Europeana Galleries

• A bit Wes Anderson
  This gallery shows photos, illustrations and objects from cultural heritage institutions across Europe, inspired by Wes Anderson's films and aesthetic.

• Archaeological Tools and Equipment
  Archaeologists use various tools: from trowels to wheelbarrows to even toothbrushes. The excavations need to be also documented: traditional methods include diaries, sketches and photos. While tacheometers, georadars, laserscanners can be used to detect and map objects or locations.

• Archaeologists at work
  Archaeologists aren't always found deep in a trench sifting through rubble, but it's during their field work that they're often most visible. This gallery depicts archaeologists during their daily work: digging, excavating, researching, observing. 

• Athletics
  Discover vintage photography of athletics, with track and field events, races and athletes from across Europe. Gallery curated for the Europeana Sport project.

• Axeheads
  Lithic tools were integral to Neolithic societies. Flint was used for everyday tools, with some having ceremonial value. The development of stronger bronze and iron tools changed agriculture and society. This gallery shows axeheads in stone, bronze and iron in variety of periods.

• Basketball
  Vintage photography and memorabilia showing histories of basketball across Europe.

• Beginnings and endings
  From birthdays and weddings to the first day at work: what better reason is there to celebrate than the start of a new chapter? Many seasonal celebrations mark the start of something new - most importantly the arrival of that magical time of year when days lengthen, nature reawakens and the arrival of spring alleviates our yearning for brightness and warmth. 

• Bridges of Europe
  Artworks and photographs depicting bridges across Europe: spanning rivers, canals, lakes and seas to connect communities, regions and countries. Curated by Europeana Common Culture project partners. 

• Budapest
  Hungary’s capital is bisected by the river Danube and its origins began with Aquincum, a Celtic settlement. Hungarians arrived in the territory in the 9th century and today, its famous Chain Bridge links Buda with Pest, united in 1873. Gallery curated by Forum Hungaricum. 

• Camping
  Pack your sleeping bag and grab your s’mores: summertime is here, and with it the perfect season for camping out! Get inspired by these holiday pics for your own outdoors adventures.

• Carnival celebrations
  Carnival is celebrated mostly in February. This gallery presents photographs, paintings and artefacts reflecting the many ways carnival is marked across Europe. Curated by Europeana Common Culture project partners.

• Castles and palaces
  Explore historic and stately buildings from around Europe.

• Cherry blossoms
  Beloved in Japan, and found in many countries across Europe, the cherry tree welcomes spring with its bright and beautiful blossoms.

• Chess
  Chess is a board game with a long history. In this gallery, discover players, pieces and papers relating to chess from across Europe.

• Churches and cathedrals
  Christian places of worship from across Europe – explore churches and cathedrals from across Europe.

• Cityscapes of Europe
  Did you ever feel like visiting a place because of an artwork you've seen? Visit this gallery of cityscapes and who knows, maybe one of these paintings will inspire your future travels.

• Disappearing trades and occupations
  As our daily life and routines have changed a lot in past decades thanks to clever inventions and modernization, several jobs and trades that used to offer the same conveniences through less technologically advanced solutions are disappearing. With these gallery of workers with unique knowledge and skills, we celebrate the intangible heritage that is the art of the cobbler, the knocker up, the rag-and-bone-man, the peddler, lamplighter and more!

• Easter Eggs
  Across Europe, Easter is celebrated with Easter eggs. This gallery presents Easter eggs from across the continent, decorated in a variety of ways and techniques. Curated by Europeana Common Culture project partners.

• Football teams across Europe
  Explore vintage photography of football teams across Europe. Curated for the Europeana Sport project.

• Four-leaf clover
  Believed to possess medicinal powers since the 17th century, the four-leaf clover became a good luck charm in Victorian times. These rare, green plants are a much-coveted gift and a symbol often used in brand logos. Gallery curated by Europeana Common Culture partners.

• Generating electricity and power
  Water, coal, oil, nuclear or wind: for centuries, people have harnessed nature and science to generate energy and electricity for industrial power. This gallery present some of the ways we generate power across Europe. Curated by Europeana Common Culture project partners.  

• Grand Hotel Europa
  Hotels are not simply places to stay and relax, but places of work for many people. This gallery shows photographs and illustrations of grand hotels across Europe. Gallery curated by Europeana Common Culture project partners. 

