Curated category
Megacities
- LahoreLahore is a city that has been conquered, sacked, and rebuilt more times than almost any other on the subcontinent. Its origin reaches back into antiquity…
- São PauloSão Paulo answers to a Latin motto: Non ducor, duco, which translates as "I am not led, I lead." The phrase fits a city that grew from a hilltop mission of…
- BangkokBangkok carries a ceremonial name so long it holds a Guinness World Records entry as the world's longest place name, at 168 letters.
- LagosLagos sits at the southwest mouth of Lagos Lagoon, protected from the Atlantic Ocean by barrier islands and long sand spits that stretch up to 100 km east…
- SeoulSeoul is the only city in South Korea allowed to carry the title special metropolitan city. That status was not inherited. It was declared in a charter the U.
- JakartaGreater Jakarta holds more than 40 million people, making it the most populous urban area in the world. Yet the ground beneath it is dropping.
- Mexico CityMexico City sits at an altitude of 2,240 meters, more than 7,350 feet above the sea, on the high Mexican Central Plateau.
- CairoCairo is titled "the city of a thousand minarets," a name earned by its sheer density of Islamic architecture. More than 9.8 million people live within the…
- Rio de JaneiroRio de Janeiro sits at the entrance to Guanabara Bay, where the shoreline bends east to west near the Tropic of Capricorn, and the city faces largely south…
- BeijingBeijing, once romanized as Peking, holds more than 22 million residents, making it the world's most populous national capital.
- MoscowMoscow holds the second-highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, tied with Hong Kong. It stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, the…
- LondonLondon stands on the River Thames at the head of a tidal estuary that runs 50 miles down to the North Sea. It has been a major settlement for nearly 2,000…
- MumbaiMumbai has more billionaires than any other city in Asia. Seven islands once sat here, home to Marathi-speaking Koli fishermen who prayed to a goddess named…
- ParisParis holds 2.04 million people in just 105.4 square kilometres of land. Around that core, a metropolitan population of 13.2 million spreads across the Seine…
- TokyoTokyo holds more than 14 million people inside its city proper, and when you widen the lens to its Greater Area, the number swells to 33 million.
- 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…
- DelhiDelhi loses control of nothing more often than its own name. One legend traces it to Dhillu, a king who built a city here in 50 BCE and called it after…
- New York CityAn estimated 800 languages are spoken in New York City, more than in any other city on earth. That single fact captures something about the place at the…
- ChongqingChongqing is the only inland city among China's four direct-administered municipalities, and it carries a name that means a double celebration.
- Los AngelesLos Angeles spreads across roughly 469 square miles of land between the Pacific Ocean and the San Gabriel Mountains, and inside that footprint live an…