Each stop on this path carries a recorded founding or settlement year, and reading them in order runs from Port of Spain in 1560 through the Lesser Antilles, Jamaica and the Guianas to Belmopan, a planned capital begun...
11 stops
Colombia's departmental capitals sit in very different landscapes, from rainforest river ports with no road to the rest of the country to Andean valley towns and Caribbean coasts. This trail starts at the southern tip...
12 stops
These eleven African cities run from a hunter's settlement of the mid 17th century in Nigeria to a city established in 1978 in Zimbabwe, ordered by the earliest founding date each page records. Where a page records an...
11 stops
Every city on this path is the capital of an Iranian province, and each page records its 2016 census population. Read from the largest, Kermanshah, down to the smallest, Yasuj, the order shows how a country of deserts...
15 stops
Every city on this path carries a founding year in the atlas, and the years run from the 8th century BC to 1666. Reading them in order shows how settlement was layered across the Mediterranean, the Balkans, South Asia...
9 stops
Every place on this path began as a deliberate act: a settlement by colonists, a Roman fort, a Spanish or Dutch foundation, a refuge granted to religious exiles, or a rebuilding after an earthquake. The stops run in the...
12 stops
These thirteen towns from Iceland to Austria are not national capitals, yet each has a history and a trade of its own. They are arranged from the largest recorded population to the smallest, so the path runs from a...
13 stops
This trail follows nine places whose atlas pages record how far back they go, from a Peloponnesian city settled some 7,000 years ago to a garrison city founded in 638 CE. Each stop is placed by the earliest date its...
9 stops
This trail follows ten cities of the eastern Mediterranean basin from the Montenegrin coast at the mouth of the Bay of Kotor to the hills of Galilee, in order from west to east. Venetian, Ottoman, Byzantine and Greek...
10 stops
This trail follows eight cities of the Ethiopian highlands, the Congo and Uganda lake country, the Kenyan Rift and the Tanzanian highlands, ordered by the latitude recorded for each in Wikidata, from 7.67 degrees north...
8 stops
This path follows thirteen ancient cities of the Troad, Aeolis, Ionia and Caria down the Aegean side of Anatolia, ordered by the latitude the atlas records for each, from about 40.2 degrees at Zeleia to about 36.7...
13 stops
These thirteen provincial seats are ordered by the year each place was founded or organized as a town, from a Spanish encomienda of 1571 to a municipality created in 1971. Reading them in order shows the capital network...
13 stops
These nine ancient cities of Arcadia, the highland heart of the Peloponnese, are ordered by the latitude recorded for each on its page, from Cynaetha in the north to Pallantium in the south. Together they show how a...
9 stops
These nine ancient cities are ordered by the earliest war event their own atlas pages record, from the Persian invasion of 480 BC to Caesar's siege in Gaul in 52 BC. Each stop shows a different way a city met a war...
9 stops
This path runs west to east through the dry belt below the Sahara, from the Niger River in Mali across northern Cameroon and Sudan to the Eritrean border country. Each city grew as a trading, caravan, rail or garrison...
8 stops
This path follows eight river and Patagonian cities in southern South America in order of the latitude recorded on each entity page, from about 25.8 degrees south at Rosario de la Frontera to about 45.9 degrees south at...
8 stops
These eleven American cities, from Washington State to the Arizona border, are placed in one order: the latitude recorded on each city page, from the highest value to the lowest. Each stop note repeats that recorded...
11 stops
This trail follows nine towns in Croatia, from the Hrvatsko Zagorje and Slavonia in the north to the Dalmatian coast in the south. Every stop is ordered on one basis, the latitude recorded on its entity page, from about...
9 stops
This trail follows eleven Indonesian towns and cities across Sulawesi, Borneo, Belitung, Papua, Java and the Lesser Sunda Islands. Every stop is ordered on one basis, the latitude recorded on its entity page, from about...
11 stops
This trail follows twelve prefecture-level cities of China from the far northeast to the Gulf of Tonkin coast. Every stop is ordered on one basis, the latitude recorded on its Wikidata coordinate entry, from about 47.34...
12 stops
These eight places in India share one ordering: the latitude that Wikidata records for each of them on its entity page, running from about 31.1 degrees north at Shimla in the Himalayan foothills to about 12.5 degrees...
8 stops
These eight Hungarian towns are ordered on one basis that every stop shares, the latitude recorded on each town page, running from Putnok in the northern hills near Miskolc to Újkígyós in the Southern Great Plain. On...
8 stops
This path runs through eleven Dutch towns in one order, the latitude recorded for each on its entity page, from Winschoten in the northeast at about 53.15 degrees north down to Breda in North Brabant at about 51.59...
11 stops
This path crosses France from the Belgian border to the Aude valley, ordered on one basis that every stop shares: the latitude recorded on each entity page, starting with the northernmost place and ending with the...
8 stops
This path crosses Poland from the Pomeranian coast to the Lesser Poland foothills, ordered on one basis that every stop shares: the latitude recorded on each entity page, starting with the northernmost town and ending...
12 stops
This path runs through twelve German cities in one order, the latitude recorded for each on its entity page, from Buxtehude in Lower Saxony at about 53.5 degrees north down to Lindau on Lake Constance at about 47.5...
12 stops
This path runs through twelve Japanese cities in one order, the latitude recorded for each on its entity page, from Asahikawa in Hokkaido at about 43.8 degrees north down to Kurashiki in Okayama at about 34.6 degrees...
