From the millennia-old metropolises of the Middle East to the ancient settlements of South America, there are cities around the world that bear astonishing testimony to human history. While a definitive ranking of the world’s oldest cities would be nigh-impossible to whittle down, we’ve rounded up settlements that are at least compelling contenders, along with some that are the oldest in their regions. Note that some of these cities are not currently safe to visit – always check your government’s guidance before travelling.
Click through this gallery to discover the longest-lived cities in the world...
Though still an infant compared to some of this list, Sydney is Australia’s oldest and largest city. Founded in 1788, Sydney (then Sydney Cove) became Australia’s first non-Aboriginal settlement when it was claimed by the English admiral Arthur Phillip. Named after the British home secretary at the time, the city served as a convict colony for more than 80 years before growing into a modern metropolis. The Australian Museum, St James Church and Hyde Park Barracks (pictured) are some of Sydney’s oldest buildings that can be visited today.
St Augustine is the oldest continuously-inhabited European-founded city in the modern USA. It was established by Spain in September 1565 after Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles first sighted the land on the feast day of St Augustine. Today, there are a number of historic sites still standing in the city: Castillo de San Marcos (pictured) is the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States, while the Fort Mose Historic State Park commemorates America’s first legally-sanctioned free African settlement.
Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial capital is one of the oldest and most easterly cities in North America. It’s also said to be the oldest in Canada, with the first European explorer – John Cabot – thought to have arrived in 1497. Cabot Tower (pictured) was built to mark the 400th anniversary of his voyage. The area was claimed by England in 1583, but didn’t grow into a permanent settlement until the early 17th century. Some of the oldest streets in the Americas still knit St John’s together, and today it's a colourful and characterful maritime city.
Thought by many to be the oldest continuously-inhabited city in South America, Quito is also the oldest of all the continent’s capitals. The Cara people are often credited with the foundation of the city, dated to roughly AD 980, though evidence of human presence goes back even further. The city was conquered by the Inca Empire in the 15th century and then the Spanish in the 1530s. Much of the architecture in Quito’s UNESCO-inscribed old town (pictured) harks back to the colonial era.
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Home to the Great Pyramid of Cholula, the largest pyramid by volume anywhere in the world, Cholula is where several layers of Mesoamerican history converge. The city started as a major pre-Spanish settlement dedicated to Quetzalcoatl, a god typically depicted as a feathered serpent. A temple once sat atop the Great Pyramid in the god's honour. Initially founded between AD 100 and 600, Cholula is now a melting pot of conflicting cultures, with colonial Spanish churches built over each native temple.
From the 1st century BC to the 10th century AD, Gyeongju was the capital of Silla, one of three ancient kingdoms that coexisted in the south of the Korean peninsula. It hit its peak in the 800s, with a population of one million and around 180,000 homes. Today, the city has retained a number of cultural attractions from its past, including the Bulguksa Temple (pictured) and the time-worn observatory tower of Cheomseongdae (East Asia’s oldest). The city is now also a forward-thinking tech hub.
Inhabited since 250 BC, Djenne is one of the oldest known urban settlements in sub-Saharan Africa. It was a thriving merchant city during ancient times and an important link in the trans-Saharan gold trade, before emerging as an important Islamic centre during the 15th and 16th centuries. Its Grand Mosque (pictured) is the world’s largest mud-brick structure, built in 1907 to replace an older building probably constructed in the 13th century. The Old Towns of Djenne, a World Heritage Site, has been on UNESCO’S danger list since 2016.
Sometimes called 'the town of a thousand windows', Berat is even older than its stacks of Ottoman houses (pictured) would seem to imply. The small city stands on the site of an earlier Macedonian settlement that was founded in antiquity. Named Antipatreia, it was established during the 3rd or 4th century BC. It formed part of the Roman and Byzantine empires and was also ruled by Bulgarians and Serbs before the Ottoman Turks took over. Berat Castle, the Red Mosque and the Ethnographic Museum are must-see sights for history buffs visiting today.
The precise dates of Multan’s foundation have been lost to the annals of time, but it is known to be one of the subcontinent’s oldest cities. Located in central Pakistan, the city was conquered by Alexander the Great around 326 BC, and residents still proudly claim that the wound Alexander sustained in the battle contributed to his death a couple of years later. Macedonia wasn’t the only ancient power to besiege Multan; Hun warriors, Muslim generals and Mughal emperors all took swipes at the city.
