Historidex / Vanished worlds

Lost Places and Vanished Worlds in History

Courts, cities and ways of life that are gone, photographed while they still existed.

68 lost places in history stories

• San Francisco, just before the quake 1906, Market Street, San Francisco

  Filmed from the front of a cable car on Market Street just four days before the earthquake. The quake and the fires that followed destroyed most of what you see. The film survived because it had already left town by train.

• The Empress Dowager on her barge c. 1903, Zhonghai lake, Beijing, China

  Cixi effectively ruled China for about 47 years. Around 1903 she had Yu Xunling, a Manchu aristocrat who picked up photography abroad, make staged portraits of her and her court. His photographs are among the few of her that survive.

• The Viceroy arrives by elephant 1902, Delhi, India

  Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, and his American wife Mary ride into Delhi on December 29, 1902, for the Durbar marking Edward VII's coronation. The king did not attend. At the Durbar ball Mary wore a gown set with beetle wings that many guests mistook for emeralds.

• Machu Picchu after the jungle was cleared 1912, Machu Picchu, Peru

  Hiram Bingham's team stripped the jungle off the ruins in 1912. He's often said to have found it, but a local man, Agustín Lizárraga, had already written his name and the year 1902 on a temple wall.

• A samurai with sword and fan c. 1864, Yokohama, Japan

  Felice Beato took this portrait in Yokohama around 1864. A fire in 1866 destroyed his studio and many of his negatives. In 1876 Japan banned former samurai from wearing swords in public.

• The Sphinx, partly dug out late 1800s, Giza, Egypt

  For long stretches of its history, sand covered the Sphinx up to its shoulders. Napoleon's soldiers did not shoot off its nose. It was gone centuries before they arrived.

• Ötzi, first mistaken for a climber c. 3300 BCE, Ötztal Alps, Italy

  Hikers found a body in Alpine ice in 1991, and authorities first assumed a climber had died in an accident. It was Ötzi, who died about 5,300 years ago, and a 2001 X-ray found an arrowhead in his shoulder. This is a replica of one of his grass-lined shoes.

• The hippo whose legs were broken about 1961 to 1878 BCE, Meir, Upper Egypt

  Three legs of this blue hippo were probably broken on purpose so it could not harm the dead in its Egyptian tomb. It is nearly 4,000 years old. A 1931 Punch story about a family that treated a print of it as an oracle gave it the name William.

• Casting the dead of Pompeii about 1875, Pompeii, Italy

  When Vesuvius buried Pompeii in 79 CE, the ash hardened around the dead. Their bodies decayed and left hollows, and excavators under Giuseppe Fiorelli, who took charge in 1860, filled them with plaster. Giorgio Sommer photographed these two casts around 1875.

• Guide Sophia at the terraces 1885, Lake Rotomahana, New Zealand

  Sophia Hinerangi guided visitors over the Pink and White Terraces, a New Zealand attraction sometimes called the Eighth Wonder of the World. This photo is from 1885. When Mount Tarawera erupted on June 10, 1886, the terraces were thought destroyed, and her house at Te Wairoa sheltered dozens of people.

• The moai with a body 1914 or 1915, Rano Raraku, Rapa Nui

  Early accounts called the statues on Rano Raraku's slopes heads, because many are buried to the neck. Digs since, including the Routledges' in 1914 and 1915, showed torsos below the ground. This moai, photographed on that expedition, stands with its torso clear and a rider beside it for scale.

• Luna Park at night c. 1905, Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York

  Luna Park opened on Coney Island on May 16, 1903, and lit 250,000 electric bulbs on its first night. The Detroit Publishing Co. published this photo of its towers around 1905.

• Riding the Elevated Through the S Curve 1899, 104th Street, New York

  In 1899 Edison's crew filmed from the front platform of a special train run backward over New York's celebrated S curve on the elevated line. Other trains pass close by, with rooftops and billboards beyond.

• A Paris street marked for demolition c. 1865, Rue Tirechappe, Paris, France

  Charles Marville photographed this narrow Paris lane, Rue Tirechappe, before it was demolished during Baron Haussmann's rebuilding of the city. By 1862 he held the title of photographer of the city of Paris, and his series of old streets runs to about 425 photographs.

• Edward Winslow's silver chocolate pot about 1700 to 1710, Boston, Massachusetts

  Chocolate pots had a hole in the lid so a stirring stick called a molinillo could froth the drink. Edward Winslow made this one in Boston around 1700 to 1710, probably for merchant Thomas Hutchinson. It is one of only eight Boston silver chocolate pots known to survive.

