There have been cases in history when large, crowded cities first fell into disrepair, then were destroyed, and in the end their names remained only in myths, legends and fairy tales. Today I will tell about some of them.....
Kitezh
This mysterious city is often called "Russian Atlantis". Many people have tried to find it, but no one has succeeded so far.
According to legend, on the shores of Lake Svetloyar (present-day Nizhny Novgorod region), there once stood the large and beautiful city of Kitezh. When in 1238 Mongolian troops attacked the Russian principalities, they wanted to burn Kitezh like many others, but a miracle happened. The whole city together with all the inhabitants, houses and churches went to the bottom, "and the Mongols searched for ten days, but they did not find the city".
Photo:dzen.ru
Since then the city has been hidden under water, and only sometimes in good weather you can hear bells ringing and people singing from the shore of the lake. It is said that there is some secret way to get to Kitezh and talk to its inhabitants...
Archaeologists have tried to find traces of the city at the bottom of the lake, but so far no one has succeeded.
Sybaris
In ancient times, this Greek city (located in the south of modern Italy) was famous for its wealth and luxury. Now there are not even ruins left of it.
Sibaris was located in the south of the Apennine Peninsula. Thanks to its favorable geographical location and intensive trade, its inhabitants became rich very quickly. The Sybarites lived in unimaginable luxury for those times. For example, they had heated floors, water and even wine pipelines, thanks to which the Sybarites exported wine to Carthage, Phoenicia, Etruria,
Gallia and Asia Minor.
Photo:dzen.ru
Sybarites were very pampered - to the extent that it was forbidden to keep roosters in the city so that they would not wake people up early in the morning. Residents of neighboring towns laughed at the gentlemen, and said that "even if a Sybarite will sleep on a bed of rose petals, he will leave bruises on his body". By the way, thanks to the inhabitants of Sybaris, the word "Sybarite" has become a nominative word.
Nineveh
This city is one of the few fragments of which have survived to our time. Nineveh is 7-8 thousand years old. Its ruins are located on the territory of the city of Mosul in Iraq. The peak of the dawn of Nineveh was when it was the capital of Assyria.
Assyria is the oldest empire known to mankind, and the most brutal. There were cases when Assyrians killed all civilians in their cities, sparing neither the elderly nor children. People were often senselessly mutilated - for example, their hands were cut off.
Photo:dzen.ru
The neighboring nations trembled at the mere mention of the Assyrians. But the hour of reckoning had come. In 612 B.C. the Medes and Babylonians captured and destroyed the "city of blood", leaving no stone unturned. Only in 1847 it was possible to find the ruins of the city.
Mohenjo-Daro
One of the oldest cities in the world. It was built more than four and a half thousand years ago, but two thousand years before Christ it was abandoned and covered with earth. By the way, the name Mohenjo-Daro means "hill of the dead".
Mohenjo-Daro was located in what is now Pakistan. When archaeologists found it in the twentieth century and began excavations, they were shocked: it turned out that the city's inhabitants knew the written language, lived in large brick houses, had granaries, public swimming pools, even public toilets and sewage systems (the first in the world!).
Photo:dzen.ru
The Indus civilization was destroyed 2000 years before our era, so very little is known about it. It is not even known what language its inhabitants spoke.