In the 1930s Oriental Institute archaeologists used photography to capture the history and grandeur of Persepolis.

Although Leonardo da Vinci famously made realistic sketches of the moon’s surface spots in the early 16th century, the first published images of the moon as seen through a telescope were Galileo Galilei’s.

All but lost, Urdu journals offer a glimpse at one of India’s most sprawling, energetic cultures.

A UChicago Library restoration project rescues a 500-year-old manuscript.

Sung from street corners a century ago, Mexican folk ballads offered “a valuable index to popular thought,” wrote UChicago anthropologist Robert Redfield, whose work is part of a Special Collections exhibit on Mexico.

A literary mystery hidden inside a 150-year-old copy of Homer’s Odyssey finds an answer.

In 17th century anatomical drawings, death—and life—were much more present than in today’s medical textbooks.

“A certain messiness” marked the halting evolution of racist imagery in the decades after slavery’s abolition.

Artist Robert Crumb’s jazz trading cards highlight the famous and the forgotten.

“There is so much more to Renaissance art that people never see.”

How-to’s from the 17th-century chef who helped found French cuisine.