Largest Cities Throughout History

For thousands of years, humans mostly lived in small groups. A village of 200 people was ordinary. Getting 1,000 people together in one place was remarkable. Then cities happened and changed everything about how we live.

Here’s the thing about cities versus villages. In a village, everyone’s involved in getting food somehow. Either you farm or you help the farmers or you’re related to farmers. Cities work completely differently. You’ve got potters who never grow grain. Weavers who don’t raise animals. Scribes who just write things down all day. Soldiers. Priests. Merchants. All these people eating food they didn’t produce.

So you need farmers somewhere else growing extra. You need that food transported in. You need clean water coming from somewhere and dirty water going somewhere else. You need people organizing all of this or it falls apart fast.

Around 3000 BCE, Uruk in what’s now southern Iraq hit 40,000 people. Nobody had managed anything close to that before. Archaeologists dug up thousands of clay tablets there. Bureaucrats tracking everything. How much barley goes to the temple workers. How much beer for the priests. Who gets textiles. Who owes what. Running a city of 40,000 took serious organization.

Why does it matter which city was biggest? Because size follows power and money. The largest city shows you where the empire was strongest, where trade routes met, where the wealth piled up. When a big city’s population crashes, something went wrong. Plague. Invasion. Famine. Economic collapse. When it grows, opportunity is expanding.

Here’s how the rankings changed over time.

3000-2000 BCE: Mesopotamia and Egypt

Rank	3000 BCE	Population	Modern Country
1	Uruk	20,000	Iraq 🇮🇶
2	Memphis	20,000	Egypt 🇪🇬
3	Tell Brak	20,000	Syria 🇸🇾
4	Shahr-e Suktech	15,000	Iran 🇮🇷
5	Anshan	10,000	Iran 🇮🇷

Rank	2300 BCE	Population	Modern Country
1	Mohenjo-daro	40,000	Pakistan 🇵🇰
2	Akkad	36,000	Iraq 🇮🇶
3	Memphis	32,000	Egypt 🇪🇬
4	Ebla	30,000	Syria 🇸🇾
5	Umma	20,000	Iraq 🇮🇶

For close to two thousand years, the biggest cities were clustered in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Makes sense when you think about it. The Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile meant reliable water and good farmland. Surplus grain supported city populations. Plus trade networks brought in copper from Anatolia, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, timber from Lebanon. Cities need more than just local resources to thrive.

1200 BCE: Breaking 100,000

Rank	1200 BCE	Population	Modern Country
1	Pi-Ramesses	160,000	Egypt 🇪🇬
2	Yin	85,000	China 🇨🇳
3	Babylon	80,000	Iraq 🇮🇶
4	Thebes	80,000	Egypt 🇪🇬
5	Ashur	30,000	Iraq 🇮🇶

Ramesses II built Pi-Ramesses in the Nile Delta as his military headquarters. First city to break 100,000 people. Meanwhile over in China, Yin was getting close to the same size. Think about that. Two huge cities on opposite ends of the world, both managing populations that would’ve seemed crazy a few centuries earlier.

700-200 BCE: From Nineveh to Alexandria

Rank	700 BCE	Population	Modern Country
1	Nineveh	100,000	Iraq 🇮🇶
2	Luoyang	100,000	China 🇨🇳
3	Linzi	55,000	China 🇨🇳
4	Babylon	45,000	Iraq 🇮🇶
5	Rome	40,000	Italy 🇮🇹

Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, was top dog for a while. Rome shows up at number five. Still pretty small compared to the eastern cities but growing steadily.

Rank	200 BCE	Population	Modern Country
1	Alexandria	600,000	Egypt 🇪🇬
2	Pataliputra	350,000	India 🇮🇳
3	Seleucia	300,000	Iraq 🇮🇶
4	Xiangyang	250,000	China 🇨🇳
5	Rome	250,000	Italy 🇮🇹

Alexandria shot up after Alexander the Great founded it where the Nile hits the Mediterranean. The famous library, the lighthouse, all that. But really it was about location. The city sat right where Mediterranean trade met Indian Ocean trade. Everything flowed through there. Rome’s up to fifth now, tied with Xiangyang.