Though its origins go back to the 5th century BC, Buddhist lore teaches that the sacred city of Anuradhapura grew around a cutting from Buddha’s tree of enlightenment, brought here in the 3rd century BC. The city thrived as a spiritual and political capital for 1,300 years, but was abandoned in 993 AD after an invasion from southern India. Now, the ruins attract thousands of visitors each year who come to see the complex’s impressive dagobas (brick stupas) and ancient reservoirs. Some of the city’s historic temples remain working places of worship.
Another of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in the Americas, Cusco (also spelled Cuzco) is the former capital of the far-ranging and formidable Inca Empire. The Incas prospered in ancient Peru from around 1400 to the 1530s AD, and examples of their early architecture lie intact beneath the foundations and lower storeys of Cusco’s Spanish colonial buildings. The Spanish succeeded the Incas, but Cusco was settled before even the Incas arrived – unearthed fragments of decorated pottery point to human habitation from 500 BC.
Continuously inhabited since around 700 BC, Samarkand is a captivating Central Asian city on the old Silk Road. This ancient trade route snaking from China to Europe passed right through the heart of Samarkand, which gained much of its surviving historic architecture between the 14th and 17th centuries. This includes the Bibi-Khanym Mosque (pictured), constructed for the wife of notorious conqueror Timur (sometimes known as Tamerlane), who declared Samarkand the capital of his empire. He lies entombed in the blue-tiled Gur-e-Amir mausoleum, another of the city’s most important heritage monuments.
Founded by the Phoenicians as early as 1100 BC, Cadiz occupies a slim peninsula on the Andalucian coast. It has passed through the hands of several civilisations since, including the Carthaginians, the Romans and the Moors, who all made their mark on the ancient city. The ruins of a Roman amphitheatre (pictured) were unearthed in 1980; though only partially excavated, it's the oldest known Roman theatre in Spain. For an even older history hit, head to the Cadiz Archaeological Museum to see two Phoenician sarcophagi from the 5th century BC.
Located in northern Afghanistan between the Hindu Kush mountains and the Amu Darya river, Balkh was once called 'the mother of cities' before shrinking to the small town it is today. An important settlement along the Silk Road, Balkh – formerly Bactra – has more than 2,500 years of history under its belt. Conquered by Alexander the Great in 329 BC and flattened by Genghis Khan in AD 1220, it enjoyed a brief revival under the rule of Timur during the 14th and 15th centuries. The old city walls, battered and broken as they are, remain standing.
The Phoenicians certainly got around – and there’s evidence to suggest they founded a trading post in what is now the Portuguese capital in around 1000 BC. The Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths and Moors all laid claim to Lisbon (then called Olisipo) in the years that followed, as did a range of other tribes that coveted the city’s strategic position. The Romans chose Sao Jorge, one of the seven hills of Lisbon, as the heart of their settlement, and the hill was ultimately marked by the medieval Castelo de Sao Jorge, which still looks over Lisbon today.
Naturally barricaded by mountains, Luoyang was once the world's largest city and was made Chinese capital by a succession of dynasties. This may even have included the Xia dynasty – China's semi-mythical first ruling dynasty that was in power from 2070 to around 1600 BC. It's now around a thousand years since it was last China's capital, but the city remains crucial to Chinese heritage. It was once the starting point of the Silk Road, and historic sites such as the Longmen Grottoes and White Horse Temple still draw huge visitor numbers.
Perched on a hilltop above the Maltese countryside, Mdina has been an established settlement since the Bronze Age, and holds some 4,000 years of history within its walls. A former capital shaped by centuries of occupation, the city retains many of its medieval and Baroque elements, including its honey-coloured cathedral. Nicknamed 'the silent city', today businesses must adhere to strict noise restrictions and cars are severely limited. It is also here that the apostle St Paul is said to have put down roots after being shipwrecked on Malta in AD 60.
During excavations in the 1990s, while Beirut was being rebuilt after the Lebanese Civil War, archaeologists discovered remains from across nearly 5,000 years of civilisation. Layers of Canaanite, Phoenician, Hellenistic, Roman and Ottoman culture were revealed beneath the rubble. More recently, around 640 historic buildings were damaged in the Beirut port explosion in 2020, which killed more than 220 people and displaced around 300,000 more. UNESCO pledged to help restore the city, which keeps on having to bounce back.
This historic city sits on several old trade routes and has probably been settled since the early 4th millennium BC. The city has been a prolific producer of Antep pistachios for thousands of years, and is said to be one of the best places in Turkey for baklava. Gaziantep Castle (seen in the background of this image) was first built as a Roman watchtower between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD, but was severely damaged in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that rocked southern Turkey and northern Syria in February 2023.
