AHC/WI: The Moving of a City

Alright, this is an idea I had a few months ago, and one I might incorporate into the mini-TL and map series I'm working on, that I thought I'd see what people thought of.

Basically, the idea here is for an important city in the ancient to medieval world (before they got to big and complex for it to be possible) to essentially be moved, that is for all the buildings (either dismantled or not) to be moved from their original location to a new location with nothing but large empty land left where the city once stood.

I originally came-up with a few reasons for this, and they are as follows;

A. A country, after scoring a massive defeat to its enemy, decides to literally take the city as spoils/to deeply humiliate/to destroy the prestige of said enemy.

B. A country is fighting a war they've long admitted to themselves they can't win, so to try and ensure their state/society lives on they dedicate their non-military resources to moving the city to a place that it and its inhabitants will be safe.

C. Religious reasons, either stating they must have a new beginning or the present land is unholy or some promise of a new Holy land lead them to moving the city.


Originally I was thinking of the City of Rome being moved to the Balearic Islands or Iberian East Coast as a way of escaping defeat or it being moved to modern Tunisia by some really pissed off Carthaginians after winning a devastating defeat against the Roman Republic.


Anyways, thoughts, opinions, Parisians?
 
Here's an idea, but it's not a pre-1900 one: the Nationalists, fleeing to Taiwan to escape the Communists, have a little bit more time. Rather than just take the Palace Museum in Beijing, they take the entire Forbidden City, reconstructing it in Taipei, to completely infuriate the Communists.
 
I think this would be pretty hard pre-1900. I could see someone building a replica of a city, but actually moving the city would be very difficult.
 
This is pretty much what happened to Salisbury- the site of Old Sarum, a fairly substantial city with a castle, cathedral and royal palace, was considered far too constricted. The problems got steadily worse until in the early 13th century a decision was made to refound the city. A new site for the cathedral was reconsecrated, and the inhabitants basically demolished their homes and used the rubble to build a new city a couple of miles down the road in a better location. The old site was then completely abandoned, although it still had parliamentary representation until the Reform Act despite not having a single resident.

Normally, however, people would just move to a nearby rival instead of founding a new city- there's plenty of examples of that in Britain too, like the abandonment of Roxburgh, a hugely important city in the medieval period, in favour of Berwick. Another example is Ravenspurn, which fell into the sea in the early 16th century and whose inhabitants simply packed up and move to Hull, just down the coast. (Or possibly R'yleh, not that you can really tell the difference as they're both eldrich places inhabited by cyclopean horrors :rolleyes:).

So what you're looking for has been done, although generally on a smaller scale. You'd be better off looking at economic or environmental reasons rather than something political. Rivers dry up or change course, places become indefensible, and so on...
 
Would Old Sarum -> Salisbury count as an OTL example? It's not a strict 1:1 reconstruction, but the cathedral and entire populace moved en masse to the new site, usually building new structures from the material of the old ones.
 
There's also Kenfig in South Wales, which was a prosprous and ancient port that went back to the bronze age. In the 13th century the surrounding sand dunes basically silted everything up and so the inhabitants moved everything brick by brick, including the local church, a couple of miles inland. The place never recovered its former importance though.
 
Athens was totally burnt by the Persian invasion; there was some talk about reconstructing it at the new port town of Piraeus a couple miles away. Even OTL, where Athens was rebuilt on the previous site for religious reasons, Piraeus was considered so important that the Long Walls were built connecting the two. With a mild PoD either of decreased importance of religion, a sense that the sites were fully desecrated, or manufactured divine signs at the Piraeus, I think you could easily get the city completely moved.
 
I've read that when some Persian ruler took Antioch from the Romans, he had a team of architects laboriously measure the entire city so that he could build a replica on the Euphrates for the captured populace to live in. Not what you're asking about, and it seems a bit fantastic to me, but it is an interesting story.
 
Interesting, useful and educational responses.

Thanks boys...er I assume you're all male atleast.
 
Albuquerque and San Diego had their downtowns moved about two miles each to new Anglo-dominated centers, with the old Hispanic town left as a mere satellite neighborhood.
 
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