Explore 373 Colonialism Collections - Atlas Obscura
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A herd of cattle roam a lush green pasture in Australia, home to several of the world's largest private landholdings.
maps

What Do King Charles III, the Pope, and the Canadian Inuit Have in Common?

Meet the world's largest landowners.
Frank Jacobs August 11, 2023
Children play in the monsoon rains that pour down on the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh every year from late July till September.
perfume

How Indian Perfumers Capture the Smell of Rain

In Kannauj, perfumers have been making monsoon-infused mitti attar for centuries.
Zinara Rathnayake August 2, 2023
George Town, Malaysia

Church of St. George the Martyr

The oldest Anglican church in Southeast Asia.
Panama City, Panama

Iglesia de la Merced

This church was transported brick by brick from the ruins of a 16th-century city into Panama City's current historic district.
A circular central garden is surrounded by Korean-style buildings
Gwangju, South Korea

Lee Jang-woo's House

This traditional home is a rare example of 19th-century Korean architecture.
In May, the massive sculpture sometimes called Monument 9, or an "Earth Monster," was repatriated to Mexico, where it had been looted years earlier.
sculptures

An Olmec 'Earth Monster' Returns to Mexico

The repatriation of an ancient sculpture highlights the influential early Mesoamerican culture.
Karl Taube June 19, 2023
Sydney, Australia

Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair

A 19th-century perch for spotting sailing ships now boasts one of the most iconic views in the Southern Hemisphere.
Framingham, Massachusetts

The Old Field of 1800

Two stone markers honor the Nipmuc people who first settled here millennia ago.
Digitizing gravestones from the colonial era preserves them for future study and makes them more accessible, but it also raises questions about how to study this period of American history.
cemeteries

Burial Hill's Historic Gravestones Are Coming to Your Screen

Digitizing markers at the Massachusetts cemetery makes them more accessible.
Anya Gruber May 8, 2023
One of the earliest works of botanical horror, written by H.G. Wells in 1894, featured a fictional orchid with a taste for human blood.
horror

What Stories of Scary Plants and Other Botanical Horrors Say About Us

From bloodthirsty orchids to body-snatching pods, fictional flora are often symbols of societal fears.
Kate Golembiewski May 4, 2023
Children dance around a modern maypole in Boston; a few centuries earlier, a similar celebration was cut short by Puritan axes. Was it part of a practice run for a far more violent and bloody campaign?
religion

Was a May Day Attack by Pilgrims a Practice Run for a Massacre?

One historian of early New England sees the event as a harbinger of deadly violence.
Peter C. Mancall May 1, 2023
There are many depictions of the bunyip, but one common iteration is a cow-sized, aquatic wombat-like creature.
cryptozoology

The Child-Eating Bunyip Haunts Australia’s Wetlands

But its complex Aboriginal Australian origins have today been commodified and suppressed.
Sarah Durn May 1, 2023
Tree roots and vines have claimed much of the architecture.
La Antigua, Mexico

Casa de Cortés

This atmospheric ruins are truly a sight to behold.
Medieval buildings at Songa Mnara, one of many coastal Swahili ports and settlements that connected East Africa to Arabia, Persia, China, and Southeast Asia.
science

Ancient DNA Restores the Origin Story of the Swahili People

New research complicates both modern and colonial-era ideas about the medieval East African civilization.
Chapurukha Kusimba and David Reich April 24, 2023
Mexico City, Mexico

República de Guatemala 28

A trompe l'oeil mural remembers the original colonial building that once stood here.
A commemorative head, part of the so-called Benin Bronzes, which were looted from the royal palace in Benin City in 1897. The image was taken in December 2022 in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, when the piece and several other objects were formally repatriated from Germany to their homeland.
science

Are the Benin Bronzes Made From German Brass—And Does It Matter?

The famous West African artworks, long at the center of repatriation debates, were made from materials sourced in Rhineland.
Gemma Tarlach April 5, 2023
Nerul, India

Reis Magos Fort

A nearly impregnable 16th-century fort is one of Goa's oldest.
Malacca, Malaysia

Hang Li Poh’s Well (Perigi Raja)

Initially built for a Chinese princess and sultana, this well was used to secretly assassinate some 200 Portuguese colonizers.