Those are historical buildings, this discussion was about new construction.

Historically people used to use what was locally available. Most of Italy has plenty of stones, that were also easily accessible, so regular people could build out of stone. But in other regions of Europe there were no stones lying about, so cheap houses were being build out of mud + straw, more expensive ones out of brick and much more expensive ones from imported stones.

Thatched roofs will survive storms without issue. The reason why they aren’t used anymore except by rich people is cost: very labor intensive to place and on top of that the thatching has to be replaced every x years. They made sense when labor was cheap and transporting heavy goods expensive.