Choquequirao, Machu Picchu’s remote sister site, hides llama-shaped terraces and ruins that only a demanding two-day trek can reach.

Not every palace is a seat of kings. Some of the most consequential places in a nation’s history are the homes where power was quietly gathered before it stepped into

In the deserts of southern Iraq rise the ruins of Ur, one of the oldest cities in the world and a great capital of the Sumerians, the people who invented

On the shore of the most famous stretch of water in Scotland, perhaps in the world, stand the broken walls of Urquhart Castle. Below them lie the deep, dark, cold

In the land between the Tigris and Euphrates, the Sumerians built the world’s first true cities and invented writing around 5,000 years ago. This is where history itself begins — inside Uruk.

In the deserts of southern Iraq lie the ruins of Uruk, which has a strong claim to be the first true city in human history. Around five thousand years ago

Uxmal rose in Yucatan’s dry Puuc hills, where Maya builders raised mosaic palaces and a rounded pyramid despite having no permanent water source.

On a long, steep-sided ridge of rock rising from the plain beside the shimmering waters of Lake Van, in the far east of Turkey, stand the ruins of one of

On a nine-metre mound by the Danube, the Vinča culture built fine pottery, thousands of figurines, Europe’s first copper, and mysterious signs some believe are the continent’s earliest script.

In the green hills of northern Morocco, not far from the imperial city of Meknes, stand the ruins of Volubilis, the finest Roman site in the country and one of