Caral-Supe (inscribed 2009) is the oldest city in the Americas: the capital of the Norte Chico civilization (c. 2600 BCE), contemporaneous with the pyramids of Giza, with 6 platform mounds (the Pirámide Mayor: 154×138×18m), sunken circular plazas, and no pottery or weapons. Chan Chan (Chimu adobe city, inscribed 1986, In Danger), the largest pre-Columbian city, is 380 km north.
Ani (inscribed 2016) is the ruined medieval capital of the Bagratid Armenian Kingdom (961–1064 CE) on Turkey’s Armenian border: the Cathedral of Ani (1001 CE, architect Tiridates — who also repaired Hagia Sophia’s dome), the Church of the Redeemer split by lightning, and the Church of St. Gregory with the finest surviving medieval Armenian frescoes. Kars, the Russian tsarist garrison town, is the base.
Ohrid (inscribed 1979/1980) is the most important Byzantine city in North Macedonia: 365 churches tradition, the birthplace of the Cyrillic alphabet (Clement of Ohrid’s Literary School, 886 CE), and Tsar Samuel’s 10th-century fortress above ancient Lake Ohrid — one of the world’s oldest lakes (1–3 million years, 200+ endemic species), shared with Albania and extended in 2019.
Valparaíso’s Historic Quarter (inscribed 2003) is the most complete surviving Pacific coast port city from the Cape Horn maritime era (1850–1914): 42 named cerros (hills), 30 funicular railways (ascensores), Victorian corrugated-iron painted facades, and the densest street art concentration in South America. Pablo Neruda’s La Sebastiana house is on Cerro Florida.
Harar Jugol (inscribed 2006) is sub-Saharan Africa’s most important Islamic city: 82 mosques and 102 shrines within 48 hectares — the highest mosque density in the world — plus the Arthur Rimbaud trading house and the nightly hyena-feeding ritual outside the 1551 Jugol wall. Ethiopia’s Lucy fossil site (Awash Valley, inscribed 1980) is accessible 200 km northwest.
Yayoi Kusama has died at ninety-seven. In 1966, uninvited, she covered the lawn beside the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with 1,500 mirrored spheres and sold them for two dollars each, until the Biennale threw her out.
Djenné in central Mali is home to the world’s largest mud-brick building — its Great Mosque, rebuilt in 1907 in a tradition reaching back to the 13th century — and to Djenné-Djenno, an archaeological site occupied from 250 BCE that proved West African urbanism predates Arab contact by a thousand years. UNESCO inscribed the Old Towns of Djenné in 1988.
Timbuktu, at the southern edge of the Sahara in Mali, was a medieval centre of Islamic scholarship and trans-Saharan trade, home to three inscribed mosques and up to 300,000 manuscripts. In 2012, jihadists occupied the city, destroyed its Sufi mausolea, and threatened the manuscripts — most of which were covertly evacuated to safety in a remarkable rescue operation.
Shiraz is the gateway to Iran’s greatest Achaemenid sites: Persepolis (inscribed 1979) — Darius I’s 518 BCE ceremonial capital with its Apadana tribute-procession reliefs — and Pasargadae (inscribed 2004), the gabled limestone tomb of Cyrus the Great. In the city: Hafez’s garden tomb and the stained-glass Nasir ol-Molk Mosque.
Kilwa Kisiwani, off the southern Tanzanian coast, controlled the Indian Ocean gold trade for four centuries and was called one of the world’s most beautiful towns by Ibn Battuta in 1331. Its 14th-century coral mosque, the largest in East Africa, and the Husuni Kubwa palace stand as the visible remains of that medieval prosperity.
