house for the families. The first school house burnt down in 1924; which was most likely Thurmond’s fault—they seemed to like setting each other’s property on fire. The building that stands today came shortly after, built in 1925, with the second floor added in 1926.
The school remained in continuous operation until 1997. The building was purchased in 1999 to serve as business offices and visitor center for the Thurmond, Glen Jean, and Great New River Railroad, but was closed in 2006 when the railroad was sold.
There are also many accounts of the property being haunted, which some claim are from its past history of being a hospital, and others claim from a brutal murder that occurred there many years ago.
On most weekends for the past year I have been visiting abandoned elementary schools in rural Ireland. Due to a long-term tradition of emigration, and changing demographics, there are a surprising number of derelict school houses scattered around the Irish countryside. I have no real explanation for why I began doing this; it began by accident while undertaking some field work during my nine-to-five as an archaeologist. I don’t think it’s become an obsession, but I have visited almost 150 abandoned school houses in the past 12 months.
I guess the big question is why? Contemporary ruins can provoke an unusual emotional response that is difficult to define. A familiar environment that has fallen into decay can be both unsettling and intriguing, inspiring fascination and fear as a tangible reminder of the scale of your own lifetime.
But in the school houses I visit, it is the bizarre and sometimes false sense of nostalgia that is most striking; how my concept of time is warped as I am surrounded by a familiar man-made environment that is being quickly reclaimed by the earth. In a sense, I am not just exploring a physical landscape, but a cognitive landscape where my memory of these places as everlasting is now clearly wrong.
Memory is dynamic and fluid—a pulsing living thing. It can be continually stretched, coveted, erased and manipulated by the environment and circumstances from which it is recalled; taking on greater or lesser significance that is determined by the interpretation of those who recollect in the present. And nostalgia is even trickier still; a wistful desire in thought or in fact, for a former time in one’s life. In Portuguese, the word Saudaderepresents this feeling; an emotional state of longing for an absent something—"the love that remains."
It can be argued that few things have greater impact on our development and personality, our understanding of the world around us and how to interpret it, than our experience of the classroom and schoolyard. With this in mind, consider how much of an impact these now rotting buildings may have had on the lives of many.
Ballymackeehola County Mayo, 1895
This rural two-roomed national school is situated in the sparsely populated and boggy townland of Ballymackeehola in north-west Mayo. With little tree cover, the area is often wind-swept, with the Atlantic Ocean sometimes bringing a damp and harsh gale. The plaque above the doorway dates the construction of the school to 1895. It remained in use until 1969.
Whiddy Island National School County Cork, 1887
Whiddy Island is a small, near-shore island located at the head of Bantry Bay in Co. Cork. Not far from the modern quayside and in the townland of Trawnahaha is a small late 19th-century one-roomed school house overlooking Bantry Bay below. Painted bright blue with a white lime-wash, in recent years the building had been used as a local museum though it has now fallen into a state of disrepair.
Gortahose County Leitrim, 1890
In 1937 the Irish Folklore Commission, in collaboration with the Department of Education and the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation, initiated a revolutionary scheme in which schoolchildren were encouraged to collect and document folklore and local history. Over a period of eighteen months some 100,000 children in 5,000 primary schools in the twenty-six counties of the Irish Free State were encouraged to collect folklore material in their home districts. This of course included Gortahose. Below are extracts from the Irish Folklore Commission’s records for Gortahose. The story’s featured below relate to local folklore and places, with an interesting reference to witchcraft in the locality.
Latton National School County Monaghan, 1941
Now standing in open pasture, the structure is gradually giving way to the elements. To the front of the building there is an inscribed limestone date and name plaque reading "Scoil Mhuire Leacht Fhinn Scoil Náisiúnta 1941". Inside, many of the fixtures and fittings remain, and each classroom retains much of the original furniture, giving the environment a particularly spooky feeling.
Drumlish National School County Longford, 1930
Standing beside the building is a pebble-dashed water-tower typical of 1950s school construction, while to the rear is a cast-in-situ concrete playground shelter. It is a particularly evocative abandoned schoolhouse, only going out of use in recent years. The sight of the functional 1950s structure amid the encroaching nature gives the interior a Pripyat-esque feel.
Killymarly National School, County Monaghan, 1840
Two-storey National Schools are less common in Ireland, and generally earlier in date than their single-storey counterparts. Remarkably, one of the classrooms retains three long school benches, two of which are in relatively good condition. Facing a now-blank wall, it is interesting to wonder how many local school children sat on these seats through the years, and to which corners of the earth they might have scattered. And when was the last time the empty inkwells that are sunken into each desk held ink?