12 stops
These thirteen Turkish provincial cities are arranged by the latitude recorded on each city page, from Muğla at about 37.2 degrees north to Kırklareli at about 41.7 degrees north. Moving north through the list takes a...
13 stops
These eight Greek cities are ordered on one basis that every page shares, the latitude recorded from Wikidata coordinates, running from Kastoria in the north to Heraklion on Crete in the south. Along the way the path...
8 stops
These nine Syrian places are ordered on one basis that every stop shares, the latitude recorded on each city page, running from Afrin and Hasakah near the northern border to Daraa near the Jordanian border in the south...
9 stops
These eight Angolan cities are ordered on one basis that every stop shares, the latitude recorded on each city page, running from Soyo near the Congo River mouth in the north to Ondjiva near the Namibian border in the...
8 stops
These eight places in Malaysia are royal capitals, state capitals and district towns, arranged by the latitude each entity page records, from the southernmost to the northernmost. Every stop is placed by the same...
8 stops
This path runs down the west side of Taiwan from the northern special municipalities to the southern tip of the island, ordering nine places by the latitude in the Wikidata coordinate recorded on each page, from New...
9 stops
This path follows the Nile from the Mediterranean end of its delta to the Aswan Governorate, ordering nine Egyptian cities by the latitude each page records, from Damietta at 31.42 degrees north to Edfu at 24.98. Along...
9 stops
Albania's 2015 local government reform merged small communes into larger municipalities, and each of these eight town pages states its municipality's population as of the 2023 census. The path climbs from Roskovec with...
8 stops
Ten provincial capitals, from the Pacific lowlands and the Andean valleys to the Amazon and the Galápagos, are set in order of their 2022 census population, largest first. The order shows how a country of banana ports...
10 stops
Every stop on this path is the capital of a Philippine province, ordered by the population recorded for it in the 2024 census, from Lagawe with 19,124 people to San Fernando in La Union with 124,809. The order shows...
14 stops
Twelve regional cities in New South Wales, Tasmania, Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland are lined up by the founding year each page records, from 1815 on the Central Tablelands to 1870 on the Burnett River. Each...
12 stops
Thirteen small towns in Slovenia and Croatia are lined up by the year each page records for the earliest written reference to the place, from 932 on the Adriatic coast to 1481 in the Gorski Kotar hills. Each stop adds...
13 stops
This path crosses Anatolia from the Aegean and the Dardanelles to the Tigris, ordered by the longitude each city page records. Along the way are Greek and Hellenistic foundations, Ottoman fortress towns and Syriac and...
11 stops
These eleven Hungarian towns are set in order of the earliest year the atlas records for each, from a settlement dated 43 AD in the west to a town formed from four villages in 1984. Along the way the path crosses the...
11 stops
These sixteen prefecture-level cities of China have not appeared on another trail, and they are arranged from the most populous at the 2020 census to the least, using the population figure recorded on each page. The...
16 stops
These eight cities run from a settlement first inhabited in the fifteenth century BCE to a desert town established in 1955. Read in order of founding or first record, they show how the region was settled in layers...
8 stops
This path runs north to south through ten towns of eastern Germany, from the Peene river near the Baltic lagoon to the Ore Mountains on the Czech border. Each stop is a town the atlas records with a documented medieval...
10 stops
This path crosses the Iberian Peninsula by date rather than by map, moving from a Roman town destroyed in the Second Punic War to a Barcelona suburb of today. Each stop is placed by one dated event its own page records...
11 stops
This trail follows nine ancient places from the Algerian coast to southern Iraq, taken from west to east. Each began as a trading post, colony, sanctuary or city-state, and each page records what later happened to it: a...
9 stops
This trail crosses the southern African interior from the Namibian desert to the Lubombo lowlands of Eswatini, visiting towns that are district seats, railway or road stops and farming centres rather than capitals...
8 stops
Eleven South African towns follow the country's settlement from a Dutch trading company outpost in 1657 to a coal and industrial town founded in 1892. Along the way the path passes wine farms, a colonial district seat...
11 stops
Greek settlers from a handful of mother cities such as Phocaea, Miletus and Euboea planted trading towns around the Mediterranean and Black Sea. This path follows twelve of them from the Catalan coast to Crimea, in...
12 stops
These eleven cities all earn their place on the map as harbors, ferry landings or gateways, and the path runs from the Pacific coast of Mexico eastward across the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Each stop is told from what...
11 stops
These ten capitals of Colombian departments are taken in the order the cities were founded, from the Caribbean port of 1525 to a Casanare town of the twentieth century. Reading them in sequence shows the Spanish...
10 stops
These twelve Hungarian towns run roughly from west to east, from the Austrian and Slovak borders through the Bakony, the Danube and the northern hills to the plain around Nyíregyháza. None is a national capital, and...
12 stops
These eight capitals lie between the Caspian Sea and the Tian Shan foothills, in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Ranked by their latest recorded population, they climb from just over a million in Ashgabat to more than...
8 stops
This path crosses Mongolia from the far northwest to the east, stopping at twelve provincial capitals. Each began for a different reason: a Dzungar or Qing garrison, a monastery, a railway, a Soviet base or a Comecon...
12 stops
This path runs roughly west to east through ten national capitals of southeastern Europe, from the Slovenian city on the Adriatic trade route to the Romanian metropolis on the Dambovita. Each capital has its own origin...
10 stops
These eleven towns sit in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Benin, and none of them is a national capital. Taken from the Atlantic coast of Senegal eastward to northern Benin, they show how colonial ports, cocoa and...
