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> It's surprising that they're not doing that systematically around the building

There's a very good reason for that: archaeological techniques improve all the time. The idea here is to leave something for future archaeologists.

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By not excavating the whole city they leave work for future archaeologists. :)
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> It's surprising that they're not doing that systematically around the building, but then again I guess that applies to a large part of the city as well.

In some places in Italy, Greece, Malta, probably others I don't know, people always joke that you shouldn't try to ever do any renovations lest you end up finding something and lose your house. Some places you're almost guaranteed to find stuff if you just dig once or twice.

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There is a wonderful museum it the Italian city of Lecce that started when someone went to fix some plumbing in their house and ended up finding so much amazing historical stuff that they ended up opening the house as a museum:

https://www.museofaggiano.it/en/home/

And that's just one house in one city in one country!

Edit: I strongly recommend the museum, Lecce and indeed all of Puglia!

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Spain, in some cities like Merida, hapens.
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> One always wonders which incredible books we lost, from amazing mysterious old philosophers.

You might be interested in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, a historical novel about such a lost work.

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Also, the movie was good. And the 8-bit era game was very popular.
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I didn't know there was a game. The movie is great, but it focuses on the crime plot and unfortunately leaves most of the historical/philosophical/linguistic meat out, which is not surprising when you compress a 500 page book into a 100 page screenplay. I guess an adventure game would actually be more suitable for incorporating some of the things the film left out.
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Excavation with our soon-to-be-outdated techniques is needless destruction.

We should only excavate what is about to be destroyed.

( And we shouldn't destroy stuff just to put up yet another shitty modern building. )

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> now Paris wants to soften the hot, bare square in front of it with trees and shade.

It's not a building.

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It was a general point.
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