Ten Cities from the Bay of Kotor to Galilee, West to East

Herceg Novi stands at the western entrance to the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro. It was founded as a fortress in 1382 by Tvrtko I Kotromanic, King of Bosnia, then ruled by the Ottomans from 1482 to 1687 and by Venice until 1797, which left it a blend of architectural styles.

Ulcinj lies a little farther along the Montenegrin shore and is one of the oldest settlements on the Adriatic coast, founded in the 5th century BC. The Romans took it from the Illyrians in 163 BC, Venice took it in 1405, and the Ottomans held it from 1571 until it was ceded to Montenegro in 1878.

Corfu, called Kerkyra in Greek, was a naval power in fifth century BC Greece alongside Athens and Corinth, according to Thucydides. Venice ruled it from 1386 to 1797, and its two fortresses earned it the nickname Kastropolis, or Castle City.

Prizren sits in the foothills of the Sharr Mountains in southern Kosovo and is its historical capital. It was a capital of the Serbian Empire under Stefan Dusan, became an Ottoman administrative center after 1455, and hosted the founding of the League of Prizren in 1878.

Rosetta, or Rashid, is a port on the Nile Delta about 65 kilometers east of Alexandria, built on the site of the ancient Ptolemaic city of Bolbitine. It gave its name to the Rosetta Stone, found at nearby Fort Julien in 1799, which proved essential to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Afyonkarahisar is an inland city in western Turkey, about 250 kilometers southwest of Ankara on the Akarcay River. Known in antiquity as Akroinon, it became an important Byzantine fortress, and its Turkish name combines the words for opium, black and fortress, after the castle on a dark volcanic rock.

Kyrenia is a city on the northern coast of Cyprus, noted for its historic harbor and castle. Romans laid the castle's foundations in the 1st century AD, Venetians modified the fortifications in the 15th century, and Ottoman rule began in 1571.

Netanya is the youngest city on the trail, founded in 1929 on the Sharon plain and named for the philanthropist Nathan Straus. It has 14 kilometers of beaches and, in the 1990s, absorbed large numbers of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia.

Nazareth is the largest city in Israel's Northern District, set in a bowl-shaped basin in the hill country of Lower Galilee about 25 kilometers from the Sea of Galilee. Its center sits near 347 meters above sea level, and the hills around it rise to roughly 488 meters.

Safed, in the Upper Galilee, is the highest city in Israel at roughly 850 to 937 meters. It has been identified with the fortified town of Sepph mentioned by Josephus, was a Crusader fortress in the 12th century, and became a major center of Kabbalah study in the 16th century.