100 CE: Rome Hits a Million

Rank	100 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	Rome	1,000,000	Italy 🇮🇹
2	Alexandria	423,000	Egypt 🇪🇬
3	Luoyang	420,000	China 🇨🇳
4	Chang’an	150,000	China 🇨🇳
5	Seleucia	258,000	Iraq 🇮🇶

Rome crossed one million. Some historians think maybe Chang’an or Alexandria got there first, but Rome definitely hit it. How? Grain ships from North Africa. Silver mines in Spain. Multiple aqueducts bringing in water from miles away. The city ate more grain in a year than medieval London would!

Didn’t last though. By 300 CE, Rome was down to 800,000. By 400 CE, only 500,000 left. Wars, disease, political chaos. People fled.

500-700 CE: China Takes the Lead

Rank	500 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	Nanjing	600,000	China 🇨🇳
2	Luoyang	500,000	China 🇨🇳
3	Ctesiphon	467,000	Iraq 🇮🇶
4	Constantinople	450,000	Turkey 🇹🇷
5	Pataliputra	300,000	India 🇮🇳

While Rome was shrinking, Chinese and Persian cities were growing. Ctesiphon (the Sasanian capital, near modern Baghdad) controlled the east-west trade routes. Constantinople was sucking up resources from what was left of the Roman Empire.

Rank	700 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	Chang’an	1,200,000	China 🇨🇳
2	Luoyang	498,000	China 🇨🇳
3	Guangzhou	200,000	China 🇨🇳
4	Constantinople	150,000	Turkey 🇹🇷
5	Kannauj	120,000	India 🇮🇳

Chang’an under the Tang dynasty got massive. The city had this organized grid layout with wide streets. Different districts for merchants, government people, foreigners. This design influenced how cities got built across East Asia for a long time after.

900-1000 CE: Baghdad Gets Huge

Rank	900 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	Baghdad	714,000	Iraq 🇮🇶
2	Luoyang	300,000	China 🇨🇳
3	Constantinople	300,000	Turkey 🇹🇷
4	Cordoba	175,000	Spain 🇪🇸
5	Kyoto	200,000	Japan 🇯🇵

Rank	1000 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	Baghdad	1,388,000	Iraq 🇮🇶
2	Cordoba	450,000	Spain 🇪🇸
3	Bianliang	401,000	China 🇨🇳
4	Constantinople	300,000	Turkey 🇹🇷
5	Palermo	300,000	Italy 🇮🇹

Baghdad exploded under the Abbasid caliphate. The city sat where you could cross the Tigris easily, so it connected Persian, Indian, and Mediterranean trade. The House of Wisdom there was famous for translating Greek, Persian, and Indian texts into Arabic. Scholars came from everywhere.

Then the Mongols invaded in the 1200s and absolutely devastated the region. Baghdad never recovered to anything close to its peak size.

1200-1300 CE: China Again

Rank	1200 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	Hangzhou	800,000	China 🇨🇳
2	Marv	500,000	Turkmenistan 🇹🇲
3	Cairo	251,000	Egypt 🇪🇬
4	Constantinople	240,000	Turkey 🇹🇷
5	Baghdad	200,000	Iraq 🇮🇶

Rank	1300 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	Hangzhou	793,000	China 🇨🇳
2	Khanbaliq	400,000	China 🇨🇳
3	Cairo	350,000	Egypt 🇪🇬
4	Paris	229,000	France 🇫🇷
5	Milan	200,000	Italy 🇮🇹

Marco Polo went to Hangzhou and couldn’t stop talking about it. The canals, the markets, boats on West Lake. Chinese cities stayed dominant for centuries while European kingdoms were dealing with plague and constant political mess.

1700-1900: Europe Transforms

Look at that jump. One century and London’s population went up seven times. Factories needed workers. Railways brought coal from Wales and people from all over Britain and Ireland.