Bunnadden, County Sligo 1883
A plaque on the northern end of the building dates its construction to 1883, although the First Edition Ordnance Survey sheet above shows there was a pre-existing school at this site by the 1840s. Although in ruins, the interior is relatively well preserved, with the brightly painted walls displaying a spooky patina.
Carrigan National School, County Cavan, 1897
The building includes the typical double entrances at each end for boys and girls, with the schoolyard to the rear also being segregated. A Stone plaque out front is inscribed ‘CARRIGANS NATIONAL SCHOOL / 1897 / ENLARGED BY REV T. MAGUIRE CC / 1929’.
Shanavaghera, County Mayo, 1935
The building is certainly in a ruinous state, with nature making its way in through the shattered glass and broken doorways. Nonetheless, original features such as the wooden partition that divided the main room into three classrooms, three original fireplaces, and a single school desk added wonderful atmosphere to this building. The separate entrances for boys and girls are to the rear of the school, and the numbered coat-hooks once used by the pupils can be seen in the entrance hall. The suspended wooden floor remains solid enough to walk on without fear of it collapsing beneath your feet. The school closed in 1968 or 1969.
Mastergeehy, County Kerry, 1870-1890
It is difficult to imagine the tranquility of this location being disturbed by the outside world, but this was the case one winter in 1941. On the 26th of December, a Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 D was forced to crash-land on the valley floor because of engine trouble. Such happenings were undoubtedly the subject of much discussion when the school children of Mastergeehy returned to their tiny classroom after the Christmas break in 1942. Is there anyone still living in the area that remembers the time when the winds that have given Mastergeehy its name, brought this unexpected surprise?
As you drive toward Palo Duro Canyon from Amarillow, it suddenly emerges from the heart of the Texas Panhandle, first as a small gap, then a gaping, deep schism in the ground with deep red, brown, and tan layers. The locals call Palo Duro the “Grand Canyon of Texas”—and they aren’t far off.
Palo Duro Canyon is considered to be the second largest and longest canyon in the U.S. Formed by the Prairie Dog Town fork of the Red River, it is 120 miles long and 20 miles across at its widest point. Its highest elevation is 2,759-3,463 feet above sea level and its deepest point is over 800 feet from the rim. Early Spanish explorers probably discovered the canyon, naming it Palo Duro, Spanish for "hard wood" for the junipers and mesquite trees.
People have inhabited the area for around 12,000 years. The Clovis and Folsom peoples first lived in the canyon and hunted large herds of mammoth and giant bison. Other cultures, such as the Apache, Comanche and Kiowa, used the canyon’s plentiful resources more recently.
Visitors can drive down onto the floor of the canyon, which was constructed in 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. However, visitors should note that often after rain, the road is flooded at several points, making the journey difficult, if not impossible. The most prominent feature is the Lighthouse, a 300-foot formation at the north end of the canyon. It is accessible from the road or by a three-mile trail. You can also watch a musical about Early settlers in the park, and bring your own horse to ride on trails.
Though it's one of the most important buildings in Portugal today, the Jerónimos Monastery had much more humble beginnings.
In the 14th century, the small Lisbon chapel, Santa Maria de Belém, was presided over by monks of the military-religious Order of Christ. Originally built by Prince Henry the Navigator, the duty of the monks there was to assist Portuguese sailors and ships leaving port for long journeys. Seamen and crew would spend their last night in Portugal within the church, often praying for safe travel and confessing their sins to the monks there in case they did not return to land.
Of the most famous was the great Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama, who was the first European to reach the Far East by sea and who credited the night of prayer in the church with his success. Upon the triumphant return of de Gama and the new found riches, King Manuel I began construction of a new monastery on the location, one to showcase the glorious wealth that the age of exploration brought to the Portuguese empire.
The monastery and church were built over the next 100 years with taxes from imported goods from Africa and the far east. Unsurprisingly, several architects and numerous sculptors worked on the building, together achieving a level of cohesive realization in creating one of the most majestic examples of Late Gothic Manueline style of architecture.
The King donated the construction to the monks of the Hieronymite order, who were tasked with praying for the soul of the King and his family— likely no small task when considering the atrocities of Portuguese explorers and traders among plundered lands all in the name and with approval of their King. Regardless, for the next several hundred years the monks continued in their duties until the order was dissolved and the monastery abandoned in 1833. For a time it was a children’s school, but it gradually fell from it’s grandeur into disrepair thanks to earthquakes and neglect.
