40 Eerily Stunning Abandoned Places
1. Christ of the Abyss, San Fruttuoso, Liguria
Christ of the Abyss (or Il Cristo degli Abissi as it's known in Italian) is a submerged bronze statue of Jesus Christ, located in the Mediterranean Sea off San Fruttuoso on the Italian Riviera. It was placed in the water on 22 August 1954 at approximately 17 metres depth, and stands 2.5 metres tall. So while it's not technically abandoned, it certainly looks like it's a relic long since forgotten.
The sculpture was the brainchild of Italian diver Duilio Marcante and was created by Guido Galletti. The statue is located where Dario Gonzatti, the first Italian to use SCUBA gear, died in 1947.
The statue depicts Christ offering a benediction of peace, with his head and hands raised skyward. In the submerged location covered in algae and seaweed with bright blue light radiating from above it looks heavenly.
2. 1984 Winter Olympics bobsleigh track, Sarajevo
Sarajevo's Luge and Bobsleigh track was built in 1982 for the 1984 Winter Olympic games. After the Winter Olympics, the track was used for World Cup competitions until the start of the Yugoslav wars in 1991 and the Siege of Sarajevo the following year. The track was damaged as a result of the siege which occurred during the Bosnian War. During the siege, the track was used as an artillery position by Bosnian Serb forces. Today, the tracks still remain mostly intact with war wounds of defensive fighting holes, drilled into one of the last turns of the course. The tracks today are mainly used for graffiti.
3. Kolmanskop, Namib Desert
Kolmanskop, which is Afrikaans for Coleman's hill, is a ghost town in the Namib desert in southern Namibia. Originally it was named after a transport driver called Johnny Coleman who, during a sand storm, abandoned his ox wagon on a small incline opposite the settlement. Once a small but very rich mining village, it is now a popular (if not eery) tourist destination.
Fulled by enormous diamond wealth the village developed into a thriving town built by local German miners in a traditional German style. The town had numerous facilities including a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, skittle-alley, theatre and sport-hall, casino, ice factory and the first x-ray-station in the southern hemisphere, as well as the first tram in Africa.
Since its decline after World War 1, the town was finally abandoned in 1954 and eventually succumbed to the desert sands. Today, tourists drudge through houses knee-deep sand to capture striking images of the abanodoned town.
4. Railway Depot, Poland
Part of the Kingdom of Prussia and the expanding Russian empire from the late 18th century until the outbreak of World War One, the city of Czestochowa entered the 20th century as one of the leading industrial centres of Russian Poland. Its success was in part due to the opening of the Warsaw-Vienna Railway in 1846, which linked the city to the rest of Europe. Nowadays, Czestochowa is a tourist hub attracting millions of visitors and pilgrims each year. And with six railway stations, it’s little wonder that a train depot or two should become abandoned along the sprawling network. Treated to a touch of HDR, this overgrown, weed-strewn depot looks like a piece of post-apocalyptic artwork. But it’s actually a very real place. It’s difficult to be entirely certain whether or not it’s completely abandoned, but amid rusting track, overgrown yards and ageing, vandalised rolling stock, the lines between derelict and active are somewhat blurred.
5. City Hall Station, New York
6. Sunken Yacht, Antarctica
Mar Sem Fim (“Endless Sea” in English) is a Brazilian yacht that was shipwrecked, sunk and subsequently frozen in ice in Maxwell Bay of Ardley Cove, Antarctica in April 7th, 2012. The yacht belonged to the famed Brazilian journalist and entrepreneur João Lara Mesquita. It was manned by four crew members who were filming a documentary off the Antarctic coast when the boat capsized. Strong winds in excess of 100-kilometers per hour tossed the boat from one side to the other “like a bucking bronco in a rodeo,” according to one crew member.
With their vessel trapped in ice, the crew radioed for help and were rescued by the Chilean navy in the base in Bahia Fildes, in Antarctica. All four researchers were eventually rescued but bad weather delayed the process by two days. Now, the preserved vessel serves as an encased reminder of the crew's lucky escape. Visiting it is enough to send (literal) chills down your spine.
7. Hafodunos Hall, Wales
Hafodunos Hall is a Gothic revival house in Wales. Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, it was built between 1861 and 1866 for Henry Robertson Sandbach, replacing a house that had been built in 1674.
The Sandbach Family sold the house in the 1930s and after housing a girls school and nursing home, the building was abandoned in 1993. It quickly fell victim to dry rot which had spread rapidly through the servant’s quarters into the main house. On the night of 13 October 2004, Hafodunos Hall was the subject of a devastating fire which gutted the main block of the house.
8. Craco, Italy
Craco is a ghost town and comune in Southern Italy.
