Beautiful Locations That Civilization Abandoned

3 posts

Mike
Beneath the waves, lost to the desert sands, or simply reclaimed by nature, these are some of the world’s most beautiful locations that civilisation abandoned

By Olivia Williams
PUBLISHED: 07:33 EST, 20 June 2013 | UPDATED: 09:55 EST, 20 June 2013

From disused fairgrounds to neglected cliff-top hotels, these atmospheric pictures of urban decay and abandoned buildings show just how rapid decline can be without human attention.

Disasters such as earthquakes, nuclear explosions and prolonged warfare have left some places uninhabitable while others, like Japanese fairground Nara Dreamland, sadly just fell out of fashion.

At the ends of the earth are beautiful sights such as the underwater Christ of the Abyss statue off the Italian coast and the ghost town of Kolmanskop in the Namibian desert, rarely ever seen by people any more.


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A lone man takes pictures inside the crumbling House of the Bulgarian Communist Party on Mount Buzludzha, no longer needed after the party has lost its grip on the country

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The House of the Bulgarian Communist Party was left after the regime collapsed two decades ago but the Bulgarian authorities have neither maintained nor dismantled them, leaving behind an eerie shell of a building

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Still looking imposing in the snow despite its decay, the House of the Bulgarian Communist Party is now rarely visited


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In the Thames estuary the abandoned wartime Redsands forts are rusting away, with Kentish flats windfarm on the horizon


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Seagulls are now the only inhabitants at the Army's old Anti-Aircraft towers at Redsands, Kent


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It may look like a science fiction film set but this is a Russian military rocket factory outside Moscow, which is now left unguarded


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The photos of the NPO Energomash factory, which produced liquid-fuel rockets, were taken by a woman called Lana Sator, who managed to sneak into the facility


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Looking now more like a haunted house than a hotel, the Hotel del Salto in Columbia has trees growing through its once-grand rooms. It opened in 1928 to welcome wealthy travelers visiting Tequendama Falls but it closed down in the early nineties