11 stops
This path crosses Canada from New Brunswick to Alberta and shows how its cities grew: from river capitals and Loyalist settlements, through canal and railway towns, to suburbs that exploded around Toronto and Edmonton...
13 stops
This path leaves the capitals behind and follows twelve regional Australian cities, starting with the pearling town of Broome in the far northwest, working down the Western Australian coast and across the south, then up...
12 stops
This trail runs down New Zealand from the northernmost city of the North Island to the southernmost city of the country, pausing at harbours, river towns, a wine and farming coast, the Wellington suburbs and the...
12 stops
Peru's regional capitals sit at every height between the Pacific coast and the high Andean plateau. This trail climbs from Tumbes at about 6 meters through the Amazon river cities and the mountain valleys to Cerro de...
13 stops
These ten Italian cities run from the Alpine edge of South Tyrol to the southern coast of Sicily, in order of latitude. Each one is known for a single defining thing, whether a spa, a fortress, a racing circuit, a...
10 stops
These eleven state capitals have not appeared on an earlier trail. They run from Ohio's Columbus, with 905,748 residents at the 2020 census, down to Pierre in South Dakota, with 14,091, so the path shows how widely a...
11 stops
This trail runs west to east across central Europe, from the Rhine and Ruhr cities of western Germany through Westphalia, Thuringia, Lusatia and Bohemia to the Czech border with Poland. Each stop is a city whose atlas...
10 stops
Each of these eleven places carried a Latin name before it took the name a modern map shows, and the path runs from Spain in the west to Judaea in the east. Along the way it shows what Rome built a city for: settling...
11 stops
Every place on this path is a protected area that UNESCO also lists as a World Heritage Site, and the stops run in the order each was first set aside, from a Canadian hot springs reserve to an ocean sanctuary in the...
12 stops
Nature does not stop at a frontier, and these twelve protected areas show what countries do about that. Some sit side by side as two parks, some were joined into one agreed area, and some were inscribed as a single site...
12 stops
These fourteen state capitals are arranged by longitude, from Augusta in Maine at about 69.8 degrees west to Salem in Oregon at about 123.0 degrees west. Along the way the trail passes planned capitals, river cities, a...
14 stops
These ten places are reserves kept apart for research and wildlife rather than for visitors: the Russian strict nature reserves called zapovedniks, a karst reserve in Madagascar, a transboundary biosphere reserve in the...
10 stops
This trail runs roughly south to north through ten Indian cities, from the Kerala capital at the southern tip to a Telangana district seat on the Deccan. They are not the best known cities of the region. Each earns its...
10 stops
These fourteen protected places sit on no other trail, and they are lined up by the year the atlas records for their founding. Read in order, they show the idea moving from a Pyrenean valley in 1918 to Japanese volcano...
14 stops
This path runs north to south through ten towns of interior and lowland Central America, from the Guatemalan highlands to central Panama. Each stop is a regional hub built on a different local economy, from highland...
10 stops
Most protected areas are drawn around wildlife or scenery, but these ten also guard the traces of people. The path runs roughly from the oldest human evidence to the most recent, and shows how a park, a historic site or...
10 stops
Eight cities, from the Balkans to the Caucasus, show how political authority can be split, shared or contested within a single city or between a city and the state that claims it. The path runs west to east: a city...
8 stops
Finland's national parks are run by Metsahallitus, and this path follows twelve that no other path here covers, in the order they were founded. It starts with the Lapland wilderness of Lemmenjoki in 1956 and ends with a...
12 stops
These nine smaller cities of North America and Europe are laid out from the smallest to the largest by their most recent recorded population, from 38,336 people in Urbana to 177,074 in Uppsala. Each stop note uses only...
9 stops
These fourteen towns are ordered by the earliest origin their entity pages state, starting with settlements that began under Rome, moving through early medieval foundations and market charters, and ending with a town...
14 stops
Seven of these nine capitals were first established by Spanish expeditions within fourteen years, from Quito in 1534 to La Paz in 1548, and this path follows them in that order before turning to Caracas in 1567 and...
9 stops
These twelve cities are not national capitals, yet each anchors a region of its country as a provincial seat, a second or third city, a port or a seat of government. The path runs west to east, from Colombia and...
12 stops
This path follows twelve capitals of Philippine provinces from Mindoro and Palawan through Bicol, the Visayas and Mindanao, ending at the southern edge of the archipelago in Tawi-Tawi. Each stop is the seat of a...
12 stops
These twelve towns of the Netherlands and Belgium run roughly from the northern Frisian and Zuiderzee shore, through the Holland and Brabant fortress towns, to the Meuse, Scheldt and Hainaut country in the south. Each...
12 stops
Poland's national parks were set up one at a time over almost half a century, and each protects a different kind of ground. This path follows eleven of them in the order they were founded, from a mountain ridge in 1950...
11 stops
Sweden created its first national parks in 1909, and this path follows thirteen of its parks from that opening group through the later additions, ending with Åsnen in 2018. Each stop adds one fact about what the park...
13 stops
Ten cities in Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, taken from north to south, show how a Nordic town grew from an ore port, a river mouth, a royal charter, a strait crossing or a medieval capital. The path starts above...
10 stops
These ten cities got big for a reason other than being a national capital: six grew as neighbors of Manila and Jakarta, and four rose around a steel works, a shipyard cluster, a diamond field or a border crossing. Read...
