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Comment by jasonswett | Hacker News Reader

What about London?

Interestingly, London wasn't continuously inhabited since the founding by the Romans, so it wouldn't make this particular list. I was quite surprised when I learned this fact recently, visiting the Museum of London.

"By the 5th century, the Roman Empire was in rapid decline and in AD 410, the Roman occupation of Britannia came to an end. Following this, the Roman city also went into rapid decline and by the end of the 5th century was practically abandoned."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_London

Wikipedia’s date for that is 43 AD, there’s a long list of European cities that stops a lifetime before that.

By splitting into different regions it masks the difference in numbers and age across the world.

A list of "oldest cities" which contains places like Canbera and Detroit, but not places like London and Venice, seems very odd

> "Wikipedia’s date for that is 43 AD"

There was a story a couple of weeks ago[0] about pottery dating from around 3600BCE being found at a site in Shoreditch (which was being excavated for the new Amazon HQ), suggesting London may have been inhabited considerably longer than previously thought.

[0] https://www.mola.org.uk/blog/largest-group-early-neolithic-p... & https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2178-z

That wouldn't be "London city" that would be "a village which the latter settlement of London expanded to encompass"; which is significantly different. Not longest inhabited areas, but continuously inhabited city.

It’s odd that London isn’t listed yet there are a bunch that are only a couple of hundred years old

Nothing in Europe north of Belgium and the Netherlands made the cut. It is kind of weird that there isn't several lists for Europe. When there is for several other geographic regions.

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