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Explore capitals, ports, ceremonial centres, and urban settlements whose streets, walls, palaces, and workshops still reveal how ancient communities lived.
001
Hellenistic city on the Oxus River, possibly founded by Alexander's successors. Looted heavily during the Soviet–Afghan war.
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002
A Bronze Age Cycladic town on Thera buried by volcanic deposits in the late 17th century BCE. Streets, multi-storey buildings, frescoes, and household objects survive.
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003
Capital of the Aksumite kingdom, linked by Red Sea trade to Arabia and the Mediterranean. Monumental stelae, royal tombs, inscriptions, and coins record its power.
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004
A Roman municipium at present-day Šćitarjevo near Zagreb, where excavations reveal streets, baths, houses, and a settlement shaped by the Sava River.
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005
Sinhalese capital for over a millennium. Houses the Sri Maha Bodhi, grown from a cutting of the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment.
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006
Hellenistic and Roman city with a colonnaded street nearly 2 km long. Heavily looted during the recent civil war.
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007
Greek-Roman city with a stadium for 30,000 and a school of marble sculpture supplying the empire.
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008
A Liburnian settlement near Benkovac that became a Roman town, preserving massive walls, gates, cemeteries, inscriptions, and traces of changing local power.
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009
Siamese capital razed by a Burmese army in 1767. A buddha head, swallowed by fig roots, became its iconic image.
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010
Mesopotamian capital under Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar II. Severely damaged by US military base construction in 2003–2004.
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011
Three rooms of vivid Maya murals depicting court life, battles, and the bloodletting of captives.
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012
Long-inhabited Mediterranean port with Neolithic, Bronze Age, Phoenician, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, and later layers. Royal inscriptions preserve early Phoenician alphabetic writing.
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013
Largest known pre-Columbian city north of Mexico, organised around neighbourhoods, plazas, timber monuments, and immense earthworks including Monks Mound.
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014
Major Classic Maya capital in the forests of Campeche and a long-standing rival of Tikal. Its monuments record dynastic alliances, warfare, and political change.
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015
Major Maya city in western Belize whose roads, reservoirs, homes, monuments, and Caana complex extend far beyond the cleared ceremonial centre.
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016
One of the earliest known urban centres in the Americas, with monumental platform mounds, sunken circular courts, residences, and evidence of exchange between coast and valley.
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017
Phoenician maritime power, demolished by Rome in 146 BCE. Rebuilt as a Roman city, sacked again, rebuilt again.
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018
Largest pre-Columbian city in the Americas, built entirely of adobe. Walls bear repeating patterns of seabirds and waves.
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019
A Greek-founded city in Crimea with an orthogonal plan, vineyard land, public buildings, Roman and Byzantine layers, and a long urban life.
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020
Remote Inca settlement above the Apurímac valley, with plazas, terraces, ritual buildings, and distinctive stone figures set into agricultural walls.
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021
Maya city near the modern Honduran-Guatemalan border. Its Hieroglyphic Stairway is the longest known Maya text.
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022
Greek colony in eastern Libya. The Sanctuary of Apollo, leveled by an earthquake, has been partially rebuilt.
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023
Roman emperor's retirement complex, now the lived-in core of the city of Split. Cellars, peristyle, and mausoleum still in use.
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024
Sub-Saharan urban site predating Arab and European arrival. Predecessor of the medieval city of Djenné.
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025
Best-preserved Roman small town in North Africa. Numidian, Punic, and Roman layers stacked atop a hill in the hinterland.
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026
Early Bronze Age city whose royal archive of 17,000 clay tablets reshaped scholarship on the third millennium BCE.
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027
Large Preclassic Maya centre in the Petén forest, linked by raised causeways. Its immense La Danta complex combines terraces, platforms, and summit pyramids.
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028
Greek and Roman metropolis, once a port. Silting moved the harbour seven kilometres inland, killing the city.
