Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka's entries run from a capital of a thousand years to a Dutch fort that held when the 2004 tsunami arrived. Anuradhapura was the Sinhalese seat for over a millennium and tends a fig tree planted in 288 BC — the oldest human-planted tree with a recorded date. Polonnaruwa's king ruled on the principle that no drop of rain should reach the sea unused. Galle's seventeenth-century ramparts saved the streets behind them.