Top 10: cities of 2010

In this photo taken Sunday, Sept. 5, 2010, visitors sit on a rocky outcrop looking out onto the Acropolis, with the newly-restored temple of Athena Nike, distinguished by its four Ionic columns, on a platform below and to the left of the Parthenon, in Athens, Sunday, Sept. 5, 2010. A ten-year restoration project has just been completed on the 2,400-year-old temple, which was dismantled to ground level and rebuilt to correct damage from ground subsidence and rusting internal joints. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) *** Local Caption *** ATH103_Greece_Disappearing_Temple.jpg

Nepal’s capital city is known primarily as a nexus for trekkers clad in hi-tech garments on their way to conquer legendary trails such as the Annapurna Circuit and the route to Everest Base Camp. Even without heading off on such wondrous and strenuous e???

The name Kuala Lumpur, meaning muddy estuary, belies the shiny towers of steel and glass which dominate the city’s skyline. The city’s futuristic abbreviation, KL, is much more apt. The Petronas Towers, completed in 1998 and the two tallest buildings ???

Cambodia’s capital city is well on its way to becoming a ­metropolis. Its squat residences are being overshadowed by skyscrapers erected with a glut of foreign investment. The laid-back, almost village-like backstreets intermittently traipsed by saunte???

At first glance Iran’s capital city is a vast straggle of concrete and smog with little immediate appeal. But beneath this hazy brutalist facade lies a long, rich and diverse culture, bristling with youthful exuberance and startling contrasts. It is ver???

Nairobi used to have a fearsome reputation. From car-jacking to armed robbery, danger seemed to lurk on every corner. While the city is still not a place for carefree nocturnal ramblings, by taking the usual big-city precautions and avoiding certain distr???

The Filipino capital is shambolic, smog-drenched and sprawling. Its urban fabric grows daily, smothering surrounding rice fields and interweaving with villages on its fringes. Intramuros, the ­­historic walled city, is the best ­orientation point and w???

Around 2003, after more than a decade of UN sanctions and international isolation, Libya returned to being a place you could visit quite easily. The country’s capital is a North African jewel. Its white-washed buildings, mosques and smattering of Roman ???

Mumbai is a beguiling blend of glamour and ghetto, a disorientating jumble of shanty towns and skyscrapers, with a population density which can reach one million people per 2.5 square km in some places. It is the most populated city of the world’s secon???

Once famous for murderous drug gangs, Columbia’s capital city has been on a rigorous and prolonged crime-fighting spree since the mid-1990s. As a result, this patchwork of more than 1,000 neighbourhoods in 20 districts has becoming a reasonably safe and???