• Group portraits
  Clubs, classes, communities, families, friends, meetings and more coming together to mark the moment for history. These group portraits are fascinating snapshots of moments and communities in time. 

• Hot air balloons
  Since the early ballooning days of the French Montgolfier brothers and the Italian daredevil Vincenzo Lunardi, much has changed. Nonetheless flying hot air balloons has survived as a sport and past-time to this day. 

• Ice cream
  Ice cream, eis, gelato... eating and enjoying ice-cream is a quintessential summertime activity. This gallery presents vintage photography and artifact showing our love of ice-cream all across Europe.

• Industrial architecture across Europe
  Factories, workshops, power plants and more - these buildings are where European industrial heritage was created. This gallery explores industrial architecture across Europe. Gallery curated by Europeana Common Culture project partners. 

• Interesting Interiors
  From an artist's atelier to a lawyer's office, from an inside of the church to a bookshop – take a look at all these depictions of various interiors.

• Jewellery and personal adornment
  The creation and use of jewellery or types of personal adornment has been a part of human expression since prehistoric times. It has been used to express wealth, status or to function as an amulet or a gift to the afterlife.

• Liberation Day across Europe
  Liberation Day throughout history: here are various videos and photographs that show how people from countries across Europe commemorate and celebrate their from liberation from Fascism & Nazism.

• Maps of Europe
  For centuries, cartographers and others have defined Europe, its lands and borders through maps. Explore a variety of interesting maps from across history in this gallery.

• Masks and head coverings
  Around the world, masks are used for protection, ceremony, tradition and fashion. Explore various masks from the collections of cultural heritage institutions across Europe. 

• Medals and trophies
  Celebrating sporting achievement in gold, silver, bronze and other materials.

• Mining and miners
  Mining, a major industry across Europe, has employed millions of people while raising questions about working conditions, safety and environmental effects. This gallery presents photographs and artefacts about mining. Curated by Europeana Common Culture project partners.  

• Music in paintings
  In this gallery, we highlight paintings illustrating music in various ways. 

• National Parks of Europe
  National Parks are places where nature is preserved, where human's influence is kept in check to protect biodiversity. If you're looking for a place to escape, explore these national parks from around Europe depicted in Europeana.

• Open-air and living history museums
  A gallery about open-air and living history museums from across Europe, demonstrating older lifestyles and pursuits to modern audiences 

• Party in Europeana
  This month we're turning 10, so here are some party pictures to get into a celebratory mood! 

• Playing Cards
  Playing cards are not much more than cardboard rectangles with print, but we use and collect them to play, to learn and even predict the future. This gallery features playing cards from across Europe: small works of art and design throughout the ages.

• Postcards from Europe
  Picture postcard views of locations around Europe: some beautiful, some mundane, but all fascinating.

• Railway stations across Europe
  Discover artworks and photographs of train stations across Europe.

• Rainy weather
  Explore these paintings and photographs of rainy days from places across Europe and the world.

• Romani people in Europee
  This gallery of photographs reflects the rich heritage and traditions of Romani people living across Europe, as well as reflecting the stigma, discrimination and misrepresentation faced by these communities. 

• Rotterdame
  Explore the port city of Rotterdam, a vibrant city of modern architecture

• Sports posters
  Explore these posters from across Europe advertising a variety of sports and sporting events.

• Strikes and industrial protests
  Industrial heritage isn't just the story of firms, but the stories of workers and their experiences. This gallery shows images from across Europe of when workers have gone on strike and fought for their rights and freedoms. Curated by Europeana Common Culture partners. 

• Surfing & windsurfing
  Explore these images and films of surfing and windsurfing from cultural heritage collections across Europe. Gallery curated for the Europeana Sport project.

• Synagogues
  Synagogues, Jewish communities' places of worship, have been found across Europe for millennia. This gallery of photographs, postcards and drawings of synagogues - many of which are sadly no longer present - illustrate the rich religious and architectural heritage of Europe. 

• Telephones through time
  The telephone has become an essential tool of communication – from its invention in 1876 to the ever-connected mobile and conference calls we have today. This gallery tracks the development of telephones through time. 

• Trading places: migration and new businesses
  While settling in new nations, people who are refugees or have migrated have been setting up and working in new businesses. This gallery shows stores, cafes, restaurant, bakeries and more bringing benefits to their communities. 

• Travelling in style
  The growing popularity of long-distance travel in the 20th century created a flourishing market for luxury luggage, first-class fashions, and stylish accessories. Curated by Europeana XX project partners.

