On a heavily trafficked street where few tourists pass in the heart of ancient Rome lies the entrance to one of the Eternal City's most extraordinary and overlooked monuments -- Trajan's Market.

Built in the second century AD as a series of vaulted offices for managers of the nearby Trajan Forum headed up by a "procurator", the architectural complex has served as a fortress, a convent and a barracks over the centuries.

The American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon’s leading liberal arts university, inaugurated its new gallery space, the AUB Art Gallery, with the first major public exhibition of the works of influential Lebanese artist Khalil Saleeby (1870-1928), one of the founders of modern art in the Arab world, a press release said Monday.

The inaugural exhibition, which was previewed by guests at a private view held at the weekend, opens to the public on June 12, 2012 and runs until November 2012.

Chinese archaeologists have unearthed 110 new terracotta warriors that laid buried for centuries, an official said Monday, part of the famed army built to guard the tomb of China's first emperor.

The life-size figures were excavated near the Qin Emperor's mausoleum in China's northern Xi'an city over the course of three years, and archaeologists also uncovered 12 pottery horses, parts of chariots, weapons and tools.

A rare letter in English written by Napoleon Bonaparte -- and replete with errors -- fetched 325,000 euros ($406,445) at an auction Sunday in Paris.

The one-page letter, dated March 9, 1816, penned by Napoleon during his post-Waterloo exile on the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, was one of just three known in the world, said auction house Osenat.

From French can-can dresses to plumed headdresses, an auction of extravagant costumes by the long-time owner of the Folies Bergere cabaret beat expectations at the weekend.

Nicknamed the "empress of the night", Helene Martini ran the Folies Bergere -- Paris's biggest music hall, founded in 1869 -- from 1974 until last year, when it was acquired by the Lagardere group.

Madrid's Museo del Prado has joined with Paris' Musee du Louvre to stage a major exhibition of the late works of Italian Renaissance master Raphael.

"Late Raphael", to be shown from June 12-September 16 in the Spanish capital's Prado, is devoted to final years' production of the artist and his studio.

Japanese-born artist Masami Teraoka remembers the bombing of Hiroshima as the day when he saw two suns rising -- one in the east as usual, the other an orb burning eerily in the west.

"Two suns, that's for sure. That's my memory," he explained from a Sydney gallery where his confrontational images of geishas ripping condom packets open with their teeth and naked women frolicking with priests are being exhibited.

Denmark's National Museum has announced on Thursday a major treasure trove of 16th century coins on the small island of Moen in the southeast of the country.

"This is a find of exciting proportions," National Museum Numismatist Michael Maercher said in a video interview posted on the museum website from the Moen site.

The Renaissance bronze and gold doors of the Florence Baptistry -- a masterpiece known as the "Gates of Paradise" -- will be unveiled in September after a 27-year restoration, officials said on Thursday.

Culture Minister Lorenzo Ornaghi made the long-awaited announcement, saying the priceless doors now restored to their former glory will be displayed in the Florence Cathedral museum and not hang in their former place in the baptistery.

A doctor's account of his frantic efforts to save the life of a fatally wounded president Abraham Lincoln has been rediscovered in the United States, after being lost to history for 150 years.

On April 14, 1865, Charles Leale happened to be in the same Washington theater as the U.S. president, watching the play "My American Cousin," when he heard a gunshot and saw a man leap onto the stage.