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.

Rising beside the Nile in southern Egypt, the Temple of Hathor at Dendera is one of the best-preserved and most beautiful temple complexes in the whole country. Dedicated to Hathor,

In the heart of Mali, on the flood plains of the Niger River, stands the largest building in the world made entirely of mud. The Great Mosque of Djenne, with

In the vast emptiness of the South Pacific, thousands of kilometres from any other inhabited land, lies one of the most extraordinary places on earth. Easter Island, known to its

Along a basalt cliff in western India stretches one of the most astonishing achievements of human labour and faith: the Ellora caves. Cut into the living rock over several centuries,

On the Aegean coast of Turkey lie the ruins of Ephesus, one of the greatest cities of the ancient world and the finest surviving classical city in the eastern Mediterranean.

In the green hills of the northeastern Peloponnese lies Epidaurus, home to the most perfect and best-preserved theatre of the ancient Greek world. Its acoustics are so extraordinary that a

On the banks of the Niger river in eastern Mali, where the great waterway bends closest to the Sahara, stands a strange and striking monument: a stepped pyramid of mud,

On a hilltop in southeastern Turkey stands a monument that has rewritten the story of human civilisation. Gobekli Tepe is the oldest known temple in the world, built around eleven