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>Siena’s history dates back millennia. Houston, meanwhile, was founded in 1836.

Every time I am made aware of just how young the US is, it blows me away. I've never been to Europe, I would really love to go some day, but I can only imagine the feeling of actually seeing these really old places/structures in person.

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What really strikes me is just how many ordinary buildings are older than our country. The monuments and palaces are one thing, but it's very common to eat in a restaurant or pub that dates to the 17th century. Not as a tourist trap or destination, but just as a perfectly ordinary building that has been retrofitted (sometimes awkwardly) with bathrooms and lights and such.

I've been in 500 year old cottages that weren't anything special. It's just that they were made out of stone, and so it just doesn't fall down. (Lots did fall down, but they did so centuries ago, and the ones that made it this far will do continue to.) People live there, and it's just their house. They've often put up modern interior walls so that they can have insulation and hide the wires that power their TVs -- connected to satellite dishes outside.

I've even seen a few castles with satellite dishes. Small castles dot the landscape and can be had cheap (because they require expensive maintenance). People just live in them, too.

There's a joke that in the US they think a hundred years is a long time, and in Europe they think a hundred miles is a long way. It really rings true. If the crisis ever subsides, I do recommend it.

Anecdotes like this abound in the UK.

The oldest part of the closest church to my childhood home was built in the “early 13th century”, according to its website. The cottages next to it (now a pub) seem to date to about the same time as the first British colonies in America.

Then there’s Cambridge university, which celebrated 800 years since its foundation in 2009: https://www.cam.ac.uk/about-the-university/history/800th-ann...

Same when I lived in Morocco. In Fès, there is a university that is 1161 years old, which is simply staggering.

I had a very feeble idea about the history of Britain - the sequence of the main events - when I left school. I learned far more from finding out about the architecture, dates, and benefactors of the various buildings in the centre of Cambridge...

One thing I wonder is, how frequently are new European buildings made of stone? I occasionally encounter comments from people confused by American home renovation shows where people literally burst through walls Kool-Aid Man style[1] when demolishing them, but most of our walls (even exterior) are wood-framed and mostly hollow, and once you take out the framing there’s just drywall.

[1] Not from an actual renovation show, but: https://youtu.be/B3C2TN-Vp4c

Concrete is king. Brick is best. Wood is for furniture! And for small cottages, and used as beams to hold the roof on brick houses.

That said it's not uncommon, especially in suburbs, where people build single-family homes, just like in the US.

Cinder block and metal roofs seem to be very commonly used in single family homes for new construction in several European countries I've been to. They're generally seen to be a sturdy materials for a house built to last.

Depends on where in Europe. There is a lot of wood construction in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. The Netherlands, for instance, uses a lot of brick (for facades, and sand-lime bricks on the inside). Places near the Mediterranean, often use thick stone walls and/or concrete.

That sounds a lot like people just use whatever materials are locally convenient. Which also explains the popularity of wood framing in the US.

Like the 1,100 year-old Sean's Bar which is often given as a good example of old buildings.

https://www.seansbar.ie/home

As a European, it's not the age that matters so much as the uniformity of American cities. A lot of places between the coasts seem to be the same simcity arranged slightly differently.

Come to Europe and see very different styles within a short distance.

So much so, that I didn’t really understand SimCity until I visited the USA.

I don’t think I’ve even seen a water tower outside the states, and if I have they are disguised as other things. (Unless you count the tanks on top of literally every Cypriot building, but even those are nothing like the American/SimCity type).

There's a few water towers around Norfolk - and a particularly brutalist one near Lowestoft not far from the furthest East point of the UK

They were quite popular in Hungary in the socialist era:

https://viztorony.hu/acelszerkezet.html

It's the result of a lot of growth and development by a common culture with high degrees of communication and trade in a very short amount of time.

I'm reminded of this joke:

Europeans find it strange that Americans think 100 years is a long time. Americans find it strange that Europeans think 100 miles is a long distance.

There really is dichotomy here: Americans are used to a vast geography but don't really have any internalization of just how vast history can be, while Europeans understand their long history but don't have the internalization of just how vast a country can be.

To put a finer point on the latter bit: the distance between Chicago and New York is roughly the same as between Copenhagen, Denmark and Bern, Switzerland (i.e., longer than any two points in Germany). The distance between LA and Boston is longer than the distance between Gibraltar and Moscow or between Edinburgh, UK to Jerusalem, Israel.

Moving further afield, Senegal is closer to Canada than it is to Somalia. I had to look that one up on a map when I first heard it.

That is a paradox more of spherical geometry.

Dakar is about 4000 miles from the North Carolina coast. If you move the destination up the longitude of that point, you have to go 1000 miles north from the coast (in Quebec, in fact!) to get 4100 miles away from Dakar. The fact that Canada is much further north than Africa doesn't add all that much distance, but Newfoundland jutting out so far to the east reduces the distance quite spectacularly.

Over longer distances, the spherical effects are even more screwy. The shortest way to get to Mecca from Seattle is to actually start flying north along I-5, and Thule, Greenland and Minsk, Belarus are natural pitstops along this route.

Just so you aren't in for a shock, "millennia" is including all sorts of neolithic stuff in the ground that could probably well be said of places in the US too. In terms of street layout, little is per-roman, and in terms of buildings, little is > 1000 years old.

The most common thing would be more 17th 18th 19th century buildings (in increasing frequency), and if you go to parts of Massachusetts (and maybe Virginia) you can get at least some 18th and 19th century stuff. Go to Havana, San Juan, Salvador (in Brazil) or other old colonial capitals and get more old buildings in sturdier materials than in Massechusetts.

