I am fascinated by the great cities of the world. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit some amazing metropolises. Unfortunately, I haven’t yet been to Beijing, today one of the world’s largest and most modern cities. I mention Beijing in particular because of the quote below, that I saved while reading Jack Weatherford’s popular book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. Before coming across this I didn’t know that Beijing was also the Mongol capital ‘Khanbalik.’ A little further research indicates that people have been living at the site of Beijing for more than 1500 years. This history reminds me of Mexico City as well, as the modern megacity was built on the ruins of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, thought the Aztec didn’t settle in central Mexico until the 1200s.

For what it’s worth, here are the world’s longest inhabited cities:

Other cities sometimes included on such lists, all with evidence of very long habitation histories, are Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Athens (Greece), Sidon (Lebanon), and Varanasi (India).