These are some of the oldest man-made structures on every continent
Arranged along the fabled River Nile, Luxor stands on the site of the city of Thebes, Egypt’s ancient capital. Believed to have been settled by around 3200 BC, Thebes only emerged as a political centre during the 9th and 10th dynasties (2160-2055 BC), before becoming the preferred base of the 11th-dynasty pharaohs. The city's heritage is still very much alive, and Luxor is often referred to as the world’s greatest open-air museum. Luxor Temple (pictured) and the Karnak temple complex are perhaps the two best sites open to today’s visitors.
Larnaca’s reputation as a popular Mediterranean holiday resort belies its long and fascinating backstory, which spans at least three millennia. The early archaeological remains of Kition (pictured) date the city to around the 13th century BC, when it was a Mycenaean kingdom. But if you believe local legend, it was the grandson of Noah (yep, the one with the ark) who built the first settlement here around 6,000 years ago. Today, the city is marked by the various cultures that have ruled here over the years, including the Egyptians, Byzantines, Ottomans and Venetians.
The capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Erbil is firmly in the running for the title of world's oldest continuously-inhabited city, thanks to archaeological evidence pointing to 6,000 years of human occupation. Its oval-shaped citadel (pictured) was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014. Though the structure is fairly new – the hulking walls are 19th century – it was built atop several generations of ruins, which slowly sculpted the man-made hill on which it sits. Under the name Arbela, Erbil was an important centre in the ancient Assyrian Empire.
A former European Capital of Culture, Plovdiv is said to be one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities in Europe, if not the oldest. The prehistoric settlement of Nebet Tepe – situated on one of three hills that now comprise the modern city’s old town – is sometimes called 'the birth certificate of Plovdiv', as its origins date back some 8,000 years. The Iron-Age Thracian peoples built a village here around 1200 BC, which was conquered by Alexander the Great's father in the 340s BC. A few centuries later the Romans moved in, leaving behind an array of stunning ruins, like this beautiful amphitheatre.
The land that came to be known as Athens has been inhabited since the Neolithic era, with wells and pottery found on and around the Acropolis dating back more than 5,000 years. As well as being one of the world's oldest cities, the Greek capital also has some of the world's longest-lived arts and architecture, as seen in sites like the Parthenon and the Propylaea, which have stood largely intact for more than 2,400 years. To protect the ancient citadel from mass tourism, visitors to the Acropolis are now capped at 20,000 per day.
The modern city of Shush partially lies on the site of Susa, one of the world’s most ancient cities. Evidence of habitation goes back to the 5th millennium BC, and that early community is thought to sit atop an even older settlement dating back to around 7000 BC. Inscribed by UNESCO in 2015, the ruins of Susa have been shaped by several cultures that have now largely disappeared, including the Elamite, Achaemenid Persian and Parthian peoples. Pictured here are the remnants of a ziggurat (stepped pyramid) and temple complex found in Susa.
Rising from the banks of the River Ganges, Varanasi is one of the seven sacred cities in Hinduism. It appears in legends that date back up to 10,000 years and is closely associated with the deity Lord Shiva, though contemporary historians believe the city to be between 3,000 and 4,000 years old. Known as 'the city of death', Varanasi is most famous for its funeral ghats, where some Hindu pilgrims come to be cremated at the end of their lives. If you visit the ancient waterfront while holy ceremonies are taking place, please be respectful.
According to UNESCO, excavations carried out on the outskirts of Damascus show that it's been occupied from as early as 10,000 BC, though it wasn't founded in earnest until the 3rd millennium BC. Some historians therefore consider it the world’s oldest continuously-inhabited city – though this title is debated. Damascus has witnessed centuries of Islamic development and boasts significant Roman and Byzantine heritage. Due to ongoing unrest in Syria, its ancient capital has been on UNESCO’S List of World Heritage in Danger since 2013.
Georgia’s third city stands on the site of various other settlements that have developed there since the Stone Age, making it one of the oldest cities in not just the Caucasus, but the world. Kutaisi served as the capital for a number of historic kingdoms in Georgia, including Colchis, Abkhazia and Imeretia, and the legendary hero Jason is said to have journeyed through the city with his Argonauts. While we can’t promise you’ll find a golden fleece, there are plenty of historic landmarks to discover instead.
The rock-hewn city of Matera, which has gradually chewed into the walls of the steep ravine it clings to, is one of the longest continuously-inhabited places on Earth. Born out of a system of natural caves, it was first inhabited by troglodytes during the Palaeolithic era – many thousands of years BC. Matera is most famous for its ancient neighbourhoods known as the Sassi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the cave dwellings have evolved to become increasingly more sophisticated over time.