From forgotten medieval relics and the decaying remnants of war to vacant hotels and deserted towns, Europe is full of ghostly reminders of its past – some hidden in plain sight, others lurking in more secluded corners.
Click through this gallery to see our selection of the eeriest abandoned places in Europe, and how they came to be the faded beauties they are today...
The sandstone carcass of Minard Castle overlooks the Atlantic waters of Kilmurry Bay from its lonely clifftop home on Ireland's southwest coast. Built by the Fitzgerald clan, whose lineage sired the Knights of Kerry, it has lain empty since Oliver Cromwell's army landed on Irish shores in the mid-17th century. Besieging the castle (along with several other coastal fortresses on the Dingle Peninsula), English forces killed all of Minard's residents and caused structural damage so severe that the building was rendered uninhabitable for the rest of time.
The Church of St Dunstan-in-the-East was built around 1100 in the City of London district of the British capital. After barely surviving the Great Fire of 1666, it was rebuilt and crowned with a Sir Christopher Wren-designed steeple, before disaster struck once more in 1941. All but destroyed by the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) during the 57-night bombing campaign known as the Blitz, the decision was made to not rebuild the church again, but turn the remains into a public garden. Now, it provides a small green oasis in the middle of a busy, ever-expanding metropolis.
When the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986, almost 50,000 people were forced to abandon the nearby city of Pripyat to avoid a deadly radiation leak. In the years that followed, it has arguably become the world's most famous ghost town, sitting at the rusting heart of the exclusion zone where only occasional tourists, urban explorers and animals tread.
This once-grand mansion has lived a number of lives – as a guesthouse, lodgings for the British armed forces and finally a brothel. But it was first built for Professor Salvatore Luigi Pisani, Malta’s chief government medical officer at the time, in the 1870s. After he passed away at Villa Sans Souci in 1908, his cousin and her family used it for a while as their summer residence before selling it on. How long the villa has stood crumbling and unloved is unclear, but it’s certainly been long enough for the ghosts to move in...
Visit the former farming village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France’s Nouvelle-Aquitaine region and you’ll find it still echoes with tragedy. During the Second World War, the settlement was under German occupation. On 10 June 1944, an SS detachment rounded up all 652 villagers, locked the men in barns and the women and children in the church, and set the whole place alight. Just 10 people survived and Oradour-sur-Glane has been left abandoned ever since, its ruined state a memorial to those who were massacred.
The eerie shadow of Heidelberg Castle looms above its namesake city and the Neckar valley, surrounded by the dark hills of the Odenwald Mountains. The earliest parts of the castle complex were constructed around the turn of the 14th century, but it became something of a patchwork in the eras that followed as new sections were added in various period styles. It has been uninhabited since two powerful lightning strikes finished what 17th-century warfare with the French started, leaving the castle charred and unliveable.
It’s easy to see what the Haludovo Palace Hotel would have been in the 1970s and 1980s. With its meaty Brutalist shell and space-age design, this Adriatic resort once lapped up the attention of celebs, elite athletes, playboys and international gamblers at its island home in former Yugoslavia. When key investor Bob Guccione, founder of US adult magazine Penthouse, led the hotel’s casino into bankruptcy in 1973, Haludovo Palace just managed to hold onto business for a few more years – until the Croatian war of independence led to its abandonment.
The medieval city of Mystras, in Greece’s Peloponnese region, has a complex history. It was originally built by William II of Villehardouin, a prince of the crusader state of Achaia, on the land beneath his fortress, but the site was reclaimed by the Byzantines in 1262, before later falling to the Ottomans and the Venetians. By 1832, the city lay in ruins and was abandoned after the Greek War of Independence. Save for a few feral cats and the nuns of the Pantanassa Monastery who feed them, Mystras remains uninhabited today, but can be visited by those prepared for a strenuous hike.
Trains may still rattle through Chamberi metro station, but no passengers have alighted here since 1966. The station falls on Line 1 of Madrid’s underground, the city’s first line to be opened back in 1919. But as the neighbouring stations of Bilbao and Iglesia had their platforms extended to ease congestion in the 1960s, they became too close to Chamberi and it was decommissioned. Now, the abandoned station lives again as a museum, where visitors can see trains rolling past the exhibition from behind a glass screen.
