why are ancient cities like ancient Greece in ruins? I know that they fell and probably lost wars, but why did no one reconstruct the ancient temples, buildings, and homes?
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Bear in mind that you’re looking at a relatively small number of survivors. Most ancient buildings eventually collapsed or were dismantled for building materials. Generally, when old buildings have survived, it’s either because they have retained some level of importance, or because they were in a location where nobody wanted to build anything else, or because they were somehow lost (e.g. buried by sand or covered by forest).
If you’re thinking about the Acropolis, it has been used for all kinds of things over the millennia and there have been numerous building and restoration works; however, some of the main buildings were badly damaged in wars. Fully rebuilding them would have been expensive, and there are always philosophical differences over what to do with sites like that. If you restore it with new materials, arguably you’re taking away some of the authenticity. And since the site has been through so many changes over the years, what era do you restore it to? And whatever your answer, there is only limited information about what the site was like in that era.
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