Discovery Routes

Gathering places, passage tombs and early cities. Four different answers to the urge to build something that lasts.

Here, making space meant removing stone. Follow the facades, chambers and sanctuaries cut into the landscape.

Walk through gates, royal terraces and temple avenues. Read what remains of the places where people once gathered.

Beyond the palace gate lay courtyards, gardens and rooms few could enter. Explore four places where power shaped everyday life.

A gate could welcome a traveller or hold back an army. Follow towers, ramparts and the boundaries people built to protect their worlds.

A dome, a vault, a terrace open to the sky. Four places show how different traditions gave belief a physical form.

Similar silhouettes, different worlds. From Giza and Meroe to the cities of Mesoamerica, explore the tombs and temples that rose towards the sky.

Follow the squares, trading cities and desert streets of Central Asia and Iran. Goods were not the only things travelling these roads; ideas moved with them.

Look out from a tower, a port or a city wall. From the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic and Caribbean, trace the meeting of trade, power and the sea.