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029
Early southern Mesopotamian settlement built around a long sequence of temples. Later Sumerian tradition remembered Eridu as the first city to receive kingship.
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030
The late Roman palace and memorial complex built for Emperor Galerius in eastern Serbia, with fortifications, temples, baths, mosaics, and imperial mausoleums.
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031
Largest stone structure in sub-Saharan Africa before colonialism. European colonists refused to credit African builders for over a century.
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032
Capital of the Vijayanagara empire, spread among granite hills with temples, markets, waterworks, palaces, and fortified royal enclosures.
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033
Major Indus city whose excavations helped define the civilisation now named after it. Standardised bricks, weights, seals, drainage, and craft production linked it to a vast regional network.
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034
Parthian-era walled city in the desert that twice withstood Roman sieges. Damaged by ISIS in 2015.
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035
Capital of the Hittite empire. Cuneiform tablets here recorded one of the earliest international peace treaties, with Ramesses II.
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036
Wealthier neighbour of Pompeii, buried in pyroclastic flow that carbonised wood, papyrus, and food. Some scrolls are still being read by particle accelerator.
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037
A Greek colony on Vis with a terraced city, harbour, walls, theatre, cemeteries, coins, and underwater finds across the protected bay.
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038
One of the best-preserved Roman provincial cities. The colonnaded Cardo still bears chariot ruts in its paving.
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039
A sixth-century Byzantine city at Caričin Grad with walls, churches, a palace, streets, baths, and a remarkably short urban life.
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040
Largest Bronze Age Minoan site. Heavily reconstructed by Arthur Evans in the early 1900s, sometimes with creative liberties.
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041
Olmec ceremonial centre. Source of the colossal stone heads, carved from basalt hauled 60 km from the Tuxtla Mountains.
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042
Walled political and ceremonial centre on Kosrae, built with prismatic basalt in compounds that housed rulers, elites, ritual areas, and tombs.
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043
Roman city under emperor Septimius Severus, who was born there. Spectacularly preserved, with security concerns limiting visitors.
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044
Inca royal estate on a 2,430-metre ridge, with terraces, residences, ritual spaces, and finely fitted stonework adapted to steep mountain terrain.
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045
Mesopotamian city-state whose palace archive contained 25,000 cuneiform tablets covering everything from diplomacy to recipes.
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046
Last great Maya capital before the conquest. A small El Castillo-like pyramid stands at its centre.
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047
Tell with 26 layers of occupation. Strategic crossroads where Thutmose III fought the first battle recorded in detail.
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048
Zapotec and Mixtec religious centre. Walls covered in geometric mosaics built without mortar, each piece pressure-fitted.
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049
Indus Valley city with grid streets, a covered drainage system, and the Great Bath. Its script remains undeciphered.
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050
Zapotec capital, levelled atop a flattened mountaintop. The Danzantes carvings depict mutilated captives.
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051
Late Bronze Age citadel with massive fortifications, royal shaft graves, palace remains, and the Lion Gate's monumental relief above its entrance.
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052
Ceremonial and political centre built across nearly one hundred artificial basalt islets off Pohnpei, linked by tidal channels and enclosed compounds.
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053
The principal centre of the Histri, later rebuilt as a Roman city above Istria's Budava Bay, with walls, graves, baths, and basilicas still visible.
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054
Assyrian capital under Ashurnasirpal II. Famously bulldozed and dynamited by ISIS in 2015; reconstruction efforts ongoing.
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055
Last capital of the Neo-Assyrian empire, sacked by a coalition. Its library contained the Epic of Gilgamesh.
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056
Royal Inca estate of Pachacuti, then last stronghold of Manco Inca's resistance. Six pink granite monoliths weighing 50 tonnes each remain unfinished on Temple Hill.
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057
Rome's port, abandoned as the coastline shifted. Three-storey apartment blocks (insulae) survive intact.
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058
Caravan oasis between Rome and Persia. Significant portions destroyed in 2015–2017; partial restoration is ongoing.
