Curated category
Holy cities
- MeccaAround 19.3 million international visitors arrived at a single city in 2024, making it one of the five most visited places on Earth.
- CanterburyCanterbury receives a million visitors a year at its cathedral alone, yet the city itself is home to just over 55,000 people.
- EphesusEphesus once held a building so vast that the ancient writer Pausanias called it the largest structure in the world. That building was the Temple of Artemis…
- Acre, IsraelThe earliest discovered settlement at Acre dates to around 3000 BC during the Early Bronze Age. This initial community appears to have been abandoned after a…
- LuoyangLuoyang sits where the Luo River meets the Yellow River, in the west of Henan province, China. Its name carries a small lesson in geography.
- Vatican CityVatican City sits on a marshy patch of ground that the ancient Romans considered cursed. Long before popes built their palaces here, the area was known as…
- AntiochAntioch was founded on the 22nd of May 300 BC, according to the chronicler John Malalas, at the moment Seleucus I Nicator performed a sacrifice to Zeus on a…
- Salt Lake CitySalt Lake City sits at 4,327 feet above sea level, ringed by mountains that rise more than two miles higher still. Twin Peaks, to the southeast in the…
- AlexandriaAlexandria sits at the western edge of the Nile River Delta, stretching about 40 km along Egypt's northern coast. In April 331 BC, Alexander the Great chose…
- JerusalemJerusalem sits on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains, about 60 kilometres east of the Mediterranean and 35 kilometres west of the Dead Sea.
- 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…
- 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…
- Vladimir, RussiaThe year 990 stands as the official founding date of Vladimir, Russia. Local historians and city administration support this claim through reinterpreted…
- KyivKyiv has stood on the banks of the Dnieper River for at least fifteen centuries, and during that time it has been sacked, burned, rebuilt, conquered, and…
- RomeRome is the only city on earth that contains another sovereign nation entirely within its borders. Vatican City, the smallest country in the world, sits…