Valuable minerals near dormant volcanoes
When building a city, one must consider why one is building a city. It's all very well imagining a city perched on top of an inaccessible mountain peak, but a believable world requires that we consider why on earth anyone would ever live in such a place.
With that in mind, imagine a city. This late Bronze/early Iron Age city is located in an inhospitable antarctic desert region, in an area otherwise uninhabited because, well, it's a freaking antarctic desert. We have an excellent design for this city, but we need a reason for it to be there.
In the middle of the city is a butte of igneous rock, rather like the famous Devil's Tower. Around the city, geothermal activity heats subterranean water and forces it to the surface, providing a fresh water supply and nutrients to the population (think Yellowstone, rather than Hawaii). So, in search of a reason to build a city here, I have to wonder:
What valuable geological deposits are likely to be found in a geologically active zone? Can the extraction of precious ores justify a city built in this harsh, forbidding place?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/80043. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I know you (the OP) have settled on commercial reasons; but in reading the setup I imagine privacy and/or military advantage could be at stake. The inhospitable environment make for a natural "moat" around the city; difficult to attack by surprise and defensible. The nature of the city makes it an oasis in this inhospitable environment: If there is any military advantage in dominating this area, then this is the place to build. For secret research or other operations (like keeping prisoners), this city is difficult to observe secretly, and any escapees probably cannot leave the city without dying.
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