Ancient Cities
In these cities the ancient world is not an excavation but an address: people still live, trade and pray where they have for three thousand years. Walk them slowly — antiquity here is a neighbour, not an exhibit.
An ancient city is not a city with ruins in it. It is a place where antiquity is still load-bearing — physically, legally or in the working day.
Continuity, not age. The test is whether the old fabric is in use. Nîmes's Roman arena has never stopped working: fortress, then a village of two thousand living inside it, now twenty thousand seats for concerts. Mérida's theatre has staged a drama festival every summer since 1933. A site that is only visited is a ruin; a site that is used belongs here.
The layers are visible. Plovdiv's Roman stadium runs beneath the main shopping street, exposed under glass and still under the shops. Tarragona's circus emerges in the basements of houses. Damascus's Umayyad Mosque was a Roman temple and then a church, and the Greek inscription remains above a doorway.
What is dated, and how. These portraits give the century and the evidence, and say plainly where scholars disagree — the deforestation of Rapa Nui, the purpose of the Maiden Tower, the population of Babylon.
Excavation is unfinished. Half of most of these places is still under the modern city and will stay there.
Look down, and read the levels.