What’s the feeling when you go to places that are full of monuments and ancient buildings?

34 comments

1. https://i.imgur.com/i4IdAIQ.gif

2. Awe?

3. I love history so I find them interesting. My wife who is Canadian so also from a young country would rather be at the beach.

4. Man that’s old and move along.

5. I have been lucky to have travelled to places that have things like this. for me it creates a sense that everything in life is borrowed, and that the lives that we have will come and go yet everything else will remain as others have in the past.

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   I visited the Coliseum in Pula Croatia last year and was overwhelmed with the feeling that nothing that we do today is permanent tomorrow so we have to enjoy what we can while we have it. I felt quite a lot of gratitude from this experience. Especially since something that was SO important and SO massive now is reduced to rubble as people simple stopped caring about it over time.

6. I’ve never been to a place that has those. Only place of significance I’ve been to is the National WW2 Museum. You can have those kinds of feelings about places without monuments or ancient buildings. That’s what nature and veteran memorials are for.

7. “Cool!”

8. Having been to the Great Wall I agree with the statement that it should really be called “The alright wall of China”.

   Some ancient buildings are really cool to see but some are also quite underwhelming.

9. I don’t really have any feelings beyond just thinking it’s pretty amazing humans were able to construct this without modern tools and equipment. Then I move on with my vacation.

10. When I went to Europe a few months back, I saw a pretty good swath of northern Italy, and much of the city of Budapest.

    The history I saw carried a certain nostalgia to it, I guess? That’s not exactly correct, since I had never been there before, but that’s the best descriptor I have. I live in a city that’s new even by American standards, so seeing things with centuries of history behind it was quite new to me.

    But, despite the nostalgia, I did not find things “better” there, if that makes sense. Some Americans tend to romanticize ancient cities for a variety of reasons, but to be honest while I was in Europe I came to appreciate the architectural vibe of my city much more. Adding to that, and I don’t know if it just has to do with where I went, but I found that my city is much better at integrating with nature– most places I went felt very much like stone fortresses.

11. Probably the same you’d have visiting the pyramids or anything older than European architecture.

    “Neat. Historical stuff. Pose for a picture”

12. I often feel weird because my first thought is that you’re in a place and getting an impression shared by millions of people through time. It’s almost out-of-body when it’s a building or site that has remained unchanged for centuries.

    It’s sort of like witnessing very old, traditional religious ceremonies; even if you’re not religious or of that faith, you’re witnessing something that has been done the same way for thousands of years. Gregorian chants and the Hajj are two perfect examples of this.

13. It’s all cool. But just because the USA is young as a nation doesn’t mean there’s not ancient stuff here from long before we became a country. Look up Mesa Verde, Cahokia or any assortment of effigy mounds. There’s a lot of old stuff around

14. It was really cool to stare out at Hadrian’s Wall in England, but it wasn’t that big of a difference from seeing something really cool here.

15. Just because the United States of America isn’t very old, doesn’t mean there isn’t old stuff here. There’s plenty of historical sites in North America that are thousands of years old.

16. History is cool, but I don’t think most people are going to have some over-the-top reaction. I personally think seeing dinosaurs and other fossils, which we have plenty of in the U.S., are more affecting if anything, since they remind us what a tiny blip humanity is on the timeline of this planet.

17. Bob Dylan’s When I Paint my Masterpiece starts playing in my head.

18. Oh that’s cool

19. I suddenly have to pee. I think that’s the main feeling when I realize I am nowhere near modern plumbing. Always right then.

20. Sometimes there’s a moment of “That thing was here before my country was established, that’s interesting,” and then after that momentary adjustment in perspective I just approach it on its own terms.

21. Monuments are super lame. I’d rather just go to the beach. I also don’t really care about the thousand year old stone monuments. They’re kinda boring tourist traps. I want an experience instead.

22. That’s cool. *Takes photo and moves on with my day*

23. Very cool. I love learning the history. One of my favorite things in Rome was seeing all the old buildings, ruins, and learning the history.