Civil strife and natural disaster led the the eventual abandonment of Craco. From 1892 to 1922, over 1,300 Crachesi migrated to North America mainly due to poor agricultural conditions. In 1963, Craco began to be evacuated due to a landslide and the inhabitants moved to the valley of "Craco Peschiera". The landslide seems to have been provoked by works of infrastructure, sewer and water systems. In 1972 a flood worsened the situation further, preventing a possible repopulation of the historic center and after the earthquake in 1980 the ancient site of Craco was completely abandoned.
The abandonment has made Craco a tourist attraction and a popular filming location. In 2010, Craco has been included in the watch list of the World Monuments Fund.
9. Rocket Factory, Russia
Lana Sator snuck into a rocket factory outside of Moscow and took stunning photos of the place. While the complex looks abandoned, it is actually still and active factory. Despite this, it was easy for Lana to get in. She just went there, jumped over the fence and got right into the heart of the complex through a series of tunnels and pipes, which was very surprising. And yet, she found nobody. No guards, no security. Nothing. Just a few CCTV cameras here and there in rooms packed with huge machinery. This hasn't stopped her being hassled by the Russian government for her disobediance. She's recieved letters encouraging her "not to make her situation worse".
10. Battle Ship Island, Japan
Hashima Island, commonly called Gunkanjima (meaning Battleship Island), is abandoned island about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Nagasaki. The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The island's most notable features are the abandoned and undisturbed concrete apartment buildings and the surrounding sea wall.
As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960s, coal mines began shutting down all over the country, and Hashima's mines were no exception. Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine in 1974, and today the buildings are empty and the population is zero. Leaving the creepy remains to serve as a reminder of the past and inspiration for James Bond villains' lairs.
Travel to Hashima was re-opened on April 22, 2009 after 35 years of closure.
11. Power Station Cooling Tower, Belgium
Power Plant IM is the derelict Power Plant of Centrale Electrique in Belgium. The history of the Monceau-sur-Sambre Power Plant is scarce but it is said to have begun around the 1930’s and was a coal powered operation. The Power Plant of Centrale Electrique ceased operations in 2006.
As of this year it is said that security is lacking because it is set for demolition. There are also reports of metal thieves gutting the place from the inside and people even being threatened.
12. House-Monument of the Bulgarian Communist Party
The Buzludzha monument – or to give the building its official name, the ‘House-Monument of the Bulgarian Communist Party’ – was envisaged as a symbolic meeting place for the communist regime. Resembling something straight out of a 1950s sci-fi flick, the colossal concrete saucer perches at an altitude of 1441 metres above sea level – on one of the most inhospitable peaks of the Balkan Mountains.
The House-Monument of the Bulgarian Communist Party was no doubt a wonder in its day. Bulgaria’s socialist republic came to an end in 1990 however, just shortly before the final collapse of the USSR in 1991. After this point, the decay set in fast.
The extreme location of the monument places it in the path of ravaging winds, harsh storms and bitter winters. The outer windows were the first to go, followed by large sections of the metal-tiled roof.
13. Maunsell Sea Forts, England
The Maunsell Forts were small fortified towers built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the United Kingdom. They were operated as army and navy forts, and named after their designer, Guy Maunsell. The forts were decommissioned in the late 1950s and later used for other activities including pirate radio broadcasting. One of the forts is managed by the unrecognised Principality of Sealand. Boats visit the remaining forts occasionally, and a consortium called Project Redsands is planning to conserve the fort situated at Red Sands.
14. Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat in Cambodia was originally a Hindu temple, but later became a Buddhist temple complex. The temple was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura, the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Although abanodoned (apart from hordes of tourists), it remains the largest religious monument in the world.
15. SS Ayrfield in Homebush Bay, Australia
Homebush Bay was host to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. Unlike many other olympic sites, nearby sports facilities are still (mostly) in use. But the bay is home to a number of abandoned ships. Ships' hulls are visible in the bay as a result of extensive ship-breaking operations in the mid-20th Century. The ship graveyard contains the remains of the SS Ayrfield (pictured above) as well as steam collier SS Mortlake Bank, steam tugboat SS Heroic, and boom defence vessel the HMAS Karangi. Remains of a number of smaller abandoned or broken up vessels lie nearby.
16. Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California
The Mare Island Naval Shipyard acted as a submarine port during both of the World Wars. In the 1990s, the building was abandoned and flooding has since created an amazing mirror effect.
17. Chemin de fer de Petite Ceinture, France
The "little belt railway" was a circular railway system built in 1852 to supply Paris' fortifications. When the city outgew its defenses in 1934, the railway system was also left to run wild.
18. Spreepark, Berlin
Spreepark, opened in 1969, was the only amusement park in East Berlin during Soviet rule. When the wall fell, bigger and better parks opened, leading to Spreeparks closure in 2001.
