Ruins

The most common root causes that yield ruins in their wake are natural disasters, armed conflict, and population decline, with many structures becoming progressively derelict over time due to long-term weathering and scavenging.

Ruins are of great importance to historians, archaeologists and anthropologists, whether they were once individual fortifications, places of worship, ancient universities,[1] houses and utility buildings, or entire villages, towns, and cities.

The ancient Roman city of Pompeii in modern-day Italy was completely destroyed during a volcanic eruption in the 1st century CE, and its uncovered ruins are now preserved as a World Heritage Site.

In the 20th century, a number of European historic buildings fell into ruin as a result of taxation policies, which required all structures with roofs to pay substantial property tax.

[citation needed] With the Renaissance, ruins took on new roles among a cultural elite, as examples for a consciously revived and purified architecture all' antica, and for a new aesthetic appreciation of their innate beauty as objects of venerable decay.

[9] The chance discovery of Nero's Domus Aurea at the turn of the sixteenth century, and the early excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii had marked effects on current architectural styles, in Raphael's Rooms at the Vatican and in neoclassical interiors, respectively.

Joseph Michael Gandy completed for Sir John Soane in 1832 an atmospheric watercolor of the architect's vast Bank of England rotunda as a picturesquely overgrown ruin, that is an icon of Romanticism.

Ruins remain a popular subject for painting and creative photography[12] and are often romanticized in film and literature, providing scenic backdrops or used as metaphors for other forms of decline or decay.