This map shows every city that had more than 100,000 people back in 1700. Most are in Asia. Beijing, Isfahan, Constantinople, Edo (which became Tokyo), Guangzhou. These were already huge urban centers. Europe had about ten cities this big. The Americas? None.

Two hundred years later, the Industrial Revolution had totally flipped this pattern.

Rank	1700 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	Constantinople	684,000	Turkey 🇹🇷
2	Beijing	655,000	China 🇨🇳
3	Isfahan	550,000	Iran 🇮🇷
4	London	553,000	UK 🇬🇧
5	Paris	530,000	France 🇫🇷

By 1700, European cities had made it into the top five. London was fourth.

Rank	1800 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	Beijing	1,100,000	China 🇨🇳
2	London	959,000	UK 🇬🇧
3	Guangzhou	800,000	China 🇨🇳
4	Edo	688,000	Japan 🇯🇵
5	Constantinople	572,000	Turkey 🇹🇷

Beijing was still number one, but London was catching up fast.

Rank	1900 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	London	6,480,000	UK 🇬🇧
2	Paris	3,330,000	France 🇫🇷
3	New York	3,437,000	USA 🇺🇸
4	Berlin	3,764,000	Germany 🇩🇪
5	Vienna	1,700,000	Austria 🇦🇹

2000-2025: Back to Asia

Rank	2000 CE	Population	Modern Country
1	Mumbai	16,367,000	India 🇮🇳
2	Delhi	13,782,000	India 🇮🇳
3	Tokyo	12,100,000	Japan 🇯🇵
4	Shanghai	13,595,000	China 🇨🇳
5	Beijing	10,162,000	China 🇨🇳

By 2000, Asian cities dominated again. India opened up its economy and urbanization went into overdrive.

Rank	2025	Population	Modern Country
1	Jakarta	41,900,000	Indonesia 🇮🇩
2	Dhaka	39,600,000	Bangladesh 🇧🇩
3	Tokyo	33,000,000	Japan 🇯🇵
4	Shanghai	29,600,000	China 🇨🇳
5	Delhi	30,200,000	India 🇮🇳

Jakarta‘s the most populous now. Forty-two million people. Tokyo held first place just five years ago.

These numbers are for whole metropolitan areas, not just the official city limits. Jakarta spreads across Java island and it’s hard to say where the city actually ends anymore.

In 1975, eight cities had over 10 million people. Now there are 33. More than half are in Asia. African cities are growing the fastest. Addis Ababa, Dar es Salaam, Hajipur, Kuala Lumpur will probably all hit 10 million by 2050.

Japan’s going the other direction. Four Japanese cities are shrinking because of low birth rates and an aging population.

Time Period	Largest City	Population (Millions)	Modern Country
3000-2501 BCE	Uruk	0.08	Iraq 🇮🇶
2500-2251 BCE	Lagash	0.06	Iraq 🇮🇶
2250-2001 BCE	Girsu	0.08	Iraq 🇮🇶
2000-1751 BCE	Isin	0.04	Iraq 🇮🇶
1750-1251 BCE	Babylon	0.06	Iraq 🇮🇶
1250-1001 BCE	Pi-Ramesses	0.16	Egypt 🇪🇬
1000-601 BCE	Thebes	0.12	Egypt 🇪🇬
600-301 BCE	Babylon	0.2	Iraq 🇮🇶
300-201 BCE	Carthage	0.4	Tunisia 🇹🇳
200 BCE-270 CE	Alexandria	0.6	Egypt 🇪🇬
271-350 CE	Rome	0.39	Italy 🇮🇹
351-500 CE	Constantinople	0.49	Turkey 🇹🇷
501-640 CE	Ctesiphon	0.5	Iraq 🇮🇶
641-644 CE	Constantinople	0.4	Turkey 🇹🇷
645-795 CE	Chang’an	0.59	China 🇨🇳
796-963 CE	Baghdad	1.1	Iraq 🇮🇶
964-975 CE	Constantinople	0.32	Turkey 🇹🇷
976-984 CE	Córdoba	0.33	Spain 🇪🇸
985-1144 CE	Bian	0.44	China 🇨🇳
1145-1199 CE	Constantinople	0.24	Turkey 🇹🇷
1200-1275 CE	Lin’an	0.36	China 🇨🇳
1276-1278 CE	Cairo	0.37	Egypt 🇪🇬
1279-1315 CE	Hangzhou	0.43	China 🇨🇳
1316-1348 CE	Cairo	0.5	Egypt 🇪🇬
1349-1353 CE	Hangzhou	0.43	China 🇨🇳
1344-1380 CE	Cairo	0.35	Egypt 🇪🇬
1381-1394 CE	Vijayanagara	0.36	India 🇮🇳
1395-1426 CE	Yingtian	0.5	China 🇨🇳
1427-1441 CE	Vijayanagara	0.44	India 🇮🇳
1442-1612 CE	Beijing	0.7	China 🇨🇳
1613-1678 CE	Constatinople	0.74	Turkey 🇹🇷
1679-1720 CE	Dhaka	0.78	Bangladesh 🇧🇩
1721-1826 CE	Beijing	1.3	China 🇨🇳
1827-1918 CE	London	7.4	UK 🇬🇧
1919-1954 CE	New York	13.2	U.S. 🇺🇸
1955-Present	Tokyo	37.3	Japan 🇯🇵

