Catalog · Vol. XII An Atlas in Thirteen Slides

GREAT
CITIES
/ ten that
changed history

  1. Babylon
  2. Athens
  3. Rome
  4. Constantinople
  5. Chang'an
  6. Florence
  7. Venice
  8. Paris
  9. London
  10. New York
Span ~3,800 years · six continents
Theme When a city becomes the engine of an age.
Babylon Athens Rome Istanbul Chang'an Florence Venice Paris London New York
No. 02 Mesopotamia

The first metropolis

Babyloncirca 1800 BC · Tigris-Euphrates

A city of brick and clay rising from the floodplain — where civilization first learned to scale.

"If a builder builds a house and the house collapses and causes the death of the owner, the builder shall be put to death." — Code of Hammurabi, c. 1754 BC
  • Ziggurats. Stepped temple-mountains; Etemenanki rose 91m and inspired the Tower of Babel.
  • Irrigation. Network of canals turned a hot plain into the breadbasket of the ancient world.
  • Code of Hammurabi. 282 laws carved in diorite — one of the first written legal systems.
  • Cuneiform. Bookkeeping invented writing; tablets recorded grain, beer, and contracts.
  • Hanging Gardens. Wonder of the ancient world — engineering as imperial spectacle.
Bab-ilim · "Gate of the gods"
No. 03 Attica · Aegean

The school of Hellas

Athenscirca 500 BC · Golden Age

A small city-state that, in two centuries, invented the operating system of the West.

"Our city is thrown open to the world; we never expel a foreigner. We are free to live exactly as we please." — Pericles, Funeral Oration, 431 BC
  • Demokratia. ~6,000 male citizens voted in the Assembly — politics as direct participation.
  • Philosophy. Socrates questioned, Plato wrote, Aristotle catalogued — thought became a discipline.
  • Theater. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides invented tragedy at the Theatre of Dionysus.
  • Parthenon. Marble temple to Athena (447–432 BC) — geometry as worship.
  • The agora. Public square as marketplace, courtroom, and seedbed of public reason.
Athenai · pop. ~250,000
No. 04 Latium · Tiber

Caput mundi · head of the world

Romecirca 100 AD · Imperial Apex

A city of one million at the center of an empire of seventy — engineering as the language of power.

"The city of Rome is built on the seven hills, and is the head of the world." — Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, c. 27 BC
  • Aqueducts. 11 lines delivered ~1 million m³ of water daily across hundreds of kilometres.
  • Roads. 80,000 km of paved imperial highway — "all roads lead to Rome" was infrastructure, not metaphor.
  • Concrete. Volcanic opus caementicium built the Pantheon's 43m unreinforced dome — still standing.
  • Colosseum. 50,000 spectators, retractable awning, flooded for naval battles.
  • Law. Roman civil law became the bedrock of half the world's legal codes.
Roma · SPQR
No. 05 Bosporus · East-West

The bridge of continents

Constantinople330 AD — 1453 / Istanbul thereafter

For 1,500 years a capital of empires — Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman — the world's longest-running metropolis.

"The City of the world's desire." — Common Byzantine epithet
  • The Theodosian Walls. Triple-layered, 6.5 km of defenses — unbreached for nearly 1,000 years.
  • Hagia Sophia. 537 AD; for a millennium the world's largest interior space; 32m dome.
  • The Golden Horn. Natural harbor — chain across its mouth could close the city to fleets.
  • Crossroads. Where Silk Road met Mediterranean; Greek met Latin; Christian met Muslim.
  • 1453. Mehmed II's cannon ended the Roman Empire after 1,480 years.
Nova Roma · Konstantinoupolis · Ιstanbul
No. 06 Wei Valley · Tang Dynasty

Eastern terminus of the Silk Road

Chang'an7th – 9th century AD · modern Xi'an

The largest city on Earth in 750 AD — a million people inside a perfect grid of nine by nine wards.

"On either side, the willows sway green; in the eastern wards, ten thousand houses bloom." — Bai Juyi, Tang poet
  • The grid. 9.7 km east-west by 8.6 km north-south — templates copied by Heian-kyo (Kyoto).
  • Population. ~1,000,000 by 750 AD — larger than any European city for another 1,000 years.
  • Cosmopolitan. Persians, Sogdians, Arabs, Indians, Japanese all traded and lived inside the walls.
  • Tang openness. Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism all worshipped here.
  • The arts. Li Bai and Du Fu drank in its taverns; woodblock printing was perfected nearby.
Imperial City N ↑ · 108 wards · ~1,000,000 souls
長安 · "Perpetual Peace"
No. 07 Tuscany · Arno

Crucible of the Renaissance

Florence1400s · Medici Florence

A wool-and-banking town of 60,000 that, in a single century, reinvented art, finance, and the human gaze.

