century later, Roman Carthage rose to become a premier metropolis of the Roman Empire in Africa, and it remained a critical cultural and economic prize through the Byzantine … place whose dramatic rise, fall, and reinvention have fueled centuries of philosophical and artistic reflection on the fragile nature of human empires

High on a walled platform in the plains of Marvdasht, encircled by the southern Zagros Mountains, the kings of the Achaemenid Empire raised a grand ceremonial complex that defied the typical definition of a city. Establi

To understand the history of power in the medieval world, one must look to the tip of the Thracian peninsula, where a single city commanded the watery threshold between Europe and Asia. Founded in 324 by Constantine the

High in the Andean altiplano of western Bolivia, near the shores of Lake Titicaca, lie the megalithic blocks and monumental structures of an ancient city that once considered itself the literal midpoint of existence. Lon

To understand the vast, shifting networks of the Silk Road is to understand Samarkand. Emerging in the seventh or eighth century BCE in what is now southeastern Uzbekistan, this ancient oasis prospered at the natural cro

Centuries before it bore its current name, the Romanian port of Constanța was known to the Greek world as Tomis, a colony anchored to a high-cliffed peninsula on the edge of the Black Sea. Founded around 600 BCE, this co

To understand the ancient Mediterranean is to understand the city that rose from the western edge of the Nile River Delta, near an Egyptian settlement named Rhacotis. Founded in 331 BCE by Alexander the Great, Alexandria

Carved directly into the rose-colored sandstone cliffs of southern Jordan, the ancient city of Raqmu—known to the Greek world as Petra—began as a fortress of geography. Long before it became a legendary trading hub, the

Before it was ever called the City of the Prophet, the oasis in the Hejaz highlands of western Saudi Arabia was known as Yathrib. Its history stretches back to at least 900 BCE, long before the migration of Muhammad from