These incredible images show what would happen if humanity no longer existed and nature reclaimed our homes and buildings. It’s incredibly eerie, but also beautiful.
1. Povegia Island, Italy.
When Napoleon Bonaparte ruled Italy, he created an offshore quarantine zone for plague victims. Later, the island was used as an asylum for mentally ill Venetian citizens. It is now abandoned.
2. Scary abandoned house, Virginia.
This is paint, not blood. But what’s with the pentagram? Creepy.
3. Hospital bed, Pripyat.
Pripyat is the city closest to Chernobyl, the site of a nuclear disaster in the 1980s. The town was evacuated when the nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl plant suffered a catastrophic meltdown.
4. Rusted bumper cars, Pripyat.
5. Car graveyard, Belgium.
During World War II, many US army officers based in Europe bought cars for their personal use. When the war ended they couldn’t afford to ship them home, so they were transferred to car graveyards like this one in Belgium to ‘rust in peace.’
6. Abandoned theater.
7. Flooded, abandoned mall, Bangkok.
8. Glenwood power station, New York.
Glenwood power station was built in 1908 and closed in 1968. Since it shut down, it’s been used as a filming location for a wide variety of disaster and zombie movies. It was designed by the same architects as the iconic Grand Central Station in New York.
9. Church steeple in a frozen lake, Reschen, Italy.
Reschensee (Lake Reschen) in South Tyrol, Italy is an artificial reservoir that was created by flooding a valley. When the lake was crated several villages were submerged, as well as this 14th century church. When the water freezes, people visit the abandoned building and climb inside.
10. Soviet testing station in Makhachkala, Russia.
This test station was commissioned in 1939, and is situated two kilometres off the Russian coast. It has been abandoned for years, and heavily damaged by the constant action of the rough Caspian sea.
11. Blue spiral staircase in a European palace.
12. Church of the nine ghosts, Western Europe.
13. Church in the Snow, Canada.
14. Methodist Church, Gary, Indiana.
Gary is an artificial town founded in 1906 to provide accommodation for steel workers in Indiana. As the industry declined, half of the population left, leaving many buildings abandoned.
15. Doll factory, Spain.
16. Abandoned hallway (The Blue Mile).
17. Boathouse, Obersee Lake, Germany.
18. Abandoned waterpark.
19. Bare footprints in an abandoned nuclear reactor.
Were these bare footprints left when the reactor was being painted, or after it was abandoned? Creepy!
20. Collapsed jetty.
21. Abandoned mining track, Taiwan.
22. Nara Dreamland, Japan.
Nara Dreamland was built in 1961. It was a Japanese theme park inspired by Disneyland in California. It closed in 2006 due to declining visitor numbers.
23. Staircase to nowhere, California.
24. Shipwrecks caught in a sandbar, Bermuda.
25. Turquoise canal, Venice.
26. Chris McCandless’ bus, Alaska.
28. Abandoned library, Pripyat, Russia.
The high levels of radiation released by the Chernobyl disaster meant that the residents of Pripyat could never return to their homes. Today, photographers have to get special permission to visit and can only stay for a short time.
29. An abandoned McDonald’s.
30. Jet star rollercoaster, New Jersey.
Hurricane Sandy completely submerged this seafront amusement park when it made landfall in 2013. It has since been salvaged and removed from the sea.
31. Spreepark, Berlin.
Spreepark was an East German amusement park built during Soviet rule in the 1960s. It was the only amusement park on the functional East German side of the Berlin Wall, and when the wall came down people flooded to the better designed, modern parks on the West German side, leaving Spreepark abandoned.
32. Chemin de Fer de Petite Ceinture, Paris.
This ‘little belt railway’ was built in 1852 to connect the main railway stations in Paris. It fell out of use in the 1930s and has been left abandoned, a haven for wild flowers and explorers!
33. The wreck of RMS Titanic.
The wreck of the Titanic was first photographed by a Franco-American team in 1985. Many people had tried to find the wreck before that, but they were the first people to succeed.
34. Victorian style treehouse, Florida.
35. Mare Island naval shipyard, California.
This shipyard was the first ever base to be established on the Pacific Coast in 1854. It closed in 1996.
36. Abandoned movie theater, Detroit.
The collapse of the motor industry led to the abandonment of many parts of Detroit. The decline has been so severe that the entire city was declared bankrupt in 2013.
37. Floating forest, Sydney, Australia.
38. Scary abandoned house.
39. Church, St Etienne, France.
This Romanesque church was destroyed during the English sieges of 1346 and 1417 (the Hundred Years War) and subsequently rebuilt in a Gothic style. During the French Revolution it was used as a stable.
40. Overgrown palace, Poland.
41. Abandoned piano.
This piano has been abandoned for so long that a tree has actually grown through it! Wow.
42. Abandoned cabaret theater, Berlin.
These photos show how beautiful abandoned places can be. If you’ve been moved by these haunting images, why not share this post with your family and friends?
