1 Minute
Things you never knew about the places where I died. About a minute each.
9 stories · 11 min 53 s in total
Why would anyone dig a church instead of building one?
In the 1200s, eleven churches were carved downwards out of the solid rock in Lalibela, down to fake beams copied from built churches. Legend says King Lalibela saw them in a vision, and angels took the night shift.
ROCK-HEWN CHURCHES OF LALIBELA · LALIBELA, ETHIOPIA · AUGUST 2008
See the place →Was Hachikō waiting for his master, or for the yakitori?
Beside the world’s busiest crossing sits the Akita who came back to Shibuya station every day for almost ten years after his owner died in 1925. Loyalty, or the food stalls that fed him? The statue you see today is from 1948.
SHIBUYA CROSSING · TOKYO, JAPAN · DECEMBER 2009
See the place →Who invited the bull to Wall Street?
Nobody. Arturo Di Modica paid for the bronze himself and left it outside the Stock Exchange one December night in 1989, as a gift. It was taken away the same day.
CHARGING BULL · NEW YORK, USA · AUGUST 2012
See the place →Why does one Tube station keep an old “mind the gap”?
Three words written for curved platforms became a voice someone could not bear to lose. At Embankment, the recording by actor Oswald Laurence came back for his widow.
MIND THE GAP · LONDON, UK · JUNE 2024
See the place →Why was a whole village left in ruins on purpose?
Belchite was destroyed in the fighting of 1937. Instead of rebuilding it, a new village went up next door and the old one stayed as a memorial, now famous for its ghost stories.
BELCHITE · ZARAGOZA, SPAIN · DECEMBER 2019
See the place →Which mountain almost replaced the most copied crossing in music?
The Beatles’ album was nearly called Everest, with a trip to the Himalayas for the cover. On 8 August 1969 they simply walked out of the studio and crossed the street.
ABBEY ROAD · LONDON, UK · JUNE 2025
See the place →What is a supercomputer doing inside a chapel?
MareNostrum, one of Europe’s most powerful supercomputers, works inside a glass box in Torre Girona, a former chapel on a Barcelona university campus.
BARCELONA SUPERCOMPUTING CENTER · BARCELONA, SPAIN · DECEMBER 2023
See the place →How does a monument to a dictator become a place to climb?
Opened in 1988 as the Enver Hoxha Museum and designed partly by his daughter, the Pyramid outlived the regime, was nearly demolished and now lets anyone walk up its slopes.
PYRAMID OF TIRANA · TIRANA, ALBANIA · AUGUST 2024
See the place →Why does a concrete estate in London hide a jungle?
The Barbican is not one building but a connected system: walkways above the roads, gardens and a lake below, an arts centre sunk beneath, and a conservatory wrapped around the theatre’s fly tower.
BARBICAN · LONDON, UK · JUNE 2025
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