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125 lives ready to enter

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Now exploring: Renaissance (14 lives)× Clear

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14 lives in view

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Time

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Place

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Ways of life

Follow power, reform, witness, command, or court.

Henry VIII

Henry VIII

1546 · Whitehall

A king whose body is failing faster than his grip on power dictates a version of events no courtier would dare to write.

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Mary Queen of Scots

Mary Queen of Scots

1587 · Fotheringhay Castle

Confined at Fotheringhay, a queen who was never allowed to rule writes her account before her cousin's axe falls.

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Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn

1536 · Tower of London

In the Tower of London, waiting for a verdict she already knows, a queen sets down what Henry will never allow to be read.

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Catherine de' Medici

Catherine de' Medici

1588 · Blois

At Blois, as the court tightens around her, a queen mother writes the truth about thirty years of keeping France alive.

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Suleiman the Magnificent

Suleiman the Magnificent

1566 · Camp Outside Szigetvar

In the camp outside Szigetvár, the most powerful sultan in Ottoman history confronts the campaign he knows will be his last.

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Johann Gutenberg

Johann Gutenberg

1465 · Mainz

In Mainz, no longer master of the press that bears no name of his, the man who made the modern world possible reflects on invention, debt, and erasure.

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Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan

1521 · Cebu

Having carried Castile across the ocean he named, a navigator feels command slipping and writes what the voyage actually cost.

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Vasco da Gama

Vasco da Gama

1524 · Cochin

Broken by fever in Cochin, the man who found the sea route to India confronts what the Estado became in other men's hands.

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Zheng He

Zheng He

1433 · Nanjing

In the southern provinces of the Ming Empire, the admiral who commanded the greatest fleet in history reflects on why the emperor ordered the ships burned.

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Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli

1526 · Outside Florence

At his farm outside Florence, where exile has thinned his patience, the author of The Prince writes what power actually looks like when you no longer have any.

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Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

1519 · Château du Clos Lucé, Amboise

The right hand has ceased from certain offices, not from the design entire, and I begin there because it is necessary to place the matter correctly from the first line.

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Michelangelo

Michelangelo

1564 · Rome

I am still at the marble.

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Raphael

Raphael

1520 · Rome

I am thirty-seven years old and something is wrong with my body.

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Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

1528 · Nuremberg

I am fifty-six years old and the body has been in decline since Zeeland, since the marsh air and the whale I did not properly see and the fever or corruption I brought back with me as if a journey could not be counted...

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Time travel

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The whole archive

Follow a period or preoccupation

Move through lives that belong to the same era, tension, or historical thread.

Through the Ancient World

13 private lives from the Ancient World, in the order they were lived.

  1. 1. 1458 BCE

    Hatshepsut

  2. 2. 1336 BCE

    Nefertiti

  3. 3. 1213 BCE

    Ramses II

  4. 4. 496 BCE

    Sun Tzu

  5. 5. 429 BCE

    Pericles

  6. 6. 323 BCE

    Alexander the Great

Through the Medieval

10 private lives from the Medieval, in the order they were lived.

  1. 1. 813 CE

    Charlemagne

  2. 2. 1087 CE

    William the Conqueror

  3. 3. 1193 CE

    Saladin

  4. 4. 1199 CE

    Eleanor of Aquitaine

  5. 5. 1199 CE

    Richard I (Lionheart)

  6. 6. 1307 CE

    Edward I of England

Through the Early Modern

25 private lives from the Early Modern, in the order they were lived.

  1. 1. 1519 CE

    Leonardo da Vinci

  2. 2. 1520 CE

    Raphael

  3. 3. 1521 CE

    Ferdinand Magellan

  4. 4. 1524 CE

    Vasco da Gama

  5. 5. 1526 CE

    Niccolò Machiavelli

  6. 6. 1528 CE

    Albrecht Dürer

Through the Revolutionary Age

16 private lives from the Revolutionary Age, in the order they were lived.

