A 13-year-old boy and an amateur archaeologist have unearthed a “significant” treasure trove in Germany which may have belonged to the legendary Danish king Harald Bluetooth who brought Christianity to Denmark. Rene Schoen and his student Luca Malaschnitschenko were looking for treasure using metal detectors in January on northern Ruegen island when they chanced upon what they initially thought was a worthless piece of aluminium. But upon closer inspection, they realised that it was a shimmering piece of silver, German media reported. A dig covering 400 square metres (4,300 square feet) that finally started over the weekend by the regional archaeology service has since uncovered a trove believed linked to the Danish king who reigned from around 958 to 986. Braided necklaces, pearls, brooches, a Thor’s hammer, rings and up to 600 chipped coins were found, including more than 100 that date back to Bluetooth’s era. “This trove is the biggest single discovery

The palace of Versailles has attracted travelers since it was transformed under the direction of the Sun King, Louis XIV (1638–1715), from a simple hunting lodge into one of the most magnificent public courts of Europe. French and foreign travelers, royalty, dignitaries and ambassadors, artists, musicians, writers and philosophers, scientists, Grand Tourists and day-trippers alike, all flocked to the majestic royal palace surrounded by its extensive formal gardens. Opening April 16 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Visitors to Versailles (1682–1789) tracks these many travelers from 1682, when Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles, up to 1789, when Louis XVI (1754–1793) and the royal family were forced to leave the palace and return to Paris. The exhibition brings together nearly 190 works from The Met, the Palace of Versailles, and more than 50 lenders worldwide. Through paintings, portraits, furniture, tapestries

While the European Union gears up for another of its endless post-crisis bouts over spending, debt and deficits, Berlin’s German Historical Museum has turned a microscope onto the mania for saving in Europe’s largest economy. “Merkel’s bullying”, “Queen of austerity”, “German dogma”: headlines from around the EU greet visitors to the baroque pile on the leafy Unter den Linden boulevard that houses the museum. All are relics of Berlin’s insistence that eurozone members stick to strict limits on debts and deficits at the height of the currency bloc’s post-2008 financial blues. Politicians and the public have been puzzled by the rage from other nations, while Spaniards, Italians and above all Greeks have cursed Berlin for soaring unemployment and slashed government services. “These attacks meet with little understanding in Germany. Why is this conflict so highly charged emotionally?” questioned museum chief professor Raphael Gross.

In a landmark show at the National Gallery – the first purely Monet exhibition to be staged in London for more than twenty years – there is a unique and surprising opportunity to discover the artist as we have never seen him before. We typically think of Claude Monet as a painter of landscape, of the sea, and in his later years, of gardens – but until now there has never been an exhibition considering his work in terms of architecture. Featuring more than seventy-five paintings by Monet, this innovative exhibition spans his long career from its beginnings in the mid-1860s to the public display of his Venice paintings in 1912. As a daring young artist, he exhibited in the Impressionist shows and displayed canvases of the bridges and buildings of Paris and its suburbs. Much later as an elderly man, he depicted the renowned architecture of Venice and London, reflecting them back to us through his exceptional v