• Traffic on the Champs-Élysées 1900, Champs-Élysées, Paris, France

  In 1900 Edison's crew set up a camera on the Champs-Élysées and let the traffic come to it. Double decker horse buses, carriages and delivery wagons roll toward the lens.

• A souvenir of a vanished shrine 1350 to 1400, Canterbury, England

  Pilgrims bought cheap metal badges like this one at Canterbury, cast from a tin and lead alloy. It shows Thomas Becket's gold shrine, which Henry VIII's men stripped in 1538, and it is one of the best surviving pictures of it. The ruby on the shrine was claimed to be the largest in existence.

• The Ring You Ordered in Your Will 1733, Colonial America

  Mourning rings were usually paid for by the person who died or their heirs, and wills often named who would get one. Some held a lock of the dead person's hair. The Met lists gold, enamel, glass and hair as the materials of this American ring from 1733.

• A Snowball Fight in Lyon 1897, Lyon, France

  A cyclist pedals into a street snowball fight in Lyon, gets hit, and goes down with his bicycle. The Lumière company released it on 7 February 1897.

• Stagecoaches Through Yellowstone 1897, Yellowstone National Park, USA

  A big coach drawn by six horses leads a line of Yellowstone stagecoaches past the camera, followed by coaches with four horse teams. Edison's catalog says the riders were a Christian Endeavor excursion run by the Northern Pacific Railway. The film was shot in July 1897.

• Columns topped with Hathor about 1870 to 1880, Dendera, Egypt

  The columns of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, Egypt, are topped with four faces of the goddess, each with a cow's ears. The present temple was begun around 54 BCE. Antonio Beato photographed this view sometime between about 1870 and 1880.

• Bandits' Roost alley on Mulberry Street 1888, Mulberry Bend, New York

  This 1888 photograph of an alley at 59½ Mulberry Street is usually credited to Jacob Riis, though it may have been taken by one of his collaborators, Henry G. Piffard or Richard Hoe Lawrence. Riis campaigned to clear the Mulberry Bend slum, and the site opened as a park in 1897.

• Sumo wrestlers in Tokyo c. 1882 to 1883, Tokyo, Japan

  Hugues Krafft, a French traveler, photographed these sumo wrestlers in Tokyo in 1882 or 1883. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 had cost sumo its wealthy lord sponsors, and it came to be seen as a backward relic. Emperor Meiji's 1884 tournament helped restore its popularity.

• A Theatre Torn Down in Two Minutes 1901, Broadway, New York City

  Biograph's camera watched Broadway's Star Theatre come down in 1901. The company said it took one exposure every four minutes, eight hours a day, for about a month. Played back, the demolition runs about two minutes. Frederick S. Armitage was the cameraman.

• Mapping Ohio's Hopewell earthworks 1848, Newark, Ohio, USA

  Charles Whittlesey, Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis surveyed these earthworks at Newark, Ohio, between 1837 and 1847. People of the Hopewell culture built them about 2,000 to 1,600 years ago, and the Octagon is aligned with the Moon's 18.6-year cycle. The site joined the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023.

• Broadway under a web of wires about 1885, Broadway, New York

  This color print from about 1885 to 1887 shows Broadway in lower Manhattan strung with telegraph and telephone wires. The blizzard of March 1888 knocked down many of the lines, and within a few years the city had buried its electrical and telegraph wires.

• A cat raised to be mummified 664 BCE to 1st c. CE, Egypt

  This wrapped bundle holds a cat that was nearly full grown when its neck was broken. The Met says most mummies at Egypt's big animal cemeteries were young animals killed on purpose. In 1890 about 180,000 cat mummies from a cemetery at Beni Hasan were shipped to Liverpool and auctioned as fertilizer.

• Shaker Chairs Were Plain on Purpose 1820 to 1850, United States

  Shakers left inlays, carvings and veneers off their furniture because they saw them as prideful or deceitful. By the 1860s, ladder-back chairs were a core business for the New Lebanon community. This maple and birch rocker was made between 1820 and 1850.

• Burma's last king, from a found negative c. 1885, Mandalay, Upper Burma

  This portrait of King Thibaw of Burma with Queen Supayalat and her sister was printed from a negative found in the royal palace at Mandalay in 1885. British forces defeated the Burmese on November 29, 1885. Thibaw was exiled to Ratnagiri, India, and died there in 1916.

• Inside a Union Army hospital ward 1865, Washington, D.C.

  Armory Square Hospital stood on the National Mall, where the Air and Space Museum is now. It had about 1,000 beds in twelve wards, and Walt Whitman visited its patients, writing that it held "by far the worst cases." This is Ward K in 1865.

