Images

A map illustrating the rise and evolution of the Achaemenid Persian Empire (from the name of Achaemenes, an ancestor of the empire's founder, Cyrus the Great) from its origins in around 550 BCE when Cyrus II of Persia conquered the Medes...

Brown grass on a body of water at Norden, Germany.

A beautiful pond emerges from the waterfall deriving from Mt. Saos, Samothrace.

Gold dinar of Shajara al-Durr, sultana of Egypt (r. 1250 CE). The British Museum, London.

Mausoleum of Shajara al-Durr, sultana of Egypt (r. 1250) in the al-Khalifa neighbourhood, Cairo.

This map illustrates the changing patterns of Christian pilgrimage during the Middle Ages: for most Europeans the long, perilous, and costly journey to the Holy Land was too far, dangerous, and forbiddingly expensive, so devotion redirected...

This map illustrates the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the earliest and most extensive administrative division of the Spanish Empire. At its peak, it encompassed a vast array of territories across North America, the Caribbean, and Asia, serving...

A modern statue in Panama City of Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475-1519), the Spanish conquistador who famously discovered the Pacific Ocean after crossing the isthmus of Panama in 1513.

A 19th-century portrait of Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475-1519), the Spanish conquistador who famously discovered the Pacific Ocean after crossing the isthmus of Panama in 1513. (Naval Museum of Madrid)

Statue of Pedro Álvares Cabral (1467/1468 to c. 1520) in Lisbon, Portugal.