The St Kilda archipelago is made up of four remote Atlantic islands off Scotland’s northern tip. Of the four, only Hirta has ever been lived on – but no more. The island had been settled for at least 2,000 years by a small but stoic community, but increased tourism began to threaten the peace, traditions and health of the islanders. By 1930, life on Hirta had become untenable. Following the death of a young woman from illness she could have survived on the mainland, the last residents of this inhospitable isle requested evacuation. St Kilda is now a double UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised for its cultural and ecological significance.
Under the creative direction of 19th-century polymath Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona, Castello di Sammezzano became a love letter to the Orientalism trend on the outskirts of Florence, replete with ornate plasterwork, mosaics and muqarnas (honeycomb-like architecture typical of Islamic design). But after a run-in with the Nazis during the Second World War and a short-lived stint as a hotel and restaurant in the 1970s, the castle’s 365 rooms were vacated and left to rot. A committee is petitioning for the site’s urgent restoration, but it’s unknown whether these efforts are paying off.
Built over 70 years across the 12th and 13th centuries, Villers Abbey was at its peak home to 100 Cistercian monks and 300 lay brothers. But as time passed it was battered by Spanish infantrymen, a lack of funding, the decline of the monastic vocation and the French Revolution, which spelled a perfect storm of ruination. By 1796, the ancient abbey had been completely abandoned. These days, the building and its grounds are tended to by the Villers tourism board and are open to the public.
Cyprus was torn apart in 1974 when an Athens-backed coup intended to unite the island nation prompted Turkish forces to invade. Caught in the crossfire was the city of Famagusta, home to the Varosha holiday resort. At the start of the 1970s, Varosha was a popular destination with a majority Greek Cypriot population. But when the Turkish army took control of Famagusta, Varosha’s residents and business owners fled to the Greek-controlled south of the island, leaving the resort to decay. The ghost town has now – controversially – reopened to tourists.
Explore more of Varosha, the world's biggest abandoned beach town
The ‘lost’ village of Tyneham, on southern England’s rugged Jurassic Coast, was forcibly evacuated in 1943 when the British military claimed it for D-Day combat practice. Residents were told they’d be able to return in 28 days’ time, but they were never allowed to go home; Tyneham has lain deserted ever since, still part of an active military training zone. You can visit on certain days of the year and see sobering sights like the one pictured here: coat hooks long-unused by the schoolchildren whose names they bear.
Located in the picturesque Soca valley, Kluze Fort began life in the 15th century as a wooden fortress designed to defend from Turkish invasion. Stone fortifications were added later, but the fort’s outdated design – wrecked by fire in 1903 and further weakened by the First World War – nevertheless became redundant. A newer Austro-Hungarian fortress, Fort Hermann, was built nearby on the slopes of Mount Rombon at the turn of the 20th century, but that too was abandoned by 1916 when it sustained severe damage. You can visit both today; the walk between them takes about half an hour.
This former coal-mining town was once the largest settlement in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago lodged deep within the Arctic Circle. Pyramiden was first established by Sweden in 1910, but the Soviet Union bought it in 1927 and it was under Soviet control that most of the town’s infrastructure was built. For more than 60 years the Soviets mined the coal reserves here, until resources ran dry in 1998 and the town was abandoned. Now the only residents (aside from Arctic wildlife) are tour guides and employees of the reopened Pyramiden Hotel.
Declared a national cultural monument in 2015, Okta Centrum AS is a fascinating example of Soviet-era architecture. Everything about the building, completed in 1977 for a state-owned collective organisation, was designed to be octagonal – from its exterior shape, to the pond in its grounds and even its rubbish bins. Though it appears to have many floors, Okta Centrum AS only has three. When Estonia was part of the USSR, people came from all over the Union to see this unusual structure. It was abandoned some years after Estonia regained independence in 1991, when its purpose became obsolete.
