Radical plans emerge to buy up Culloden on “behalf of nation”

[Tobus]

I think you'll get a better feel by looking at satellite view on Google Maps. You can see that the entire area between the Bannonck Burn and Stirling Castle has been turned into a series of subdivisions.

A portion of the battlefield is free of development, so it's slightly better preserved than The Alamo, where only a few of the buildings remain, overshadowed by surrounding hotels (though the Menger Hotel is a historic building in its own right ... by American standards, not European standards).

Thanks for posting links to visual examples. In my mind, the issue of preserving these sites is partly about preserving history, but there's also the preservation of "hallowed ground". In a place where men spilled each others' blood, suffered, fought and died for ideals larger than themselves, it seems offensive to throw it all in the rubbish bin of history and replace it with a Starbucks or a take-away restaurant. If we are to cherish not only our history but our humanity, it is important to leave certain spaces as "untouchable". These should be places for reflection and learning.

Much of Europe has already been built on such sites which have been lost to time. I suppose it's inevitable that when an area has a longer history of human presence, the more such sites there will be, and some will end up forgotten. I'd like to think that humans could agree that this is a shame, and should be avoided when possible.