A lost city is an urban settlement that fell into terminal decline and became extensively or completely uninhabited, with the consequence that the site's former significance was no longer known to the wider world. The locations of many lost cities have been forgotten, but some have been rediscovered and studied extensively by scientists. Recently abandoned cities or cities whose location was never in question might be referred to as ruins or ghost towns. Smaller settlements may be referred to as abandoned villages. The search for such lost cities by European explorers and adventurers in Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia from the 15th century onward eventually led to the development of archaeology. Lost cities generally fall into two broad categories: those where all knowledge of the city's existence was forgotten before it was rediscovered, and those whose memory was preserved in myth, legend, or historical records but whose location was lost or at least no longer widely recognized.

How cities are lost

Cities may become lost for a variety of reasons including natural disasters, economic or social upheaval, or war. The Incan capital city of Vilcabamba was destroyed and depopulated during the Spanish conquest of Peru in 1572. The Spanish did not rebuild the city, and the location went unrecorded and was forgotten until it was rediscovered through a detailed examination of period letters and documents. Troy was a city located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey. It is best known for being the focus of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer. Repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, the city slowly declined and was abandoned in the Byzantine era. Buried by time, the city was consigned to the realm of legend until the location was first excavated in the 1860s. Other settlements are lost with few or no clues to their abandonment. For example, Malden Island, in the central Pacific, was deserted when first visited by Europeans in 1825, but the remains of temples and other structures on the island indicate that a population of Polynesians had lived there for perhaps several generations in the past. Typically this lack of information is due to a lack of surviving written or oral histories and a lack of archaeological data as in the case of the remote and fairly unknown Malden Island.

Rediscovery

With the development of archaeology and the application of modern techniques, many previously lost cities have been rediscovered. Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian Inca site situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru. Often referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas", it is perhaps the most familiar icon of the Inca World. Machu Picchu was built around 1450, at the height of the Inca Empire. It was abandoned just over 100 years later, in 1572, as a belated result of the Spanish Conquest. It is possible that most of its inhabitants died from smallpox introduced by travelers before the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the area. In 1911, Melchor Arteaga led the explorer Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu, which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley. Nevertheless, Peruvian explorer and farmer Agustín Lizárraga predated this discovery by 9 years, having found the Inca site on July 14, 1902. He left a charcoal inscription bearing the words "A. Lizárraga 1902". Helike was an ancient Greek city that sank at night in the winter of 373 BCE. The city was located in Achaea, Northern Peloponnesos, two kilometres (12 stadia) from the Corinthian Gulf. The city was thought to be legend until 2001, when it was rediscovered in the Helike Delta. In 1988, the Greek archaeologist Dora Katsonopoulou launched the Helike Project to locate the site of the lost city. In 1994, in collaboration with the University of Patras, a magnetometer survey was carried out in the midplain of the delta, which revealed the outlines of a buried building. In 1995, this target was excavated (now known as the Klonis site), and a large Roman building with standing walls was brought to light.

Lost cities by continent

Africa

Rediscovered

Egypt

Maghreb

Horn of Africa

Subsaharan Africa

Uncertain or disputed

Undiscovered

Asia

Central Asia

Rediscovered

Undiscovered

East Asia

Rediscovered

Undiscovered

Uncertain or disputed

South Asia

India

Rediscovered

Uncertain or disputed

Undiscovered

Nepal

Pakistan

Rediscovered

Undiscovered

Sri Lanka

Rediscovered

Southeast Asia

Rediscovered

Undiscovered

Uncertain or disputed

Western Asia

Rediscovered

Undiscovered

Uncertain or disputed

Europe

Austria

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bulgaria

Croatia

Denmark

Finland

France

Germany

Greece

Hungary

Iceland

Italy

Lithuania

Netherlands

Norway

Poland

Portugal

Romania

Russia

Serbia

Slovakia

Spain

Sweden

United Kingdom

Ukraine

North America

Canada

Rediscovered

Undiscovered

Caribbean

Rediscovered

Mexico and Central America

Maya cities

Incomplete list – for further information, see Maya civilization

Rediscovered

Olmec cities

Rediscovered

Totonac Cities

Rediscovered

Other

Rediscovered

United States

Rediscovered

South America

Inca cities

Rediscovered

Other

Rediscovered

Status Unknown

Undiscovered and fictional lost cities

Legendary

That some cities are considered legendary does not mean they did not in fact exist. Some that were once considered legendary are now known to have existed, such as Troy and Bjarmaland.

Fictional