But it seems this city of myth and legend has managed to preserve the majority of its ancient treasures.

BBC: Timbuktu's art of saving its manuscripts

Brownfield lent them books on American art and heard tales of heartbreak at watching the looting of ancient treasures from Iraq's national museum.

FORBES: Smart Collecting

Only 2% of the ancient city has been excavated, but those buried historical treasures are threatened by encroaching development.

CNN: Bringing Babylon back from the dead

Their pilgrimage took them to the cultural treasures at Luoyang and Xian, both sites of ancient capitals, the old trading post of Dunhuang and, of course, Beijing and the Great Wall.

CNN: WOMAN WARRIOR

Highlights of its vast collection are the ancient Egyptian mummies, its Roman and Greek antiquities, the Rosetta Stone and the Anglo-Saxon treasures of Sutton Hoo.

CNN: London: What to see

The ancient Omayyad Mosque, which like the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is one of the greatest treasures of Islamic art, is a unique site that was once a church and a mosque at the same time.

CNN: Pope pleads for Muslim, Christian forgiveness

She still treasures the moment when a piece of the past, an object of people's daily lives in ancient Athens, or a marker mentioned in an ancient text, is revealed and she's able to bring it back into the light.

BBC: Working Lives Athens