ancient towns
Historic urban ruins
Ancient towns are settlements of significant historical age, typically dating back centuries or millennia, that retain evidence of their long habitation through architecture, ruins, or continuous occupation.
The term appears frequently in travel writing, archaeology, and historical contexts to distinguish places with deep roots from more recently established communities.
We wandered through the ancient towns of Tuscany.
What qualifies as ancient varies by region—a few hundred years in the Americas, several thousand in the Middle East or Asia.
- JerichoAncient walled Palestinian city
- BabylonAncient Mesopotamian capital
- PompeiiVolcano-buried Roman city
- heritage sitesOfficially protected cultural locations
- AthensGreece's capital city
traditional architecture · Persepolis · archaeological sites · lost civilizations · agora · market square · Roman provinces · trade routes · historical monuments · Ur · clay tablets · citadel · walled city · Thebes · Petra · Carthage · Machu Picchu · Angkor Wat
- ChinaBeijing, Shanghai, Great Wall, Yellow River, Chinese calligraphy
- Black SeaBlack Sea, Bosporus, Bosphorus, Dardanelles, Crimea
- Yangtze RiverYangtze, Yangtze River, Three Gorges, Three Gorges Dam, gorges
- Three GorgesThree Gorges Dam, Yangtze River, limestone cliffs, cliffs, rapids
ancient townsmegacities
Enormous urban agglomerations
global cities · metropolitan areas · megalopolises · concrete jungles · industrial cities