City walls: Did you mean...?

Artist's impression of an army in front of a large city wall, most likely during Late Antiquity or the early Middle Ages. While this does not depict any specific event, the walls may represent the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople...

This map illustrates the city-states of Classical Greece around 500 BCE, highlighting the rise of the polis system and the growing reach of Hellenic influence along the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts. The...

Siege tactics were a crucial part of medieval warfare, especially from the 11th century CE when castles became more widespread in Europe and sieges outnumbered pitched battles. Castles and fortified cities offered...

Carthage was a Phoenician city-state on the coast of North Africa (the site of modern-day Tunis) which, prior the conflict with Rome known as the Punic Wars (264-146 BCE), was the largest, most affluent, and powerful political entity...

A polis (plural: poleis) was the typical structure of a community in the ancient Greek world. A polis consisted of an urban centre, often fortified and with a sacred centre built on a natural acropolis or harbour...

The siege of Antioch in 1097-1098 CE occurred during the First Crusade (1095-1102 CE) when the western Crusader knights were on their way to retake Jerusalem. The great metropolis of Antioch in northern Syria was...

Forts and sieges held a key position in ancient Indian warfare. Built on considerations of strategic location, topography, and the natural advantages provided by the site, forts would be heavily supplemented with man-made...

Carthago Nova (modern-day Cartagena) was a city on the southern Iberian Peninsula, Spain, originally known as Mastia. Human habitation of the region predates the Neolithic Period, but the area around the site of Carthago Nova seems...

The Trojan War was fought between Greeks and the defenders of the city of Troy in Anatolia sometime in the late Bronze Age. The story has grabbed the imagination for millennia but a conflict between Mycenaeans and Hittites may well...

Athens, Greece, with its famous Acropolis, has come to symbolize the whole of the country in the popular imagination, and not without cause. It not only has its iconic ruins and the famous port of Piraeus but, thanks to ancient writers...