LOST CITIES and HIDDEN WORLDS: 50 Forgotten Ruins, Sunken Cities, Abandoned Places from History

What remains when a city disappears? >Lost Cities and Hidden Worlds explores fifty remarkable places shaped by ambition, faith, trade, war, environmental change, natural disaster, and the rise and fall of empires. Travel from Akhetaten, the radical capital created by Pharaoh Akhenaten, to the clay archives of Ebla and the royal palace of Mari. Walk through the shattered grandeur of Ani, the immense oasis cities of Merv, the caravan world of Hegra, and the desert splendor of Palmyra. Enter cities reclaimed by forests and mountains, from Angkor and Koh Ker to Vijayanagara, Sigiriya, Bagan, and Ayutthaya. Descend beneath the water to discover the submerged remains of Alexandria, Thonis Heracleion, Baiae, Pavlopetri, and the prehistoric settlement of Atlit Yam. The journey continues into more recent history, through places such as Hashima, Kolmanskop, Kayaköy, Craco, Humberstone and Santa Laura, and the abandoned Soviet settlement of Pyramiden. These are not stories built around invented mysteries. Archaeology, historical records, inscriptions, landscapes, and material remains allow us to understand much of what happened to these places. Where evidence is uncertain, the uncertainty matters. Some cities were destroyed. Others slowly lost the trade routes, water systems, political power, industries, or communities that had sustained them. Some vanished beneath rising waters. Others survived as ruins beside the modern world. >Fifty lost cities. Fifty different ways a human world can disappear, survive, and be rediscovered.