I always had the impression that they turned a negative into a positive. In other words, they were so poor they couldn't afford to rebuild or upgrade, so after a thousand years or so, obsolete, decrepit buildings became antique architectural treasures.
In America, something five years old is rated obsolete, torn down and a bigger, better(?) building is created. Sometimes that's carried to extremes and some fine old architecture is torn down and replaced with some plastic and glass abomination.
That's the difference between Us and Them. We are a dynamic country, warts and all, whereas they're just a model of stagnation and the closed thinking that comes with it.
C'mon, are you really saying if they had more money they'd have torn town Versailles, the Hermitage, the Vatican, or St. Paul's in London or St. Mark's in Venice? Are we poor because we haven't razed and rebuilt Independence Hall, the Capitol, or the White House?
But in fact, when Europe really had no money after WWII some cities went to great trouble to rebuild their centers as they were before the war. It would have been easier and cheaper to build in the modern commercial style, but national pride dictated that they restore what had been around before, even if they really couldn't afford it at the time.
Europeans could turn this around on you and say that the reason we Americans are so quick to tear down and rebuild is because our buildings aren't as valuable or significant as theirs, and certainly for a lot of our history we didn't. But when we have a really valuable building, like Grand Central Station, and tear it down just to make more money it's not something to be proud of. Nor is seeing a whole city decay as people move out to the suburbs.
Europe is on the downswing, but that may not be so good for the US, either. We're at odds with Europe right now, but whatever our political and cultural differences with them, we still have a lot in common with Europeans. If they can't cope with their troubles, it won't make things easier for us in the world over the long haul. The alternative -- that Europe falls under the sway of some outside power -- could really hurt us.
Today, Europe is going through something close to what we went through in the Seventies, and they have been for some time. I hope they pull out of their funk -- not enough to threaten us -- but enough so that we don't have to worry about what will happen over there.