It has seen several restoration projects and cleanings since the mid-1800s, where it once again became the pride of the capital city. In 2007, the Treaty of Lisbon was signed at Jerónimos. Today, the monastery is a UNESCO world heritage site. Inside are the tombs of the royal family, Vasco de Gama, and Luís de Camões among other notable Portuguese notables from the age of it's construction.
Almost a quarter of the land of the Northern Hemisphere is permafrost, and about a third of that is in the western half of North America. This includes an area near Fairbanks, Alaska, where the Army Corps of Engineers has a permafrost tunnel as part of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, or “CRREL.”
The CRREL tunnel is roomy, about 360 feet long, six to eight feet high and about 15 feet wide. It’s rich with frozen animal and plant remains, fossils of all kinds, and layers of frozen silt, sand, gravel and bedrock. The space is comprised of an “adit” (just a more impressive word for access portal) and a “winze” (a term used in mining to describe sections that adjusts for differing levels or depths), and given its Army Corps parentage, it’s a feat of engineering.
The tunnel started out in the early 1960s as a kind of training camp, for the Corps to learn more about excavating permafrost. In the later 1960s, it was used for similar purposes by the Bureau of Mines to test permafrost mining techniques. Ultimately though, the tunnel has proven its value as a science lab, turning the exposed walls into a frozen classroom on how permafrost behaves, how fossils and sediment have piled up over the epochs, and how the layers may be altered by climate change.
Permafrost is simply a frozen state of ground, not necessarily icy (although it can include ice in its makeup). It’s defined by temperature, not water content, so if the ground—be it soil, rock, peat, sand or river sediment—maintains a temperature of zero degrees Celsius or lower, you’ve got permafrost.
The exposure caused by tunneling has created a paradoxical engineering dilemma for the Corps: how to keep it frozen when outside air is circulating throughout. CRREL has figured that out too. In the winter there is a system of funneling the outside air back in. In the summer, they’ve got some very fancy A/C.
Perhaps the most impressive thing about the anatomical votives of Central Italy are the sheer numbers in which they were found.
One site contained 1,654 votive feet, made of terracotta. Another had more than 400 terracotta wombs. At Ponte di Nona, there were 8,395 votives recovered in the 1970s—of the 6,171 that were identifiable body parts, 985 were heads, about as many were eyes, and 2,368 were feet. Overall, at about 150 sites, archaeologists have uncovered tens of thousands of feet, legs, arms, hands, heads, eyes, ears, breasts, uteri, vulvae, phalluses, and sometimes whole midriff sections, with indistinct organs exposed.
Scholars of ancient Italy have known about these devotional offerings for decades now, but they're still wondering: why exactly did people leave these votives for the gods?
Anatomical votives of this sort have also been found in Greece, but they were most popular in one specific place, during one specific time—on the western coast of Central Italy, from about the 4th century B.C. to the 1st century B.C. Most of the tens of thousands of surviving votives that archaeologists have found were left in pits, often containing thousands of body parts. Rebecca Flemming, a British scholar who writes about the votives in a new book, calls these "organized clear-outs of the votive clutter"—respectful burials of past offerings meant to clear temple space for new ones.
Before they were buried, these votives would have crowded the walls, ceilings and floors of temples—they're designed for display. Many of them have holes that could have been used to hang them on a hook or looped through with some sort of line to suspend from a wall or ceiling. Others had pedestals or were made so they could lean against a wall. Many of the votives were somewhat standardized and made from molds, although they also varied in size and design. It's also likely that visitors left anatomical votives made of materials other than clay; terracotta just happens to be a material with a long shelf life.
It's clear that these anatomical votives were connected in some way with health and well-being, but for years scholars have debated exactly who used them and how. Once it was thought that the votives were primarily used by rural people, but Flemming argues that it was a "wide-spread, accessible, and inclusive," popular inside cities and far out into the countryside, and available both to elites and lower classes.
Some scholars believe that the votives reflects pleas for the healing of particular body parts or were thank-you gifts for prayers answered. Some shrines may have specialized in particular illnesses—at least that's one explanation for why one place might have a great concentration of hands, another a great concentration of eyes, and another a great concentration of uteri.
It's an easy leap to make when a temple to a goddess connected to fertility is full of terracotta wombs. At one site, when the wombs were X-rayed, they were found to have small spheres inside, apparently representing embryos—either wishes fulfilled or requests for the future.
But some scholars think these anatomical votives shouldn't be taken quite so literally. Feet votives could be connected to travel, for instance; eyes and ears could represent something more conceptual than eye and ear pain. Did heads represent headaches—or the whole persons? Or perhaps a soul sickness rather than a simple physical pain?
Part of the mystery comes from the lack of written sources that explain exactly what was going on here. The practice faded as social and political conditions in the area changed: people began concentrating more in cities, and written votives became more popular.
