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Move through the centuries and meet the lives lived in each. Choose a stretch of time, meet the people gathered there, and move outward through the places that held them.
Current period
18th century 18th century opens onto 12 lives, 8 place stories, and 1 named historical windows.
12 lives 8 place stories 1 historical window
Lives in this period
Enter time through a single life These are the clearest lives to open first when you want a person, not a date label, to lead you into the period.
Featured period
James Cook 1779 - Kealakekua Bay
At Kealakekua Bay, a navigator who mapped more of the world than any man alive sets down his account before the morning that will end everything.
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Featured period
Maria Theresa 1780 - Vienna
Maternal myth, bodily decline, and authority resisting sentimental reduction.
In Vienna, with her body failing, an empress who held together an empire through sixteen pregnancies reflects on the cost.
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Featured period
Frederick the Great 1785 - Sanssouci
Intellectual pride, bodily siege, and legend resisting simplification.
At Sanssouci, in his last year of clarity, a warrior-king reflects on what Prussia cost him and what it will become without him.
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Featured life
Louis XIV 1715 - Versailles
Ritual, bodily decline, and the separation of image from control.
Feeling control leave his body at Versailles, the Sun King writes what absolute power actually felt like from the inside.
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Featured life
Peter the Great 1724 - Saint Petersburg
State-building, incompletion, and fury at relapse.
A tsar who dragged Russia into the modern world now watches lesser men prepare to undo everything.
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Featured life
Isaac Newton 1726 - Kensington
In Kensington, feeling the stone return, the mind that defined the laws of the universe reflects on the feuds, the secrecy, and the cost.
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Places inside this time
Where this period becomes physical In 18th century, use the same years to move from chronology into cities, courts, islands, and regions that already carry deeper context.
Named windows
Time gathers into recognisable historical pressure 1 windows to step into
Early Modern
Revolution and empire 1750 to 1825
Private lives inside state collapse, military ambition, and the remaking of legitimacy.
16 lives visible here
15 place stories active in the same years
Enter this period Time travel
Where you are Chalus, France · 1701 CE to 1800 CE
This view does not show the active place. It is kept so you can return to it.
Time controls
18th century Change the span without losing your route back into the lives and places already visible in this period.
8 place stories are visible in this time window.
Historical events
Concrete moments inside this stretch of time 8 prototype events
France and Low Countries
The French Revolution 1789-1794 · Paris
Paris becomes the city where monarchy, citizenship, fear, and public violence are all renegotiated at once.
Marie Antoinette and Mary Wollstonecraft let the revolution be felt from inside its unequal human consequences.
Russia and Eurasia
Peter the Great and the making of Saint Petersburg 1703-1725 · Saint Petersburg, Russia
Saint Petersburg makes state transformation visible as a city built by decision, labor, and exposed ambition.
Peter the Great keeps the sequence attached to one life of restless transformation rather than a detached city-building program.
Chronology
12 lives in sequence Move year by year, compare one life with the next, and open a person directly when the route becomes clear.
early-modern
Louis XIV 1715 - Versailles
Place story available
Ritual, bodily decline, and the separation of image from control.
Feeling control leave his body at Versailles, the Sun King writes what absolute power actually felt like from the inside.
Oceania Place story
Kealakekua Bay, Hawai'i Alive in this timeline around 1779 / story span 1779
Connected to 1 life including James Cook.
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(2)
James Cook at Kealakekua Bay 1779 · Kealakekua Bay, Hawai'i
Kealakekua Bay turns exploration into fatal encounter inside a Pacific world that was never empty.
Cook lets the event be felt from inside a life accustomed to command but unable to master the place he has entered.
North America
Benjamin Franklin dies in Philadelphia 1790 · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia turns revolutionary achievement into an old man's death inside a republic still learning what it has made.
Franklin remains the human scale of the event, while Washington sharpens the sense that founding authority is already passing from one generation to the next.
France and Low Countries
Antoine Lavoisier executed in revolutionary Paris May 1794 · Luxembourg Prison, Paris
Paris turns scientific brilliance into revolutionary expendability when public virtue demands a victim.
Lavoisier remains the central life, while Marie Antoinette's Paris sharpens the sense of a city where different kinds of eminence become equally vulnerable.
France and Low Countries
Louis XIV dies at Versailles and the Regency begins 1 September 1715 · Versailles, France
Versailles turns personal monarchy into managed succession, forcing France to discover how absolute rule survives the body that embodied it.
Louis XIV keeps the event human because an entire model of monarchy contracts here into one deathbed and one succession problem.
Central and Eastern Europe
Maria Theresa succeeds to the Habsburg lands in Vienna 20 October 1740 · Vindobona / Vienna
Vienna becomes the place where a disputed female succession forces the Habsburg monarchy to defend its right to survive.
Maria Theresa keeps the event human because imperial continuity is forced here through one young ruler who has to convert inheritance into authority almost overnight.
Russia and Eurasia
Catherine the Great seizes power in Saint Petersburg 28 June 1762 · Saint Petersburg, Russia
Saint Petersburg becomes the place where dynastic marriage turns into coup, guard politics, and a new Russian reign.
Catherine keeps the event human because empire changes course here through one woman who must turn vulnerability at court into command.
early-modern
Peter the Great 1724 - Saint Petersburg
Place story available
State-building, incompletion, and fury at relapse.
A tsar who dragged Russia into the modern world now watches lesser men prepare to undo everything.
early-modern
Isaac Newton 1726 - Kensington
In Kensington, feeling the stone return, the mind that defined the laws of the universe reflects on the feuds, the secrecy, and the cost.
early-modern
James Cook 1779 - Kealakekua Bay
Place story available
At Kealakekua Bay, a navigator who mapped more of the world than any man alive sets down his account before the morning that will end everything.
early-modern
Maria Theresa 1780 - Vienna
Place story available
Maternal myth, bodily decline, and authority resisting sentimental reduction.
In Vienna, with her body failing, an empress who held together an empire through sixteen pregnancies reflects on the cost.
early-modern
Frederick the Great 1785 - Sanssouci
Place story available
Intellectual pride, bodily siege, and legend resisting simplification.
At Sanssouci, in his last year of clarity, a warrior-king reflects on what Prussia cost him and what it will become without him.
revolutionary-age
Benjamin Franklin 1790 - Philadelphia
Place story available
Usefulness, public myth, old age, and the accounting of self.
In Philadelphia, the most practical man of the Revolution reflects on what independence actually required — and what it didn't.
revolutionary-age
Marie Antoinette 1793 - Conciergerie, Paris
Place story available
Scapegoating, mythmaking, and a queen resisting reduction to symbol.
Waiting for the blade in the Conciergerie, a queen dismantles the lie that she was ever in control.
revolutionary-age
Antoine Lavoisier 1794 - Luxembourg Prison, Paris
Place story available
Under guard in the Luxembourg Prison, a chemist who transformed science waits to learn whether the Revolution will let him live.
revolutionary-age
Catherine the Great 1796 - Tsarskoye Selo
Place story available
Succession paranoia, political memory, and power defended through paperwork.
With succession turning every drawer into a point of danger, an empress writes what her court was built to conceal.
revolutionary-age
Mary Wollstonecraft 1797 - London
Place story available
Weak from childbirth and aware the fever is winning, the author of the first argument for women's rights writes her last account.
revolutionary-age
George Washington 1799 - Mount Vernon
Place story available
Retirement, republican virtue, and the afterlife of command.
In his last year at Mount Vernon, the father of a nation admits what the republic asked of him — and what it took.
