Alaska’s Abandoned Igloo City Hotel

Even in the chilly Alaskan heartland, this isn’t quite what you expect. A giant igloo. Situated on the George Parks Highway, 180 miles out of Anchorage on the route towards Fairbanks, Igloo City as it is known stands out like the proverbial sore thumb. It has become something of a tourist attraction in its own right.

Image Credit Flickr Use Sandwich Girl

You may not have to guess when the Igloo Hotel was but as the 1970s are generally regarded as the decade that style forgot there aren’t any prizes if that was your first conjecture. Someone, apparently, thought that aping the Inuit tradition of igloo building would be a great idea for a hotel. Whether they simultaneously had the idea to build a giant tepee hotel in a Lakota community is lost to history.

The Abandoned Giant Chicken Church of Java

Due west of Borobudur in central Java in Indonesia, a strange and somewhat bewildering sight rises above the forest canopy.  Now abandoned, this church was built to represent the Christian dove but all the locals refer to it as the giant chicken church – and you can see why.  This brilliant footage was captured by ThreatLevel11 who only had a single battery pack left when this most strange edifice revealed itself – so bravo for the excellent views.

Abandoned in Iceland

It is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland, warmed by the Gulf Stream, has a temperate climate and has been settled for more than a millennium. Yet despite having a population of only just over three hundred thousand, the majestic countryside of Iceland is dotted with the ruins of houses and other buildings abandoned when they were no longer needed or their inhabitants were forced to move on. Take a look at some of the abandoned buildings of Iceland with some imposing views thrown in for good measure.

Image Credit Flickr User t_buchtele

The Divine Lorraine Hotel, Philadelphia: The Beauty of Abandonment

This is a short but beautifully made  fly-by (over? across?) of the once gorgeous Divine Lorraine Hotel in Philadelphia by Chris DeAntonio.  Although it is hoped a refurbishment of this gorgeous, historic building will start shortly, as of writing it continues to be the abandoned shell you see here.  As well as being a still grandiose sight it has more than just architectural importance: it was the first hotel to become racially desegregated in Philadelphia.

The Kennecott Mines: Abandoned Alaskan Boomtown

In 1900 two prospectors were traveling through Alaska. Their horses were hungry and so when they spied a distant green hillside they thought their luck was in.

They were not wrong. They had stumbled upon a massive deposit of copper ore, exposed at the surface. Industry on a massive scale quickly followed. Yet by 1939 the copper was exhausted, the place abandoned. This is what remains of the Kennecott Mine Camp.

Craco - The Abandoned Town

Back in 1963 massive landslides made the inhabitants of the hilltop town of Craco in Italy shrug their shoulders one last time and move elsewhere.  As no one wished to (or could…) move in the place was left to nature.  Today although the local authorities have made attempts to rehabilitate the town as a tourist attraction it remains eerily abandoned.  If a town could have a beautiful corpse this is it, as amply demonstrated by Walter Molfese’s amazing film.

Bokor Hill Station – Cambodia’s Abandoned Town

The history of Cambodia in the twentieth century is one of almost continual struggle and conflict. One place which encapsulates the traumatic events which the country persevered is the Bokor Hill Station. This eerie ghost town has been abandoned not once, but twice in its history.

Image Credit Flickr User Atilla.szantner

Image Credit Flickr User An Agent

Even its birth was savage. Designed as a resort for the French colonists of the early twentieth century, the construction of Bokor Hill Station was complete by 1925. Built by indentured Cambodian laborers it took nine months to build. Almost a thousand men perished during that time.

Bhangarh – India’s Haunted City

It has lain abandoned for the best part of 400 years and is said to be the most haunted place in India. Situated between the cities of Delhi and Jaipur in the state of Rajasthan the true reason for its abandonment has been lost to history, though there are several legends surrounding its fate. Even today no-one is allowed to enter the ghost city of Bhangarh after twilight – it is said that if they do they will never return.

Image Credit Flickr User Saad.Akhtar

Within the grounds there are still majestic temples to major Hindu deities: Shiva, Lavina Devi and Gopinath are represented among others but the throngs of worshipers who clamoured for entrance to the temple are long gone. The town was first built in the reign of Bhagwant Das, a powerful maharaja, in 1573. It is said that a local guru was asked for permission to build the city.