Indeed, scholars still have plenty to argue about: a new book is coming out in 2017 that's dedicated to "new questions about what constitutes an anatomical votive" and "how they were used and manipulated."
There will probably always be questions, though, about these mass burials of clay body parts.
In the 1738 edition of Physica subterranea, written by German alchemist Johann Becher, there is a particularly intriguing illustration. Titled The Body as an Alchemical Laboratory, it depicts a figure framed by drapes and surrounded by floating symbols. To an untrained eye, these symbols are indecipherable. But for those that studied alchemy—primarily known for attempting to turn base metals into gold—they codify formulas, elements, planetary metals and ingredients.
Some of the symbols shown relate to Venus (linked to copper), Mercury (linked to quicksilver), along with “primary catalysts” like sulfur. Their design is almost mystical, akin to the hidden codes of a secret order. It’s a fascinating example of how alchemy has been depicted over the centuries, which is the subject of the new Getty Research Institute exhibition, The Art of Alchemy.
But there was more to alchemy than trying to create gold. It encompassed elements of chemistry, and also had the loftier aim of extending life. Or, as David Brafman, the curator of the exhibition puts it, “alchemy was a science tinged with spirituality and infused with a spritz of artistic spirit.”
The exhibition explores alchemy as depicted in art and rare books, across Europe and Asia, from the 3rd century B.C. to the 20th. It includes the 20-foot-long Ripley Scroll, an 18th century artwork that shows two alchemists sharing secrets from a locked book.
Atlas Obscura has a selection of images from the exhibition, which runs through February 12, 2017.
The village of Proctor, Vermont, is one of the few places in the United States with an actual castle. Enormous, beautiful, and creepy, Wilson Castle is part of a 115-acre estate in various stages of disrepair. It’s hard to imagine a building more incongruous with its surroundings.
You approach the estate (it’s a real castle, tour guides explain, because it has battlements and towers) by turning off a main highway by a truck parts shop and traveling for a mile or so on a sparsely populated rural road near Rutland, Vermont. Neighboring buildings include small ranch houses and trailers.
It was always a slightly unusual building for the area, which was, perhaps, the point. A Vermont doctor, John Johnson, built it in 1867 to impress his wife, who was an English aristocrat of some sort. According to the story, Johnson met her when he attended medical school in the United Kingdom. It took eight years and $1.3 million to finish the castle. Mrs. Johnson returned to England after living only three years in the castle with her husband. After she died her husband had to sell the castle.
The property was juggled from one owner to the next for the next fifty or so years until falling into the hands of Herbert Lee Wilson, an AM radio pioneer who created a radio station in the home’s stable, which, though its headquarters have since moved, is still on the air today. Five generations of Wilsons lived at the house from 1939-2009, when Wilson’s daughter passed away. It opened for tours in 1962 and is still owned and operated by Wilson’s granddaughter, Denise Devine.
The castle is a peculiar mixture of 19th-century architectural styles including Dutch Neo-Renaissance, Scottish baronial, Queen Anne, and Romanesque Revival. Consisting of 32 rooms (though only a few of these are available for touring), 84 stained glass windows, and 13 fireplaces, the building is lavish in a way that’s unique for Rutland County, and even for the Gilded Age. Each room has different woodwork to match its furniture, some of which is priceless. Due to the travels Wilson (who was also an army officer) the castle is decorated with include impressive and valuable Far Eastern and European antiques, Chinese scrolls, and Oriental rugs. The Wilson Castle tour is novel in that visitors can walk on the carpets, touch some of the furniture, and take flash pictures.
Depending on funds and maintenance, and concerns about visitor safety, various parts of the estate are added and subtracted from what’s available on tour. Most of the rooms originally had elaborate murals on the ceiling—an owl near the study, a rendition of the sky on the drawing room ceiling—but many of those are gone now or covered over due to water damage and the expense and difficulty hiring workers to repair and maintain such decorations.
In San Francisco, a development project is being planned on a site that was once home to some of the city’s most famous gay bars. The development could be blocked though, by the discovery of a network of underground tunnels used by bar patrons to escape police raids, SFist reports.
The only catch is that it’s not clear who’s actually seen these secret tunnels.
The development would put a hotel and condos at 950 Market Street, on a block once considered part of the “Meat Rack,” a nightlife district for gay men and trans people. One of the most famous, the Old Crow, survived here from 1935—and perhaps even earlier, as a speakeasy—through the 1980s. In those earlier years, from the 1930s to the 1950s, police would regularly raid and shutter bars associated with gay nightlife.