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059
Cyrus the Great's capital, including his austere limestone tomb. Visited and reportedly preserved by Alexander.
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060
Hellenistic royal capital built across a steep acropolis, with a theatre, palaces, sanctuaries, and a library celebrated by ancient writers.
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061
Ceremonial capital of Achaemenid Persia. Burned by Alexander's army in 330 BCE, accidentally, drunkenly, or strategically depending on the source.
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062
Nabataean rock-cut city in the desert. Lost to the West for over a thousand years until Burckhardt entered it in 1812.
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063
A Greek-founded city on the Taman Peninsula with an acropolis, public buildings, necropolises, underwater remains, and more than a thousand years of change.
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064
The Greek foundation beneath modern Stari Grad on Hvar, established by settlers from Paros and preserved in fragments under a continuously inhabited town.
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065
Inca settlement above the Sacred Valley, combining terraces, residential and ritual sectors, defensive positions, and an extensive cliffside cemetery.
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066
Sri Lanka's second medieval capital. The Gal Vihara houses four colossal Buddha images carved from a single granite face.
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067
Roman city sealed by Vesuvius. Casts of victims, made by pouring plaster into voids in the ash, are themselves now historical artefacts.
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068
Small Maya site holding the tallest free-standing stone monuments of the pre-Columbian Americas.
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069
Roman capital of Dalmatia. Birthplace of Diocletian and the largest Roman ruin field on the Croatian coast.
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070
The Roman city and fortress at the meeting of the Sava and Danube, with a legionary camp, streets, walls, baths, cemeteries, and layers beneath Belgrade.
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071
A Roman city on the Sava and imperial centre of the late empire, with a palace, circus, baths, villas, mosaics, and streets beneath Sremska Mitrovica.
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072
First capital of the Thai kingdom. The script developed here became the basis of modern Thai writing.
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073
A Greek-founded port at the mouth of the Don that connected the Bosporan world with peoples and trade routes of the northern Black Sea steppe.
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074
Crossroads of Persian, Greek, Mauryan, and Buddhist culture. Site of one of the earliest universities in the world.
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075
One of the largest cities in the ancient Americas, organised around the Avenue of the Dead, massive pyramids, and planned residential districts.
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076
A major Maya political centre whose temples, palaces, plazas, reservoirs, and homes extend across the rainforest of northern Guatemala.
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077
Roman colony founded under Trajan with a formal street grid, forum, theatre, baths, and later expansion beyond its original plan. Its surviving layout makes Roman urban planning unusually legible.
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078
Punic, Roman, and early-Christian coastal town that Albert Camus loved enough to write essays about.
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079
Pre-Inca capital on the Bolivian altiplano. The Gateway of the Sun is monolithic; the Akapana platform mound is the largest ever built in the region.
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080
Nine cities stacked on one hill. Heinrich Schliemann blasted through the lower layers in his hunt for Homeric Troy, destroying much of it.
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081
Walled Maya seaport on Caribbean cliffs. One of the last cities built and inhabited by the Maya.
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082
Bronze Age port whose archive of clay tablets revealed the Ugaritic alphabet, one of the earliest. Destroyed in the Late Bronze Age collapse.
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083
Sumerian city of the great ziggurat, traditionally linked to Abraham. Ziggurat partly restored under Saddam Hussein.
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084
One of the world's earliest large cities. Late fourth-millennium administrative tablets from Uruk preserve proto-cuneiform, among the earliest writing known.
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085
A Roman city and legionary camp near the Danube, with an amphitheatre, baths, streets, frescoed tombs, and one of the region's largest excavated necropolises.
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086
Roman provincial capital in modern Morocco. Stone was scavenged in the 18th century to build nearby Meknes.
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087
Zapotec and Mixtec hilltop city in the Oaxaca Valley. Includes the Patio of the Triple Tomb and a fortified upper acropolis.
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088
Maya city above an oxbow bend in the Usumacinta. Famous for its carved limestone lintels with hieroglyphic narratives.
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