When to visit which city

Times change, 17^thC India had a higher standard of living per capita than England.

All cities have their moments in the sun when I would like to have been living there

(as a free male citizen, that is) here are some of them.

Troy, late-13th century

Memphis, 2,500

Mohenjo-daro, 2,500

Ur, 2100

Mycenae, 1250

Hattusa, 1000

Babylon, 600 (Nebuchadnezzar) the first city to have more than 200,000 inhabitants

Athens, 435

Persepolis, 300

Hatra, 200

Rome, 250

Ctesiphon, 500

Teotihuacan ('The City of the Gods", the sixth largest city in the world, 30 miles north of Mexico City), 600

Xian, 650

Baghdad, 750 (the first city with over 1,000,000)

Kyoto, 850

Cordova, 1000

Tulum, 1150

Sukhotha, 1200

Hangzhou, 1250

Milan, 1300

Angkor Wat, 1400

Bruges, 1450

Venice, 1450

Florence, 1450

Vijaynagar, 1500

Mexico City, 1500

Agra, 1570

Istanbul, 1650

London, 1750

St Petersburg, 1800

Paris, 1920s

Berlin, 1920s

New York, the fifties

London, the sixties (1825, the first city over 5 million)

Bristol, the seventies

Sydney, the nineties.

and now - none.