If you didn’t know, you might think this deserted village was a traditional Viking settlement, remarkably preserved by biting Icelandic winters. But in reality, it’s an abandoned film set from a movie that was never made. Located just outside the fishing town of Hofn, the replica Viking village is surrounded by jagged black peaks and is filled with true-to-history timber huts with turfed roofs. Built in 2010 for a production that was later scrapped due to funding issues, the site can now be visited by paying a small fee to the farmer who owns the land.
As warfare and weaponry began to modernise towards the end of the 19th century, it became necessary for major cities to protect themselves with ringed networks of forts around their suburbs. Edegem Fortress, sometimes called Fort V, was one of 21 such defences that formed Antwerp’s main line of resistance in 1914. It was taken by German forces in the Second World War, but was subsequently reclaimed by the Belgian army who continued to occupy it until 1975. Thereafter, it slid into disuse, but parts can be visited freely today.
A calendar still hanging on the wall of Poggioreale’s part-ruined school eerily marks the year that time stood still in this ghost town. In 1968, the Sicilian village was rocked by a 6.1-magnitude earthquake, sparking a mass exodus of its citizens. The disaster killed 231 people in the Belice valley, while some 100,000 were left homeless. Poggioreale, shabby and rubble-strewn, has since become a haunt for tourists who come to walk among the wreckage, which includes the shells of a theatre, a library, a hospital and an orphanage.
Though a coating of white paint has given this abandoned church a modern Scandi facelift, it was actually built way back in the 14th century. But by the late 18th century rapidly rising sands were swallowing the church’s foundations and pouring inside through every tiny crack in the masonry. No force – divine or otherwise – could save the chapel from its inevitable fate, and it was finally sacrificed to nature in 1795. Once the largest church in the region, most of it was demolished upon closure, and now just a lonely tower remains among the dunes.
During the Spanish Civil War, the quaint town of Belchite saw its peace shattered when a deadly siege lasting a fortnight turned the place into a bloody battleground. In the summer of 1937, loyalist Republicans attacked and recaptured the town (then a Nationalist stronghold), with the ensuing conflict claiming thousands of lives. The Republican triumph at Belchite was, however, short-lived; the town was reclaimed by General Francisco Franco’s troops in 1938 and the war was ultimately a victory for fascism. Belchite, with its bullet-peppered cathedral and mortar-damaged buildings, can only be accessed today on guided tours.
You can see the dazzling waters of Oludeniz from the ghost town of Kayakoy, but its tourist enclaves couldn’t feel farther away. Formerly known as Levissi, Kayakoy was once a harmonious community of Anatolian Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians, and had been since the 14th century. But in 1923, in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1923, a population exchange (with the intention of ensuring each country only had one main religion) meant its 6,500 Christian residents were deported to Greece. Renamed Kayakoy, meaning ‘rock village’, the settlement was abandoned and stands today as an open-air museum.
This creepy sanatorium has stood abandoned for almost 30 years, having served as a military hospital from the start of the First World War until 1995. Staff treated a young Adolf Hitler here following the Battle of the Somme and, after engineering the next World War, his fellow Nazis also spent time recuperating here before the Soviets took control of the premises. Prior to its time in the field, Beelitz-Heilstatten was a tuberculosis hospital between 1898 and 1930. Today, part of the site is open for tours.
The Alpine village of Curon was seemingly lost forever when it was deliberately flooded in order to merge two lakes for a hydroelectric power plant in 1950, forming Lake Resia (Reschensee in German). Disgruntled residents were evacuated from more than 160 homes, a dam was built and Curon was fated to see out the rest of its days as Italy's answer to Atlantis. All that typically remains visible of the drowned village is its 14th-century bell tower but, in 2021, maintenance work on the reservoir revealed traces of Curon that hadn't been seen for decades.
This ancient hilltop village is proof that you can’t have it all. While its high perch on a rocky outcrop did much to deter would-be aggressors, it also presented geological challenges that would eventually render Craco inhospitable. The medieval settlement, having previously grappled with the Black Death and the trials of Italian unification, was finally put out to pasture by a slew of earthquakes and landslides that forced its residents to up sticks. Craco was completely abandoned by 1980, but guided tours and religious festivals have been known to bring a little life back to the ghost town.
