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

In the year 79 AD, the Roman town of Pompeii vanished in a single day, buried under metres of ash and pumice when the volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted. That catastrophe,

On the plains of central Java, not far from the great Buddhist monument of Borobudur, rises a cluster of tall, sharply pointed towers of dark stone. This is Prambanan, the

Before the pyramids of Giza rose, the story of monumental stone architecture began a little to the south, at Saqqara, the sprawling desert cemetery of Egypt’s first capital, Memphis. Here

Rising almost two hundred metres straight out of the green plains of central Sri Lanka is a sheer column of rock crowned with ancient ruins. This is Sigiriya, the Lion

Come over a rise in the road in the Spiš region of eastern Slovakia and the sight stops you cold: an immense sprawl of pale stone walls and towers riding

Northeast of modern Mexico City, in a high mountain valley, lie the ruins of one of the greatest cities the ancient world ever produced. At its height around the middle

Above the noise and sprawl of modern Athens rises a flat-topped rock crowned with white marble columns. This is the Acropolis, the sacred citadel of the ancient city, and the

Snaking for thousands of kilometres across the mountains, deserts and grasslands of northern China is the greatest fortification ever built by human hands: the Great Wall of China. Raised and