As the development project nears its final approvals, preservation activist Nate Allbee turned up photos of underground tunnels that connected the bars in this area and would have allowed patrons to escape those raids, SFist reports.
The photos show spacious basements, dusty stairwells and vintage liquor bottles.“So many gay bars faced raids and were shut down in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's, and it's never been clear how places like the Old Crow managed to stay in business so long. The tunnels may be the answer,” Allbee told SFist.
But another local news outlet, KPIX5, was unable to locate the tunnels. The CBS affiliate reported that Allbee did not take the photos himself and wouldn’t say who provided them. The development group told KPIX5 that “This is the first time we’ve heard that there is a tunnel…As far as we’re concerned, there is no tunnel.”
Also known as Siq al-Barid, "Little Petra," located about eight miles north of the ruins of the ancient city of Petra in Jordan, is a smaller but no less fascinating archeological site.
Like Petra senior, Little Petra was built by the Nabateans, and is widely believed to be a suburb of the ancient city, acting as a post on the silk road.
Within Little Petra is a room dug into the mountainside in true Petra-style commonly referred to as The Painted House. It contains a recently restored 2,000-year old Nabatean fresco, depicting grapes and small, chubby, male children (dubbed Putti in art jargon). While Little Petra is often recommended as a more relaxed version of Petra, this ancient painting has no parallels in its larger neighbour, making the extra trip worthwhile for those interested in art, archeology, or paintings of small chubby children.
“Every capital city has its own smell. London smells of fried fish and Player's, Paris of coffee, onions and Caporals, Moscow of cheap eau-de-Cologne and sweat. Berlin smells of cigars and boiled cabbage.” This observation comes from the 1963 travelogue Thrilling Cities by the British author Ian Fleming—and, at least when it comes to Berlin, it’s rather outdated. Today, more than five decades after James Bond’s creator took his nose for a trip around the world, the ever-changing German capital seems to be smelling like doner kebabs and currywurst more than anything else. But for Berlin-based olfactory artist Sissel Tolaas, who creates “smellscapes” of major cities, it smells like so much more.
“Every city has an identity like we humans do. And every city is unique smell-wise,” explains Tolaas, a half-Norwegian, half-Icelandic expatriate artist with background in chemistry, linguistics, mathematics, and visual arts. “The odor depends on things like climate, geography, demography etc. Inside the city, smells differs from neighborhood to neighborhood. For example if you go to Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood, you’ll notice it’s quite different from, let’s say, Charlottenburg when it comes to smell.”
To Tolaas, the ethnically diverse Neukölln, which she studied back in 2004, smells like heaven. “Its smell is very complex because of the many foods and spices,” she says. “There are many body odors as well. And dry cleaners. Most of them are in the basement, so when it’s hot the smell comes up and you can almost see the white shirts coming out, flying towards you.”
Tolaas, an energetic, fast talking blonde with a platinum-blonde bob that makes her look like the Australian singer Sia, knows what she’s talking about. She is one of the most respected olfaction experts in the world and has turned collecting, dissecting, and engineering smells into a life mission.
The artist has been working in the medium of smell for more than 20 years, and has amassed a personal smell library of more than 6,500 odors caught in airtight cans. She’s taken her interest in odors to new heights by making Limburger cheese from bacteria found in David Beckham's shoes—cheese that was then served to the VIPs at the London Olympics. She also managed to recreate the long lost smell of the First World War for the German Military History Museum in Dresden. But nowadays Tolaas is traveling around the world and mapping its cities, one smell at a time. The project, called SmellScapes, has taken her to 35 cities so far, from London and Paris to Cape Town to Kansas City (both of them).
Tolaas started working on her SmellScapes more than a decade ago. Most of them are commissioned by either creative platforms, city councils, or universities and private foundations, and they serve an amazingly wide variety of purposes. For example, her SmellScape of Mexico City, developed in 2001 in collaboration with the Harvard graduate student teacher program, was a creative way to understand pollution.
“The pollution in Mexico City is a big problem,” explains Tolaas. “Back then it was the most polluted human settlement in the world. It was worse than Beijing! This was primarily because the city is high up, it’s situated in a valley surrounded by mountains and it’s flanked by two volcanoes. And it has a lot of car traffic. So, we developed new tools of awareness to understand this problem beyond the way it looks visually.”
While working on the SmellScape of Mexico City, Tolaas visited more than 200 neighborhoods over and over again, trying to identify what makes them smell the way they do. The research resulted in an exhibition called Talking Nose, in which Tolaas created a scratch-and-sniff map of the Mexican capital and videotaped 2,100 of its residents while they described the way the city smells.
