Nobody expects to find a two-thousand-year-old fortification in the courtyards of a working hospital. But that is what archaeologists have uncovered at the Hôtel-Dieu, on the Île de la Cité, the island in the Seine where Notre-Dame stands. The wall runs for about 20 meters (roughly 65 feet) and shows clear signs of having burned […]

While Brutus and his allies were stabbing Julius Caesar to death, a good chunk of the Roman working class was having a picnic. They drank wine, pitched makeshift tents out of branches and cloth, and toasted to as many years of life as cups they could down. It was the feast of Anna Perenna, the […]