Commissioned by Tsar Alexander I of Russia in anticipation of an attack by Napoleon, Daugavpils Fortress did its duty in 1812 when it successfully held off the marauding emperor. While several houses, hospitals and barracks within the enormous fortress (it contains 10 streets and 80 buildings) have since been left neglected or disused, a number of them have been converted into contemporary visitor attractions, including the Museum of World War I and the Mark Rothko Art Center – the only gallery in Eastern Europe exhibiting original work by the famed abstract artist.
This moated chateau in the middle of the Loire Valley could have been the stuff of dreams, but its life has been more of a nightmare. Invaded by the English during the Hundred Years War and reduced to a burnt-out skeleton in 1932 by raging fire, the chateau lay uninhabited for decades, tipping further into nature-wrapped ruin. But it wasn’t forsaken entirely – in 2017, a crowdfunding collective campaigned for the preservation of La Mothe-Chandeniers and the pile is now co-owned by thousands of strangers from all around the world.
The abandoned gulag of Goli Otok – ‘barren island’ – was first used by Austria-Hungary to incarcerate Russian prisoners of war, but it was in communist former Yugoslavia that the prison island became truly notorious. Political dissidents and critics of Josip Broz Tito’s breakaway regime were sent here for hard labour. By 1956, more than 15,000 people had endured such sentences, leaving at least 600 dead (some reportedly from torture). As the Iron Curtain was dismantled across Eastern Europe, the island was abandoned. Tourists can visit on boat trips to see what remains.
Today, Montearagon Castle is a forlorn sight. Founded in 1086 by King Sancho Ramirez, its earliest purpose was to antagonise the nearby city of Huesca, which was under Islamic rule at the time. In 1097, the king handed custody of Montearagon to an order of Augustinian monks. After functioning as a monastery for more than seven centuries, the fortress was used as a gunpowder store in the 19th century, which ended in the compound’s demise. An explosion turned it into a dour ruin, and the castle was never rebuilt.
Among the 272 operational stations that make up the world’s oldest metro system, there are also a handful of disused stations lurking in the London Underground. One of them is Aldwych, which was a stop on the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway (now the Piccadilly line) until 1994. Opened in 1907 as Strand station, Aldwych closed nearly a century later when it was deemed an unsustainable offshoot of the reimagined Piccadilly line. In the years since, the station has lived again as a favourite filming location and tourist attraction.
A fortress was first established on the Cretan islet of Spinalonga during the 16th century. But, from 1904, it was the site of a leprosy hospital – home to hundreds of shunned sufferers. Transplanted from civilisation to live in exile, patients here were visited by only one doctor who seldom came. When the cure for the disease was discovered in 1948, those left on the island were healed and permitted to rejoin society. The sun set on Europe’s last leper colony in 1957, but visitors looking to learn more about Spinalonga’s haunting history can explore the ruins of the hospital, the restored homes and the fortress walls that still stand.
In 1984, Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics and an entire purpose-built facility was created. But after the medals had been won and the athletes had gone home, it was only a matter of time before the region was gripped by war. Starting in 1991, the Yugoslav Wars ultimately saw the Olympic Village repurposed for battle: the old competitors’ hotel was turned into army headquarters; the podium was a platform for executions; and the curves of the bobsleigh track (pictured) doubled as effective defensive positions. Currently the site is largely abandoned, with talk of restoration work ongoing.
Located in Lancashire, northwest England, the Camelot theme park had a concept based around the legend of King Arthur, his knights of the Round Table and his magical companion Merlin. It operated for almost 30 years before steadily-declining visitor numbers, bad weather and attention-diverting events like the London 2012 Olympics put the park out of business that year. Usually closed to the public, the abandoned theme park sometimes hosts small music festivals and Halloween-themed events.
Said to be one of the largest barracks in Eastern Europe, this dramatic-looking pile was founded in the late 19th century under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It housed artillery units and by the time of the First World War, had grown to encompass a prison and even developed its own currency. After it was later occupied by the Nazis and then the Soviets, Hajmasker Barracks was stripped of valuables and abandoned. The sounds of local children playing among the treacherous ruins have often been mistaken for the wails of ghosts.
