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Actually Rome has been at the periphery of the western world since the Europe of Charlemagne, and it still is today (in the European sovereign debt crisis, Italy is included among the peripheral countries, the PIIGS, to take an ongoing contemporary example).
Rome was the center of the Mediterranean world, a world that's been broken for a long, long time, a break-up that culminated, well, around the time of Charlemagne, the father of western Europe.
Nevertheless, indeed, everyone should visit Rome when they get the chance, but also Istanbul, Vienna, Moscow, Paris, London, New York.
Athens has been irrelevant since around 325BC, the death of Alexander the Great, better to look to Constantinople, Cairo has only been relevant in modern times, especially since the Suez Canal, better to look to Alexandria, while the capital of the ancient Egyptians before Alexander moved around.
Cairo was an important city in the medieval Islamic world. It was much bigger than London during that time period. It also boasts one of the oldest active universities in the world.
Still, I picked Rome. After all, it was the first city to have over a million people and it's the center of the branch of Christianity that over half of all Christians subscribe to. It was also the capital of a massive empire.
My Chinese history is rather weak, but I don't believe that Beijing became the primary capital of China until 800 to 900 years ago. China obviously is and was an important power, and Beijing has had power and influence within China and the region, but the Chinese have historically been very inward looking. That limited Beijing's importance on the world stage.
Chang'an was the equivalent of Rome in Far East many many years ago,while Beijing became important more recently.
Around 1st century and probably 7th century Chang'an was by far the largest city in the entire world(more than one million inhabitants),Han and Tang dynasty were really powerful so China was less inward during those time(the silk road and stuff).After like 10th century,the status of the city has flopped though.
My vote goes to Rome nonetheless,the legacy of Rome is unbeatable.
100 years... In Russia history... Only...? What do you mean?
anyway, there is no any age limitation in this thread.
So, why can't Stalingrad claim to be the most important city?
100 years... In Russia history... Only...? What do you mean?
anyway, there is no any age limitation in this thread.
So, why can't Stalingrad claim to be the most important city?
Througout history = longer than last 100 years
More like the last 4000 years
Chang'An, Rome's counterpart and sister empire. In terms of population (and what people reckon ancient Rome's population was) it was smaller, or equal to. It may have been the worlds first city to ever reach 1 million depending on whether you believe Rome did that in 100AD (where some historians put it at 400-450,000), or Alexandria, Egypt 200 years earlier from Rome. In terms of the built environment it was far larger - 3 to 6x larger than Rome. Chang'An was divided up into quarters by some streets 500ft wide, and was the birth of the original grid plan.
The palaces it had were as big as the city of Rome in it's entirety, and the largest palaces every built. Today the Forbidden City in Beijing is the world's largest - these ones were 3, 5.5 and 7x it's size, with pavilions that were the largest ancient buildings in China.
the main pagoda, built for Empress Wu Zetian (as China's first officialised female ruler, she sought to outdo all male counterparts before her and to future-proof them against those after her, creating China's largest ancient structures) was rumoured to be 500ft tall, though likely to been more around 350ft
Her tomb, rumoured to be the 1000ft tall Great White Pyramid The Fabulous 1,000-Foot White Pyramid of Xian, the purported largest single structure built by man and of legend, that was once faced with white stone and crowned until the 1910s - actually a natural hill but pyramidised by hundreds of thousands of workers:
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