One of the great natural events of this year has been the Brood X phenomenon, in which every 17 years cicada nymphs tunnel upwards from underground and hatch en masse, in their trillions. Brood X is one of 15 broods of periodical cicadas that appear regularly throughout the eastern United States – Andrew Wilkinson sent […]
Airports are surely the ultimate liminal space, linking worlds together through a place that is neither one nor the other – at the same time, every airport feels the same, but also has its own quirks and similarities. Today’s highlights from the Until We Travel project take us on a tour of airport sounds, investigating […]
On a visit to the iconic Jurassic Coast tourist attraction of Durdle Door, the beach was suddenly cleared of people by site security, as a search and rescue helicopter was called to take off someone in distress to hospital. This recording captures the helicopter arriving and coming in to land, briefly circling before descending onto […]
Pre-flight announcements are different all over the world, and as well as the differences from airline to airline, there’s a cultural specificity to many of them. Before an internal flight from Jeddah to Riyadh, a supplication to Allah for safety in travel is broadcast after the regular safety announcements you’d expect to hear on a […]
The maglev train in Shanghai is the fastest commercial electric train in the world, with a cruising speed of 431 km/h, with a 30km journey completed in 7 minutes and 20 seconds. In this field recording by Mark Wilden, we’re on board this super-sleek, super-fast transportation. City version: There’s not much going on in the […]
Copyright ©2026 Cities and Memory, Oxford, UK. All rights reserved.
"As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of [the city] as it is today should contain all [the city's] past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the bags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Grand Prix winner and Coup de Coeur winner, Académie Charles Cros