19. Library, Russia
20. Staricase to Nowhere, USA
Once giving access to the beach, the walkway that connected this staircase to the bluffs has long since rotted away.
21. Jetty
22. Waterpark
23. Mall
24. Methodist Church, USA
Gary, Indiana, was founded in 1905 during the boom of US steel. During the 1950s, more than 200,000 people worked in the bustling city. As the manufacturing sector declined, nearly half of the city fell into disuse, including this Methodist Church, left to the elements.
25. Gulliver’s Travels Park, Japan
Constructed in the shadow of Mt Fuji, this theme park opened in 1997. Despite financial help from the Japanese government, it lasted only 10 years before being abandoned.
26. Bannerman Castle, USA
Bannerman Castle's owner, Francis Bannerman VI, built the structure as storage space after buying the American military surplus from the war with the Spanish. After 200lbs of ammunition exploded in 1920, much of the castle was destroyed and the rest abandoned.
27. Kalavantin Durg, India
Originally built during Bahmani Sultanate to keep an eye on Panvel Fort and Kalyan Fort in North Konkan. Built on a plateau, Kalavantin Durg is a fort which contains a temple to Ganesh and some stone ruins. It was abandoned due to a lack of water and its hostile location. No one, it seems, wanted to carry water up all those steps.
28. Chateau Miranda, Belgium
The castle was originally built by French aristocrats fleeing the revolution. During and after World War II, Miranda Castle was used as an orphanage. It was abandoned in 1980, with the family refusing to allow authorities to care for the structure. Because of its past, this haunting castle remains a favourite amongst ghost hunters.
29. Pripyat, Ukraine
Pripyat is a city in northern Ukraine abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The city's population of 49,360 were evacuated a few days after the disaster, leaving a ghost town complete with: 15 primary schools, 5 secondary schools, a hospital, 25 stores and malls, 27 cafes, cafeterias and restaurants, a culture palace, a cinema and a school of arts, with 8 different societies, 10 gyms, 3 indoor swimming-pools, 10 shooting galleries, 2 stadia.
Post abandonment, the city has been vandalised and ransacked over the years. Because the buildings have not been maintained since 1986, the roofs leak, and in the springtime the rooms are flooded with water. Trees can be seen growing on roofs and even inside the buildings. All this adds to the deterioration process (and its facinating eeriness).
30. Holland Island, Chesapeake Bay, USA
Holland Island was originally settled in the 1600s, taking its name from early colonist Daniel Holland, the original purchaser of the property from the Dorchester County Sheriff. By 1850, the first community of fishing and farming families developed on the island. By 1910, the island had about 360 residents, making it one of the largest inhabited islands in the Chesapeake Bay. The island community had 70 homes, stores and other buildings. It had its own post office, two-room school with two teachers, a church, baseball team, community center, and a doctor. The islanders supported themselves mainly by dredging for oysters, fishing for shad and crabbing. Their fleet of workboats included 41 skipjacks, 10 schooners and 36 bugeyes, some of which were built on the island.
The wind and tide began to seriously erode the west side of the island, where most of the houses were located, in 1914. This forced the inhabitants to move to the mainland. Many disassembled their houses and other structures and took them to the mainland, predominantly Crisfield. Attempts to protect the island by building stone walls were unsuccessful. The last family left the island in 1918, when a tropical storm damaged the island's church. A few of the former residents continued living on the island during the fishing season until 1922, when the church was moved to Fairmount, Maryland.
Stephen White, a minister, cared for the island for many years and formed The Holland Island Preservation Foundation. In mid-2010, White sold the island to the Concorde Foundation. In October 2010, the last remaining house on Holland Island, built in 1888, collapsed.
31. Pegasus Remains, Antarctica
On October 8, 1970, the Lockheed Constellation ‘Pegasus’ crashed, due to very low visibility landing conditions. Nobody was hurt or wounded except for the propeller driven airliner built by the Lockheed Corporation.
The ice landing strip was then named Pegasus White Ice Runway, and the landing field, Pegasus Field, in honour of the aircraft.
The Pegasus remains there to this day, buried beneath snow and residing alone in this Antarctic Sound. The Lockheed Constellation does get many visitors for a plane in the Antarctic and often gets parts of it dug out for pictures. There are photographs that display the flying orange Pegasus that is detailed on the side of the aircraft, but it must be dug out to be seen.
32. Nara Dreamland, Japan
An eery and decidedly unpopular copy of Disneyland, Nara Dreamland was a theme park near Nara, Japan built in 1961. Unfortunately there's no fairytale ending for this themepark. In 2006, Nara Dreamland closed permanently due to low visitor numbers creating a striking juxtaposition as the evocative architecture slowly degrades and becomes overrun by nature.