Teufelsberg: Abandoned Cold War Listening Station Built on an Artificial Hill

A remnant of the Cold War, Teufelsberg Listening Station stands deserted, abandoned to the ravages of time and vandals.  Dominating Brandenburg Plain, in the northern section of Berlin’s Grunewald Forest, the permanent station at Teufelsberg was constructed in 1963.  Yet perhaps the most surprising fact is that the hill itself is less than twenty years older than the listening station that sits atop it.

Image Credit Flickr User Dotpitch

Image Credit Flickr User Anna Jumped

At the end of the Second World War, Berlin was in ruins.  The process was to take more than twenty The process of rebuilding was to take more than twenty years but by 1948 the city was in crisis.  The Soviet Union had blocked all transport access to the parts of the city under Allied control, to effectively control Berlin.

Leh Palace: Abandoned Bastion of the Himalayas

In the early years of the seventeenth century the Lion King of Ladakh, Sengge Namgyal ordered the construction of a great palace.  Situated atop the Himalayan city of Leh, now in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, it was the home of his dynastic descendants until their overthrow and exile in 1834.  Once the world’s highest building, Leh Palace has been abandoned since then.  Yet it remains a majestic presence in this area of India often referred to as Little Tibet.

Image Credit Flickr User Friars Balsam

If it seems familiar that is because it is thought to be modelled on the more famous Potala Palace in neighboring Tibet which was the home of the Dalai Lama until his flight from the country in 1959.   Some say that it is the other way around but the similarities are remarkable. It is smaller than Potala but nevertheless Leh Palace is hugely impressive in its own right.  Towering nine storeys high, its upper floors once echoed to the sounds of Namgyal royalty and their throngs of courtiers.  The lower floors were used for storage and to accommodate the precious horses of the army.

Atomic Ruin: The Abandoned Satsop Nuclear Power Station

Motion control shot specialist Andrew Walker and friends recently had something of an experience – a visit to a Satsop nuclear power station in Western Washington, a place abandoned before it was even completed.

The place is like some giant movie set of an eerie alien city – quite extraordinary.  The power plant was the second largest municipal bond default in U.S. history too – you don’t abandon something like this without it leaving some lasting financial sting.

Hitler’s Hospital: The Eerie Remains of Beelitz Sanatorium

In the last years of the nineteenth century the population of Berlin was expanding rapidly. The attendant issues of housing large numbers of people in cramped conditions were not far behind.  By 1898 the German National Insurance Institute had a sanatorium built for the victims of tuberculosis.  Beelitz-Heilstätten (or the Beelitz Sanitorium) steadily grew and functioned for many decades, playing host to a number of infamous patients, including Adolf Hitler. Yet most of it is now abandoned.

Image Credit Flickr User mr172

Image Credit Flickr User Harm Rhebergen

Although just a short distance from the German capital, the Beelitzer forest was considered suitable for a sanatorium as the area enjoyed fresh air and countryside.  However when the First World War broke out in 1914 it was not long before it was requisitioned and converted to care for the massive casualties inflicted at the front.  In the later months of 1916 a young soldier called Adolf Hitler was sent there to recuperate from a thigh injury acquired during the Battle of the Somme.

Rhyolite: A Ghost Town from the Air

Rhyolite is an abandoned mining town in Nevada and if you search for it online you will find no end of images.  Yet this is the first time I have seen this fascinating place from above.  Director and fIlmmaker Philp Bloom took his Phantom 3, the new DJI drone, for an hour’s spin over the town (and through it too).  The results are remarkable – the shots of the town are unlike any of those seen before.

Stromness: Abandoned Whaling Station of South Georgia

The island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic is remote, to say the least – they are 1,390 kilometers (864 mi) east-southeast of the Falkland Islands, considered the ends of the earth by many themselves.  There is no air strip and visitor must arrive on the island by boat.  On the northern coast of the island is the former whaling station of Stromness, named for a village in the Scottish Orkney isles.  The last time the place was used commercially was in the early 1960s.  Now it is left to decay, its only company the seals and penguins native to the islands.

Image Credit Flickr User Amanda B

The first whaling station on the island was built in the harbour in 1907 as a kind of floating factory.  Business must have been good as the permanent land station followed in 1912.  The place operated as a whaling station until 1931 when it was converted in to a ship repair yard.  Just thirty years later the entire place was abandoned.