• Benin plaque of a warrior chief about 1540 to 1570, Benin City, Nigeria

  Benin's brass casters made this plaque around 1540 to 1570 for the royal palace in Benin City. It shows a warrior chief flanked by soldiers and attendants. The Met's records say it was taken from the palace in 1897, when British forces occupied the city and exiled Oba Ovonramwen.

• Lucky Bats on a Qing Court Robe c. 1800, China

  Red bats cover this Qing court robe because the Chinese words for bat and luck both sound like fu. Its dragons, waves and rocks form a diagram of the universe, with the ocean at the hem. Under the Qing, bright yellow was reserved for the emperor and his closest family.

• The Royal Game of Ur about 2600 to 2400 BCE, Royal Cemetery at Ur, Iraq

  This inlaid board comes from the Royal Cemetery at Ur, in Iraq, and dates to about 2600 to 2400 BCE. Partial rules survive on a clay tablet written in Babylon around 177 BCE, which British Museum curator Irving Finkel used to work out how the game may have been played.

• An Ottoman sultan's signature 1648 to 1687, Ottoman Empire

  Ottoman documents carried the sultan's monogram, called a tughra, drawn by a court calligrapher. This one reads Mehmed, son of Ibrahim Khan, the Eternally Victorious. It was cut from the top of a proclamation by Mehmed IV, who ruled from 1648 to 1687.

• Asbury Park's Baby Parade 1904, Asbury Park, New Jersey, USA

  Boys dressed as soldiers and sailors, girls in costume and mothers pushing decorated carriages march through Asbury Park, New Jersey, in 1904. The town's baby parade began in 1890.

• Cyclists in Hyde Park 1896, Hyde Park, London, England

  Robert W. Paul filmed cyclists, many of them women, and pony traps moving through London's Hyde Park while onlookers line the road. The British Film Institute's catalogue says it was first dated to 1900, then moved to 1896.

• Giant heads on a mountaintop 1st century BCE, Mount Nemrut, Turkey

  On a peak in southeastern Turkey, King Antiochus I of Commagene built a tomb-sanctuary in the first century BCE, with a mound about 50 metres high and giant seated statues of himself and the gods. The heads have come off their bodies and now rest on the ground.

• Paris dug away a hill 1876, Butte des Moulins, Paris

  In December 1876, Charles Marville photographed crews digging out the Butte des Moulins to make room for the Avenue de l'Opéra. The small hill, once crowned with mills, was leveled in the 1870s as the avenue was built.

• The NIH Hygienic Laboratory building 1920s, Washington, D.C.

  The National Institutes of Health began in 1887 as a one-room laboratory in a Staten Island hospital. It moved to Washington in 1891, and in 1904 into this Hygienic Laboratory building on the old Naval Observatory grounds. The building, seen here in the 1920s, was torn down in 1963.

• A board game buried in a coffin about 1580 to 1458 BCE, Thebes, Egypt

  One side of this box is a 30 square senet board, and the other is for twenty squares, a game that came from the Near East. Players raced for position, throwing knucklebones or sticks as dice. Met excavators found it in a coffin at Thebes, and only its ivory parts are original.

• The Sword Built Only for Beheading 1634, Germany

  This German sword has a blunt end because it was designed only for beheading. Its blade is dated 1634, and such blades were often engraved with inscriptions and symbols. In the 1790s, Paris's executioner warned that swords often broke and needed resharpening after each beheading, and France adopted the guillotine in 1792.

• A Sack Race in Lyon 1896, Monplaisir, Lyon, France

  Young men race in sacks down a street in Lyon, France, between two lines of spectators who laugh at every fall. Louis Lumière filmed it in the Monplaisir district in autumn 1896.

• A script nobody can read about 2600 to 1900 BCE, Indus Valley

  This steatite seal from the Indus Valley, shown with a modern impression, dates to about 2600 to 1900 BCE. Like many Indus seals, it carries a one-horned animal and a short line of signs. Thousands of inscribed objects have been found, and no one has deciphered the script.

• A Carpet Europeans Kept Off the Floor 1600 to 1650, Ushak, Ottoman Turkey

  Europeans displayed Turkish carpets like this one on tables to protect them, though they were made for floors. The type is named for Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto, who painted such carpets in the 1500s. This one was woven in Ushak, in western Turkey, between 1600 and 1650.

• Varanasi Ghats Mislabeled as Calcutta 1899, Varanasi, India

  In 1899 the Warwick Trading Company sold this view of boats and riverside steps as Panorama of Calcutta. It actually shows the ghats at Varanasi, on the Ganges. The British Film Institute counts it among the earliest films shot in India.