“People are tired of looking at melting icebergs and polar bears. Those things became kind of cliche nowadays,” Tolaas says. “Instead of that, I walked around and catched in a playful manner the smells in different neighborhoods. The goal was reproducing the smell of pollution—the car exhaust, the refrigerator, the air conditioner… Then I gave the smells to people and asked them to articulate them which made them understand better what’s causing the pollution.”
Tolaas’ latest SmellScape project is focused on the olfactory identity of Singapore. She carried out fieldwork in selected neighborhoods that have been developed by the architect William S. W. Lim and presented her findings in the ongoing exhibition Incomplete Urbanism: Attempts of Critical Spatial Practice.
But how do one even collect and preserve something so ephemeral as a smell?
“The first tool I use is my nose,” says Tolaas, perhaps rather obviously. “I have to make sure that a certain smell is permanent by going back in different times of the day and the year. In other words the smell should be part of the identity of the site. Then if I’m able to collect the source of the smell, I would bring it to the lab. If the source is, let’s say, a sewage plant and I can’t collect it, I’d go back with a special tool that collect smells molecules from the source and I’ll take a ‘snapshot’ of that smell.”
The “smell camera” Tolaas uses is based on a technology called Headspace. It was developed for perfumers who need to recreate a scent for a specific fragrance, either because the natural flower is too rare to be harvested or because its aroma is too unstable to use in a formula. The same technology might very soon give us the chance to learn what Mars smells like.
Tolaas collects the smell samples in a small glass tube called tennex. Then the container is sent to her research partners from International Flavors & Fragrances, an American perfumery corporation headquartered in New York City, which according to Tolaas is “one of a small number of companies which controls how the world smells and tastes.” IFF helped Tolaas in establishing her research lab in Berlin in 2004, and has supported her with full olfactory analysis ever since. After analyzing the sample with a gas chromatograph, IFF sends Tolaas a formula that contains the fingerprint of the smell captured, describing all the subtle nuances in great detail. Using this data chart, Tolaas replicates the smell in her lab, combining some of the nearly 4,000 individual molecules she has at her disposal. The result, Tolaas explains, is as close as possible to the original smell, considering today’s technology development.
“What is important here is that to reproduce certain smell from reality as close as possible, one needs to work with abstract smells molecules,” she says. “So, you have to basically build up a smell from scratch. It sounds very simple but in fact it’s a lot of work. You do a small mistake putting one or two nano units more and the whole batch goes bad, so you’ll have to start from the beginning.”
Cities tend to change the way they smell through time. That’s especially true for an ever-changing metropolis like Berlin. Tolaas’ SmellScape of Berlin was created between 2002 and 2004, and she mourns the smell of that city: “Back in 2002 Berlin smelled more interesting than today. It was more diverse then.” But certain parts of Berlin, says Tolaas, have stayed the same over time. Like the U-Bahn station Berlin Jannowitzbrücke in the former East Berlin.
“If you remove a couple of tiles from its wall, the smell of the German Democratic Republic would come off immediately,” she says. “It’s that of lignite and a detergent which I suspect was used in all the public buildings, probably supplied by the same, state-owned company. The smell is omnipresent as if The Big Brother is looking at you.”
Smells can reinforce and reflect the identity of the cities—and yet few people think about preserving a city’s olfactory heritage. Indeed, Tolaas may be the only person doing so—but she’s confident in her work. A thousand years from now, she says, someone using her SmellScape charts would be able to recreate truthfully the smell of the cities she’s mapping. Maybe they’d even learn a thing or two about the city’s history.
But for Tolaas, collecting and recreating smells is first and foremost something she does for art—and for fun.
“It adds quality to being alive. To rediscover the amazing efficiency of senses is so mind-blowing! We live in a world that’s sanitized, sterilized and deodorized to a such an extent, that we don’t have a clue what’s going on anymore,” she says. “That’s not healthy for ... the people, nor the cities or the planet. Our bodies are equipped with this amazing software for the purpose of navigating and communicating the world we live in. And the best part is that these ‘tools’ are free. They cost nothing! So, I’m trying to re-educate people how to use these amazing tools, to understand the world in a different way. And whatever it takes to bring across this experience to humanity, I will do it.”
Crystals are an important part of our daily lives. These structures are found in the salt that we have at our tables, the snowflakes that we try to catch with our tongues, and the diamonds that gleam in the windows of jewelry stores.
But how, exactly, are crystals formed? This timelapse video, directed by Italian student, Emanuele Fornasier, doesn’t just tell us, it shows us. Inside the world of microscopic chemical reactions that are produced during electrocrystallization, we come face to face with the absolute beauty of nature.
