Tristan Hughes explores the destruction of Pompeii, using extraordinary eyewitness testimony and the revelations of archaeology to understand what really happened here nearly 2000 years ago.

In 79 AD, one of the greatest natural disasters in Roman history occurred in southern Italy, when Mount V...

The story of Pompeii’s destruction is renowned across the world. In 79 AD, this prosperous Roman town was destroyed by a massive, volcanic eruption. Pompeii became frozen in time, only to be rediscovered c.1500 years later.

Warning: contains very strong language and sexual content.

Vesuvius’ er...

In 60 AD, the fledgling Roman town of Colchester witnessed ancient Armageddon. Thousands of British warriors descended on the settlement, turning what was then the capital of Roman Britain to ash. At the head of these attackers was one of the most well-known figures in British history - the warri...

Britain is an island where history is well and truly part of the landscape and an island where human feet have walked for a million years. We are constantly making groundbreaking archaeological discoveries that are helping us to better understand the way in which our distant ancestors lived.

Joi...

12,000 years ago, Britain entered a new chapter in its long history. By this point, hunting tools had evolved, from hefty spears to the slick and stealthy bow and arrow. This revolution in technology would change the way humans hunted forever.

In a period in which Britain was also thawing and e...

Around 800 BC, Britain entered the Iron Age. This era saw the gradual introduction of iron working technology, although the general adoption of iron artefacts did not become widespread until after 500-400 BC.

As the Iron Age progressed through the first millennium BC, strong regional groupings e...

The Rollright Stones are some of Britain’s most remarkable and mysterious ancient monuments. They consist of three separate sites - a looming funerary monument built to contain dismembered corpses, a venerated stone circle, and a single monolith with an innominate purpose. Alice Loxton traces six...

Hadrian’s Wall is celebrating its 1900th birthday… the perfect time for History Hit to investigate this potent embodiment of Roman dominance.

Dan Snow explores the physical remains of Hadrian’s vast project of 122AD - over 80 Roman miles of wall, turrets and forts, stretching from coast to coast...

Dr Janina Ramirez takes an exclusive tour of 'Imagining the Divine', the new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. With the exhibition's co-curator, Jas Eslner, Janina discovers how the art of the 5 major world religions spread across the globe in the first Millennium AD, and takes a fasc...

In 1960, a man was laying a waterpipe underneath the quaint village of Fishbourne near Chichester, West Sussex, when he uncovered what looked like Roman remains. After he duly reported the discover, the archaeologists were called in and they quickly unearthed more and more prestigious finds. They...

Renowned as the home of the Pythia, the sanctuary at Delphi was the religious heart of the Hellenic World. In this episode of Historic Questions Professor Michael Scott explains the site's history and why it was so significant in antiquity.

2,500 years ago groups of formidable warriors roamed the vast open plains of Siberia. Ferocious nomads, they roamed from Southern Russia down into Iran – a whole region that makes up the middle portion of the Silk Roads. Feared, loathed, admired – but over time forgotten… until now. A new major e...

Alexander the Great: Until the End of the World

Alexander the Great: The Path to Power

Born in Paris in 1840, François-Auguste-René Rodin is quite possibly the most famous sculptor in recent history. Considered by many to be the first ‘modern’ sculptor, his works such as ‘The Kiss’ and ‘The Thinker’ have become iconic throughout the world. He possessed a unique ability to model a c...

In 1974, 29 years after the end of the Second World War, Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda finally surrendered after almost three decades of fighting a guerilla campaign on a remote island in the Philippines. ​But why did he keep fighting? Are humans just inherently warlike?

In our latest documentary...

Historian and archaeologist Simon Elliott has written extensively on the Roman world. He answers the key questions surrounding one of history's most compelling figures - Julius Caesar. Who was Julius Caesar and what was his family history? How did military and political changes aid the rise of Ju...

Situated roughly one mile south of Hadrian’s Wall is one of the great jewels of Roman and early medieval archaeology: Vindolanda. Over the past 50 years, annual excavations at this site have revealed incredible amounts of new information. Information that has not only shone more light on the site...

Egyptologist Dr Chris Naunton explores the story of how Ancient Egypt was rediscovered, and how its incredible sites and treasures were gradually decoded. Starting with the earliest travelers who ventured inside the pyramids, Chris traces how this curiosity exploded into Egyptomania in the 18th ...

In this film three leading Egyptologists explore how Cleopatra became one of the most influential and powerful women of the ancient world.

We trace how Cleopatra's learning and intelligence enabled her to gain control of her own Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt; skilfully and ruthlessly overcoming her...

He was one of the greatest enemies the Romans ever faced. An excellent general and a larger-than-life figure, who led an army across the alps and dealt a series of crushing defeats upon the Romans on Italian soil. His achievements have become a thing of legend and his name has become immortalised...

Richborough was one of the longest Roman-occupied sites in Britain, with history stretching from the Claudian invasion of Britain in 43 AD to the Roman departure almost 4 centuries later. During its long history Richborough transformed on several occasions. From military base to prosperous port t...

Rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, the Minoan Civilization, whose earliest beginnings were from c. 3500 BC on the island of Crete, became one of the most developed, complex urban civilizations in antiquity. Yet we still kn...

Described as the "most important piece of prehistoric art to be found in Britain in the last 100 years", an elaborately decorated 5000 year-old chalk cylinder, discovered buried with 3 child skeletons in Yorkshire and as old as the first phase of Stonehenge, is going on display at the British Mus...