10 stops
This path climbs one scale from the smallest place to the largest, using the area each entry records. It begins with a tidal beach about 40 meters long in northern Spain, passes a former Kenyan reserve, a South African...
11 stops
This path follows cities that are now mainly ruins, heritage sites or small towns beside them, in the order of their earliest settlement or founding. It runs from Byblos and Al-Ula, settled thousands of years before the...
11 stops
Most protected areas are pictured as empty wild land, but the label has been stretched to cover a single tree, a war hero's farm, a stretch of night sky and farmed valleys where people still live. These ten places are...
10 stops
This path runs through ten Italian cities in rough order from the Ligurian coast to the toe of the peninsula, taking in a riviera resort, a violin-making town, a court city, a late Roman capital, a maritime republic, an...
10 stops
Eight reserves in Asia and Africa that the atlas has not yet placed on another path, ordered by the year each was first set aside, from an Assam forest reserved in 1917 to a sanctuary declared in 2022. Together they...
8 stops
This path runs through eight capitals of northern and eastern Europe, from the Danish islands up the Scandinavian coast, across the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic shore, and inland to Belarus. Each stop gives the...
8 stops
Eight marine protected areas, from a rocky shore reserve in Hong Kong to a park covering the sea around a whole Pacific island, show how far a protected area can stretch. The path runs from the smallest to the largest...
8 stops
This path crosses South Asia from the Kashmir Valley to the hills of Sri Lanka, visiting cities that are not national capitals. Each stop is known for a particular trade, shrine, industry or role, from shawls and...
13 stops
This path follows the Mediterranean from west to east, from the Ionian islands through the Cyclades and the eastern Aegean to the ports of the Israeli coast. Each stop is a place where the sea, trade and conquest left a...
10 stops
Eight Finnish national parks, all managed by Metsähallitus and all classed IUCN Category II, taken in the order they were established. The path runs from two parks founded in 1956 through three founded in 1982 and one...
8 stops
This path runs roughly west to east from Morocco's Atlantic shore across North Africa to the Red Sea tip of the Sinai Peninsula, which lies in Asia. It passes an imperial capital, a rebuilt resort, an Algerian trade...
8 stops
Thirteen Finnish national parks, read in the order they were founded, show how protection grew from a northern fell park into a network of forest gorges, bogs, lake islands, archipelagos and a park created for the...
13 stops
This path follows Croatia from the Adriatic coast to the inland plains. It starts in Istria, runs south along the Dalmatian shore and its islands, then turns inland to the hinterland towns and the Slavonian and central...
11 stops
Austria and Denmark are far apart in landscape, yet their national parks tell one story of how Europe's protection grew from a single Alpine giant to working landscapes that people still farm and live in. This path runs...
10 stops
This path crosses the national parks of Arctic Norway, first the mainland parks of Nordland, Troms and Finnmark taken from west to east, then five parks on Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago. It shows how the same...
0 stops
This path crosses Poland from the earliest Piast seats in the west and center, through a Renaissance new town and the Silesian industrial belt, to the Lower Silesian foothills and the Baltic and lake country in the...
14 stops
This path runs through eight protected places in order of how much ground each one protects (for Madum Lake, the Natura 2000 site that contains it), from a rainforest reserve larger than some countries down to a sixteen...
8 stops
These ten cities of northern Germany and Poland are told in order of founding year, from 861 to 1255. The path runs from the Harz foothills and the Lower Saxony plain to the Baltic coast, and shows how a medieval...
10 stops
This path walks down the length of Italy through eleven national parks that no other trail here covers, starting in the empty valleys of the Alps and ending on the island of Sardinia. Most were created between 1991 and...
11 stops
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania protect their land in nine national parks, and the order in which they were founded shows how the idea took hold around the eastern Baltic. This path runs from the first park of the former...
0 stops
This path follows the national parks of Great Britain and Ireland from the first Irish park, given to the state in 1932, to England's newest park, designated in 2010. Along the way it passes the English and Welsh parks...
11 stops
This trail travels through Nigeria from the far north to the southeast, from the old Hausa and caliphate cities of the savanna, across the Middle Belt, to the Niger Delta and the Igbo and Efik cities near the coast...
12 stops
This path follows Norway's national parks through the sixty years in which they were created, in order of founding. It runs from the 1960s and 1970s parks of the north, through the glacier and plateau parks of the 1980s...
23 stops
These ten Japanese cities run from the northern port of Hokkaido to the steel coast of Kyushu, taken roughly in order from north to south. Each is a prefectural capital or a major regional city, and together they show...
10 stops
Spain named its first national park in 1918 and was still adding them more than a century later. This path follows fourteen of them in the order they were declared, from a mountain park in the north to the Andalusian...
14 stops
This path crosses the Pacific from Tahiti to Micronesia and the Solomon Islands, following the outside forces that shaped small island towns: eighteenth-century exploration, colonial administration, wartime battles and...
10 stops
This path runs roughly west to east across the Arabian Peninsula, northern Iraq and Iran, from a cool mountain resort in Saudi Arabia through three cities of the United Arab Emirates and three of Iraq to two cities of...
9 stops
This path crosses Italy's national parks roughly in the order they were founded, from the Apennine park created in 1923 to the Ligurian coast park of 1999. Along the way the reasons for protection change from wildlife...
12 stops
These ten towns cross Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini, from the Zambezi in the north to the mountain kingdoms in the south. Each began for a different reason, a river post, a mine, a mission, a tribal seat, a...