After watching this video, you’ll never look at your table salt the same way.
Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email ella@atlasobscura.com.
Officially called the “NI-Tele Really BIG Clock,” four or five times a day this wacked-out symphonic mega-machine spins, dances, whirs and clanks. And as a side gig, it also tells the time.
The giant clock is in the Shiodome section of Tokyo, at the Nittele Tower (headquarters of Nippon Television). It was designed by Hayao Miyazaki, the renowned director and co-founder of Studio Ghibli, and while it’s not exactly drawn from his 2004 film Howl’s Moving Castle, it’s been likened to the aesthetic of the anime classic.
The clock is huge: over 20 tons of copper and steel, three stories high and 60 feet wide. Besides chiming out the time, there are over 30 mechanical vignettes at appointed hours, including cannons, a couple of blacksmiths, a wheel spinner, boiling teapot and two bell-headed piston crankers. They all move in a delicate and industrious ballet, some reminiscent of a cuckoo clock and others like 19th century tin toys.
The clock springs to life four times on Monday to Friday, with an extra show on Saturdays and Sundays. Each performance begins about four minutes ahead of the hour, and you can see it from many different spots around the Nippon TV tower. But get as close as you can so you can really see the detail. Anime fan or not, Miyazaki’s clock is crazy with detail.
Before the often-cheesy vampires of modern teenage literature, there were the beautifully dark and complicated vampires of Anne Rice’s novels. These vampires not only reflect a rich and complex inner life that is in constant flux, but also serve as a stand-in for the human condition. Long after we've forgotten about Twilight, it's likely Prince Lestat and his world will continue to populate our imagination.
Rice has written eleven books in her series TheVampire Chronicles, which began in 1976 with Interview with the Vampire. That series will expand further with the 12th installment of the series, Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, set to go on sale later this month.
Ahead of the book's release, Atlas Obscura spoke with Anne about her work as a writer, the future of the Chronicles, and her sources of inspiration:
What kind of documents or books do you read while researching for your books? Do you read other vampire literature?
I read and enjoy history, archaeology, mythology, anthropology and religious reading all the time. This feeds continuously into my stories and my plots and my characters. I research on every level: finding out what the interior of a famous Paris cafe looks like by googling for the info; reading books by Graham Hancock on catastrophe theory, or the idea that the world suffered a huge shift in sea level 12 thousand years ago; reading current literature for stimulation. There is just so much reading that goes into my daily life. But I do avoid vampire literature. I don't want to be distracted by other people's vampires. Exception: Charlaine Harris. I found her Sookie Steakhouse characters stimulating and fun.
You’ve said that you keep up with investigations into ghosts and spirits. What are the most interesting and obscure things you’ve found?
I read the reports world wide of ghost sightings and I read of near-death experiences world wide, and I'm impressed by the patterns that emerge, because those patterns are not easily explainable. Like why do near-death experiences always involve seeing dead people? If they were pure hallucinations, would they not be random?
Have you ever had a supernatural encounter? Do you believe that it’s possible?
No, I've never had a supernatural encounter. My mind is open on it. But nothing has ever happened to me to indicate that there is anything supernatural out there. Never.
The loss of your daughter prompted you to start writing. How did the birth of your son change your relationship to literature? Did it affect your books at all?
Actually, I have always wanted to be a writer, and was writing a novel and short stories long before my daughter became ill. I was majoring in Creative Writing when she was born. When I set out to write Interview with the Vampire after her death, I drew on my earlier short story with that title. I can't say my son's birth changed my relationship with writing at all. Certainly experiencing his generation, meeting and getting to know his school friends, confronting a younger generation every day with him, all this influenced my confidence in being able to write about young people and from their point of view. All of my life goes into my writing, including my experiences as a parent. Right now one of the joys of my life is that my son is an novelist, that we are fellow novelists.
What is the hardest scene you’ve had to write? And the most enjoyable?
The hardest was the rape of Marie Ste. Marie in Feast of All Saints. I hated it. The most enjoyable? Hard to say. It's hard work to write any scene, even the most optimistic or the most pessimistic. Some books of mine have been written in periods of optimism and joy, like Blackwood Farm for instance. Other books, like Tale of the Body Thief in dark depression.
This book changes everything for vampires, and introduces a new species with which they will have to live now. Is this the start of a new era in the Chronicles? Can we expect more books in the future?
For me Prince Lestat was a personal reboot of the Chronicles. I am in love with Lestat as the leader of the tribe, in love with what he'll do as Prince as the tribe confronts challenges. And yes, I will write a new book flowing directly out of Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis. I want very much to go on with the story of the survivors of Atlantis and the vampires. I'm loving doing these books, loving working with suspense and a large cast of characters.