• Trees in Art
  From calming to chilling and great forests to solitary trunks, explore these artworks which depict trees in urban and rural landscapes. Part of Urban Tree Festival.

• Tranquil spaces 
  When in need of some calm, explore this gallery of beautifully serene landscapes and peaceful nature views.

• Waterfalls
  What waterfalls are on your travel & nature bucket list? Visit this gallery and explore paintings, drawings and vintage photography of waterfalls from the cultural heritage collections across Europe to get inspired.

• Weddings and marriages
  Wedding traditions across Europe vary. This gallery showcases paintings, photographs and artefacts relating to wedding and marriage traditions reflecting our diverse continent. Curated by Europeana Common Culture partners.

• Working lives across Europe
  Across Europe, work isn’t just what we do. It’s often who we are and where we’ve come from. It’s an integral part of our cultural heritage. This gallery of vintage imagery explores our industrial and labour-related heritage.

Europeana Blog

• Are you being served? A short history of waiters and servers in restaurants
  When you last ate at a restaurant or cafe, how was the service? Slow or fast, attentive or more relaxed? We all remember good and bad restaurant experiences. Let's spare a thought for people working in these roles and learn about the history of their jobs.

• Back to school – historic school uniforms in Europeana Collections
  If your social media feed is anything like mine, this week it’s been full of photographs of children dressed in school uniforms and big grins, ready for their first days at new schools. Their uniforms have been bought with growing room, so they all look tiny, swamped in swathes of grey, navy and black Teflon-coated fabric. Yes, the same stuff they put on non-stick frying pans gets applied to school clothing to try to make sure the knees don’t go through before Christmas. So what did schoolchildren wear before polyester? I took a dive into Europeana Collections to see if I could find out. From the very youngest to some more mature students, I found fewer smiles than I’ve seen on Facebook this week, but more home-knitted jumpers, military-influenced jackets, voluminous blouses, pinafores and more than one very fine moustache. Enjoy.

• Beautiful & useful: Bauhaus and Walter Gropius
  2019 celebrates the centenary of the influential Bauhaus art and design school, founded by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar Germany on April 12th in 1919.

• Busó-walking of Mohács: the Hungarian carnival banishing winter
  Carnival traditions which banish winter and welcome spring can be found across Europe. Hungary’s oldest and most famous, ‘Busó-walking’ in Mohács starts today, with around 1000 people taking part. ‘Busó-walking’, a world-famous folk tradition of the Šokac population in Mohács, a town in southern Hungary, was first recorded at the end of the 18th century. Blog curated by Forum Hungaricum.

• Europeana Travel Roulette
  Visit interesting places through the collections of cultural institutions across Europe with Europeana Travel Roulette. Spin the wheel and be inspired.

• Folklore shadow puppet theatre: a Greek summer holiday tradition
  Shadow puppet theatre is a staple summer evening entertainment for many in Greece, with what’s known as Karagiozis shadow theatre a childhood favourite. 
  

• Graveyard symbols: architectural markers of life and death
  Visiting a cemetery is not always a sad and sombre occasion. Graveyards are filled with stories of historical people and their lives. Tombs and gravestones are small pieces of architecture, with symbolic meaning. 

• Legends of La Liga: Ferenc ‘Pancho’ Puskás and Hungarian footballers in El Clásico
  Hungary reached the football World Cup final in 1954 and, although they didn’t win, its Hungarian national team of the 1950s became legendary. This is the story of Ferenc ‘Pancho’ Puskás and the ‘Golden Team’ generation which made its mark on Spanish footbal

• Neon nights: how advertising signs lit up the city
  Neon lighting’s distinctive glow has been brightening cities across Europe and the world all through the 20th century. Neon signs and lighting animate city centres, evoking both a modern, urban world, both futuristic and nostalgic.

• Perspective Views in the baroque era: early versions of 3D virtual reality
  Perspective panorama pictures became popular owing to optic innovations of the 18th century, and became the forerunners of visual entertainment tools. Picture demonstrators took their ‘peep’ boxes to fairs from town to town, and showed remote landscapes, beautiful street views, panoramas in three dimensions realistically to common people for some pennies. Blog curated by Péter Borbás, Piarist Museum and Boglárka Helmeczi, Forum Hungaricum. 