10 stops
Nine large American cities that are not state capitals, taken in the order they were founded, from a Spanish colonial villa of 1706 to Anchorage in 1914. Each stop gives the city's founding date and one fact about what...
9 stops
Protected green land has to be owned, paid for and watched over by someone. This path follows nine places in the order of who holds them, starting with city councils and city parks departments, moving through a state...
9 stops
Germany's national parks were founded in bursts rather than one at a time, and this path follows them by year of founding. It starts with the Alpine park of 1978, passes the three North Sea mudflat parks and the cluster...
12 stops
This trail follows the isthmus from the Guatemalan highlands to the Panama Canal corridor, stopping at towns that are not national capitals but each carry a distinct local story: a colonial capital, a Maya region...
11 stops
A protected area can be a national park, a wildlife refuge, a biosphere reserve, a provincial park or a private preserve, and each name carries a different idea of what is being kept and who keeps it. This path runs...
12 stops
This path crosses Mexico from the northern border to the southern mountains, stopping at nine cities that are not on any other trail here. They show different jobs a Mexican city does: border crossing, export...
9 stops
Some protected areas are defined by water on every side. This path begins in the cold seas of northern Europe, moves south through the Aegean and the Gulf of Guinea, and ends in the Pacific and Asian waters, visiting...
9 stops
These twelve provincial capitals run from the northern tip of Luzon down through the Bicol and Visayan coasts to southeastern Mindanao. Each is the seat of a province, yet they differ widely in age, size and character...
12 stops
These ten cities govern places whose political status is something other than an ordinary independent state: overseas territories, autonomous and special administrative regions, a constituent country, and two disputed...
10 stops
These eleven cities run roughly from west to east across Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Poland and Romania, from the Rhine to Moldavia. Each stop note names a fact from the entity page, from a Roman or medieval...
11 stops
Eight protected areas in India are tied together by the tiger, and each page names the year its protection began or the year it joined the tiger reserve network. The path follows the earliest of those dates on each...
8 stops
This path runs through Thailand from north to south, from a Lanna-era capital founded in 1262 to a railway hub that grew after 1922. Each stop is a provincial city that shows a different reason a Thai town became a...
13 stops
This trail crosses the Indonesian archipelago from west to east through twelve regency towns that rarely head a list of cities, from the Sumatran coast of Aceh to the Bird's Head of New Guinea. Each stop carries a fact...
12 stops
These eight protected places stretch from the Carpathians to the Indian Ocean and are ordered by the year each gained the protection or recognition named in its own entry. Together they show how very different...
8 stops
This trail runs south through eleven Chinese cities that earlier trails skip, from Changchun and Jilin City in the northeast to Haikou on Hainan. Each stop is a city of several million people, and each note picks out...
11 stops
Ten national parks in the Americas and the Pacific that no other trail visits, taken roughly from north to south. Each one shows a different reason to protect land, from a tall waterfall to a land bridge, an island...
10 stops
This trail follows New Zealand's national parks that no earlier trail covers, in the order they were founded, from the lake and beech forest park of 1956 to the Stewart Island park opened in 2002. It ends beside the...
8 stops
This trail runs through nine cities of the Caribbean and Central America in the order they were founded, from Santiago de los Caballeros in 1495 to Oranjestad around 1796. Spanish towns on the mainland and islands come...
9 stops
Fjords are long, steep-sided inlets where mountains drop straight into the sea. This path starts with five Norwegian fjords, from the cliffs of the south to the old capital in the centre, then follows the type to a...
8 stops
Indian national parks range from a few square kilometers to well over a thousand. This path climbs that scale using the area each park's own page states, starting at a Haryana bird wetland of about 1.4 square kilometers...
12 stops
This path follows water across the Canadian interior and north, from a great lake in the Mackenzie basin to the prairie rivers and lakes that feed Hudson Bay, and on to James Bay and the reservoir built on its...
9 stops
These eleven Australian cities sit well away from the capital cities and each grew around a particular reason: a mine, a port, a crossing, a highway or a tableland. The path runs from the mining towns of the north and...
11 stops
Eleven places on six continents were set aside mainly for birds, ordered by the date their protection began. Together they show how a single farmer, a village, a national government and an international treaty each took...
11 stops
This trail crosses the Sahel, the Nile valley and the Horn to the East African highlands by way of ten cities that are not national capitals, or in a few cases are capitals of regions or of a contested state. Their...
10 stops
This path crosses India from the snow leopard country of Ladakh to the rainforest of Kerala, using parks that no other trail here visits. It moves north to south so a reader sees how the same national park idea protects...
13 stops
The Mediterranean is not one sea but a chain of basins joined by narrow passages. This trail follows that chain from the Strait of Gibraltar at its western edge to the Sea of Crete in the east, stopping at the seas...
11 stops
These ten Indian cities were not chosen for size alone. Some were planned, some were made to be capitals, some grew around a river crossing, a temple, a rebellion or an examination, and together they show how many...
10 stops
Chile stretches from high desert salt flats to sub-Antarctic forest, and its national parks follow the same line. This trail walks eleven of them from north to south, beginning on the Aymara altiplano and ending on...
11 stops
This path runs west to east along North Africa, from Morocco's Atlantic ports through the Algerian Tell and Aures to Tunisia's Mediterranean coast and the Libyan shore of Cyrenaica. Each city is placed by its own...
12 stops
This path runs through twelve Mexican state capitals, from the border city of Mexicali in the northwest down through the silver and Bajio highlands of the centre to Tuxtla Gutierrez in the far south. Each stop is a seat...