Which Cities Hit One Million First?

Rome got to one million in 133 BCE. Alexandria hit it in 30 BCE. Then almost a thousand years passed before Angkor reached it. Three more centuries until Hangzhou.

But then the 1800s happened and suddenly five cities crossed one million in 24 years.

Order	City	Country	Year Reached
1	Rome	Italy 🇮🇹	133 BCE
2	Alexandria	Egypt 🇪🇬	30 BCE
3	Angkor	Cambodia 🇰🇭	900 CE
4	Hangzhou	China 🇨🇳	1200 CE
5	London	UK 🇬🇧	1810 CE
6	Paris	France 🇫🇷	1850 CE
7	Beijing	China 🇨🇳	1855 CE
8	Guangzhou	China 🇨🇳	1860 CE
9	Berlin	Germany 🇩🇪	1870 CE
10	Manhattan	USA 🇺🇸	1874 CE

Today there are roughly 501 cities all over the world that have more than a million residents. It sounds like quite a few until you think about how that’s only around 4 percent of the more than 12,000 urban areas out there with at least 50,000 people.

Many cities have crossed the million threshold by this point, but those truly huge ones with ten million or more people remain pretty rare. Right now we have just 33 megacities in that group.

Which Cities Hit Ten Million First?

And speaking of ten million, who made it there earliest? New York started it off in 1950, with Tokyo getting there by 1955. Plenty more joined in the following decades as urban areas expanded fast across the globe.

Order	City	Country	Year Reached
1	New York	USA 🇺🇸	1950
2	Tokyo	Japan 🇯🇵	1955
3	Osaka	Japan 🇯🇵	1965
4	Mexico City	Mexico 🇲🇽	1970
5	São Paulo	Brazil 🇧🇷	1970
6	Buenos Aires	Argentina 🇦🇷	1975
7	Los Angeles	USA 🇺🇸	1975
8	Paris	France 🇫🇷	1975
9	Beijing	China 🇨🇳	1980
10	Rio de Janeiro	Brazil 🇧🇷	1980

Lately a few megacities have actually started to lose population, like Mexico City and Chengdu. Others keep expanding at a crazy pace that’s hard to manage, bringing issues such as too few homes, not enough water, and streets clogged with endless traffic. Delhi may end up bigger than Jakarta sometime near 2030, mostly because India’s overall population is still on the rise as Indonesia’s birth rates drop off. Even with that, though, the largest spots aren’t always the smoothest to live in and they often face even tougher challenges ahead.

Over five thousand years since Uruk got the ball rolling on cities, we haven’t quite figured out the best number of people to pack into one place for things to run well. We’ve pushed it to 42 million in some areas, but that doesn’t mean it’s ideal.