The Dead Cities of Syria: Ancient Abandoned Cities Now Repopulated by Refugees

The Syrian civil war continues its tragic evolution with the death toll surpassing 400,000 by the end of 2016. It is the latest of many upheavals the country has been through since its formation as a state.  As the conflict continues, much of what remains of Syria’s long and unique history has also, inevitably, come under threat.  Perhaps the best known, the crusader castle of Krak des Chevaliers has been shelled while the giant waterwheels of Hama are in daily peril. While the preservation of human life is forefront in the minds of any person concerned about the ongoing bloodshed, these ancient sites represent history in situ which is of immense importance not only to Syrians but to the world.

Image Credit Flickr User Sharunjiv

In the northwest of the country are lesser known reminders of past turmoil and upheaval. Over 700 abandoned settlements bear the collective name The Dead Cities of Syria.  The name might perhaps be considered ironic, bearing in mind what is happening in the country’s modern cities at the moment.  Yet these dead cities have become home to thousands of refugees, who have fled from the civil war and now live in the caves beneath the ruins.  Some have even dug up the ancient stone graves and are using them as makeshift homes.  These pictures show the Dead Cities before the war as well as a number of their new residents. There is little or no access to places like this while war rages so the true nature of the devastation will not be known for some time.

Villa Epecuén: Argentina’s Pompeii Revealed

Once, people would flock to the small town of Villa Epecuén in Argentina’s Buenos Aires Province to take advantage of the saline, healing waters of its lake. Decades of tourism was wiped away in November 1985.  The rains were unusually heavy and the lake burst its banks.  The entire town of more than 100 blocks disappeared under ten meters of water.

Image Credit Flickr User Pablo Curras

The Tallest Abandoned Structure in the World: The Leaning Tower of Yekaterinburg

As of 24 March 2018 the tower is no more.  Read our reaction and watch the demolition HERE.

Turn your eyes skyward anywhere in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg and you will see it.  A tall off-white, disheveled but somehow elegant tower is by far the tallest building in Russia’s fourth most populated city.

Yet this is not a monument to a fallen tsar or departed dictator.  It is a TV tower. What is more, it’s an unfinished TV tower.  Nonetheless it gives the city another claim to fame – as the home to the tallest abandoned structure in the world.

Image Credit Flickr User Andre Bulber

There are three parts to the building:  the trunk of the tower, the lower joint-work with the base and the metallic aerial. The tower has 26 floors in total (not accounting the floors which make up the base). The lifts were never installed.  Instead any visitors must clamber up the concrete stairs of the half-complete tower.  It is quite the local landmark.

The SS United States

The SS United States was built in 1952 and held various records including the fastest ocean liner to cross the Atlantic in either direction.  The ship was in service for seventeen solid years. Yet since 1996 she has been docked, abandoned, on Pier 82 in Philadelphia.  Take a look at this majestic ship (shot by Chris DeAntonio), surely too iconic to allow to rust away out of sight and out of mind?

The Forgotten Space Below Dupont Circle

What lies below Washington DC's Dupont Circle? Something forgotten about for years but incredibly interesting.  PBS Digital Studios takes us on a tour of the amazing 75,000 square feet of abandoned tunnels that have remained inaccessible for most of the last 50 years.  As well as some fantastic footage of this abandoned trolley tunnel and its stations there is an interesting insight in to what this amazing space might become.

The Eerie Abandoned Silos of Washington, DC

The McMillan Sand Filtration Site is one of Washington DC's most conspicuous mysteries: a fenced-off 25-acre grassy plain just over 2 miles north of Capitol Hill, marked by rows of tall concrete cylinders clothed in overgrown ferns. Unbeknownst to the thousands of commuters and residents that pass by its rusted gates daily, below this sprawling parcel of land lies a series of vast underground caverns built in the early 20th century by the Army Corps of Engineers as a natural purification facility for DC's water supply.

Sealed to the public at the onset of World War II, the park above the filtration cells has been inaccessible ever since. Now, almost 30 years since its official closure, the site - a curious holdout among DC's recent wave of rapid urban development - has become the subject of a widespread debate over its future use.