Why do you think the world needs fantasy fiction?
The world has always needed art in all forms including sculpture, painting, architecture and poetry and prose stories. Most of the great literature of the world is fantasy fiction. We've only known a short time in history when anyone thought "realism" was a practical idea for great literature. Literary history is dominated by Homer's heroes and heroines, Virgil's heroes and heroines, Shakespeare's kings and queens, and gods and goddesses, and his witches and his ghosts, and the brilliant fantasies of the Bronte sisters and Charles Dickens. Fantasy fiction embraces the highest literary values: plot, spectacle, suspense, great persons, tragedy, pity, catharsis.
What places on earth do you think we would most likely find vampires?
We find vampires in great dense cities where they can pass for human and feed off the population. Also vampires love beauty. With their heightened senses, they have a deep appreciation for the grandeur of Rome and Venice, of the historic buildings and monuments of Jerusalem, and Cairo, and the natural beauty of New Orleans and the Caribbean, of India, Peru, Brazil ... all the dramatically beautiful and enchanting places.
Vampires don't love conformity or sterility, and are not too comfortable with things that are uniformly modern.
Are there any real places that inspired Atalantaya?
Not really. All I have ever known and seen went into my Atalantaya. It is my utopia, my idea place.
What are your favorite places in the world?
My favorite places in the world include New Orleans, Rome, Florence and Venice, Paris, London, and Jerusalem. I long to see India, and very much want to go to Peru. I have loved Rio de Janeiro, too. I love to travel. I want to get back to England. I want to live in Oxford for a while. I want to visit Scotland. I have so many dreams.
Despite being in ruins, the synagogue in Vidin, Bulgaria is still famous for being the second-largest Jewish temple in Bulgaria. Built in 1894, it fell into disuse after the majority of the local Jews left Bulgaria during and soon after World WarII.
The synagogue was then seized by the communist government, and during the 1970's, the Ministry of Culture and the National Institute of Monuments developed a plan to restore the building. However, when the communist regime collapsed in 1989, the project was abandoned, leaving the synagogue roofless and exposed to the elements.
Restoration efforts have been talked for years, but nothing has been attempted yet, and it still remains an empty shell.
Above a door in a small alleyway in Gdańsk is a strange emblem: three severed boar heads protruding from a golden shield. Many pass by without glancing up, but those that do often wonder about the mysterious insignia. It is, in fact, the coat of arms of one of the most successful families in the region.
The Ferber family was one of the more heralded families in medieval Gdansk. Over time through trade, shipping, and financial success they became the most educated and wealthy tenants of the ancient city and held positions of power in the region.
All came to a head when in 1460, the city was under siege by the neighboring Teutonic Knights. As the siege dragged on and the starving citizens came down to their final three pigs, the head of the house of Ferber, Johann, came up with an ingenious plan. After butchering the remaining pigs and feeding his hungry defenders, the heads of the pigs, full of valuable meat, were loaded into a catapult and launched at the attackers. It was an effort to trick the assailants that all was well and good within the city walls.
The ruse worked and the Teutonic Knights, despairing that the citizens of the city had so much food in store that they could literally throw it away, packed up and left, ending the siege. Johann Ferber was celebrated as a hero and became the town’s army commander, councilor, and long time mayor and governor of the region. His son, Eberhard, was knighted for heroic deeds in the Holy Land and then granted the status of nobility by the Polish King, Sigismund the Old, in 1515.
As a result, the newly created family crest was adorned with three boar heads, a nod to, and symbolic of, Everhard's fathers' wit and bravery in the time of crisis.
We heard you like mummified crocodiles, so we put some mummified crocodiles inside your mummified crocodile! While Xzibit had nothing to do with it, according to the BBC, researchers at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands have discovered dozens of baby crocodiles mummified within a large crocodile mummy.
The museum has had its mummified crocodile on display since 1828, only being able to discern what was inside the wrappings with traditional x-rays and other earlier methods. However, the museum began to employ a scanning technology produced by Swedish company Interspectral, for an interactive exhibit that would allow visitors to perform a “virtual autopsy” on the mummy, and the new scans ended up revealing a surprising new level to the artifact.
As the scans revealed, in addition to the giant crocodile skeleton, there are over 40 tiny little croc babies, individually mummified, and contained in the wrapping of the larger animal. Hidden from the museum for over a hundred years, the babies came as an unexpected, but not unwelcome shock to staff.
Now visitors will be able to check out the little secret mummies for themselves when the exhibit using the Interspectral technology opens to the public.
