Troas, Alexandria. Ca. 301-281 B.C., Æ 10.

Nestled beneath the sun-drenched olive groves of western Turkey's Troad region lie the massive, pink granite ruins of a Hellenistic powerhouse. Founded in the wake of Alexander the Great's conquests and later transformed into a prestigious Roman colony, this is no ordinary archaeological site—it is the epicenter of one of antiquity's greatest "what ifs." Welcome to Alexandria Troas, a sprawling, monumental metropolis of the ancient world that was so strategically vital and magnificent that both Julius Caesar and Constantine the Great considered making it the capital of the entire Roman Empire. next...