A cemetery might not top your list of places to visit in a city. But actually, cemeteries are a treasure trove of information on a city’s history and architectural taste. The cemetery in Roubaix is particularly rich, with Gothic and art deco tombs side by side.

The series Il était une fois… les Amériques: Les premiers Américains (Once Upon a Time… the Americas: The First Americans) relates American history from the very beginning up to the twentieth century. Enjoy the opening song about the making of America and its first settlers…

It’s back to the past, with the Once Upon a Time series. How did America get its name? Take a trip back to Renaissance Italy in this first episode of The Explorers to find out.

He may not know it yet, but Amerigo Vespucci’s life is about to change. Though he works as a successful banker, Amerigo feels restless and aspires to greater things. Luckily, Lorenzo de’ Medici has offered him the opportunity of a lifetime: a trip to Spain to help Christopher Columbus prepare for an expedition to the Indies.

Amerigo Vespucci sails for the New World to explore new territories discovered by Columbus, draw accurate maps, and find the true route to the Indies. As his ship approaches “Little Venice,” or Venezuela, the crew comes into contact with some local natives.

The explorers are exploring a new territory, full of lush vegetation, exotic wildlife, and, to the joy of a few explorers, gold! Perhaps they could use a lesson on the dangers of greed…

Amerigo Vespucci sets foot for the first time on the American continent. He collects all manner of plants and animals, only to drop them into the Amazon River.

Amerigo and his crew continue exploring the New World. Their water is almost gone. Fortunately, the river they’re sailing on turns out to be the Amazon, so they won’t die of thirst after all.

Vespuccia or America? In the last episode of this fun cartoon, we find out how the name of the new continent now known as “America” came about.

In part seven of this episode on the ecosystems, the young students are on a field trip (a marsh trip to be exact), where they witness firsthand the destruction of this precious ecosystem. But this is not a new phenomenon: once upon a time in Polynesia…

Il était une fois… (“Once Upon a Time…”) takes us back to the origins of Western civilization on the island of Crete. This lively animated series is for French learners of all ages!

Learn about the birth of democracy in ancient Greece and watch a scene from Sophocles’s famous tragedy, Antigone, in the next installment of Il était une fois….

A young man consults the Pythia (aka the Oracle of Delphi) to see if the gods will sanction his marriage to the girl of his dreams. What is her forecast? Find out in this video!

While the Athenians were constructing and reconstructing the Acropolis, young Spartans were undergoing a harsh, often brutal education — a walk in the park compared to what Spartan women experienced during the traditional marriage ritual.

In the next installment of Il était une fois…, we meet some of the great thinkers of ancient Greece: Socrates, Euripides, Sophocles, Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and others. You’re sure to be enlightened by the end!

In the last segment of this animated series on ancient Greece, we learn about the later years of the empire, filled with endless wars and the ostracism of some of its most famous citizens.

In the French town of Lantages, a group of history buffs and other volunteers reenact a series of World War II battles from the years 1940 and 1944. Their equipment and clothing are authentic to the period, which helps to preserve that memory of that difficult time.

The Malgré-nous (Despite Ourselves) are the roughly 130,000 young Alsatians from Lorraine, many of them recruited by force, who served under the Nazis during World War II.

The Oradour-sur-Glane massacre took place over a half a century ago, but France still remembers.

A Lockheed P-38 Lightning, last piloted by noted writer Saint-Exupéry, who presumably went down with it on July 31, 1944, has been found and identified off the coast of Marseille. This gives credence to a local fisherman who, six years ago, claimed to have netted the author’s ID bracelet.