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Among the new World Heritage Sites announced earlier this year are two properties that take the form of lines: the Via Appia1 and the Beijing Central Axis.2 Built in the fourth century BC, the Via Appia, or Appian Way, cuts straight through the marshes south of Rome, before winding across southern Italy to the Roman port of Brundisium on the heel of the Italian boot. In similar fashion, the Beijing Central Axis is a perfect north–south line, running through the heart of China's historic capital, along which the city's most important imperial palaces and ceremonial buildings are aligned. The axis dates to the refoundation of the city under the Yuan dynasty (AD 1271–1368) and many of the extant structures date to the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1636–1912) periods, but the line itself attests to a much older Chinese tradition of urban planning specified in the Kaogongji (the Book of Diverse Crafts). Based on Confucian principles, the axis and the urban form it guides use symmetry and balance to achieve societal and spiritual harmony

For an ancient and well-known city, there is always something new to discover in Rome. In late August, almost 5000 delegates gathered in the Eternal City for this year's annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA). Whether attending academic sessions or visiting sites, monuments and landscapes in and around the city, participants were left in no doubt about the scale of archaeological work underway in Rome today. The most prominent example relates to the long-running project for a new metro line that passes beneath the heart of the ancient city. As work proceeds on completing tunnels and stations, monuments such as the Basilica of Maxentius, propped up by scaffolding, are subject to careful monitoring for signs of subsidence caused by the works below. And it is underground that the real scale of the engineering—and the archaeological intervention—becomes apparent. Construction of the new station at Porta Metronia, for example, has involved the investigation of almost 50 000m3 of archaeological stratigraphy, in some places reaching more than 15m below current street level. At this station, excavations have revealed an early second-century AD military barrack block decorated with frescoes and mosaics, a large residential complex and a terraced garden all located on the edge of the ever-expanding imperial city. By the late third century, however, priorities had changed and the whole area was levelled during the hurried construction of the defensive Aurelian Walls around the city. Work on the new metro station required the complete removal of the surviving archaeological structures, but these will now be reinstalled in situ as part of a station/museum, one of several already completed or planned. Another stop along the line, the new station at San Giovanni, already offers commuters and visitors a fascinating display of finds recovered during the building works, while the stations under construction at the Colosseum and Piazza Venezia promise even more spectacular displays. The latter, for example, will incorporate parts of Hadrian's Athenaeum, or school for literary and scientific studies, discovered in 2009 during preparatory works for the metro. Visitors, and commuters, will need to wait a little longer for the first trains to arrive. Construction of the Piazza Venezia station, budgeted at approximately €0.75bn, finally began last year with a projected completion date of 2032.

Antiquity's centenary is still a couple of years hence. With this issue, however, the journal reaches the milestone of 400 issues. How Antiquity: A Quarterly Review of World Archaeology has reached this number in fewer than 100 years is explained by the change, in 2015, from four to six issues per annum. No doubt the 100th anniversary will be an occasion for some sustained reflection. Here, more modestly, we look back to the first issue of Antiquity and to a selection of other content published over the subsequent 98 years. To counterbalance such indulgence, the next editorial will look resolutely forward and introduce initiatives that, we trust, will usefully serve Antiquity's authors and readers for the future.

New Orleans. The Big Easy. You don't need to have been to Louisiana to have a vivid image of the city in your mind: the colonial architecture of Bourbon Street and the French Quarter, ornate cemeteries and Mardi Gras, po'boys and blues, jambalaya and jazz. New Orleans is a global brand mediated through food, fiction, music and film. The mighty river which flows past the city is no less storied. Stretching more than 3700km through the heart of the United States and out to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi, with paddle steamers afloat, is immediately familiar from a host of novels, movies and Disneyland theme parks. These powerful images shape perceptions of the city and its river, as well as of the people who live there today and in the past