#cultural-heritage

#cultural-heritage

Growing up in a Mexican household, it never truly felt like the holidays until my abuela, very aptly, broke out the yellow box of Abuelita chocolate from the tiny cupboard next to the stove. My family and I would decorate the Christmas tree, laughing and reminiscing over handmade ornaments. Then we'd soak up the beauty of the silvery lights in the sala, warming our palms with mismatched tazas of chocolate.

In that job, the 73-year-old Parkman used artifacts found in old ruins or the chemistry of rocks and layers of soil to piece together possible narratives about life in the Bay Area as far back as tens of thousands of years ago or as recently as the late 20th century. More than being a scientist or historian, Parkman has always seen himself as a storyteller with an innate curiosity about other worlds and a desire to imagine the people who lived in them.

We look at what this olive harvest really means for Palestinians and how it connects generations across the land. For Palestinians, the olive harvest is both an essential source of income and a treasured cultural tradition. Each year, families gather beneath the groves to pick olives, press oil, and celebrate a connection to the land that spans generations. But this season has seen increasing attacks from settlers and Israeli troops, damaging or uprooting thousands of trees.

When an ecosystem is so ingrained in your psyche, so essential to your culture and so central to the stories you tell about your reason for being, you have no choice but to safeguard it. This is the galvanizing sentiment behind the recent creation of an unprecedented commission for California that brings together five tribes to advise the U.S. government on the management of a monument that holds specific meaning to each and is a treasure to all.

As for what guests get to experience now, TravelHost explained the garden (which is also known as the Palace of Tranquil Longevity) is spread across four connected courtyards and punctuated by 27 structures, each designed as a personal retreat for the emperor. There are also stunning rock gardens, century-old trees, and streams providing the perfect sound effects throughout. The buildings are also full of treasures, including ornate decorations and furnishings.

The multi-million dollar Museum of West African Arts (MOWAA), a prestigious cultural project in Edo State in southern Nigeria, has suspended preview events scheduled for this week. MOWAA made the decision after around 20 men, some armed with wooden bats, stormed into the museum courtyard on Sunday during a pre-opening event. Guests, including ambassadors and donors, were forced to take refuge inside.

Italian officials have reacted with outrage after Russia used the partial collapse of a medieval tower in central Rome to claim that Italy's support for Ukraine has drained funds needed to preserve its cultural heritage. The Torre dei Conti, a 29m-tall fortified residence built near the Colosseum in the 13th century, partially collapsed on Monday (4 November), causing the death of a Romanian worker who was trapped under rubble for 11 hours.

This week's practical must-reads from The Local include common traps that catch out property hunters, what increasing the 'franchise médicale' means for your health bills, and the small town in south-west France that's up there with Europe's big cultural guns. Buying a house always carries a risk, but it can be harder doing it in a foreign country where you are unfamiliar with the sales process, tax regulations or local bylaws.

The bronze "Momotaro" statue was reported missing earlier this month, cut from its stand in San Jose's Guadalupe River Park. This week, officials released new details about the theft and now believe the statue was cut down and taken on Sept. 25 just after 7 a.m. New photos from the day of the theft show two people appearing to take away the statue in a shopping cart. Police said the people were last seen walking north through the park.

A motion approved approved at Peel Regional Council last month proposes control of the Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives (PAMA) be transferred to the City of Brampton, with a plan to enhance programming and modernize the funding model. The site, which was originally the Peel County courthouse and jail, was built in 1867. But for more than 55 years it's housed thousands of pieces of art and artifacts representing the history of the region.

Never mind that it was probably carried out by a couple of chancers with a crowbar: for some of the pessimists, it's civilisation itself that's being prised open. Funny how the same people who decry France's alleged dysfunctionalism probably marvelled at the Paris Olympics of summer 2024 that brief, dazzling interlude when the city actually worked, the trains ran on time, and millions around the world fell a little bit in love with France again.

October 2025 was absolutely wild for LEGO fans. We saw everything from nostalgic computer builds to kinetic sculptures that actually move. The month delivered some seriously impressive creations that pushed boundaries and made us remember why we love playing with plastic bricks in the first place. These ten builds represent the cream of the crop from October 2025. Each one brings something different to the table, whether it's mind-blowing engineering, cultural significance, or just pure fun.

Among the eight pieces stolen from the Apollo Gallery, two imperial jewels contain precious gems extracted from the Muzo mines in the Colombian department of Boyaca: a necklace and earrings that belonged to Marie Louise of Austria, the second wife of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte after his separation from Josephine de Beauharnais, whom he divorced in January 1810 due to her inability to produce an heir. The gems are a clean, intense green known as Muzo green, a hue that has captivated European fine jewelry.

Lalitha Krishnan wore a sari on the plane from the south Indian state of Kerala to New York, where she was traveling to study for a Ph.D on a full scholarship. Krishnan would go on to do pioneering work developing pharmaceutical drugs that combat multi-drug resistant infections. When Dr. Krishnan finally received an award for her work in 1991-as a rare woman of color in her field, often witnessing others take credit for her research-once again, she wore a sari.

For generations a massive iron meteorite sat in the Somali desert, becoming a landmark where children played and herders sharpened their knives. Then in 2020 a group of armed men arrived to steal it. The El Ali meteorite contains three minerals never before seen naturally on Earth, making it scientifically priceless. But its journey from Somalia to the black market, with some research along the way, raises uncomfortable questions.

"Bullfighting doesn't sustain itself, it's sustained by public funds," he stated, asking that these resources be allocated "to creation, not cruelty."

For this year's Black History Month, the theme is Standing Firm in Power and Pride, honouring the resilience, innovation and fortitude of Black people in the UK and beyond. It celebrates the community's contributions across many fields, including the arts and culture, as reflected in a selection of brilliant new exhibitions. These range from explorations into the artists and groups

As a Japanese man born and raised in the United States, Kitamura said he struggled with imposter syndrome. Though he was part of a Japanese tattoo family, apprenticed to a Japanese tattoo master, and works with primarily Japanese-American clients, he worried that his own style was Americanized compared to the traditions he was studying. Now, nearly 29 years into his own practice as a tattoo artist (Kitamura opened his own studio, State of Grace Tattoo, in 2002 in San Jose) he feels "This is me accepting who I am and being proud of that," he said.

As Brazilian philosopher Marilena Chauí reminds us, the word derives from the Latin colere, which means "to take care of." In that sense, agriculture means taking care of the soil, while religious cults are the care of the gods. At its core, culture is the creation of symbolic universes, expressed through different languages, including architecture, that weave connections across time.

MASERU, Lesotho Puseletso Seema is musical royalty in the tiny African mountain kingdom of Lesotho, where she's known as "the Queen of Famo" - a popular genre of pastoral accordion music beloved by the country's people, the Basotho. But for all her fame, she never got rich, and the 77-year-old grandmother's living conditions these days are far from regal. She resides in a small, run-down home along a dusty road in the rural