City walls: Did you mean...?

La Rochelle emerged early in the French Reformation as a Protestant political and military center. The city's fortifications withstood repeated sieges over the years. In 1627, La Rochelle was...

Albania is located at the crossroads of the eastern Adriatic and was known as Illyria and Epirus throughout the Classical era. It played a strategic role in ancient times and was a point of contact between Illyrian...

Dur-Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad, Iraq) was a city built by Sargon II of Assyria (r. 722-705 BCE) as his new capital between 717-706 BCE. The name means Fortress of Sargon and the building project became the king's near obsession...

The Byzantine Empire existed from 330 to 1453. It is often called the Eastern Roman Empire or simply Byzantium. The Byzantine capital was founded at Constantinople by Constantine I (r. 306-337). The Byzantine Empire varied in...

Persepolis was the capital of the Persian Achaemenid Empire from the reign of Darius I (the Great, r. 522-486 BCE) until its destruction in 330 BCE. Its name comes from the Greek Perses-polis (Persian City), but the Persians knew...

In 1204 CE the unthinkable happened and Constantinople, after nine centuries of withstanding all comers, was brutally sacked. Even more startling was the fact that the perpetrators were not any of the traditional...

Agrigento (Greek: Akragas, Latin: Agrigentum) was a Greek-founded city-state located on the south coast of Sicily near the river Akragas (now S. Biagio) just 5 km from the sea. At its peak, the city may have had as many as 300,000...

Sabratha was an ancient port city on the coast of North Africa (in modern-day Libya). The site was originally inhabited by the indigenous Berber Zwagha tribe in the 8th century BCE (according to the 11th-century CE historian al-Bakari...

A detail of the roof of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, part of the Temple of Heaven in the Forbidden City, Beijing. The temple and the Forbidden City were first built in the reign of Yongle Emperor of the Ming...

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, part of the Temple of Heaven in the Forbidden City, Beijing. The temple and the Forbidden City were first built in the reign of Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty...