Ancient city of Cyrene in Libya

The region known as Cyrenaica (and in Roman times also as the Pentapolis) comprised an important group of cities: notably Cyrene, Apollonia, Euesperides/Berenice, Barke, Ptolemais and Taucheira. It was successively a center for Greek colonization in Libya, a kingdom based around the power and wealth of Cyrene, a satellite of the Hellenistic kingdom in Egypt, and a Roman province for long governed jointly with Crete.

Cyrene was important Greek city in the North of Arica lying between Alexandria and Carthage. It was founded by Battus who led a colony form the Island of Thera, and he and his descendants rule over the city of 8 generations.

The founding of Cyrene by Thera is recorded at length by Herodotus. A pilgrimage to the oracle at Delphi resulted in the advice to found a new city in Libya. The advice was ignored for seven years during which time, according to Herodotus, “not a drop of rain fell in Thera.” The drought had worsened and the people were in great distress. A committee was appointed to go to the oracle, again. The priestess repeated the same message, that they must found a colony in Libya for their fortunes to mend.

The Greek conscripts sailed to the coast of North Africa, where they were eventually led to a place where “the sky leaked through a hole in the heavens.” It rained often – glorious to the Therans. They established their new city-state, Cyrene, on the fertile highland ground in 631 BC.

Son of Ptolemy VIII, Euergetes II (Physcin) (d, 116 BC), by a concubine he became ruler of Cyrene before the end of the second century. And when he died in 96 BC, he bequeathed his kingdom to Rome. Cyrene became subject to the Egyptian Ptolemies and was eventually formed with the Island of Crete, into a Roman province.
Ancient city of Cyrene in Libya

Tripoli, Libya

The city also known as Tripoli-of-the-West. At the heart of Tripolitania (the northwestern part of the country) was its metropolis, Tripoli, for centuries a terminal for caravans plying the Saharan trade routes and a port sheltering pirates and slave traders. Tripolitania's cultural ties were with the Maghrib (Maghreb), of which it was a part geographically and culturally and with which it shared a common history.

Libya’s earliest inhabitants were the semi-nomadic Berbers, whose descendants still live throughout North Africa’s Atlas Mountains. Phoenician merchants from the Levant began to settle in what is today Libya from around 1000 BC

The Phoenicians founded Tripoli in the 8th century BC. It originally comprised three neighborhoods situated in the current location of Al Mina. It was the center of a Phoenician confederation with Sidon and Tyre and Arados Island, hence the name "Tripolis", meaning "triple city". This city enjoyed the highest repute amongst the cities of Phoenicia for there, as it happens, the Phoenicians held their common council and deliberated on matters of supreme importance.

Roman settlements appeared in Libya in the third century BC. Later Rome triumphed over Carthage and destroyed the city in 149 B.C. The Phoenician Tripolis: Oya, Sparta, and Leptis-Magna, close to the modern Tripoli, became a Roman city.

The Arabs arrived in Libya much before Islam, from Yemen and settled around the water recourses of the mountains. In 10th Century AD the Fatimid Caliph, Al-Muiz, conquered the city. It became an independent province encompassing Lattakia (Syria), experiencing a commercial and cultural boom that rendered it a significant center of Shiia.

In 1109 Tripoli was conquered by Raymond de Saint Gilles, Count of Toulouse. It became the capital of Tripoli County, one of the main Crusader states, and remained under domination by the Franks for almost two centuries under the name “Triple”.

In 1289 the Mamluks conquered the Crusader city that was situated on the peninsula, razed it to the ground but keeping the St. Gilles Citadel and the Cathedral, today known as “Taynal Mosque”, and rebuilt a new city two kilometers to the east at the foot of the citadel and straddling the Abu Ali river. During this period, Tripoli witnessed a substantial growth in its economic and political power.
Tripoli, Libya

Ancient city of Hippo Regius (Annaba)

There are several other Phoenician settlements on the northern coast of Africa. Hippo Regius was founded by the Phoenicians in the 12th century BC.

Hippo Regius is an ancient port on the coast of North Africa, located near the modern town of Annaba (formerly Bône) in Algeria. Because of its strategic position, it was soon a regular trading post. The city is in Numidia, but was incorporated into Africa Proconsularis by Augustus.

In AD 430, the Vandals advanced eastwards along the North African coast and laid siege to the walled city of Hippo Regius. The city fell to the Vandals and King Geiseric made it the first capital of the Vandal Kingdom until the capture of Carthage in 439.

It was later conquered by the Eastern Roman Empire in 534. Under Roman control it was first made a municipium (a community that exercised partial rights of Roman citizenship) and later a colonia (Roman settlement with full rights of citizenship).

Christianity appears to have been brought to Hippo from Italy and from the East. The Christian quarter was in the port area, within the pre-Roman settlement on the outskirts of the Roman city and its forum. Its first known bishop bore a Greek name; Augustine's immediate predecessor, Valerius, still spoke Greek and had difficulty with Latin.

It was kept under Roman rule until 698, when it fell to the Muslims; the Arabs rebuilt the town in the eighth century.

Ancient city of Hippo Regius (Annaba)

Ancient city of Palmyra

Palmyra, the name given by the Geeks to a great and splendid city of Upper Syria. Its original Hebrew name was Tadmor, which, like the Greek word means ‘city of palms’.

According to the writers of Book of Palmyra Kings and Chronicles, the city was built by Solomon in the 10th century BC.

The city had long been a vital caravan city for travellers crossing the Syrian Desert and was known as the ‘Bride of the Desert’.

It soon became an important emporium of commerce and must have been a splendid place when it was sacked by Nebuchadnezzar 600 BC, together with Jerusalem and Tyre.

The first author of antiquity who mentions Palmyra is Piny the Elder. Afterwards it was mentioned by Appian, in connection oath a design of Mark Anthony to let his cavalry plunder it.

The Seleucids took control of Syria in BC, and Palmyra was left to itself and became an independent state. In the first century AD, Palmyra was already an important trade centre. There is early testimony of trade with Seleucia on the Tigris from 19 AD.

After the end of the Nabataean kingdom in 106 AD, Palmyra became Rome’s most important resupply base for the Eastern trade with Parthia and India.

In the second century AD, it seems to have been beautified by the emperor Hadrian. In the beginning of the third century AD, it became a Roman colony under Caracalla (211 - 217 AD) and received the jus Italicum.
Ancient city of Palmyra

Ancient city of Ephesus

Ephesus, which became the greatest city of Asia Minor, was a center of Hellenism for over 2000 years. It was founded by Androclus, son of the king of Athens, around 1050 BC.

From around 1000 to 550 BC the city of Ephesus was located at the northern based of Mt. Pion, near the place where the Cayster River met the Aegean Sea; from 550 BC, it was situated near the Artemisium.  Ephesus was one of the Greek world’s foremost cities during the Ionian heyday of the 600s and 500s BC.

Croesus of Lydia conquered the city in 560 BC, and moved its inhabitants to a new site near the new temple of Artemis, which he adorned with elaborate columns.

In the third century BC Ephesus was in turn under the Seleucids and the Ptolemies of Egypt.  After the defeat of Antiochus III, the city was made subject to the rule of Eumenes II in 188, and seems to have flourished under Pergamene rule.

Ephesus can under the control of Rome after Attalos III of Pergamum bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans in 133 BC, although Ephesus was granted its freedom by Rome. Ephesus reached its height under the Roman Empire, when it was the residence of the proconsul of Asia and set of the imperial cult.

The town was finally destroyed in civil wars in the early 15th century. In the Ottoman period only a few Greek Christians remained in a declining town that suffered from malaria and nomadism.
Ancient city of Ephesus

Ancient city of Tyre

The eldest Tyre, which is ancient times bore the name of Sor, and also called the daughter of Sidon, was situated on the mainland at the seashore, 80 km south of Beirut.

Tyre was built by the Sidonians and became the rival of Sidon, as well as the chief city of Phoenician. According to Herodotus Tyre was founded around 2700 BC. Titus Flavius Josephus says that Tyre was founded 240 years before the building of Solomon’s temple.

Tyre was enormously powerful, proud and rich, receiving the trade and tribute of many lesser cities. The wealth Tyre came by trading with the Mediterranean nations,

It was founded on the mainland, but after its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC until 573 BC, King of Babylon, second city was built on small rocky island, half a mile from the shore, but the latter never attained the importance of the first Tyre.

Alexander the Great in 331 BC took Tyre after a siege of eight months. Tyre recovered from its second capture, attained once more considerable distinction and was made a free city by the Romans.

In 218 BC, the city was taken possession of by Antiochus the Great. It next became subject to the Seleucid, and was sold to a Roman named Marion, whose wealth was so great that he was enabled to purchase the whole principality.

Under the Romans, Tyre was a large and strong city, with safe and capacious harbor and a flourishing trade.
Ancient city of Tyre

Ancient Corinth

Located in the narrow isthmus that connects southern and central Greece, Corinth prospered in large part because of its geography.

Its twin ports, one on the Aegean Sea and one on the Ionian side enabled it to trade throughout the Mediterranean.

The area of ancient Corinth was occupied continuously from the Late Neolithic period through the Bronze and Iron Ages.

Ancient Corinth was an independent city-state governed by a constitution based on oligarchy, which flourished during the time of overthrow of the tyrants.

The city’s peak of prosperity came in the 600s and early 500s BC when its international shipping network came to dwarf those of other mainland Greek cities.

Although it lost this preeminence to Athens in the fifth century BC, Corinth remained a center for commerce and luxury throughout ancient history.

After the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, and following the defeat of Athens and Thebes, Corinth was chosen by Philip II of Macedon as the locale for the great conference he called to decide the future relationship between the Greek cities and himself; the result is popularly known as the league of Corinth.

Corinth flourished under Macedon rule, but it was sacked by the Roman consul Mummius in 146 BC for rebelling against Roman rule. Mummius sold its inhabitants into slavery as an example to other Greek cities of how Rome would response to opposition of its hegemony in Achaea.

In 44 BC Julius Caesar began rebuilding the city and it again became a prosperous port.

By the 2nd century AD, Corinth was much larger and more powerful than Athens, but during the next hundred years a series of barbarian invasion and attacks undermined the city’s prosperity.
Ancient Corinth

City of Strasbourg under Roman Empire

Strasbourg had been founded as Argentinensis or Argentina and Argentotratum, a Roman camp that protected important trade routes along the Upper Rhine Valley.

There are signs of permanent habitation in the area of Strasbourg dating back to the Stone Age. The Celts, who had settled there prior to the Roman occupation, built dams and walls to counter the floods of the Rhine.

In the 12 BC, the Romans conquered the area and turned the settlement into one of fifty cities built by the Roman general Claudius Drusus, to guard  the empire’s easternmost frontier in Europe. Under the Roman Empire, Strasbourg – then called Argentorate – formed part of a zone of contact along the Rhine that attracted both Romans and a diverse mix of non-Romans.

Strasbourg’s post-Roman development as Startiburgum, ‘the fortress of the roads’ began to take form in Carolingian times, as the site of the well-known Oaths of Strasbourg in 842.

During the late Middle Ages, the burghers of Strasbourg asserted their independence from princes and bishops, even as the city remained part of the Holy Roman Empire. On November 18, 1262, Richard of Cornwall King of Germany confirmed the privileges of Strasbourg as a self-governing imperial city to the Holy Roman Empire.

In the 16th century Strasbourg was a prominent German speaking city in the Roman Empire and the see of a Roman bishop.

Strasbourg’s Protestant status was amended in 1681 when it was annexed by Louis XIV. The transition was bloodless, the culmination of a period of French expansion throughout Alsace.
City of Strasbourg under Roman Empire

Ancient city of Cumae in Italy

Cumae, perhaps the most ancient Greek settlement on mainland Italy is located just north of the Bay of Naples, 10 miles west of modern-day Italy.

Cumae was one of the earliest datable Greek colonies, established by Euboean Greeks who moved ashore from their nearby island holding of Pithecusae around 750 BC.

In 730/725 the trading station at Cumae achieved the status of a Greek colony and city, and became independent.

The city reached the height of its powers in the fifth century BC when the tyrant Aristodemus defeated the Etruscans, a people who had settled farther north on the Italic peninsula.

Cumae thrived, supplying the Etruscans with Corinthian painted pottery, Euboean bronze, and other wares.

In 524 BC, Cumae repulsed an attack launched by a coalition of Etruscans, Umbrian and Dauni. The invading army was motivated by greed, around by the city’s prosperity.
In 421 BC, the city fell to another Italian people, the Samnite, and later passed to the Romans.

Under the Roman Empire Cumae was noted for a manufacture of a particular kind of red earthenware. Its territory also produced excellent flax, which was especially adapted for the manufacturing of nets.
Ancient city of Cumae in Italy 

Ancient city of Hierapolis

Hierapolis was built as a Greek colony at the end of third and beginning of the second century BC over a pre-existing settlement on top- of the summit travertine plateau. It was founded by the king of Pergamon Eumenes II.

It is also believed that the name Hierapolis may derive from Hiera, who was the wife of a legendary ancestor of the kings of Pergamon. However there is also a suggestion that the name of Hierapolis which means Holy City, was chosen for the many temples throughout the city.

Hierapolis passed to the Romans as provided for in the testament of Attalus III.

The city was anciently celebrated as the Bath of Asia and its warm medicinal springs raised it to wealth and distinction.

Religion appears to have flourished greatly at Hierapolis in the early periods of the Christian history.

In 17 AD, a terrible earthquake razed it to the ground but reconstruction soon began under Tiberius.

The town had to be entirely rebuilt after the earthquake of AD 60 and was abandoned after the 1354 event, the two strongest historical shocks.

Hierapolis was renowned in the ancient world as a city filled with temples dedicated to a variety of gods, both central figures within the pantheon as well as local deities.
Ancient city of Hierapolis

Ancient city of Rome

The city of Rome grew up gradually on seven hills lying by the Tiber river, about fourteen miles from its mouth.

Rome was founded on 753 BC by Latin to guard the river against the Etruscans, of whom they were afraid. This new town appears from the Legend of Romulus and Remus. It was called Rome after Romulus name at that time 18 years of age and he was its first king.

The walls were built and the city ready, but mean were wanting to people it. To supply this, Romulus set apart a palace within the walls as a sanctuary or refuge for those who had shed blood , for slaves who had run away from their masters and the like.

Hence the city of Romulus was called by the Greek name of the Asylum. The male population soon began to increase rapidly and from such an heterogeneous assembly it was that Romulus made his first attempt at the formation of a body politics.

During 753 BC, Rome was at first almost square, containing about a thousand houses. It was near a mile in compass, and commanded a small territory around it of about eight miles over.

It was favorites delusion among the Romans that they were descended from the gods. It soon became of importance trade, as well as for keeping off the Etruscans.

Rome had to secure it existence by force of arms, and it crushed one after another, every one of its neighbor that can it contact with, until towards the end of the fifth century after its birth, it had subdued al the tribes of Italy and acquired the sovereignty of the whole peninsula.
Ancient city of Rome

History of Alexandria in Egypt

Alexander the Great came to Egypt in the second half of the fourth century (332 BC). He stopped at a fishing village on the Egyptian Mediterranean coast called the village of Rakoda.

He noted that ‘the site was the very best in which to found a city, and that the city would prosper’. The Roman architect Vitruvius notes that Alexander choose the site ‘observing a harbor rendered safe by nature, an excellent center for trade, cornfields throughout all Egypt and the great usefulness of the mighty river Nile’.

He then pondered on a small island in the sea opposite to this village, called the island of Pharos.

The island had a port to which ships used to resort, which has turned into today’s Alexandria commercial port. 

The location was known to Greeks and already in use when Alexander decided to found a city there.

For the thousand years after its foundation, Alexandria served as the cultural, political, and religious center of Egypt. In addition to its reputation for learning, its architecture was famous.

By the early part of the first century BC, the city had grown so rapidly that travelers and historians overwhelmingly agreed she was the greatest city of the civilized world and surpassed all other in size, elegance and luxury.

Alexandria was built on a soil of limestone above the level of the Delta, on the January 20th 331 BC. The construction of the city was under the supervision of Kleumenes, Finance Minister of Alexander the Great in Egypt.

It was recorded that Alexander laid out the site an traced the streets skillfully and order that the city should be called after him Alexandria.

Alexandria was completed over eight years till the reign of Ptolemy II. Ptolemy made Alexandria the capital. He founded the university of Alexandria, the great Library and built laboratories, museums, a zoological garden and promenades.
History of Alexandria in Egypt