Some 40 miles (65 km) from Thessaloniki, a teenager who would go on to reshape the ancient world once sat listening to lessons on physics, ethics and politics under stone colonnades. That teenager was Alexander the Great; his teacher was Aristotle; and the classroom was a monumental gymnasium carved into the rock near the modern […]

On the Turkish coast of the Black Sea, there is a Roman city called Pompeiopolis. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with the Pompeii buried by Vesuvius in 79 AD. This one takes its name from Pompey the Great, the Roman general who founded it in 64 or 63 BC as one of […]