• Pizza: a slice of migration history 
  Pizza – possibly one of the most popular, tasty and simple things you can have for dinner tonight. But behind its simplicity lies a much more complex history – this is the tale of the Margherita’s migration.

• Singer sewing machines: production on a grand scale
  You might remember the sight of an old steel and wood bench with a sewing machine affixed to it in the house of your parents, grandparents, or somewhere forgotten, collecting dust. Singer sewing machines and their logos and fonts are embedded in the collective mind of many, but how did it end up there in the first place? The tale of the Singer company and their world-changing sewing machines is one of industrialisation, emancipation, mass production, mass marketing, and a massive impact on the world. 

• Sporting divides: antisemitism in post-war Hungarian football matches
  Antisemitism manifests itself in many ways. However, few people know that there were antisemitic demonstrations in Hungary shortly after WWII, during the Soviet occupation. Some of these riots accompanied the matches of a Budapest football club MTK.

• Take a city trip to Galway and Rijeka, European Capitals of Culture 2020
  Galway, in Ireland, and Rijeka, in Croatia, are the European Capitals of Culture for 2020. Both cities have a wide range of cultural activities planned throughout 2020. As their year-long celebrations begin, let’s take a tour of both cities illustrated with digitised cultural heritage collections from around Europe and discover some interesting connections.

• The Chair Men: Gebrüder Thonet and the Number 14 Chair
  Vienna’s cafe culture is legendary – coffee, kipferl, and kuchen are important ingredients. And another important part of the recipe are the cafes themselves and their furniture – in particular the Number 14 Thonet chair. The firm of Thonet are synonymous with the furniture for Viennese cafes, as well as homes and establishments around the world. Their ‘Number 14’ chair was the world’s first mass-produced furniture.

• The Good Place? Tracing utopia and dystopia through literature
  Today we often hear the words utopia and dystopia used in informal conversations and in the media. But what do these words really mean? To find out, let’s trace the ideas behind utopia and dystopia through the history of literature and thought.  

• The History of cars
  It’s hard to imagine any 20th-century landscape without a car. Cars were roaming the roads as early as the 1880s, but the most innovation happened in the 20th century. Read the blog to learn more.  

• Tisza sport shoes: icon of Hungarian sport – Sport story of a shoe factory in Martfű
  The tiny village of Martfű has made a big name for itself as the capital of Hungarian shoes. Czech-born Jan Antonin Baťa (who also gave his name to the shoe brand Bata) saw the potential in this little place along the river Tisza and bought a site for his factory in 1939. He started producing shoes three years later under the name 'Cikta Inc'. In 1949, the factory was nationalised and took on a new name - 'Tisza Shoe Factory National Company'. In the 1950s and 1960s, it only sold to customers in Hungary but later exported to the CMEA market. Martfű and its shoe factory became iconic.

• Trekking through Europe: a history of hiking
  As Europeans are rediscovering their local natural surroundings, confined to their immediate area due to lockdowns and travel restrictions, hiking and bikepacking have become prime holiday past-times this year.

• Vermouth is an aperitif alcoholic drink, a fortified wine, flavoured with herbs and other botanicals. There are three general varieties: red (rosso), white (bianco) and dry. Since the 18th century, versions of vermouth have been produced in Turin, Italy with the city becoming synonymous with the development and popularity of many vermouth brands.

Europeana Exhibitions

• Blue Skies, Red Panic: Photographic perspectives on the 1950s in Europe
  When you think of the 1950s, what do you see? A pink Cadillac? Buddy Holly’s horn-rimmed glasses? A family gathered around a Sunday roast? Join us on a photographic journey through Europe in this fascinating decade. It was an era of division – between east and west, liberty and repression, terror and euphoria – but also a time of growing abundance and modernity. Whether you experienced the 1950s yourself or you only possess second-hand knowledge, you may be surprised by what this exhibition has in store. This exhibition was created in the framework of the CEF-project ‘50s in Europe Kaleidoscope. 

• Celebrations in Europe 
  Seasonal traditions and customs
  Celebrations, traditions and customs are part of our common cultural heritage in Europe. They unite us across borders, structuring our seasons and lives, often reflecting themes relating to identity, religion and nature. Explore a variety of customs and traditions across Europe in this exhibition. We invite you to read stories brought together from people across Europe, and discover objects from cultural heritage institutions and people in Europe and beyond. Perhaps some of these occasions will be new to you, or maybe you will recognise some celebrations? We hope you'll see that together we share many traditions that connect us.