I had no idea just how many of those rough-stone "chunks" embedded in Italian city blocks were actually the stubs of medieval towers
I'm from Rome area (now I live in Colonna, 40km from Rome center) and the number of places I lived or people I know live which is directly connected/built along/into over ancient roman stuff is quite huge.
When I lived in Ostiense area, the basement of the building where we held bikes and stuff was an ancient roman storage facility from first century BC, the building was built over it. Same stones and everything!
When I lived in Colli Albani area (out of the ancient city perimeter and 5 mile-ish from downtown) the building was built around an ancient, still functioning acqueduct.
Where I live now, which is in the country side, my neighbor while building a new house found a Christian church from the 2nd century.
Living with that kind of deep history literally underfoot must shift your whole sense of time
Istanbul is similar.
I don't have a hard time believing this, because you hardly find all that medieval/ancient stuff on the ground level
That was probably the thing that disappointed me more visiting Istanbul, considering it's insane history I expected way more traces of it's ancient and medieval ages, but since the Ottoman rebuilt the city few times and people built house after house on top of ancient stuff I can't lie I was disappointed.