Curated playlist
Capitals of former countries
- Austin, TexasAustin, Texas was formally incorporated on the 27th of December 1839, named in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the man history remembers as the Father of Texas. The site had been known, briefly and unromantically, as Waterloo. A vice president…
- Richmond, VirginiaRichmond, Virginia sits at the James River's fall line, a geographic fact that has shaped nearly everything about it. The point where the river's rapids meet tidal water made this place a natural crossroads for boats, then railroads, then…
- GdańskAt 04:45 in the morning on the 1st of September 1939, the first shots of World War II were fired on a Polish military depot at Westerplatte, in a city the world then knew as Danzig. That city is Gdańsk, on the Baltic coast of northern…
- FlorenceFlorence holds the greatest concentration of art in proportion to its size anywhere in the world, and some visitors react to it physically. Encountering the city's repositories of painting and sculpture, a few are said to experience…
- MunichMunich draws over six million visitors to a single festival every autumn, when Oktoberfest spreads across 85 acres of a meadow called Theresienwiese. The beer poured there comes from just six breweries, and the whole tradition traces back…
- TurinTurin sits at the foot of the Alps, on the western bank of the River Po, and it has been the stage for more of Italian history than almost any other city. It was the first capital of the Kingdom of Italy. Before that, it was the capital of…
- YorkYork sits at the meeting point of two rivers, the Ouse and the Foss, in North Yorkshire, and its story stretches back nearly ten thousand years. Mesolithic people settled in this region between 8000 and 7000 BC, making it one of the oldest…
- Córdoba, SpainCórdoba, Spain sits in the Guadalquivir Valley under some of the most punishing summer heat in all of Europe, where average highs reach 37 degrees Celsius in July and August and days above 40 degrees are simply ordinary. But the heat is…
- RijekaRijeka sits at the edge of the Adriatic, where the mountains drop so steeply to the coast that the city has nowhere to grow but along the shore. Its name means simply "river" in Croatian, and every language that has ever held power there…
- HoustonHouston was founded by land investors on the 30th of August 1836, at the spot where Buffalo Bayou meets White Oak Bayou. That point is now called Allen's Landing. The Allen brothers, Augustus Chapman and John Kirby, ran their first…
- VeniceVenice sits on 126 islands in a shallow lagoon wedged between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers in northeastern Italy. Those islands are laced together by 472 bridges, and the city has no roads in its historic heart - only water…
- East BerlinEast Berlin sat behind a wall for nearly three decades, a city split in two by concrete, wire, and the weight of competing ideologies. On the 13th of August 1961, East German authorities began sealing off West Berlin from the east, and…
- KrakówKraków sits on the Vistula River in southern Poland, and for roughly six centuries it was the royal capital of a kingdom, the seat of an empire, the target of conquerors, and the cradle of some of the oldest institutions in Europe. With a…
- GenoaGenoa sits wedged between the Ligurian Sea and the Apennine Mountains, a city that Petrarch once called la Superba, "the superb one," for its glories on the water and its astonishing buildings rising from the shore. For more than seven…
- LiègeLiège sits where two rivers meet. The Meuse and the Ourthe converge in the valley that has shaped this Belgian city's character for more than fifteen centuries. Call it "la cité ardente" - the fervent city - and you have captured something…
- RavennaRavenna sits in the flatlands of northern Italy, an inland city that was once washed by the Adriatic Sea, and it has been the capital of more empires than almost any city in Europe. It served as the seat of the Western Roman Empire in its…
- DubrovnikDubrovnik sits at the southern tip of Croatia's Dalmatia coast, its limestone walls rising straight from the Adriatic Sea. In 1564, a poet named Ivan Vidalić wrote a letter to his fellow writer Nikola Nalješković and called the city "crown…
- ValenciaValencia stands on the banks of the Turia River, where Roman soldiers planted a colony in 138 BC and gave it a name meaning "strength" or "valour." More than two thousand years later, that colony has grown into Spain's third-largest city,…
- RegensburgRegensburg is a city in eastern Bavaria, where the Danube reaches its northernmost bend and takes in the rivers Naab and Regen. English speakers once called it Ratisbon. More than 150,000 people live there today, making it the…
- IstanbulIstanbul is the only city in the world that stands on two continents, with about two-thirds of its more than 15 million people living in Europe and the rest in Asia. The Bosphorus splits it down the middle. That strait is one of the…
- ConstantinopleConstantinople stood at the crossing point of two continents and two seas, a city so singular that it was known simply as "the City" to everyone who lived within or near its walls. Perched on a peninsula at the southeastern tip of Thrace,…