The crumbling ruins speckle the Turkish border with Armenia in a hodgepodge fashion; a half-standing wall here, an empty church there. Standing in defiance to the elements and to the geopolitical turmoil that has ravaged the region of generations, the ancient ruins of Ani are a reminder of both mankind's ability to build magnificent cities and our willingness to allow these monuments to succumb to decay.

The various structures of Ani have stood for hundreds of years, with historians first mentioning the city in the 5th century, according to Armenian History. Known as the "City of a Thousand and ONe Churches," Ani rose to prominence in the Middle Ages. The city included a citadel, an inner city, suburbs and an underground city of caves. Around the 11th century, Ani had around 100,000 residents, despite the surrounding area being repeatedly destroyed and conquered by Ottoman Turks, Byzantine emperors, nomadic Kurds and Russians, wrote The Atlantic.

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But the city wasn't destined to survey until the modern era. After being conquered and ransacked several times, Ani went into decline and was finally abandoned in the 1700s. But the city's tragic destiny didn't end when its citizens left. The buildings were raided by vandals and looters and the remaining structures were neglected. In 2010 the Global Heritage Fund listed Ani as being in danger of disappearing entirely due to insufficient management, neglect and looting and vandalism by Turks trying to eliminate Armenian history, the Global Heritage Fund wrote.

Since that time, further efforts have been made to safeguard the city's future. The most recent archaeological excavations took place in 2011 and it has become a popular destination for tourists straying off the beaten path and visiting the eastern border of Turkey.

"When we speak of Ani, we call it an iceberg," said the Kars Culture and Tourism Director to the Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet Daily News. "The visible surface is one-tenth of the invisible face of Ani."

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Rain clouds pass over a section of the Great Wall at Jinshanling, Hebei Province on June 10, 2012. A recent archaeological survey found its total length to be 21,196 km or 13,171 miles. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)