(Photos from Brussells, Belgium and London, England)
Although a Celtic community settled around a ford across the River Thames, it was the Romans who first developed the square mile now known as the City of London. They built a bridge and an impressive city wall, and made Londinium an important port and the hub of their road system. The Romans left, but trade went on. Few traces of London dating from the Dark Ages can now be found, but the city survived the incursions of both the Saxons and Vikings. Fifty years before the Normans arrived, Edward the Confessor built his abbey and palace at Westminster.
The area now known as Brussels has been inhabited since 2250 BC, when an agrarian Neolithic civilization set up shop in what are now the districts of Schaerbeek, Boitsfort and Uccle. The Romans considered the area a lovely corner of the empire, building villas here during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.