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Preservation

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State-owned factories in the GDR produced plastic toys, furniture, household goods, and even a car.
museums

The Race to Preserve East Germany's Colorful Plastic Past

Meet the conservators trying to keep plastics around longer. It's harder than you think.
Amy Crawford November 15, 2021
The C&H Refinery in Lusk, Wyoming, as it looked in 2013, 80 years after it was established.
world record

One Man's Quest to Preserve the World's Smallest Oil Refinery

The dusty, rusty site in eastern Wyoming is a rare relic of the 20th-century petroleum boom.
Nadia White November 5, 2021
Butterfly wings from Fritz Müller.
preserved specimens

The Curious Task of Digitizing Darwin’s Beans and Butterflies

From squeaky beans to arsenic scares, conservation is full of surprises.
Diana Hubbell September 22, 2021
Hardanger Fartøyvernsenter and the Mathilde
Norheimsund, Norway

Hardanger Fartøyvernsenter (Hardanger Maritime Museum)

A living museum working to keep the traditions of building and repairing handmade wooden boats, ropemaking, and blacksmithing alive.
A longtime resident of the Dorset countryside, the geoglyph known as the Cerne Abbas Giant has a new estimated age, thanks to novel research.
science

How Do You Date an Ancient Giant? Try Snails and Lasers

The famous Cerne Abbas Giant gets a new birthday thanks to a novel approach for estimating the geoglyph's age.
Keridwen Cornelius August 16, 2021
Shunan Teng travels to distant, hard-to-access areas of China to seek out teas.
food

The Tea Sommelier Seeking Out China's Rarest Brews

Shunan Teng is on a mission to preserve and promote legendary teas.
Marina Wang June 23, 2021
This anthropomorphic house in Aliano was rebuilt, following the direction of architect Lodovico Alessandri. It now hosts a pizzeria and rooms for tourists.
architecture

The Italian Village Where the Houses Have Eyes

An architect has worked to save Aliano's unusual facial features, thought to ward off the "evil eye."
Federico Formica June 10, 2021
The facade of Hind Talkies in Bareilly.
architecture

An Elegy for India's Single-Screen Cinema Palaces

Meet the photographer who has scoured the country to document these vanishing communal sites.
Reem Khokhar December 3, 2020
Yosemite, Carleton E. Watkins, 1872.
nature

See America's National Parks—Before They Were National Parks

Landscape photography like this helped create the national park system.
Winnie Lee May 8, 2025
Sandaga Market in December 2019, before the government relocated vendors and started to demolish informal stalls. Many of these vendors are selling clothing, but one blows bubbles from toys for sale.
architecture

The Fight to Save One of Dakar's Most Distinctive Markets

In a city full of French colonial influence, Marché Sandaga was built in a uniquely West African style.
Ricci Shryock October 5, 2020
A stonemason and an industrial climber inspect the inside of the Freiburg Minster's steeple.
churches

Caring for the Soaring Beauty of a Centuries-Old Stone Cathedral

The stonemasons of the Freiburg Minster in southern Germany go to great lengths—and heights.
Winnie Lee August 10, 2020
Birdsboro, Pennsylvania

Daniel Boone Homestead

Where the famed frontiersman was born, raised, and survived Quaker intrigue
Video

How a Group of Rock Climbers Saved a Ranch for Everyone

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The mosaic panel "Blacksmiths of the Present," on a wall at the Institute of Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, in Kyiv, was created in 1974 by artists Galina Zubchenko and Grygoryi Pryshedko.
mosaics

Preserving Ukraine’s Soviet Past, One Mosaic At a Time

“We’re trying to collect everything before it’s gone.”
JoAnna Haugen May 5, 2020
A slave house at Ivy Cliff in Bedford County, Virginia. This site was documented by the Virginia Slave House Project, which chronicles the architecture of slavery in the commonwealth.
architecture

Meet the Iowa Architect Documenting Every Slave House Still Standing

Jobie Hill has visited 700 former residences. Many have been abandoned. Some have become storage space. Others are B&Bs.
Sabrina Imbler February 26, 2020
Permanently Closed
Galway, Ireland

Áras na nGael

At this cozy bar tucked down a hidden Galway backroad, Guinness makes the Gaelic come out.
It looks as if you're walking in a maquette.
Pingan, Tajikistan

Hulbuk Fortress

This medieval citadel once guarded the western entrance of the Pamir Highway.
Aspendos Theater.
Serik, Turkey

Aspendos Theater

The best-preserved ancient theater in the world.