Italy doesn’t just have art.
Italy is art.

And nowhere is that clearer than in its churches, some built to honor God, others to display power, and a few to do both.

Here are 17 churches in Italy that will make you question what humans are even capable of. 🧵👇 1. Duomo di Milano – Milan

It took 579 years to build.

A forest of spires.
3,400 statues.
And on top? A golden Virgin Mary watching over the city.

This is what happens when ambition and spirituality unite.

Most people think of mausoleums as tombs.

But the best of them are something more, Cathedrals of memory, ambition, and love carved in stone.

Here are 22 that left the world in awe and one that hides a deadly secret. 🧵 1. Basilica of Saint-Denis – France

Where the French kings go to sleep.

Gothic architecture was born here. Stained glass blazing like fire, tombs of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI beneath your feet.

Most people visit Rome for the Colosseum or the Vatican.

But Rome is a city of cathedrals.

And these 18 churches aren’t just places of worship, they’re where architecture, power, and beauty collided to shape Western civilization.

You won’t believe #3 and #4. 🧵 1. Sant’Agnese in Agone

Francesco Borromini’s boldest move.

He took geometry, crushed it, and turned it into emotion.
Step inside and you’ll feel space bend.

They say ancient epics ignored women. But what if that’s wrong?

What if the most powerful minds in early literature weren’t warriors but women?

Let’s talk about the forgotten heroines of East and West: The Shahnameh and The Odyssey. 🧵👇 One is Persian.
The other Greek.

One written by Ferdowsi. 120,000 lines.
The other by Homer. 12,000 lines.

Different worlds. Same question:
What role did women play in shaping the epic imagination?

Tomorrow is July 4th. Independence Day.

We’ll hear about Lexington. Muskets. War. But remember this:

The American Revolution didn’t begin with a gunshot; it began with a boycott.

Before the first shot fired, ordinary Americans had already overthrown British rule. 🧵 From 1765 to 1775, colonists ran a full-blown civil resistance campaign.

They shut down courts.
Refused to import goods.
Built parallel governments.

It wasn’t protest for show. It was rebellion in plain sight.

Latin America holds some of the most stunning architecture in the world.

Most of it was built by Europeans on top of Indigenous empires.

These 20 buildings reveal a continent shaped by beauty and conquest.

And the first three will leave you speechless. 🧵 1. Las Lajas Cathedral – Colombia

It’s not built on a canyon.
It’s part of it.

Bridging cliffs like a miracle frozen in stone.

Built after a woman claimed the Virgin Mary appeared inside the gorge.

We talk about globalization like it’s new.

But 2,000 years ago, merchants were already trading silk, spices, and stories from China to Italy.

Not through the internet.
Through deserts, mountains, and war zones.

Here are the 16 cities that shaped the Silk Road. 🧵 It began in Xi’an, China.

Not just the home of the Terracotta Army but the launchpad of the world’s most ambitious trade route.

Silk, porcelain, and even Buddhist monks left from here.

Every empire west of here would feel it.

What makes Russian literature unmatched?

It doesn’t escape pain.
It sits with it. Names it, breaks it open, redeems it.

Before War and Peace, Russian writers had already turned suffering into sacred text.

Let’s walk through it. Then we’ll get to Tolstoy. 🧵 Dostoevsky doesn’t flinch.

In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan demands justice from God.
A child is tortured. A murderer walks free.
There is no easy answer.

Faith isn’t comfort.
It’s a decision you make in the presence of unbearable truth.

They look alive.

But every one of these sculptures is made of stone.

18 masterpieces that shatter the line between reality and illusion.

You won’t believe they’re real. 🧵👇 1. Pietà – Michelangelo, 1499

She doesn’t weep.
She endures.

Michelangelo gave us a Madonna so full of sorrow, the marble itself seems to grieve.

If you lived during the Renaissance, you'd never call it a Golden Age.

Plague, political murder, censorship, and the Inquisition ruled the day.

Yet, behind the chaos was a cultural explosion.

Here’s the dark side of the Renaissance you were never taught: 🧵 Florence was the beating heart of the Renaissance.

But it wasn’t just a city of art, it was a ruthless power game.

Behind every fresco and statue was a family trying to control the future.

When I first read about Icarus, I thought it was a warning against arrogance.

But it’s not that simple.

