When trying to depict how architecture gets transformed over time, it is important to try and spot and analyse temporal relations between architectural changes on one hand and facts or events that may have triggered or at least impacted on these changes. In this contribution we introduce a visual metaphor called historySkyline aimed at aligning in time architectural events (any changes, including destruction or extension) and facts that may have impacted these events (in short, pieces of information about historical contexts). Visual metaphors are commonly used to uncover temporal patterns in the field of information visualisation (Infovis). Our experiment, carried out on the historic centre of the city of Cracow, shows that such an approach can be worth trying out in the context of historical sciences, and underlines some of the specific challenges this application field raises.