The oldest cities in the world still inhabited: Jericho, Damascus, Aleppo, Byblos, Athens, Varanasi, Plovdiv and the rest, with what "oldest" means

Architecture · 4 September 2026

The oldest city in the world that is still inhabited is usually named as Jericho, in the West Bank, where a settlement around a spring has been lived in, with gaps, since about 9000 BC, with a stone wall and a tower of about 8000 BC that are the oldest fortifications on earth; the cities with the strongest claims to continuous occupation without a break are Byblos in Lebanon, from about 5000 BC, and Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, from about 4000 to 3000 BC, each of which calls itself the oldest continuously inhabited capital or city. Plovdiv in Bulgaria, from about 6000 BC, is the oldest in Europe, Argos and Athens the oldest in Greece, Varanasi the oldest in India by tradition and Luoyang among the oldest in China, and Cholula in Mexico, from about 500 BC, the oldest in the Americas. "Oldest" depends on whether a village of 100 people counts as a city, whether a gap of a few centuries breaks the chain, and whether the modern town is on the same ground; the list below gives the evidence for each and lets the reader choose, with the earliest buildings of all in the oldest buildings in the world and their temples in the oldest temples in the world.

What "oldest city" means

Three questions decide every list. Is it a city? A settlement of a few hundred farmers in 8000 BC is a village, and the first places that were cities in the sense of thousands of people, walls, temples and a ruling class are Uruk and its neighbours in Mesopotamia about 4000–3500 BC, which are ruins; the "oldest cities" are places that were villages when they began and are cities now. Is it continuous? Jericho was abandoned several times, for centuries, and its modern town is beside the ancient mound, not on it; Damascus and Aleppo have never been empty, which is their claim. Is it the same place? Athens has been Athens since the Bronze Age on the same rock, Luxor is Thebes, Faiyum was Shedet, but the name has changed and the town has moved a mile. Archaeology gives the dates, from the lowest occupation layers, by radiocarbon and by pottery, and it gives them only where someone has dug, which under a living city is rarely far; the dates below are of the earliest settlement found on the site, and the claims of continuity are the cities' own. List of oldest continuously inhabited cities.

The Near East: the oldest of all

• Jericho, West Bank (about 9000 BC). Tell es-Sultan, a mound beside the spring of Ain es-Sultan 250 m below sea level, has a Natufian camp of about 9600 BC, a walled town of about 8000 BC with a stone tower 8.5 m high and a wall 3.6 m thick, the oldest known, plastered skulls of about 7000 BC, and occupation through the Bronze Age, the Bible's Jericho, to the Roman city that Herod built a mile away and the modern town; the gaps, of centuries at a time, are why purists prefer Byblos, and the claim of "oldest city" is the mound's.
• Byblos, Lebanon (about 5000 BC, town by 3000 BC). Gebal, the port that shipped cedar to Egypt and papyrus to Greece, whose name gave the Greeks their word for book and the Bible its name, settled about 8800 BC as a fishing village and occupied without a known break from about 5000 BC; Phoenician, Persian, Greek, Roman, Crusader and Ottoman on the same headland, a World Heritage Site, and the city whose claim to unbroken occupation is the strongest.
• Damascus, Syria (about 6300–4000 BC). Settled in the Barada oasis by about 6300 BC at Tell Ramad on its edge and in the city by about 4000 BC, a city by 2000 BC, the capital of the Umayyad caliphate from 661, and never empty; it calls itself the oldest continuously inhabited capital, and the Umayyad Mosque stands on a temple of Hadad of the 1st millennium BC that became a temple of Jupiter and a church.
• Aleppo, Syria (about 5000 BC, city by 3000 BC). Halab, on the Citadel hill and around it, a city of the kingdom of Yamhad by 2000 BC, named in the Ebla tablets of about 2300 BC as already a city, and lived in throughout, the largest city in Syria until the war of 2012–16 destroyed half its old town; Damascus and Aleppo dispute the title between them.
• Susa, Iran (about 4200 BC). The capital of Elam and of the Persian kings, settled about 4200 BC, with the modern town of Shush beside the mounds.
• Sidon (about 4000 BC) and Tyre (about 2750 BC), Lebanon. Phoenician ports, Sidon with a Neolithic settlement under it, Tyre founded, Herodotus was told, in 2750 BC.
• Jerusalem (about 4500 BC, city by 1800 BC). Settled on the Gihon spring by about 4500 BC, walled by about 1800 BC, and in the Bible from David's capture of it about 1000 BC; occupied throughout, though destroyed in 587 BC and AD 70.
• Beirut (about 3000 BC), Gaziantep (about 3650 BC), Erbil (about 6000 BC, citadel occupied since about 2300 BC), Kirkuk (about 3000 BC), Luxor (about 3200 BC), Faiyum (about 4000 BC). Each with a claim, Erbil's citadel mound in Iraqi Kurdistan being one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in the world, emptied of its last residents for restoration in 2007 with one family kept to preserve the record.

