Condé Nast Traveller has published a list of 15 of the world's oldest towns and cities that remain inhabited today. The selection includes Luoyang in China, which is older than Beijing, Byblos in Lebanon, which gave ancient Greeks the word for book, and Flores in Guatemala, once the capital of a Mayan kingdom and now set on a lake.
The list is limited to places that have been, for the most part, continuously inhabited since their founding, with ages validated by scholarly sources. The magazine says it has also aimed for geographical diversity, noting that a strict top 15 would feature only China and Iran.
The article notes that the UK Government currently advises against travel to the countries in which some of these cities are located.