Wide, protective sandy beaches and a deep Mediterranean bay helped make Patara the wealthy capital of the Lycian-Pamphylian province during the Roman Empire.
For the first several decades after the Spanish colonialists arrived in Mexico, a furious convent and church building campaign began with the arrival of Christian missionaries.
The last generation of wealthy landowners to emerge in Mexico to build elaborate haciendas within huge land tracts arose during the dictatorship of Diaz, president from1876 until 1911.
Many wealthy and powerful families of sixteenth-century Rome bought property on the Palatine Hill, where they built elaborate gardens filled with sculpture and fountains.
In an unlikely setting of towering loading-dock cranes, piles of coal, and railroad tracks stands the Arch of Trajan, one of the most intact ancient Roman commemorative monuments.