Explore — try these views

Every link opens the live map and timeline at an exact place and time. No login, no install. The URL in your address bar is the share link — copy it to share any view you discover.

• Eurasia, 600–900 CE →
  The default sweep — Byzantine–Sassanid wars, the early Tang, and everything in between, end to end across Eurasia.
• Tang China & Abbasid Baghdad, 700–900 CE →
  Two golden ages in the same window, at opposite ends of Eurasia — the core Annalium idea.
• The Mongol expansion, 1200–1300 →
  The conquests of Western Xia and the Jin, the sieges of Bukhara and Samarkand, the sweep west.
• The Black Death, 1340–1360 →
  The plague years across Europe and the Middle East, alongside the early Hundred Years' War.
• The world in 1492 →
  What else was happening — far from the Atlantic — the decade Columbus crossed.
• The world around 1914 →
  The decade of the First World War, worldwide: revolutions, earthquakes, and campaigns far from the Western Front.
• The Space Race, 1960–1972 →
  Sputnik, Mercury, Apollo 8 and 11 — the science and spaceflight of the 1960s, on one map.
• Renaissance Europe, 1450–1600 →
  Shown with the Renaissance period theme — the page chrome itself shifts to the era.
• Rome at its height, 100–200 CE →
  The empire near its greatest extent — the Dacian Wars and the frontier. A deliberately sparse, focused era.

Featured battles

Hand-crafted, day-by-day battles on a satellite map — the camera flies phase by phase along real, sourced troop movements, with each commander's portrait on the ground.

• Battle of Gettysburg →
  Three days that turned the American Civil War — traced across the real battlefield, phase by phase.
• Battle of Waterloo →
  Napoleon's last day, hour by hour — from the assault on Hougoumont to the Guard's final rout.
• Battle of Red Cliffs →
  The fire on the Yangtze that split China three ways — shown at the strategic scale the sources actually support.
• Battle of Thermopylae →
  The 300 at the Hot Gates — three days holding the pass against Xerxes' empire, and the goat-path betrayal that ended it (480 BCE).
• Battle of Salamis →
  Themistocles lures the vast Persian fleet into a narrow strait where numbers count for nothing — the naval turning point of the Greco-Persian Wars (480 BCE).
• Battle of Gaugamela →
  Alexander breaks the Persian Empire — an oblique advance opens a gap, and a cavalry wedge drives straight at Darius (331 BCE).
• Battle of Cannae →
  Hannibal's masterpiece — ~50,000 Carthaginians encircle and destroy a Roman army nearly twice their size in a single day (216 BCE).
• Battle of Tong Pass →
  Cao Cao's river-crossing gambit against the Guanzhong warlords — and the ruse that turned Ma Chao and Han Sui against each other (211 CE).
• Battle of Hastings →
  The day that remade England — the Anglo-Saxon shield-wall, the feigned Norman retreats, and the death of Harold (14 October 1066).
• Battle of Sekigahara →
  The one-day battle that decided who would rule Japan for 250 years — turned by a mid-battle betrayal (1600).
• Battle of Trafalgar →
  Nelson breaks the line — two British columns punch through the Franco-Spanish fleet off the cape, and win the age of sail (21 October 1805).
• Battle of Stalingrad →
  Six months that broke the German advance in the East — the city grind, then Operation Uranus closes the trap on the 6th Army (1942–43). Shown at operational scale.

Make your own

Pan and zoom to any region, scrub the timeline to a window, and the URL becomes a shareable link. Add a category to the end — /Conflict, /Science, /Culture — to filter.

Want the background? Read the guides on what was happening at the same moment in history.

Teaching? The classroom page has a 5-minute warm-up and a 20-minute activity built on these views.

Data from Wikipedia/Wikidata (CC-BY-SA); base map © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); era boundaries are a hand-curated set in v1. Spotted a wrong date or border? Email [email protected].