About

Ancient History Sites was created to make the ancient and medieval world easier to explore, both for study and for travel. The website’s distinguishing feature is its database of archaeological and historic sites that can still be visited today. Many historic places are hard to find, poorly marked, or rarely maintained; here they are brought together in one structured resource.

Individual site articles focus on the physical evidence: standing buildings, preserved interiors, excavated streets, defensive walls and other substantial remains. They explain how these features worked, how they were used and how they changed over time. Where a site preserves the work of several civilizations, the articles distinguish their contributions, alongside later rebuilding and restoration.

Around this practical resource, the website provides context: explaining the civilizations, histories, and structures behind the sites. The collection spans prehistoric, ancient, and medieval places across Europe, the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Near East, and other historically connected regions. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine history remains an important part of the website, alongside a much wider range of civilizations and building traditions.

The scope includes, among others:

• Prehistoric sites: Settlements, burial monuments, stone circles, and hillforts from the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages.
• Ancient civilizations: Greek and Roman cities and monuments, alongside sites associated with the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Celts, Achaemenids, Parthians, Sassanids, and other ancient cultures.
• The medieval world: Byzantine monuments, castles and towns of medieval European kingdoms, Islamic religious and urban architecture, Crusader strongholds, Venetian defences, and sites associated with other regional states and traditions.
• Selected later sites: Buildings that help complete the development of particular types, such as the progression from hillforts to castles and artillery forts.

This range makes it possible to follow both continuity and change through surviving places: ancient temples adapted as churches, Roman towns reshaped in the medieval period, or castles enlarged to accommodate new weapons and residential needs. The maps and grids bring together religious buildings, fortifications, houses, palaces, theatres, bridges, markets, and many other structures, with filters that help readers explore the collection.

The site does not only describe monuments, but also connects them to broader historical processes. Daily life content is included for major centers where evidence or strong inference allows, but it is not added for every site.

The overall aim is to connect archaeological remains, historic buildings, economic systems, and social structures into a coherent view of the places and societies represented, with ancient and medieval history at its centre.

Please feel free to reach out with comments or suggestions at: info [at] ancienthistorysites [dot] com