Countless cities have risen and fallen over the past 10,000 years of urban history. Some were true metropolises, capitals that governed entire empires and inspired awe and wonder as the marvels of their age, yet today they are remembered only by historians, or have passed out of memory altogether. Occasionally, however, archaeology can help to reconstruct something of their lost splendour and tell us of the lives that were lived there."Lost Cities" surveys 28 of the greatest of these fossil cities, abandoned and ruined but still able to invoke the grandeur of ages past. Richly illustrated with full colour and black- and-white archival photos, the book reveals the stories behind great metropolises such as Petra, the rock-carved rose city in the desert of what is now Jordan; Great Zimbabwe, the capital of the once-mighty southern African Shona empire; and Mohenjo-Daro, centre of one of the world's earliest civilizations in the Indus Valley, together with better known examples such as Troy, Babylon, Angkor and Machu Picchu.