Many these cities are unsustainable as modern cities. Their creation and golden periods were marked by lavish spending of royalty and/or wealthy merchants (today’s billionaire class, but without jets and yachts to spend on). It’s almost impossible to rebuild to modern, tourist level usage without massive cash infusions and disruption of services for that maintenance.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 6 points 8 months ago

You also have differences in what makes a city location good or not. Venice was a very defensible location with easy access to shipping, which was the foundation of its economy.

The economics of a trade hub has shifted a lot since then, usually requiring the port to move a lot more goods and generally being the connection point between land and sea.