Greatest Cities

Stunningly illustrated biographies of the world's greatest cities, packed with paintings, photographs, maps, and artifacts

Rendered in rich detail, four of the world’s greatest cities - Vienna, Helsinki, Berlin, and Amsterdam - await the steady hand of a planner to manage their transportation needs in Cities in Motion. Overseeing the changing needs of people from 1920 to 2020, it’s up to you to manage everything from buses, trams and subway trains to maximize profits while pleasing commuters.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, British archeologist Austen Henry Layard uncovered parts of several ancient Assyrian cities buried beneath the earth, including the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Nineveh. Nineveh was one of the greatest cities of its time and was an important religious center around 3000 BC. Commerce and religion thrived in the city, which was decorated with ornate stone carvings and reliefs and boasted well-defended walls and an aqueduct. However, the city was sacked in 612 BC, and its citizens were either deported or murdered. From that time forward, the city remained unoccupied, until Layard's excavation in the mid-1800s brought its treasures back into the world.

Andrew Leach’s Rome is the first book in Polity’s exciting new ‘Cities in World History’ series, which aims to provide the general reader and traveller with historically informed companions to the world’s greatest cities. Most city guides are good on practical details but very thin when it comes to recounting the histories of cities and contextualizing the buildings and sites for which they are famous. These new books from Polity bridge the gulf between guide and history by offering concise and accessible accounts written by some of the world’s leading historians.