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Comment by zwieback | Hacker News Reader

I grew up not far from this site but have been living in Oregon for 30 years. One of the things that still strikes me when I go back to visit is just how much old stuff was around me in my childhood. Over there it's like "oh, let's put a nail salon in this 400 year old building". Here it's like: "oh, there's a 100 year old barn, we must turn it into a heritage site."

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Grew up in a 15th century farm house that was built decades before Columbus set sail and re-discovered the Americas. A few years ago the wife and I were contemplating buying a property in England where the realtor enthusiastically explained that "the plumbing was modernized in the 16th century."

As a Czech, I feel the difference between Central Europe and the Mediterranean.

In CZ, we have about 1000 years of written history. A building from the 11th century is ancient and rare.

In Italy: well, this city is called Naples (Nea Polis = New City in Greek), because it is barely 2600 years old.

Things get occasionally found that are older, but the prevalent building material has been wood and it doesn’t preserve nearly as well as rock. For example: https://www.livescience.com/ancient-cemetery-fortress-discov...

In The Netherlands, thanks to land reclamation and WWII we don’t have many old buildings. Most buildings in Amsterdam are 19th century or newer. The center of Rotterdam was largely rebuild after WWII. If I look at homes for sale and filter on 20th century and older that is about 5% of all homes.

Yeh, moved to Michigan from England and was taken to the oldest pub in the city, 120 years old. My local pub used to be a hunting lodge used by Henry VIII

In my hometown in Germany there's a bakery that's been in basically continous operation since about the time Christopher Columbus set sail. Annoyingly modern web site, and of course in German: https://www.fidelisbaeck.de/

Just the other day a moron set light to the crypt in St Michan's church in Dublin. It housed the ~800 year old mummified remains of a body that was called "The Crusader". Destroyed, along with other priceless mummies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Michan's_Church,_Dublin

> On 11 June 2024, a man set a fire in the crypt, resulting in the destruction of five mummies, including "The Crusader".

Why though!? God dammit.

Because he's an asshole, pain and simple. I hope they deport him.

Yeah they should have kept the website in its original 15th century markup.

Heidelberg Text Markup Language

Percentage sizing was only added in the 16th century though.

I really want to pay a visit

Will always remember my visit to The Old Wellington pub in Manchester. It was built in 1552 and is the oldest building in the city.

Friends of mine lived for a while in Rennes in one of the only buildings to survive a fire in the 18th century. It was from 15-something and had nary a right angle to it. A bit scary to go up the stairs, but quite cool.

Lyon's Musée de l'Imprimerie et de la Communication graphique is also 15th century and very oddly angled. https://www.imprimerie.lyon.fr/en/edito/presentation_musee https://thisislyon.fr/things-to-do/museums/museum-of-printin... Also in Lyon, the church of Saint Paul was built in 549 and rebuilt in the 11th and 12th centuries.

As a kid I used to play football using this building as goal https://maps.app.goo.gl/9iBkX42RF6zUgXJd9

Which is like 1k years old aprox.

"In the US, 100 years is a long time. In Europe, 100 miles is a long way."

(Or 160,9 kilometers.)

It's a bit of an outdated quote now with the Schengen area, high speed trains, cheap flights and comfortable modern cars. We frequently do weekend trips 1000 kilometers away from home. And in the summer most Dutch families I know drive all the way to Spain or the south of France to go on Holiday, which is over 1200 kilometers. In the winter those same people drive to Austria or Switzerland for a ski-trip.

I have done a couple of road trips within Europe that were over 6000 kilometers.

Our local kindergarten is in a building from the 14th century, but this is really nothing special in Europe. Apart from the stones of the outer walls, the cellar and the truss, there is probably nothing original from the 14th century in this building. It has been renovated probably every 100 years at least.

Here is a typical 14th century house from the area where I grew up: https://www.tuebingen.de/i/fullscreen/1440/Bilder/stiefelhof... It is really just a normal apartment building and also doesn't look any different than neighboring houses built 300 years later.

One thing that even impressed this blasé European here who grew up surrounded by towns at least 1,000 years old was the city of Split in Croatia: here, they pragmatically built the entire old town into a ruinous roman palace by Diocletian:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian%27s_Palace

https://www.google.com/maps/place/@43.5086065,16.4391912,455...

I disagree on your 14th century building picture being "nothing special" to Europeans. All the major German cities that I've lived in were bombed to ashes in WW2. Most buildings are post war construction. Picturesque towns like Tübingen with conserved old buildings are an exception in Germany and attract local tourism for this reason. Split is a UNESCO world heritage site and pulls in tourists from all over the world.

Cities were bombed to smithereens but a lot of smaller towns in the countryside were spared. My Dad grew up in Berlin during WWII but my mom just a bit north in Mecklenburg, big difference between their wartime experience.

While that is true, all towns and villages under 80,000 inhabitants in my area (100 km around the village where I grew up) had historic centers with (at least) dozens of buildings that looked like my example from above, and were spared in WWII. These old half-timbered houses are so extremely common here that as a child I thought that all towns and villages looked like this.

There's also... Here's a mountain covered with 2500 year old trees!

Wait, seems they were all chopped down after the 1906 earthquake in SF, these are all 100 years old.

(that said, I think it's interesting people can go buy roman coins)

About 10% of old growth forests still exist on the west coast. It's not great, but there are a good number of groves you can see within a few hours of the bay area.

Australian here, living in Europe.. I grew up with an understanding that the land of my childhood had been inhabited and cultivated for tens of thousands of years by the prior occupants .... and now here in Europe, I find it rather amusing that a thousand-year old building is being used for a nail salon.

Context is everything.

My wife grew up in China and scoffs at both these scenarios

I guess Iraq and Iran would technically win in this scenario.

just leaving this here... https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/25/shadia...

That structure wasn't very old, and yes the locals were furious, but there's extra background to Shadian: there was a locally famous event there where local armed resistance to the government continued successfully for an extended period. This is perhaps a kind of 'payback' from the government.

I visited some of the oldest mosques in China and documented them with photography. One that sticks out in my memory was in Qingzhou, the old capital of Shandong.

In the grand tradition of autocracy, like many other old things, many ancient structures will lose their battle to fate due to paranoid rulers. In the grand tradition of time, however, the rulers will surely lose their own. The difference is, nobody will weep for them.

That's true. In 100 years when people see Winnie the Pooh they won't remember that it was once used to make fun of some chinese dude.

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