The entrance to the park was designed to look almost identical to Disneyland, including the Train depot, a Main Street, U.S.A. and the familiar Sleeping Beauty Castle at the hub. It also had a Matterhorn-type mountain (with a Matterhorn Bobsleds-type ride, called Bobsleigh), and the skyway running through it, as well as an Autopia-type ride and a monorail. The park also had its own mascots, Ran-chan and Dori-chan, two kids dressed as bearskinned guards. Unfortuantley no matter how upbeat Ran-chan and Dori-chan were, nothing could save this imitation from it's depressing fate.
33. Dome Houses, USA
The Cape Romano homes are no more extra terrestrial than the alien-looking fish swimming around them today in the waters. A holiday home built in 1980 by a retired independent oil producer, Bob Lee, trying to fill his time with ambitious DIY projects, the houses was ahead of its time, self-sustaining, and solar-powered.
Bob’s daughter, Janet Maples tells Coastal Breeze of the amusing stories she would so often hear about her childhood vacation home:
“I can remember one time, we went to the drug store on Marco and some people in the row behind me were saying, ‘Have you been by those dome houses?’ And the other one said, ‘Yeah, but I hear they guard that with machine guns!’ Somehow it got a reputation of being a scary place.”
34. Wonderland, China
Like Nara Dreamland, Wonderland Amusement Park in China experienced a similarly unhappy ending. Construction of the park, which was planned to be the largest amusement park in Asia, ceased in 1998 due to financial problems.
The remains of several abandoned strucutres including the frame work of a castle-like building and medieval-themed outer buildings, was being reclaimed by local farmers to grow their various crops while the site was abandoned. While the park itself was abandoned, the parking lot was sometimes still served by attendants, presumably to tend to onlookers and curious sightseers.
An attempt to recommence construction in 2008 also failed, sealing the park's fate. The incomplete and abandoned structures were demolished in May 2013, leaving no hope for the abandoned park to ever be finished.
35. El Hotel Del Salto, Columbia
Now restored and renovated into the Tequendama Falls Museum of Biodiversity and Culture, the Hotel Del Salto spent many years abandoned. The original building was built as an elaborate mansion by the architect Carlos Arturo Tapias, as a symbol of the joy and elegance of the elite citizens of the 20sThe building is presumed to be haunted by the neighbors which led to many years of disinterest in restoring or preserving the building which has spectacular views over the Tequendama Falls.
36. Factory, Paraguay
A tree grows from the top of a chimney in an abandoned factory yard in Luque, on the outskirts of Asuncion, Paraguay.
37. Lawndale Theater, USA
The Lawndale Theater, which opened in 1927, was located in the North Lawndale community in Chicago. It was a rather large neighborhood movie house, seating 2,000, which later featured burlesque, and after that, movies once more, before it was closed in 1963. It was known as the Rena Theater in its later years. Most recently, the former theater had housed a church.
Unfortuantely the spectacular relic was to deterioated to save and it was demolished in July 2014.
38. Diamond Mine, Russia
Mirny Mine is a former open pit diamond mine located in Mirny, Eastern Siberia, Russia.
39. North Brother Island, USA
The now abandoned North Brother Island has a haunted past. Originally settled as the site of Riverside Hospital, built in 1885. Riverside Hospital was founded in the 1850s as a Smallpox Hospital to treat and isolate victims of the disease. Its mission eventually expanded to other quarantinable diseases.
The island was the site of the wreck of the General Slocum, a steamship which burned on June 15, 1904. Over 1,000 people died either from the fire on board the ship or from drowning before the ship was beached on the island's shores.
Mary Mallon, also known as Typhoid Mary, was confined to the island for over two decades until she died there in 1938. The hospital closed shortly thereafter.
Following World War II, the island housed war veterans who were students at local colleges, along with their families. After the nationwide housing shortage abated, the island was once again abandoned until the 1950s, when a center opened to treat adolescent drug addicts. The facility claimed to be the first to offer treatment, rehabilitation, and education facilities to young drug offenders. Heroin addicts were confined to this island and locked in a room until they were clean. Many of them believed they were being held against their will. By the early 1960s widespread staff corruption and patient recidivism forced the facility to close.
Now a bird sanctuary, the island is currently abandoned and off-limits to the public. Most of the original hospitals' buildings still stand, but are heavily deteriorated and in danger of collapse, and a dense forest conceals the ruined hospital buildings.
40. Abandoned Church, France
Stunning? Yes. Real? No.
Sorry, this one's a trick. While this is merely an exceptional photoshop job on an image of Cathedrale Bourges it does show an imagined reality where nature reclaims it's power and wins the battle against man-made structures.
About the Author
Brodie Norris runs Lunchbox Architect, a website featuring one exceptional, architect-designed family home every weekday.
