Sitting at the nation’s crossroads, Kansas City has satisfied the appetites of hungry travelers since the days when it was a western outpost on the Santa Fe Trail.

Poets and writers are often the most dangerous of resistors. In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin put Ukrainian-born poet Anna Akhmatova on his watch list for writing what he deemed to be subversive poetry that worked to undermine his regime. Without access to printing presses, and because publication was dangerous, Akhmatova disseminated her poetry by word of mouth.  

Director Ridley Scott takes a sweeping look back to the Crusades and the brutal fighting between Christians and Muslims over the First Kingdom of Jerusalem in his epic 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven. How much did he get right? 

Maybe you know Molière. If not … well, Kansas City’s French roots lend a connection to the great French playwright, who may rank second only to Shakespeare in the theatrical universe. So profound was his influence that the French language is often referred to as “the language of Molière.”