24. If I am in the The Glorious Hospitable South, I know the statuary is at best a century old, erected by racist women’s societies hellbent on whitewashing a history of mass forced labor, rape, torture, starvation and murder, because that don’t play well for tourism and mass denial makes white folks feel more comfy.

25. Appreciation.

    But most of Europe is new. In many instances it’s newer than America, as we don’t keep starting wars with our neighbors.

    It’s not every country, but Italy does this for me. It’s amazing for me to walk down the path from Augustus’ house on the Palatine to the Forum. His daily commute. And realize all of the people who stood in that exact small part of Rome.

    Or standing in the Pantheon where hundreds of Emperors were coronated.

    Or to walk the Uffizi and realize all the masters of the Renaissance that stood there.

    But I get the same sense walking through our national battlefields. Gettysburg does this to me.

26. I feel the same sense of wonder walking across a bridge built in the 1100s in Germany (Regensburg Old Stone Bridge) as I do seeing some of the rock formations we have in the high desert in the US. Have you seen these red rocks? They will take your breath away.

    I’ve been blessed to travel a lot of Europe because I lived there for 3 years, and truly, there are such amazing things to see. The history is astounding.

    But even though our country is young as the US, there are things here that are quite old as well. We were not the first to settle here. I’ve found arrowheads older than the country in my backyard. That is history too.

27. Awe. We are a young country. Traveling to other parts of the world and seeing structures that are a thousand years old is awe inspiring.

28. It’s really cool and I love to look at the architecture and structures and learn how they built it but at the end of the day I’m not living inside those places. We have ancient buildings and structures here too lol. But y’all don’t know this because you’re not taught these things and only see the U.S. as the 1800- the now lol Plus there are different scales of old. What’s old to some countries are not even that old to other countries. Like in Europe.

29. When I was in London I did a historic pub tour. Had fun going to all the quaint little hole-in-the-walls, learning about their stories, etc.

    Then I went to a place called Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. If I remember correctly, this place was built in 1609. It survived the Great Plague of London, the Great Fire of London, and the Blitz (despite being a stone’s throw from St. Paul’s).

    So I’m sitting, drinking beer in the same spot someone sat drinking beer well over a hundred and fifty years before my country even existed. I had a sort of holy shit moment.

    The Tower of London blew me away. One place, Not all that big, with almost 2,000 years of history. I could see bricks from the old Roman fortifications outside the white tower.

    We don’t have stuff like that in the Americas.

    There was a German tourist in my pub tour group. He was a Bayern-Munich supporter and I’m a Spurs fan, so we had some good banter going. We got talking about the differences between buildings in the new world and Europe. He said that he loved visiting American cities, especially New York, because we built so high. He could stand in Manhattan and look straight up and see a dozen buildings almost touching the clouds. He told me they don’t have cities like that in Europe. I refuted by saying that in European cities you have buildings that can be up at two thousand years old. Think of the history, all the lives lived in proximity to those structures. He paused and said to me:

    “That’s why we can’t build like you do in Manhattan. We have too many fucking old buildings everywhere.”

    I guess it’s a trade off.

30. So I get that Europe and the east have old buildings, but we have the Appalachian mountains, so ancient and mysterious. I’m an outdoor girl so I’ll take ancient mountains over ancient buildings any day.

31. I’m a history dork so I love that kind of stuff. Everything in the US has a specific date attached to it, but there’s places overseas that have just “been here forever.”

    Castles are a bit overrated, I feel like once you’ve been to three or four, you’ve seen them all, but I’ll never get sick of old churches, palaces, temples, etc. Any place built with artistry.

32. Italy began unification the first time in 1861 as the kingdom of Italy. The modern Italian state was formed in 1946.

    US became a nation in 1776.

    GTFO with this young nation stuff.

33. >I mean, USA is relatively young as a nation

    One of the oldest nations around eh is a young nation? Thats rich.

34. > USA is relatively young as a nation compared to the EU one’s, China, Japan, Egypt, etc.

    No, we’re not. The US as a nation is 85 years older than Italy and 95 years older than Germany, for example.

    I know the real question was about structures, not nations, but I feel like we hear this a lot and it’s just not true.