Pilgrims, pirates, poets and spies: the surprising stories behind the making of one of Southeast Asia's great cities.The 'Golden City', the 'Pearl of the Orient', the 'Garden City of the East'-Yangon has been known by many names over the years. From a small fifteenth-century Buddhist pilgrimage site to a sprawling twenty-first-century metropolis, Myanmar's former capital has continually reinvented itself as new people, ideas and empires arrived. Christian Gilberti brings to life a port-city shaped by its connections with the wider world, tracing its history from ancient times to the ongoing civil war. Portuguese pirates, Chilean poets, Burmese monks and Japanese spies all feature in this vivid account, which reveals Yangon as a crossroads of people, politics and trade long before the age of globalisation. It explores the forces that have moulded the city: Buddhism, colonialism, capitalism and military rule, as well as the diverse communities and cultures that have left their mark on its streets and architecture. Drawing on little-known Burmese- and English-language sources, Gilberti challenges the idea of Myanmar as an isolated country. Yangon has always been its open door, a cosmopolitan gateway to the Indian Ocean and beyond.