The cultural cities usually were exempted from destruction. See the siege of Leningrad (with targets being hospitals or bazaars but not bridges or other cultura

The cultural cities usually were exempted from destruction. See the siege of Leningrad (with targets being hospitals or bazaars but not bridges or other cultural artifacts, when it would have been easy to rake the ground all over) or the avoidance to target Kyoto (when almost every city over 30k people all around Japan having been bombed at one time or another).