12 stops
Every river ends somewhere, and in Africa the endings differ a great deal. This path begins with rivers that finish by joining a larger one, turns to rivers whose water spreads into a delta or a lake or fades out before...
15 stops
Some countries do not keep every branch of government in one city. This path visits capitals where the executive, legislature or courts sit apart, and capitals that took over from an older seat, from South Africa and...
12 stops
This path follows eight waterfalls from around the world in the order of how they fall: first the tall free leaps, then the tiered and stepped drops, then the falls known for power and for sheer volume of water. Each...
8 stops
These eight capitals run west to east across Europe, from the Seine to the Moskva. Each stop note rests on facts the atlas page already records, such as when the city was first documented, which river or plain it stands...
8 stops
This path starts with the two largest oceans and steps down through cold polar and tropical seas, a Pacific gulf and two Australian waters, to the Mediterranean arms and a single estuary. Each stop shows how a different...
11 stops
This trail follows twelve Indian national parks in the order each one first received some form of protection, from a duck-hunting reserve set up in 1899 to a Himalayan park established in 1984. Along the way it shows...
12 stops
This path crosses England through eleven cities that the atlas records, starting with the cathedral cities and ending with the ports and industrial towns that grew around trade and manufacturing. Each stop names one...
11 stops
This trail follows waters shaped by cold and isolation, beginning at the ice-covered Arctic Ocean and its narrow gateway at the Bering Strait, then a Greenland fjord system, and crossing to the Southern Ocean that...
8 stops
These eight parks sit in the southern third of Africa, from the Luangwa Valley to the Eastern Cape Highlands, and they are set in order of when each place was first protected, from 1938 to 2025. Read in sequence, they...
8 stops
Costa Rica protected most of its land in stages: a reserve or protected zone came first, and national park status often followed years later. These twelve parks, none of them on the country's earlier park trail, are...
12 stops
These ten cities are each tied in the atlas to one thing they made or still make, from porcelain and tin-glazed pottery to cars, shoes, steel and media. The path runs from the ceramic towns of China, Saxony and Romagna...
10 stops
Costa Rica protects a large share of its land through a national parks system run by the National System of Conservation Areas. This path starts in the dry northwest, climbs the volcanic spine of the central highlands...
12 stops
This path follows ten rivers that carry the water, farming and trade of South, Southeast and East Asia. It starts with the Indus tributaries of the Punjab, moves to the Ganges system and the great rivers of peninsular...
10 stops
These nine Indonesian towns are mostly seats of regencies, the middle tier of local government, and they run in order from Java east through Bali, Borneo and Sulawesi to Timor and the Maluku islands. Each one shows a...
9 stops
Every lake needs a basin, and the basin has to come from somewhere. This path follows ten lakes by the force that made their bowls, starting with volcanoes that collapsed into calderas, moving through the stretched...
10 stops
Many of the United States protected areas exist to hold a place where something happened, not to save a habitat. This path follows twelve of them in the order of the history each one tells, from the colonial James River...
12 stops
This trail follows ten Kenyan national parks in the order they were established, from the Born Free country of Meru in 1966 to the coastal forest of Arabuko-Sokoke in 1990. Together they show how Kenya protected a...
10 stops
These nine large lakes lie in dry, high or landlocked interiors, far from the open ocean. The path begins with the largest inland body of water on Earth and moves through salt lakes that human diversion has shrunk, then...
9 stops
This path follows Europe's large lakes from the mountain lakes of Switzerland and northern Italy, through Hungary and Sweden, to the vast lakes of Finland and northwestern Russia. Each stop is a lake whose own page...
14 stops
This path crosses Brazil from the rainforest port of Manaus to the southern lagoon city of Porto Alegre, visiting ten cities that no earlier trail covers. Each stop is a city the atlas records with a founding year, so...
10 stops
This path follows twelve of Chile's national parks from north to south, starting in the Andean foothills beside Santiago and ending near the Beagle Channel. Along the way the protected landscape changes from cypress and...
12 stops
This trail follows nine straits and channels around the world, each a narrow stretch of water that separates two pieces of land while joining two larger bodies of water. They show the roles such passages play: busy...
9 stops
This path crosses Africa from the Atlantic coast to the highlands of the east, stopping in ten national capitals. Each one is a different answer to why a capital sits where it does: a peninsula port, a river confluence...
10 stops
This trail follows fifteen great rivers across Europe and Asia, from the Alps in the west to the Arctic coast of Siberia in the east. Each stop shows a different job a river does: carrying trade, marking a border...
15 stops
This path follows fifteen Japanese national parks that no other trail on the atlas covers, travelling from the northern tip of Hokkaido to the subtropical islands of Okinawa. Each stop is a park run by the Ministry of...
15 stops
This path runs east from Georgia and Armenia through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Each stop was founded, rebuilt or reshaped by an empire, a railway, a river or an earthquake, and together they show how the...
11 stops
These eight cities each began in a different way: as a Roman camp or settlement, a colonial town, a pirate haven, a salt works or a land run. Read in rough order of settlement, they show how a place first took hold, and...
8 stops
Chile's national parks, most of them managed by the Corporación Nacional Forestal, change character with every step south. This path follows thirteen of them in order of latitude, from the high Andes beside Bolivia and...
13 stops
Kenya's national parks run from a fenced reserve on the edge of Nairobi to a fossil shore on Lake Turkana. This path follows them from the capital through the Rift Valley and the central highlands, across the Tsavo...
