The First Persian Empire

Charlemagne remains one of the towering figures of European history. He created for himself a vast territory that covered most of modern-day France and Germany, encompassing the Low Countries, areas in northern Spain, and parts of Italy. His imperial coronation on Christmas Day 8 ...  Show more

In the early nineteenth century, engineers discovered that steam power and iron rails could be combined to move people and goods faster than any horse or ox could. Within a few decades, railways had spread across every continent. Cities were reorganised around stations, clocks we ...  Show more

The Achaemenid Empire, or better known as the First Persian Empire, was one of the largest empires in History - led by Cyrus the Great it covered 2.1 million square miles. But where did it come from? And what do we know about their society? It was in their DNA to travel and ex ...

Persia was the first great superpower. The empire built by Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and the rest of the Achaemenids stretched from India in the east to the Mediterranean in the west, from Russia in the north to the Gulf of Oman in the south. It laid the foundation for empires of the ...  Show more

At its pinnacle, the kingdom of Assyria stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf, a feat few could compare with in 660BCE. With Assyria's conquests documented by contemporary Greek historians, and even in the Hebrew Bible, nearly two millennia of stu ...

The Sasanians are renowned as one of Rome's most feared enemies. Founded in third century Persia by an Iranian noble called Ardashir, their dynasty oversaw the growth of a mighty empire that brought down the Parthians and survived into the early Middle Ages. But how did one fa ...