Cities Through the Ages

Seven real street corners, rebuilt once per era, from AD 250 to the year 3000. Pick a city and drag the timeline: the buildings, roofs, shopfronts, signs, traffic, clothes, water level, sky and air all change with the year, and every one of them is period-correct. London is the foot of London Bridge, where a crossing has stood within yards of one line since AD 50. Paris is the right bank at the Pont d’Iéna, where everything permanent on the axis has been demolished and the tower that was licensed for twenty years is still standing — watch it built, in twenty-six months, while you scrub. New York is Greenwich Street at Fulton, where the ground itself is younger than the buildings on it. Tokyo is the palace moat, the one piece of ground in the densest city on earth that nobody may build on. Rome is a road that has not moved while the ground rose twelve metres over it. Mexico City is a centre of power that never shifted, and Los Angeles is the plaza of 1781 under the freeway. Walk each street at eye level or orbit the whole block, and click the markers to read what you are looking at.