I am afraid that attitude towards the remains of the past is very recent - historically a lot of disused buildings (Like monasteries after the Reformation for instance, or even castles that were no longer strategically important) were just given over to the locals for use as ‘quarries’, if the government itself wasn’t involved.
The main thing - as far as I know - that kept a lot of the really ancient monuments around (Think burial mounds or standing stones) would have been a combination of local beliefs in some sort of supernatural retribution if the monument was destroyed combined with the fact that there wasn’t much to be gained by interfering with the monument in the first place.
It would very much be a projection of modern attitudes to be able to turn a ruin into a visitor’s center.
It would make a lot more sense if excavating (or at least harvesting the stones from the ruin) would trigger a morale penalty to the settlement, to reflect the fears of the people of upsetting whatever spirits or ghosts they would believe to linger in the ruins.
I think that ruins should be converted into places of worship, shrines that give prestige to the settlement. Perhaps they will be places of pilgrimage for the settlers and become part of their daily routine, like dancing and drinking and lounging in the parks.
I’m from the US and totally agree. I never use ruins for stone, in fact, I always place my cemetery near a ruin that’s close to my village and treat it as a sacred spot. If it’s within my city walls, I place a ‘preacher’ near it or my church building, and it becomes an often visited, and favorite location in my city. I’d rather put my villagers in danger by having them venture too close to a raider camp to gather stone than desecrate a potentially important cultural spot, even if it’s not my current culture.
Not sure where those castles where harvested. Where I come from, we have so many that you can actually buy some of them quite cheap. They where not harvested like ever. And they are mostly protected now. Which makes them cheaper since any one who wishes to reform has to jump through hoops. We have many old settlements you can also visit. From caves to old mosques, churches and monasteries, to towers, forts and castles. We have things from every century actually. Some still standing, others in ruins (wars and such). Celts, Romans, Arabs, everyone left its mark and you can visit those places. Some cities were even build over old cities and can be found excavating.
Totally depends on who you’re asking and in what context. Plenty of old buildings have been destroyed on purpose, deconstructed, or repurposed. Many of the old castles that are still around are around because they have been in use personally or communally. The ones that weren’t are ruins and/or may have been harvested in more desperate times.
I’m not opposed to having a secondary option on how to handle ruins, but harvesting them makes perfect sense, especially if you’re trying to survive out in the wilds and even more so if the ruin is not of your culture.
Mostly no resources for maintenance probably, which is indeed far more likely in war times.
Castles aside, a whole bunch of Hadrian’s Wall was harvested. Wikipedia says a lot of it was used to build roads.
The citadel of Carcassonne was almost demolished in the 19th century because it was so poorly maintained after it became militarily irrelevant. (And that was with people living there!) People didn’t tear it down, but they did build houses incorporating it as one or more of the walls. I vaguely remember being told something about harvesting the tops of the walls for stone when I visited, but I can’t find anything to that effect when I look up stuff on the internet, so that may not be true.
I am mostly familiar with Danish examples - but in Denmark the general fate of castles - as they became militarily obsolete - was that they were either repurposed for non-military uses (such as administrative centers), rebuild (Often to the point where the buildings were no long recognizable - Elsinore Castle is good example of this, in that Frederick II remodeled the older castle on the site - Krogen - into the current castle) or torn down and the building materials were recycled for use on other projects. Some of course were just neglected and allowed to fall into ruin, but I suspect that those would be in the absolute minority, and in the cases where ruins survive to the modern day, the ruins are what was left behind, after anything that was needed and useful had been scavenged.
Generally, the attitude of pre-modern peoples when it came to the the Past was quite pragmatic. If an old building was useful, it was used, but if not, it was repurposed. In a way this attitude can even be seen in how pre-modern writes conceptualized the writing of history. The Ancients wrote history primarily because they thought it could be instructive to the reader. They were not really concerned with a study of the Past for it’s own sake. That attitude only arises in the 1800s.
I am quite sure that if you were examine those castles in your country that you assert were not ‘harvested’, you will find one of two things - 1) They have been in continual use, 2) Everything that could be meaningfully scavenged from them, has been. Later on - in modern times - they might have been undergoing restoration efforts, but that does not reflect the attitudes of people in the past. Why am I so certain? Because as you point out, people build new cities over old cities. If they had been concerned with preserving the Past, they would not have done so.
But I actually agree with your initial point, it would be neat if there was something else the player could do with the ruins. Within the limited world-building provided thus far, I think it would make a lot of sense if the ruins could be turned into shrines of some sort, once we consider the fact that these sites are associated with relics that the people of the game world consider holy.