You have mentioned several, but I believe that they are best incarnated by the surviving pieces of architecture that dot the landscape of many cities and capitals of both mainland and insular Europe.

We could mention the heavyweights of the matter - the Colosseum or the Parthenon (1950 years and 2400 ca. years old respectively) - but I would like to shift the focus to other, perhaps less renowned aspects.

Toponymy plays a big role. Many many cities still hold their "ancestral" names obtained by the linguistical analysis of the current tonoponym or by studying how it changed. An example could be two cities in nowdays Campania: Capua and Santa Maria Capua Vetere. You may have heard the city's name if you watched the TV series Spartacus, where it is mentioned that in Capua there once was a gladiatorial school. That Capua is not the other Capua I've mentioned. The Roman Capua was abandoned during the Early Middle Ages; its omonym was a Langobard county founded in the IX century. The old site was named Santa Maria (St. Mary) due to the church which at some point was erected there. Its current name, Santa Maria Capua Vetere is a name given to it when Italy was unified in 1861, and it literally means "St. Mary of Old Capua".

Odonymy is quite helpful, I believe. Even considered that some street names were assigned much later and perhaps were not based on customary namings. However, you might have seen, in some European city or capital, a street called some variation of "Lombard Street". It most likely was that city's area where Italian (mostly Florentine or Central Italian) merchants and bankers would have set up office branches of their financial services and facilities, which were often "exported" abroad. If a street is named "Metalworkers' Street" (Via dei Ferrari) we can suppose it must have had a number of workshops regarding the blacksmithing trade. If a square is called "Warehouse of St. Gregory of Armenia" (Fondaco San Gregorio Armeno), I can hypothesize the presence, in Medieval times, of a warehouse or stockpile of goods rented by traders which might have belonged to the monastery of St. Gregory, or perhaps it got the name due to its vicinity.

Most of all, I think that the surviving buildings tell a much better story. This cathedral erected in the center of a nowdays small province town, dating from 1103, has never been remodeled on the outside and is virtually unchanged since the time it was built. But also the castle of Rocca Janula, found beneath the Montecassino abbey (here before WWII and here after a recent restoration), can tell us much on how its sorroundings might have been ordinated and organized given the presence of a very powerful abbey and a fortified strongpoint.

I hope this brief overview on the matter helps you.