A Texas foundation is selling four Henri Matisse sculptures known as "The Backs," which were once displayed in a public park and are currently on exhibit at an art museum in Fort Worth.

The monumental sculptures move from realism to the abstract in depicting, in bronze relief, the back of a nude woman resting her head on her arm. A casting of "Back IV" sold at auction at Christie's in November for 48.8 million dollars.

Peruvian archeologists have discovered the tomb of an ancient pre-Columbian lord buried with gold and silver ornaments in coastal northern Peru, one of the researchers told AFP on Wednesday.

The 1,100-year-old tomb in the Lambayeque region of northern Peru belonged to a noble from the Sican culture, said Carlos Elera, director of the Sican Archeology Project.

In between memorials to two presidents and a stone's throw from a site for World War II soldiers, Washington stands to get a new memorial honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The 120-million-dollar memorial was still a building site Thursday when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Representative Eleanor Holmes-Norton and Washington Mayor Vincent Gray took an inspection tour to see how construction was progressing on the site, which has been dogged by delays.

Arguably the most widely recognized structure in the world, the Eiffel Tower was designed to stand for only 20 years -- and some predicted it would collapse long before then.

Even as it was being built for the 1889 Universal Exhibition, a professor of mathematics sagely calculated that when the tower was two-thirds complete, its legs would buckle and the whole thing would come tumbling down, crushing workers and houses alike.

Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, who underwent surgery last year to remove cancerous polyp from his colon, Wednesday described performing at his age as a "marvel" as he turns 70 this month.

"To be in Madrid singing, with my family and friends, on such an important day for me is part of my birthday present," he told a news conference ahead of a special birthday performance in the Spanish capital.

Archaeologists said Tuesday they had found the world's oldest known winery in a cave in Armenia, indicating that humans were distilling grapes during the Copper Age, more than 6,000 years ago.

"This is, so far, the oldest relatively complete wine production facility, with its press, fermentation vats and storage jars in situ," said Hans Barnard, the lead author of an article about the study published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Archaeological Science.

Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, who wrote the worldwide bestseller "The Alchemist," accused Iran Monday of banning his books.

"My books have been published in Iran since 1998, in different publishing houses," Coelho wrote on his website http://paulocoelhoblog.com, noting estimates that over six million copies of his books have sold in the country.

A youthful premiere of contemporary choreographies by Jiri Bubenicek, Paul Lightfoot and Jiri Kylian on Sunday proved the Vienna Ballet was well on the path to a renaissance.

"Schritte und Spuren" (Steps and Traces), the third premiere under Manuel Legris's five-month-old reign as ballet director, showed a fresh company light years away from stuffy old productions.

The Romanian Academy on Wednesday urged the ministry of culture to include a former Roman site in its tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage to protect it from a Canadian gold mine project.

Two other organizations involved in the conservation of cultural heritage, Pro Patrimonio and the Romanian branch of the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), joined the call.

Madrid's prestigious Prado Museum said Tuesday that visitor numbers were down slightly last year despite some star exhibitions, such as one by English master J.M.W. Turner.

Some 2.732 million people visited the Prado in 2010, down from 2.764 million the previous year and the first decline since it opened a new ultra-modern wing in 2007.