Eleven Roman Cities Under Their Latin Names, from Merida to Jerusalem

Begin in the far west, where Augustus founded a colony in 25 BC to resettle veteran soldiers from the Cantabrian Wars. Augusta Emerita became capital of the province of Lusitania, with three aqueducts and two public forums, and its site is present day Merida in Spain.

Cartagena in Spain was first Qart Hadasht, founded around 227 BC by the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal the Fair. Scipio Africanus captured it in 209 BC, and under Rome it prospered on silver and lead mining and gained a theatre and forum built under Augustus.

Roman Britain gives a different reason for a town: hot springs at the point where the Fosse Way crosses the River Avon. By the 3rd century AD it was a walled temple and bath complex, and the city of Bath, England, occupies the site today.

Eboracum was a legionary fortress first and a capital second. Founded in the first century AD, it became capital of the province of Britannia Inferior, saw Septimius Severus and Constantius Chlorus die there, and is where Constantine the Great was proclaimed emperor in 306. It is now York.

Before it was Paris, this was a settlement of the Gallic Parisii at a crossing of the Seine, taken by the Romans in the first century BC. The Roman town gained a forum, amphitheatre, aqueduct and baths, and by the fifth century it was the capital of the Merovingian kings.

Lucius Munatius Plancus founded Lugdunum in 43 BC at the confluence of the Rhone and Saone, and within about fifty years it was the administrative center of Roman Gaul and Germany. The emperors Claudius and Caracalla were born here, and the name shifted over the centuries into Lyon.

Moving east along the Danube, Carnuntum began around 50 AD as a legionary fortress and headquarters of the Pannonian fleet. It grew into the capital of Pannonia Superior and a city of about 50,000 people, and its remains lie in Lower Austria between Vienna and Bratislava.

Not every Roman city was a Roman foundation. Cirta was the capital of the Berber kingdom of Numidia, passed under Roman rule in the time of Julius Caesar, and was rebuilt by Constantine the Great after destruction early in the fourth century, who gave it his own name. It is now Constantine, Algeria.

Berytus grew from the Phoenician port of Beerut into a Roman colony around 14 BC, named for Julia, daughter of Augustus. Called the most Roman city of the eastern provinces, it had one of the leading law schools of the empire until the earthquake of AD 551. It is now Beirut.

Apamea on the Orontes shows the Greek layer beneath the Roman one. Seleucus I Nicator refounded it around 300 BC and named it for his wife Apama, and it later served as capital of the Roman province of Syria Secunda, a status it kept into the Crusader period.

End at the most contested name on the path. Hadrian founded Aelia Capitolina in 129 or 130 AD on the ruins of Jerusalem, after the siege of 70 AD, and dedicated it to the cult of Capitoline Jupiter. The name held for roughly two centuries before the site was again called Jerusalem.