"I would rather die a man among men than live as a fool among gods." — Niccolò Machiavelli, Florentine
  • The Medici. Bankers turned patrons financed Donatello, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Galileo.
  • The Dome. Brunelleschi's 1436 cupola spans 45m without internal scaffolding — an engineering miracle.
  • Linear perspective. Brunelleschi and Alberti gave painters the geometry of depth.
  • Double-entry bookkeeping. Florentine ledgers (1340s onward) became the syntax of capitalism.
  • The florin. Gold coin minted 1252; for 300 years the dollar of European trade.
Firenze · "the city of the lily"
No. 08 Adriatic · lagoon

La Serenissima

Venicec. 1000 – 1797 · Maritime Republic

A city built on 118 islands and three million wooden piles — the world's first commercial superpower.

"The most triumphant city I have ever seen." — Philippe de Commines, 1495
  • The Arsenale. State shipyard could assemble a complete galley in a single day — the first true factory.
  • Joint-stock pioneers. Colleganza contracts pooled risk for sea voyages — ancestors of the corporation.
  • The Rialto. First international financial market; a Venetian bill of exchange spent anywhere in Europe.
  • Glass and print. Murano glassmakers and the Aldine Press defined craft and the modern book.
  • 1,100-year republic. Elected doges, written constitution, balance-of-power diplomacy.
Venezia · "the most serene"
No. 09 Île-de-France · Seine

Cradle of revolutions

Paris1789 · 1871 · 1968

A city that taught the modern world how to overthrow itself — and rebuild on grand new ideas.

"Paris is well worth a Mass." — Henri IV, attributed
  • 1789. The Bastille falls — liberté, égalité, fraternité goes global.
  • Haussmann (1853). 20,000 buildings demolished, 60,000 built; the boulevards and zinc roofs of the modern Paris.
  • 1871 Commune. 72 days of self-governance — the first urban socialist government.
  • Belle Époque. Impressionism, the Eiffel Tower (1889), the Métro (1900), the cinema.
  • May 1968. Students and workers nearly toppled de Gaulle — "be realistic, demand the impossible."
Lutèce · the City of Light
No. 10 Thames · Britannia

First city of the industrial age

London19th century · capital of empire

In 1800, ~1 million. By 1900, the largest city the world had ever seen — the metropolis as global hub.

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." — Samuel Johnson, 1777
  • The metropolis. 1 million in 1801 → 6.7 million by 1901; one in five Britons.
  • Empire's hub. Lloyd's, the City, and the docks moved a quarter of the world's trade.
  • Underground. 1863 Metropolitan Railway — the first subway; 1890 first electric tube.
  • Sewers and gas. Bazalgette's 1860s sewer ended cholera; gaslight invented the night-time city.
  • Ideas. Marx wrote in the British Library; Darwin published; Dickens chronicled the working poor.
Londinium · "the world in a city"
No. 11 Hudson · Atlantic Gateway

The American century made vertical

New York1900 — present

In 1900 it overtook London as the model of the global city — immigrant gateway, financial capital, modern art's home.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." — Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus," 1883
  • Ellis Island. 1892–1954: 12 million immigrants — ~40% of Americans descend from someone who passed through.
  • The grid. 1811 Commissioners' Plan: 12 avenues, 155 streets — rationalised real-estate at scale.
  • The skyscraper. Steel frame + elevator → Flatiron 1902, Chrysler 1930, Empire State 1931.
  • Wall Street. NYSE replaced London after WWII as the world's financial center.
  • Modern art. Pollock, MoMA, the Beats, hip-hop — the 20th-century cultural capital.
Nieuw Amsterdam · the capital of capital
Plate XII 21st-century · the megacity

The Next
chapters

In 1800, fewer than 3% of humans lived in cities. Today: 57%. By 2050, two-thirds. The next great cities are already being built — in Asia and Africa, at a scale Rome could not have imagined.

~33
Cities > 10M today
2050
68% urban worldwide
~37 million
Tokyo
The largest urban region; precision and density as a way of life.
~22 million
Mumbai
India's financial heart; Bollywood; the world's most kinetic skyline.
~25 million
Lagos
Africa's commercial capital; growing by ~600,000 every year.
~28 million
Shanghai
From colonial port to 21st-century engine; 632m Shanghai Tower.
Cities are humanity's longest-running experiment Continued in the next century
Colophon · XIII / XIII Further reading · viewing

Cities are
where futures
are rehearsed.

Books · the canon

  • Lewis Mumford — The City in History (1961)
  • Jane Jacobs — The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961)
  • Peter Hall — Cities in Civilization (1998)
  • Edward Glaeser — Triumph of the City (2011)
  • Joel Kotkin — The City: A Global History (2005)

Watch · on YouTube

Visit · in person

  • The Pergamon Museum, Berlin (Babylon's Ishtar Gate)
  • The Acropolis Museum, Athens
  • The Forum Romanum, Rome
  • Hagia Sophia, Istanbul
  • The Bigan Museum, Xi'an
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