On the coast of Libya, half-buried for centuries beneath drifting sand, lie the ruins of Leptis Magna, one of the most magnificent Roman cities anywhere in the world. Its arches,

On the limestone cliffs above the Yi River in central China, tens of thousands of Buddhas gaze out from the rock. The Longmen Grottoes are one of the greatest treasuries

High on a narrow ridge between two Andean peaks, wrapped in cloud and ringed by plunging green gorges, stands the most famous ruin in the Americas. Machu Picchu, built by

Prepare to have your sense of scale recalibrated. Malbork, on the flat plain of northern Poland, is the largest castle in the world measured by land area, and the largest

Where the Limpopo and Shashe rivers meet, at the point where South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe now converge, a flat-topped sandstone hill rises above the surrounding bush. Eight centuries ago

High above the shore of the Dead Sea, on an isolated plateau of rock ringed by sheer cliffs, stand the ruins of Masada. Once a lavish desert fortress of King

In the deserts of Sudan, along the banks of the Nile far south of Egypt, rise scores of steep, narrow pyramids, the burial places of the kings and queens of

On the banks of the Indus River in southern Pakistan lie the ruins of one of the world’s first great cities. Built nearly five thousand years ago, Mohenjo-daro was a

Above the city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, on a mountain ridge that was artificially levelled to make room for it, spreads the ancient capital of the Zapotec people. Monte

On a lonely mountain summit in southeastern Turkey, more than two thousand metres up, a row of colossal stone heads gazes out over the surrounding peaks. These giant faces, toppled