I've officially heard one too many "My local pub is older than your country" comments and it's given me an idea. Fantasy setting where the Pubs are the oldest manmade structures and institutions in existence by a wide margin. City where the walls were built 400 years ago, the overwhelming majority of houses are less than 600 years old due to the city being sacked and burned around that long ago, the central palace is actually only about 250-150 years old (took a century to finish the damn thing), and the Grand Cathedral is 800 years old (albeit was a much smaller building that was heavily damaged and rebuilt much larger following the war 600 years ago). However, there are multiple pubs that are 2000+ years old and have outlasted multiple dynasties and conquering empires.
There are random villages that just happen to have a pub that is a relic from a previous age of creation. You ask the Elves, you ask the dragons, you even ask the Gods, and they'll all say "I dunno, it's been there as long as I can remember." It is unclear who or what constructed these pubs but some of them have graffiti that doesn't match any known language and there's probably some kind of cosmic horror nonsense going on, which the setting proceeds to completely ignore the implications of and acts like there is nothing strange about there being some random pubs that are probably older than the gods.