13 stops
This path crosses mainland and island Southeast Asia from west to east, stopping at cities that were royal seats, trading ports or colonial retreats. Each stop shows how a capital, a river or a harbor shaped the place...
10 stops
This path runs through thirteen of Japan's national parks from the cold north to the subtropical south, so that the country's volcanoes, wetlands, alpine ridges, inland sea and island forests appear in the order a...
13 stops
This trail walks through thirteen of the national parks run by South African National Parks, in the order they were set aside, from the elephants and antelope saved in 1931 to the coastal forest park assembled in 2009...
13 stops
This trail follows nine great rivers down the length of the Americas, from the Yukon in the far northwest to the Paraná in the south. Each stop shows a different job a river does: carrying gold seekers and explorers...
0 stops
This trail runs through ten Italian cities from the far northeast to Sicily, ordered roughly north to south. Together they show how Italian cities earned their place through very different roles: frontier capital...
10 stops
This trail follows eight cities of northern Europe from the plains of Lower Saxony and the Dutch north, along the Baltic coast of Poland and Sweden, to the western and central coasts of Norway. Each stop shows a...
8 stops
This path crosses the Tasman world of protected land in sixteen stops, starting in the tropical Top End of Australia, running west and into the desert centre, down the east and south coasts to Tasmania, and ending in...
16 stops
Some bodies of water are known mostly through the places and people attached to them. This path follows four rivers that reach the sea at or beside a great city, two lakes with a distinctive standing in the world, a...
9 stops
Rivers slow and split as they near the sea or a flat basin, and the land they build there becomes some of the most productive, crowded and contested ground on Earth. This path moves from Europe through Africa and Asia...
12 stops
This path crosses Canada from west to east through twelve protected areas run by Parks Canada or shared with Indigenous governments, from the Haida islands on the Pacific to the Arctic mountains of Labrador. Along the...
12 stops
This trail runs through twelve cities of Australia, New Zealand and Melanesia, from Tasmania north to the Highlands of Papua New Guinea and east to Fiji. Each began as a convict settlement, a port, a gold or sugar town...
12 stops
These ten reserves and parks, taken in the order they were established, show how Europe and Russia protect land in very different ways. Russia began with strict reserves, England chose open moors where people live and...
10 stops
Not every protected place in the United States is a national park. This trail follows ten sites held as national monuments, wildlife refuges and a preserve, in the order they were first protected, and shows how the...
10 stops
This path crosses northern and western China from the Bohai Sea to the plateaus of the interior. It starts with industrial cities of the Hebei plain, follows the Yellow River basin through ancient capitals and grassland...
10 stops
This path follows the five Great Lakes of North America, and the Saint Lawrence River that carries Lake Ontario's outflow toward the Atlantic, then turns north and west to three more of Canada's very large lakes. Each...
9 stops
These twelve protected areas are all marine, and they are placed in order of size, so the path runs from a park of a few dozen square kilometers off Kenya to reserves that cover more sea than many countries cover land...
12 stops
This path crosses Turkey from west to east, from the Gulf of Izmit and the first Ottoman capital to the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts and on to the Tigris. Each stop is a city whose page records a different layer...
9 stops
These eleven cities, most of them now ruins or small towns, trace the eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to the last years of the Byzantine Empire. The path runs roughly in the order each city rose to prominence...
11 stops
These twelve ancient cities, ordered roughly by when they rose, trace how urban life spread from Bronze Age Crete through the Greek colonies to Hellenistic Anatolia and the Roman and Nabataean east. Each stop is a place...
12 stops
Africa's best known reserves are savanna game parks, but some of its most remarkable protected places are shaped by stone, sand and fire. This path starts in the Saharan massifs, crosses the rift valley and the great...
9 stops
This path follows the cold waters that ring the far north, starting at the Greenland Sea, crossing the Russian and Alaskan Arctic, then turning through the Canadian waters of Baffin Bay, Hudson Bay and the Atlantic...
9 stops
These eleven parks run roughly from north to south across North America, from the Arctic ice of Greenland and Baffin Island through the Canadian Rockies and the western United States to the Appalachians, the Chihuahuan...
11 stops
This path crosses Asia from north to south, from the strict zapovednik reserves of Russia through Japan, Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and India to the tropical parks of Sri Lanka and Vietnam. It shows how very different...
12 stops
These ten reserves follow the world's tropical forests westward from Central America through Africa and Madagascar to South and Southeast Asia, showing how very different governments have set aside rainforest, from...
10 stops
This path follows the northern edge of the Indian Ocean from the Red Sea and its two northern gulfs, south through the Gulf of Aden and east across the Arabian Sea, then into the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf and...
9 stops
These nine cities and towns cross southern Africa from Namibia's Atlantic harbor to the Indian Ocean port of Beira and north to Zambia's Copperbelt. Their stories are linked by what each place was built around: a...
9 stops
These ten South American cities run from the Ecuadorian Andes south through Peru and Bolivia to the foothills and plains of Argentina. Together they show several reasons people build cities where they do: Inca and...
10 stops
These nine protected areas exist chiefly because of what lies underfoot. The path runs from basalt columns and sandstone bridges in the United States, through banded and pillared stone in China and Jordan, down into the...
9 stops
This path follows the seas that edge the western Pacific from north to south, beginning in the cold waters between Russia and Alaska and ending between Australia and New Zealand. Each stop is a different kind of sea...
