Deep in the rainforest of southern Mexico, close to the border with Guatemala, lie the ruins of Calakmul, one of the two great superpowers of the Classic Maya world. Its

A short distance along the coast from Elmina stands another great white fortress, larger and in some ways even more terrible in its history: Cape Coast Castle, the headquarters of

In a dry valley a little inland from the Peruvian coast stand the eroded remains of what may be the oldest city in all the Americas. Caral, in the Supe

On a low headland overlooking the Gulf of Tunis lie the ruins of a city that once came close to ruling the western Mediterranean. This was Carthage, the great maritime

Some castles overwhelm you with size, and some seduce you with setting. Cesky Krumlov belongs firmly to the second kind. It does not sprawl across a mountain or crown a

On the desert coast of northern Peru sprawls Chan Chan, the largest city ever built of mud brick and the greatest metropolis of pre-Columbian South America outside the Inca realm.

On the flat limestone plain of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula rises the most famous of all Maya cities. At its centre stands a single perfect pyramid, El Castillo, a mountain of

Spread across the summit of a great hill above the plains of southern Rajasthan, covering an area so vast that a whole city once flourished within its walls, Chittorgarh is

In a lush green valley in the far west of Honduras, near the border with Guatemala, lie the ruins of a Maya city renowned above all for the beauty of

High on the slopes of Mount Parnassus in central Greece, overlooking a valley of olive groves, lie the ruins of Delphi, the most sacred site of the ancient Greek world.