Often it's not the place itself but its location. Somewhere like Megiddo - and there are many other places like it in that part of the world, such as Armenia, or Nisibis, or Israel - was valuable because it represented a potential buffer against an enemy. For example, the reason the Holy Land was important to the Roman empire was that it was a buffer against Persia, and so the Romans were prepared to keep it, protect it, and if necessary fight for it, simply because of that, even though the place itself didn't provide very much and was a lot of trouble (it is possible, though not certain, that the empire effectively lost money on the Holy Land overall, contrary to the traditional picture of ruthless tax collectors bleeding it dry). Similarly, Armenia had the bad fortune to be stuck in between Rome and Persia, which meant it spent much of antiquity hosting various battles and wars between the two.
I think northern England must be fairly high on the list, given that it was the scene of battles between Romans and Picts, Saxons and Picts, Vikings and Saxons, Lancastrians and Yorkshiremen, Parliamentarians and Royalists, etc etc... In fact you could probably say something similar for southern England too.
) (austria, Prussia, Germany.)
smiley.
