Ancient Cities
Walk through gates, royal terraces and temple avenues. Read what remains of the places where people once gathered.
01 · Iraq · c. 575 BC
Babylon
In 1902, the men digging into a mound near Hillah did not know what they were looking at: pieces of glazed brick the size of a palm, broken at every edge, the blue on them still bright. Robert Koldewey, the German architect running the dig, decided they belonged to a wall, and that the rest of that wall had to be somewhere in the ground.
Read the story02 · Iran · c. 518 BC
Persepolis
Picture a banquet that goes badly wrong. Cedar ceilings, gold fittings, a lot of wine, and at the head of the table a twenty-six-year-old Macedonian who has just conquered the largest empire on earth. Some ancient writers say an Athenian woman named Thais proposed setting fire to the palace and that Alexander grabbed a torch and led the way himself.
Read the story03 · Mexico · c. 100 BC
Teotihuacan
In 2003 a heavy rainstorm opened a hole in the ground in front of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. The hole dropped into a tunnel that ran about a hundred metres under the temple, eighteen metres below the surface, and had been deliberately sealed shut some eighteen centuries earlier.
Read the story04 · Cambodia · c. 1122
Angkor Wat
Almost every temple the Khmer ever built faces east, towards the sunrise. Angkor Wat faces west.
Read the story05 · Libya
Leptis Magna
Find a place on the theatre steps and look through the columns towards the sea. Even without a performance, the building gives your body instructions: sit here, face that way, leave through the passage at the side. Ruins do not always communicate so directly.
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