13 stops
Wilderness protection in the United States did not arrive all at once. It began with a single national forest area in New Mexico in 1924, grew through primitive areas and forest designations of the 1930s and 1940s...
10 stops
This trail follows the seas that border Europe from the Arctic edge to the inland waters of the southeast. It runs down the Norwegian coast, into the Baltic and its two northern gulfs, out through the Channel and the...
14 stops
These ten towns are the administrative centers of Pacific territories and island nations, and they show how small a capital can be and still run a government. The path starts at Adamstown on remote Pitcairn and moves...
10 stops
Europe invented protected land in many different ways, and this path follows twelve of them in the order they were set aside. It begins with the continent's first national parks in 1909, passes through reserves built...
12 stops
These eleven parks show what South America sets aside, taken roughly from north to south: a Caribbean coast, tepui highlands, Amazon headwaters, island chains, ancient rock art, a great waterfall and Andean lakes. Each...
11 stops
This path follows water across Africa, from the great lakes of the East African Rift to the rivers that carry the continent's rain to the ocean. It starts at the lakes, moves to the Congo, Zambezi, Niger and Gambia...
8 stops
This path follows the Russian cities that sit along the great rivers and the Trans-Siberian route, from Volgograd on the Volga to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan, so that each stop shows how rivers, fortresses, railways...
8 stops
This path follows water that the surrounding land holds in place, from freshwater lakes that sit in basins on their own, to a salt lake below sea level, to bays and fjords that the sea has pushed inland. Each stop shows...
8 stops
This path crosses India through nine cities, starting with three holy and ancient places on the Ganges and its confluences, moving across the Godavari, the palaces of the west and the lakes of the center, and ending at...
9 stops
This path follows protected water from inland lakes through river deltas and tidal flats to coral reefs and open ocean. Each stop is a reserve whose reason for existing is a particular kind of wet habitat, so the order...
10 stops
These ten cities each owe their existence or their fortunes to a harbor. The path begins with the three cities that stand at the ends of the Suez and Panama canals, moves to ports founded in the early twentieth century...
10 stops
Countries divide themselves into first-level units under many names, and the units differ enormously in size, population and age. This path visits thirteen of them in a rough sweep from western Europe through Russia and...
13 stops
These nine cities run roughly from east to west along the overland trade routes that crossed Asia, from the Yellow River in northwestern China through the Fergana Valley and the Zeravshan oasis to Iran, Iraq and Syria...
9 stops
This path crosses the United States from the Pacific to the Atlantic through fifteen state capitals, ordered roughly west to east. Each stop shows a different reason a seat of government ended up where it did, from rail...
15 stops
This path follows water that people have stopped behind dams and water that nature drops over cliffs. Five of the world's great reservoirs come first, from the largest by surface area to the best known in North America...
10 stops
This path climbs through ten protected areas that exist because of mountains and the ice and fire that shaped them, starting at the Himalaya, passing through Patagonian and Icelandic glaciers, a New Zealand volcano and...
10 stops
A capital is a city chosen, or grown into, as the place where a government sits. This path starts with six national capitals that reached that role in very different ways: a Roman settlement, a shogun town, a colonial...
12 stops
Nine African protected areas, arranged by the year each was first set aside, show how conservation on the continent moved from colonial game reserves in the early twentieth century to national parks and private...
9 stops
This path follows great rivers from their long courses to the places where they finish: three rivers paired with the deltas they build, two rivers that cross whole regions, and two waters that fail to reach open sea in...
10 stops
This path follows protected areas in the order their ideas arrived: the first national park, the first in Africa and Asia, then wetlands, multi-use land, marine parks and wilderness. Each stop shows a different answer...
12 stops
Many of Asia's best known protected areas were created or reshaped to save one species, and the animal's needs still set the park's boundaries and management. This path follows eight of them in the order each area...
8 stops
Countries rarely call their first-level divisions by one name. This path visits twelve of them across six continents, each labelled in its own country as a state, province, autonomous community, region, voivodeship...
12 stops
These eight bodies of water are all narrow passages where the sea is squeezed between land. Four straits carry the world's shipping and the story of how oceans and continents meet, and three Norwegian fjords show the...
8 stops
This trail follows ten protected areas of North America in the order they were set aside, from the first national park in the world in 1872 to a rainforest agreement finalized in 2016. Together they show how protection...
10 stops
This path crosses Asia from west to east through twelve first-level divisions of Pakistan, India, China and Indonesia. The stops show how differently a state, province, territory or autonomous region can be shaped: some...
12 stops
A city is rarely where it is by accident. This path visits ten cities and, at each one, asks what the ground, water or climate around it did to make the place work: a river crossing, a strait, a lagoon, a basin ringed...
9 stops
The world ocean is one connected body of water, but it is joined and divided by a few narrow passages and shaped by a few distinctive seas. This path moves from the polar oceans through the straits that link basins, to...
11 stops
The seven-continent map looks settled from a distance. Up close, nearly every boundary on it is a choice: where Europe ends and Asia begins, whether the Americas are one continent or two, whether Australia means a...
10 stops
This wave minted four requested countries, Tanzania, Mongolia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, alongside the landforms already on file that first flagged them missing. This trail walks each country to its signature landform and on...
10 stops
A ground-level tour of Earth's seven continents, the spine every other page in this atlas hangs from.
7 stops
Seven regions this atlas holds not as countries but as the supra-national spaces where conventions do the work borders elsewhere do on their own: a mountain range that is Europe by one line and Asia by another, a...
7 stops