Figures
2.1A piece of the Ishtar Gate, along Babylon’s Processional Way, constructed by Nebuchadnezzar II around 575 BCE
3.1The Parthenon, commissioned by Pericles, still towers over Athens. Its conservative design prominently features Doric styles brought to Athens from the Peloponnese
5.1The Roman Forum, the scale of which still dwarfs visitors
5.2Interior of upper class apartment in Roman Ephesus, present-day Turkey
6.1The Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, located 70 kilometers north of Beijing. Initiated by the Northern Qi dynasty in the 550s CE, this remarkable section of the wall purportedly required over a million laborers. It makes steep terrains traversable and its watchtowers allowed for frontier surveillance
7.1Wandering into Tikal’s central plaza in Guatemala, center of the Mayan world
7.2Teotihuacan in Central Mexico, which shared architectural features and dense political, social, and economic ties with Tikal – a quintessential dyadic relationship
9.1Venetian fortification in Candia (present-day Heraklion, Crete), a critical node in the Stato da Mar. Completed in the sixteenth century, this fortress was under Venetian control until Venice capitulated to the Ottomans in 1669. One can imagine Venetian sentinels scanning these seas for the Turkish navy
10.1The Hanseatic outpost at Bryggen, along the harbor in Bergen, Norway
10.2Tallinn’s (then known as Reval, in Estonia) medieval city center, replete with its walls dating from the 1200s and the Baltic Sea in the background. It was a stronghold for German merchants
11.1Elmina Castle, in present-day Ghana, the site of many of the horrors of the West African slave trade that helped capitalize Amsterdam’s expansion during its “golden age.” This was the site of the “door of no return” for abducted slaves headed to the Americas to satiate European labor demands
11.2Amsterdam’s inner ring canal system connected the houses of the bourgeois elite to the Dutch canal system and broader maritime trading network