Europe

• Plovdiv, Bulgaria (about 6000 BC). Settled on its hills by about 6000 BC, a Thracian town by 1200 BC, Philippopolis under Philip of Macedon in 342 BC, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, and the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe, with a Roman theatre and stadium under the modern streets.
• Argos, Greece (about 5000 BC). Settled in the Neolithic, a Mycenaean stronghold, the city of Agamemnon's Argolid and a power in classical Greece, and lived in throughout; the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe by some counts and the oldest in Greece.
• Athens (about 5000 BC, city by 1400 BC). The Acropolis has Neolithic pottery of about 5000 BC and a Mycenaean palace of 1400 BC, and the city has been on the same rock and plain since; the oldest capital in Europe.
• Chania, Crete (about 3500 BC), on Minoan Kydonia; Larnaca, Cyprus (about 1400 BC), on Kition; Thebes, Greece (about 3000 BC).
• Lisbon (about 1200 BC, Phoenician) and Cádiz (about 1100 BC), the oldest in western Europe, founded by the Phoenicians from Tyre; Rome (753 BC by tradition, settled about 1000 BC); Marseille (600 BC), the oldest in France, founded by Greeks from Phocaea; Trier (16 BC), the oldest in Germany; Colchester (about AD 43, Iron Age before) in Britain.

Asia and Africa

• Varanasi, India (about 1800–1200 BC). Kashi, on the Ganges, settled in the 2nd millennium BC and a city by 800 BC, the oldest living city of India and the holiest of Hinduism, with the Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath beside it in about 528 BC; Mark Twain wrote that it was "older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend".
• Luoyang (about 2070 BC) and Xi'an (about 1100 BC), China. Luoyang on the Luo river, capital of thirteen dynasties from the Xia by tradition and the Zhou by record, and the oldest continuously inhabited city in China; Xi'an, Chang'an, the capital of the Qin, Han and Tang and the end of the Silk Road.
• Balkh, Afghanistan (about 1500 BC). Bactra, the "mother of cities", a village now beside the ruins; Kandahar (about 1000 BC), on Alexander's Alexandria Arachosia and older towns.
• Luxor, Egypt (about 3200 BC). Thebes, the capital of the New Kingdom, with Karnak and the Luxor temple in the town; Faiyum claims 4000 BC as Shedet, the crocodile city, and is the oldest in Egypt.
• Aksum, Ethiopia (about 400 BC); Carthage is a suburb of Tunis; Alexandria (331 BC).
• Jericho and the Levant above; Kirkuk, Erbil, Mosul in Iraq; Hamadan (about 1100 BC), Ecbatana, in Iran.

The Americas

• Cholula, Mexico (about 500 BC). A city of the same site since the late Preclassic, with the largest pyramid by volume in the world, Tlachihualtepetl, under a church, and the oldest continuously inhabited city in the Americas.
• Cusco, Peru (about 1100). The Inca capital on an earlier Killke settlement of about 900, lived in since, with Inca walls under Spanish streets; the oldest in South America.
• Mexico City (1325). Tenochtitlan, founded by the Aztecs on the lake and rebuilt by the Spanish on its ruins.
• Quito (about 980, Inca 1470), Acoma and Taos pueblos (about 1100–1150) in the United States, St Augustine (1565) and Santo Domingo (1496), the oldest European cities in the Americas.

The oldest cities that are ruins

• Göbekli Tepe, Turkey (9500 BC). Not a city, a sanctuary; the oldest monumental building, in Göbekli Tepe.
• Çatalhöyük, Turkey (7500–5700 BC). A town of up to 8,000 people in houses packed together with no streets, entered through the roofs, the largest settlement of its age; abandoned.
• Uruk, Iraq (about 4000 BC, city by 3500). The first city in the full sense, with 40,000 people by 3000 BC, the first writing, the first king and the first wall, Gilgamesh's; a ruin since the 7th century AD.
• Eridu (about 5400 BC), the oldest city of the Sumerians by their own account; Ur, Nippur, Kish; Mohenjo-daro and Harappa (about 2600 BC) in Pakistan, the planned cities of the Indus; Memphis (about 3100 BC) in Egypt; Knossos (about 7000 BC, palace 1900 BC); Troy (about 3000 BC); Caral (about 2600 BC) in Peru, the oldest city in the Americas.

Versions and theories

• Damascus is the oldest city. The oldest continuously inhabited capital, by its own claim, from about 4000 BC on the site; Jericho and Byblos are older, and Aleppo says it is older than Damascus. All are right in their own terms.
• Jericho has been inhabited for 11,000 years. The site has, with long gaps; the walls of 8000 BC are real and the "walls of Jericho" of Joshua, about 1400 BC, have not been found, the Bronze Age wall having fallen about 1550 BC.
• Varanasi is the oldest city in the world. The oldest living city of India, of about 1800 BC at most; the claim of 5,000 years is tradition.
• Plovdiv is older than Rome, Athens and Constantinople. Its settlement of 6000 BC is older than Rome's (about 1000 BC) and Constantinople's (about 660 BC) and about as old as Athens's; as a city it is younger than all three.
• Rome was founded in 753 BC. By Varro's tradition; the huts on the Palatine are of about 1000 BC and the city of about 600 BC.
• The oldest city in the United States is St Augustine. The oldest European one, 1565; Acoma and Taos are 400 years older, and Cahokia, abandoned about 1350, was the largest city north of Mexico.

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