Art history and art travel guides
Learn to read art, one work at a time.
Most art writing gives you too much or too little. The Art Newbie gives you the part that matters: what you are looking at, why it was made, and what to notice when you stand in front of it. Every term is explained, and nothing is called unmissable unless it is.
Everything on this page has a guide.
The two sections
Two ways in
Art History
The story of art, one question at a time.
Periods, works and ideas in plain English. Every term is explained the first time it appears, so you can start anywhere.
Art Travel
Where the art is now, and how to see it well.
The museums, the monuments and the routes, with how long you need and what to look at first.
Recently added
All guides Latest guides
MesopotamiaAncient Babylon: History, Ruins and What Survives Today
German excavators uncovered its brick walls and gates from 1899, but some of what stands today was rebuilt in the 1980s.
MesopotamiaHow Much of the Berlin Ishtar Gate Is Original?
The Berlin gate was rebuilt from glazed-brick fragments excavated at Babylon, and it shows only the smaller outer gate.
PrehistoryGöbekli Tepe: Temple or Settlement? Archaeologists Disagree
Hunters raised circles of carved pillars before farming began. Was it a temple, a village or both?
PrehistoryÇatalhöyük: What It Was and How People Lived There
People lived in mud-brick houses packed together and entered by ladder through the roof, burying their dead under the floors.
PrehistoryWhy Did People Keep Rebuilding Stonehenge for 1,500 Years?
The first monument was a ditch and bank, not stones; the famous circle came about 500 years later, around 2500 BCE.
PrehistoryWhat Kept Chauvet Cave Untouched for 20,000 Years?
A rockfall sealed Chauvet’s entrance about 20,000 years ago, and it stayed shut until 1994, keeping the art pristine.
PrehistoryLascaux Cave Paintings: Who Made Them and How Old They Are
Lascaux’s painters left nearly 6,000 figures, only one of them human. Who were they, and why paint here?
Prehistory