He didn’t fall because he was proud.
He fell because he wanted more and reached for it.

That’s what Greek myths are about.
Not fantasy.
But hard truths. 🧵 The Greeks didn’t tell these stories to escape the world.
They told them to face it.

Why does love fall apart?
Why do the good suffer?
Why do we ruin what we build?

Here are 5 myths that don’t just survive, they still give our life meaning.

Castles matter because they weren’t built for comfort, they were built to control.

Walls were a warning. Gates told us who ruled.

To walk through one today isn’t escapism. It’s remembering how power worked.

Here are 20 castles in the UK that you should know. 🧵⤵️ 1. Edinburgh Castle – Scotland

In 1314, Thomas Randolph led a midnight raid, scaling the cliffs to recapture the castle.

A legendary moment in the fight for Scottish independence.

They were mocked, rejected, and told they misunderstood beauty.

But the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood didn’t care.

They painted anyway and what they left behind still haunts galleries today.

Here are their boldest works that dared match the Renaissance geniuses. 🧵 Boreas by Waterhouse (1903)

The wind takes everything. Especially innocence.

Private collection

They weren’t lost.
They were renamed, scattered, and quietly reabsorbed into history.

The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel didn’t vanish.
They became nations that rule the modern world — and most of us never realized it.

Here’s what they don’t teach you. 🧵👇 721 BC. Assyria destroys the northern Kingdom of Israel. Ten tribes are exiled to what is now Iran and Afghanistan.

The Bible says they were taken “beyond the River Gozan.”
That’s where most scholars stop.

But history doesn’t.

Most tourists never see this side of Italy.

Forget the crowds in Rome, Florence, or Venice.

These Italian towns are where it's soul lives and once you visit, you’ll never see the country the same way again... 🧵👇


Manarola

A Cinque Terre marvel.

Pastel houses stacked like Lego on cliffs.
Best explored with wine in hand.

War between Israel and Iran sounds like WWIII.

One man warned us 500 years ago: Nostradamus.

He named cities. Weapons. Events.

• 3 popes fall
• Rome destroyed
• Nuclear strikes
• Alien plagues
• A Middle Eastern man becomes the Antichrist

His prophecy...🧵👇 He foresaw three popes falling in rapid succession.

One assassinated while traveling.
Another manipulated by spies.
The final pope, physically deformed, would serve the Antichrist until he’s no longer useful.

(Centurie II, Quatrain 57)

Most people think they know Spain.
Beaches. Tapas. Flamenco.

But this country is built on layers of empire, genius, and stone.

And a basilica under construction longer than most nations have been in existence.

This is Spain like you’ve never seen it 🧵👇 1. Temple of the Sacred Heart, Barcelona (1961)

Perched on Mount Tibidabo.
A statue of Christ watches the city from above.

In 1915, dying men rose from the trenches, half-blind, choking on blood, and charged the German army.

It was so horrifying, Germans fled in panic.

At the heart of that charge was a 21-year-old officer.

This is the only portrait of him that exists and here is his story. 🧵👇 His name was Vladimir Kotlinsky.

The son of a schoolteacher, raised on duty and discipline.

In WWI, he was stationed at Osowiec Fortress, an old Russian outpost surrounded by German forces.

No one expected what happened next.

The world’s most stunning ceilings aren't just decoration.

They’re hidden masterpieces of art, math, and belief.

Here are some that will leave you speechless. What’s your favorite pick? 🧵👇 Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

The star-studded ceiling of this Gothic jewel glows over 15 stained-glass windows telling the Bible in radiant light.

Why are some American evangelicals cheering for war with Iran?

Not despite their faith but because of it.

To them, war isn’t tragedy.
It’s prophecy.
And Iran is cast as a villain in the story of the end times. 🧵👇 It all starts with a 2,500-year-old prophecy.

In Ezekiel 38, a mysterious figure named Gog leads an army from the north to attack Israel.

To millions of evangelicals, this is not symbolic.

They think it’s about to happen for real.

Lighthouses aren’t just structures.
They’re survival.
They’re defiance.
They’re the last thing standing when the world disappears into fog and storm.

Here are 24 that will shake you. 🧵👇 Bishop’s Rock – Isle of Scilly, UK

A mad idea turned real—this needle in the sea is the definition of stubborn brilliance.