Choose a continent, then guess its highlighted countries.
Choose your adventure
About Karshvar
I built Karshvar to make discovering the world easier for people who
love reading history. My biggest difficulty was always geography:
from Anatolia to the Caucasus, from the Iranian plateau to
Byzantium, I kept losing track of where important events happened.
So I started studying geography, and this game grew out of that
learning. It is both a way to test myself and a step toward the
offline companion I wanted for exploring the world. I plan to add
more historical features over time.
Karshvar takes its name from an ancient Iranian word related to
today’s Persian word for country. In Avestan cosmology, the world
was described as seven regions.
Acropolis of Athens · Delphi · Olympia · Epidaurus · Temple of
Apollo at Bassae
1
Acropolis of Athens
Above Athens, the Acropolis gathers several monuments from the
city’s classical past. The Parthenon is the familiar landmark, but
the entrance buildings and smaller temples help explain the hill as
a whole. Consider how the structures relate to one another: this was
a deliberately shaped sacred place, not a single temple standing
alone.
Delphi’s mountain setting gives its sanctuary a powerful sense of
place. People came to the oracle of Apollo, making this a religious
meeting point for the ancient Greek world. As you read about the
remains, keep that shared role in mind. The site connected
communities that were otherwise politically separate.
At Olympia, sport and religion belonged to the same landscape. The
sanctuary of Zeus stood alongside the facilities used for the
ancient Olympic Games. Thinking about both helps make sense of the
ruins: the contests were part of a larger gathering with sacred
meaning, rather than an isolated sporting event.
The theatre may draw your attention first, but Epidaurus was also a
sanctuary devoted to Asklepios, the god of medicine. Its temples and
healing buildings place the theatre in a broader setting. This is a
useful place to explore how performance, belief and ideas about
health could meet in ancient society.
High in the Arcadian mountains, Bassae offers a quieter
architectural story. Its fifth-century BC temple combines different
approaches to Greek design, including an early Corinthian capital.
Instead of expecting another Acropolis, look for the building’s
experiments in form and consider the contrast between its careful
geometry and its mountain surroundings.
