The grave today
Bygone Companies
The Acciaiuoli Bank
The third of Florence's great 'super-companies', founded 1282, banker to the kings of Naples. It failed in 1343 — not from England's royal defaults, like the Bardi and Peruzzi, but from financing Florence's war against Lucca.
Read the grave →The Wall · ancient to brand-new
One continuous line. 7 of the 385.Akkadian Empire
2154 BCE
Akrotiri
1600 BCE
Teshub
700 BCE
Seleucid Empire
63 BCE
Sasanian Empire
651 CE
The Acciaiuoli Bank
1343 CE
Hudson's Bay Company
2025 CE
2154 BCE1109 BCE64 BCE980 CE2025 CE
How they died
Conquest 150
Replaced 133
Overreach 86
Forgotten 77
Assimilation 61
Disaster 44
Only 44 of 385 graves were destroyed outright. The rest were replaced, absorbed, conquered, or simply forgotten — which is the whole argument of this museum.
The latest to fall
Bygone Companies
Hudson's Bay Company
1670 CE — 2025 CE
North America's oldest company ruled a fur empire across Rupert's Land for 354 years, then died a department-store death as the Bay and Saks.
Vanished Worlds
Republic of Artsakh
1991 CE — 2024 CE
An Armenian-majority breakaway republic in the mountains of the South Caucasus, declared in 1991 and governed from Stepanakert, unrecognised by any country for over thirty years. A two-day Azerbaijani offensive in 2023 emptied it of almost its entire population, and on 1 January 2024 it formally ceased to exist.
Lost Technology
Google Glass
2013 CE — 2023 CE
A $1,500 face-mounted computer that promised the future on your eyeball and instead coined the insult 'glasshole'.