Don't get me wrong, there are more old building in Europe, but colonial US is quite old, and there's more continuity than you might think. The real issue is that the US replaced more old stuff, being in growth mode, which was alright until cars came along and now most thing we build are absolutely terrible.

Colonial architecture is still pretty recent in the grand scheme of things. Native construction is far older and some of it is still standing. Oraibi, Taos, and Acoma are all close to a millennia old and there are structures in the US going back another couple thousand years like las capas or poverty point. If you head south into Mexico, you can find structures even older than that. There's nothing like gobekli tepe, but that's okay.

Right that's true, but little of that stuff is part of the fabric of an intact, living city right? Either because it was raised by colonizers (e.g. Just a few things from technocratic remain, which are largely dug up rather than continuous, right?) or abandoned first (like Mayan cities).

That depends on what you mean by part of an intact, living city. Oraibi, Taos, and Acoma are all continuously inhabited places, so obviously they count. Las Capas is a continuously inhabited region with small periods of interruption in certain specific areas, just like any city in the UK.

Sorry, I completely forgot about the Pueblos. Good point.

It’s not uncommon to have city walls from the Middle Ages, and Roman buildings and monuments around here (not all of them still in use, true). Plus a whole bunch of castles and churches from the 11th century onwards.

Boston and Santa Fe are very nice, but it really feels quite a bit different.

My local cafe/bookshop was 300 years old when Houston was founded (probably not a cafe then mind). I've lived in houses older than Houston. The nearest church, where my kids do carol services and nativities, has parts of its structure dating back 250 years before Columbus set out on his voyage.

There are cities in the US that are older than the US, by a large margin. Come to New Mexico and you'll see.

Obligatory edit: After COVID, please.

I actually took a trip to New Mexico when I was younger, the parts that we visited were awesome. All the people were amazingly friendly. I grew up in the Northeast so it was a pretty big culture shock. I believe it was in Albuquerque. We visited the Nuclear Museum and a couple little local shops and even a local reptile zoo. I would love to go back for the hot air balloon festival someday.

Agreed. Did a road trip to New Mexico (in the winter!) and it was well worth the trip. Went to Santa Fe, Taos, Los Alamos, Pecos and some of the pueblo sites (which are incredible and you get amazing access to them). Super interesting place! I'm surprised it's not more of a tourist destination.

We actually think of ourselves as sometimes having too many tourists. Many people come here for the cool summers, the scenery, the art, balloon fiesta, and skiing in the winter.

I always found it to be a fun coincidence that San Jose, CA, now the heart of Silicon Valley, was founded in 1777--a year after the US Declaration of Independence. And that was right at the beginning of the colonization of "Upper" California by parties from New Spain (Mexico).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_San_Jose,_Californi...

For a fun excursion, check out

https://www.homegate.ch/buy/real-estate/country-switzerland/... for real estate currently to buy in Switzerland built before 1801 (according to the seller).

(You can change "buy" to "rent" and 1801 for any other integer in the URL).

Founded, and floundered, as it was merely a swampy step in between the port of Galveston and places further inland.

Houston didn’t really grow with much rapidity until the mid 20th century.

When I was a kid we used to play football using the wall of a s.XI church as goal. That might be an extreme case but gives some perspective about european cities.

In Europe 100 km is far away.

In America 100 years is a long time ago.

> I've never been to Europe, I would really love to go some day, but I can only imagine the feeling of actually seeing these really old places/structures in person.

European cities are also relatively young. If you want to see old cities, you should visit the Middle East or China.

I think they mean the actual buildings and layouts, rather than the fact that people lived there 500 years ago. It's quite normal in Italy or Southern France for example to walk past churches that are 500-1000 years old

I come from a very small town on the Adriatic coast and the church there is from the 6th century. The town itself was founded sometimes BC.

The city I live in here in France is about 2000 years old. That might not be as old as some of the cities in the Middle East but relative to most cities it is doing pretty well, non?

Thats 10x older than the city I live in (Austin). But Jericho is 6x older than yours.

Most Chinese cities are younger than Rome or Istanbul or Athens.

I suppose it's not a fair comparison, "most" chinese cities against the oldest european ones. How old are the oldest chinese cities? I'd love to know more about these

Most European cities are younger than Rome or Istanbul or Athens. Shanghai and Beijing are older than Rome and Istanbul, Luoyang and Xi'an were inhabited since the neolithic.

Damas, Luxor, Erbil, Jaffa, Jericho, are also older than Rome, Athens and Istanbul.

How much old stuff is in Chinese cities vs countryside though? My understanding is since the capitals moved many times (often with city destruction at dynasty end) that there's less old stuff in the cities (and a lot of 19th century less historical stuff has been raised.)

At least a lot of the famous stuff around Xi'an and Luoyang seems to be monumental works outside city. Maybe various parts of the grand canal and stuff surrounding is a better example than that?

Athens dates back before cities like Damascus and Jehrico, and probably even before Luxor. Not aware of any cities in China older than about 2000BC.

> Athens dates back before cities like Damascus and Jehrico,

I think that is highly controversial to say the least. I think the accepted consensus is Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited city.

Wikipedia says

Jericho: "late 1st millennium BC"

Athens: 5th–4th millennia BC

Mind you I had a picnic yesterday at a village that was settled c. 1000 BC, and has evidence of people living there before then. It's nothing particularly special.

China doesn't have a lot of old intact structures though since they used worse building materials than Romans. Age of the city doesn't matter much if all structures are new.

And no, the great wall of China isn't ancient. The parts we see today were built in the 14th century, the parts that are millennia old are no longer there so you can only see traces of it in the ground.

Europe on the other hand has impressive structures 2 millenia old like this:

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

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