  1. 1. 1790 CE

    Benjamin Franklin

  2. 2. 1793 CE

    Marie Antoinette

  3. 3. 1794 CE

    Antoine Lavoisier

  4. 4. 1796 CE

    Catherine the Great

  5. 5. 1797 CE

    Mary Wollstonecraft

  6. 6. 1799 CE

    George Washington

Through the Industrial Age

26 private lives from the Industrial Age, in the order they were lived.

  1. 1. 1849 CE

    José de San Martín

  2. 2. 1852 CE

    Ada Lovelace

  3. 3. 1859 CE

    Isambard Kingdom Brunel

  4. 4. 1862 CE

    Michael Faraday

  5. 5. 1865 CE

    Abraham Lincoln

  6. 6. 1872 CE

    Napoleon III

Through the World Wars

22 private lives from the World Wars, in the order they were lived.

  1. 1. 1914 CE

    Booker T. Washington

  2. 2. 1917 CE

    Edgar Degas

  3. 3. 1919 CE

    Theodore Roosevelt

  4. 4. 1921 CE

    Alexander Graham Bell

  5. 5. 1921 CE

    Ernest Shackleton

  6. 6. 1922 CE

    Gustave Eiffel

Through the Postwar Modern

12 private lives from the Postwar Modern, in the order they were lived.

  1. 1. 1947 CE

    Orville Wright

  2. 2. 1953 CE

    Joseph Stalin

  3. 3. 1955 CE

    Winston Churchill

  4. 4. 1959 CE

    Mao Zedong

  5. 5. 1961 CE

    W.E.B. Du Bois

  6. 6. 1963 CE

    John F. Kennedy

State Power

47 lives shaped by state power, followed across the centuries.

  1. 1. 1458 BCE

    Hatshepsut

  2. 2. 1213 BCE

    Ramses II

  3. 3. 429 BCE

    Pericles

  4. 4. 323 BCE

    Alexander the Great

  5. 5. 44 BCE

    Julius Caesar

  6. 6. 43 BCE

    Cicero

War and Command

36 lives shaped by war and command, followed across the centuries.

  1. 1. 496 BCE

    Sun Tzu

  2. 2. 429 BCE

    Pericles

  3. 3. 323 BCE

    Alexander the Great

  4. 4. 184 BCE

    Scipio Africanus

  5. 5. 183 BCE

    Hannibal

  6. 6. 44 BCE

    Julius Caesar

Science and Discovery

30 lives shaped by science and discovery, followed across the centuries.

  1. 1. 1323 CE

    Marco Polo

  2. 2. 1355 CE

    Ibn Battuta

  3. 3. 1465 CE

    Johann Gutenberg

  4. 4. 1519 CE

    Leonardo da Vinci

  5. 5. 1528 CE

    Albrecht Dürer

  6. 6. 1630 CE

    Johannes Kepler

Exile and Decline

28 lives shaped by exile and decline, followed across the centuries.

  1. 1. 184 BCE

    Scipio Africanus

  2. 2. 1524 CE

    Vasco da Gama

  3. 3. 1526 CE

    Niccolò Machiavelli

  4. 4. 1669 CE

    Rembrandt

  5. 5. 1675 CE

    Johannes Vermeer

  6. 6. 1793 CE

    Marie Antoinette

Empire

25 lives shaped by empire, followed across the centuries.

  1. 1. 1458 BCE

    Hatshepsut

  2. 2. 1213 BCE

    Ramses II

  3. 3. 323 BCE

    Alexander the Great

  4. 4. 183 BCE

    Hannibal

  5. 5. 44 BCE

    Julius Caesar

  6. 6. 30 BCE

    Cleopatra

Monarchy and Court

20 lives shaped by monarchy and court, followed across the centuries.

  1. 1. 1458 BCE

    Hatshepsut

  2. 2. 1336 BCE

    Nefertiti

  3. 3. 1213 BCE

    Ramses II

  4. 4. 30 BCE

    Cleopatra

  5. 5. 1199 CE

    Eleanor of Aquitaine

  6. 6. 1536 CE

    Anne Boleyn