• A Pictish stone with ogham letters c. 600 CE, Inverurie, Scotland

  This stone from Inverurie, Scotland, carries two Pictish symbols, a crescent and a serpent, and a line of ogham letters read as IRATADDOARENS, possibly a name. It was carved around 600 CE. Later it was broken up and built into a field wall, and the pieces were rejoined in the 20th century.

• Red Yarn From Unraveled Trade Cloth 1865 to 1875, American Southwest

  Navajo weavers got some of their reds by unraveling bayeta, a trade wool cloth, and reweaving the yarn. Cleveland lists bayeta in this blanket, which it dates to 1865 to 1875 and credits to a Navajo or Zuni weaver.

• A Dragon Parades Through Cholon 1900, Cholon, Vietnam

  Runners carry a long cloth dragon down a street in Cholon, a quarter of today's Ho Chi Minh City. Gabriel Veyre filmed it for the Lumière company in 1900.

• The Dog That Punched a Bag 1901, United States

  Mannie, a dog in Laura Comstock's vaudeville act, leaps and punches a hanging bag in this 1901 Edison film directed by Edwin S. Porter. Edison's catalog called bag punching the dog's latest and most difficult feat.

• A shah's own photo of his harem 1883, Shahrestanak, Iran

  Naser al-Din Shah, who ruled Iran from 1848 to 1896, photographed his own harem and captioned many prints by hand. This 1883 print shows several of his wives with enslaved eunuchs, African and white, some of them adolescents, in a harem garden at Shahrestanak, north of Tehran.

• The bird-man carvings of Orongo c. 1915, Orongo, Rapa Nui

  Rocks at Orongo, on Easter Island, carry carvings of bird-men. Their cult replaced the older ancestor cult, and each year rival leaders sent men to Motu Nui islet for the season's first sooty tern egg. The route back meant a swim and a climb up the sea cliffs to Orongo.

• Climbing the Great Pyramid late 1800s, Giza, Egypt

  Tourists climb the Great Pyramid with local guides in this Bonfils studio photo from the late 1800s. The pyramid's smooth casing was stripped centuries earlier, which left rough blocks that worked as steps. Climbing it is now banned.

• Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde 1891, Mesa Verde, Colorado, USA

  A young Swede, Gustaf Nordenskiöld, photographed Cliff Palace in 1891, then tried to ship his Mesa Verde finds out by train. Locals had him arrested in Durango, though no law covered what he did. The affair added to the pressure behind the Antiquities Act of 1906.

• Berlin's Friedrichstrasse 1896, Berlin, Germany

  Horse buses, carriages and women with parasols pass the Panopticum on Berlin's Friedrichstrasse in the summer of 1896. A Lumière operator filmed it.

• State and Madison Streets, Chicago 1897, Chicago, Illinois, USA

  Edison's camera crew filmed State and Madison Streets in Chicago in 1897, a corner Edison's catalog called the busiest in the city. It is also where Chicago's address numbers start. Madison divides north from south, and State divides east from west.

• Kumamoto Castle before it burned c. 1871 to 1874, Kumamoto Castle, Kumamoto, Japan

  This hand-colored photograph of Kumamoto Castle's keep dates to the early 1870s. The keep burned in 1877, just before a rebel siege began, and the cause is still unexplained. When the keep was rebuilt in 1960, old photographs and drawings were the guide.

• Graves of Franklin's men 1854, Beechey Island, Nunavut, Canada

  Three sailors from Sir John Franklin's 1845 Arctic expedition died in 1846 and were buried on Beechey Island. Searchers found the graves in 1850, with no note saying where the ships had gone. Both ships were later located on the seabed, HMS Erebus in 2014 and HMS Terror in 2016.

• Tverskaya Street in Moscow 1896, Tverskaya Street, Moscow, Russia

  Flags and bunting hang over Tverskaya Street as Muscovites walk toward the camera. Lumière cameraman Charles Moisson is credited with filming it in Moscow in 1896, the year Nicholas II was crowned.

• A rare survivor of Aztec gold c. 1345 to 1575, Central Mexico

  Most Aztec gold was melted into bars after the Spanish conquest, which makes gold pieces like this 11 cm warrior rare. He holds a dart thrower, darts and a shield, and the gold shows he was elite. The calendar glyphs on his back read 2 Rabbit, 3 Water.

• A Market in Fort-de-France 1902 or 1903, Fort-de-France, Martinique

  Shoppers crowd a covered market in Fort-de-France, Martinique. Women in wide hats bend over stalls of fruit and barrels. The Lumière catalogue numbers the film 1389, dates it 1902 or 1903, and tentatively credits Alexandre Promio.

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