It's quite interesting to see how much earth is typically above ancient ruins. Cities built upon cities for 1000's of years where a street or building was once at ground level and now is 2-4 stories beneath our modern world.

While visiting Vienna, there are ruins on display in Michaelerplatz (central Old City), so cool.

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foxglacier 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I've always been confused how this works. Did people shovel soil on top of buildings then build new buildings on that? Why? Did it accumulate naturally perhaps during periods when a site was unoccupied? Would some buildings be higher than their older neighbors, with entrances above street-level until everyone else caught up?

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riffraff 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I believe in Rome, it was mostly flooding/alluvial debris. But yeah, sometimes buildings would collapse and they would just build again on top of the ruins.

There definitely are instances of buildings being misaligned.

In my ancestral family home there was a door wat ground level, but originally it had a few steps to get to it; the outside ground had gone up by some 40cm with sediments over a century or so.

	▲	readthenotes1 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Or had your house also sunk like Miami is doing?