Argos, Peloponnese

One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with settlement evidence from c. 5000 BCE on Aspida hill. Argos flourished as a Mycenaean center in the 14th-13th centuries BCE, though smaller than nearby Mycenae and Tiryns. Under King Pheidon in the 7th century BCE it became Greece's most powerful city, allegedly introducing standardized weights and hoplite warfare. Its theatre, once Greece's largest, seated 20,000 spectators across 81 rows. The city was devastated by Visigoths in 395 AD.