Some cities spread out; Pergamon climbed. Rising in tier after dramatic tier up the flank of a steep hill in western Anatolia, the ancient capital stacked its temples, palaces, and

Near the Mediterranean coast of southern Turkey lie the extensive ruins of Perge, one of the great cities of ancient Pamphylia. With its distinctive round-towered gate, its long colonnaded streets,

On a great stone terrace in the highlands of southern Iran stand the ruins of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the mighty Persian Empire. Its soaring columns, monumental gateways and

There are ruins that whisper and ruins that still, after thousands of years, seem to speak with the full voice of empire. Persepolis belongs firmly to the second kind. Rising

On the banks of the river Neva in St Petersburg, its long green-and-white facade stretching in imperial splendour along the water and the great square before it, stands the palace

Hidden among the desert mountains of southern Jordan lies a city carved not from blocks of stone but into the living rock itself. Petra, the ancient capital of the Nabataeans,

Founded by Aegean settlers on the Black Sea, Phanagoria grew into a cosmopolitan Greek city where Hellenic culture met the Scythian and Sarmatian steppe.

On an island in the Nile near Aswan stands one of the most romantic of all Egyptian temples: Philae, the sanctuary of the goddess Isis. Rising straight from the water,

In the dry plains of north-central Sri Lanka lie the ruins of Polonnaruwa, the island’s second great ancient capital and one of its most beautiful archaeological sites. Compact, well-preserved and

On an August day in the year 79, or possibly a little later in the autumn, the mountain that had loomed peacefully over the Bay of Naples for as long