Before the metro was established, the Petite Ceinture (‘little belt’) train line would ferry Parisians around the city. Running from 1852, the steam railway was the brainchild of Napoleon III and his administrator Baron Haussmann, who largely masterminded the modern aesthetic of Paris. But with the advent of underground train networks, La Petite Ceinture was shuttered in 1934. Today, the disused tracks have been reclaimed by reams of weeds and wildflowers, with designated sections reimagined as nature trails you can follow.
The turreted villas of Burj Al Babas are like something from a macabre fairy tale. Lying halfway between Istanbul and Ankara, they were part of an ambitious housing development that started in 2014, proposing 732 identical luxury properties be built to resemble Disney castles. It looked sure to be a success, considering the natural beauty and thermal springs on the site’s doorstep. But financial woe hit in 2018: the property market and global economy took a nose-dive, the value of the Turkish lira plummeted and the developer declared bankruptcy. Since then, the multimillion-dollar disaster has stood abandoned.
Whitby Abbey has never really been able to catch a break. The rib-cage-like ruin (which inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula) stands today on the site of an original monastery founded in the 7th century, which was abandoned two centuries later – possibly after Viking raids. In the 13th century it was refounded as a Benedictine monastery, but King Henry VIII’s suppression spelled further misfortune, while the relentless thrashing of wind and rain rolling in from the North Sea caused the abbey to partially disintegrate from erosion around the 18th century. German shelling in 1914 inflicted even more lasting damage.
Once a state-of-the-art Soviet spa town, Tskaltubo – made up of more than 20 defunct hotels and sanatoriums – was built because Stalin himself believed in the holistic properties of hot springs. He even had his own private bathhouse here. When the Iron Curtain collapsed in 1991, the spas closed and sank into disrepair. But, more recently, the faded resort has provided shelter for refugees of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict. In 2020, the Georgian government announced plans to invest millions of dollars into restoring the tourism infrastructure of Tskaltubo.
A dystopian sea of rusting fuel drums and clapped-out cars is all that remains of a US Army Air Corps base on Ikateq, a remote island off Greenland’s east coast. Bluie East Two is just one of more than 30 US military bases in Greenland abandoned when the Second World War ended. Since 2018, Denmark has slowly been cleaning up the mess America left behind, which reportedly included asbestos-afflicted buildings, leaded aviation fuel and dynamite. However, some locals believe a pool of debris should be retained as a testament to Bluie’s history and as a tourist attraction.
The first mention of Cesargrad Castle – which lies right on Croatia’s border with Slovenia – dates back to 1399, when it was gifted by King Sigismund to Count Herman of Celje, who came from an elite lineage of Styrian nobles. During the Peasant Revolt of 1573, the fortress was attacked and set on fire, standing abandoned for the first time until the wealthy Erdody family stepped in to partially renovate it. But when they moved to a newer and grander stronghold more befitting of their station sometime in the 17th century, Cesargrad was cast aside indefinitely.
The desiccated bones of Liban Quarry are the dying gasp of an abandoned film set created for the inimitable Schlinder’s List. Though it might only be a replica of the Plaszow concentration camp – 25 minutes’ walk from Krakow’s Jewish Quarter – art does more than imitate life here. Remnants of the actual camp lie only a few hundred feet away; inmates of Plaszow were forced to work in the quarry, and many were murdered on the site. Designed from the original blueprints of the camp, the overgrown set serves today as a harrowing reminder of the horrors of the Nazi regime.
In its heyday, this Belle Epoque beauty was the perfect base for Alpine adventures. Following Queen Victoria’s visit to the newly-completed Furka Pass in 1868, the region became popularised and, in 1882, Hotel Belvedere was born. Then, the Rhone Glacier was just a 600-foot (183m) walk from the hotel’s door, with guests drawn in by a majestic grotto carved into the ice. But as the glacier began to retreat at an alarming rate, the grotto (first fashioned in 1894) couldn’t be safely sculpted. The Belvedere closed in 2015, its boarded-up windows a monument to the repercussions of climate change.
The crumbling ruin of Durnstein Castle has almost become one with the rocky outcrop it occupies, like something from a dark fantasy novel. Built between 1140 and 1145, the fortress was where a captive Richard the Lionheart was held by Leopold V after the English king failed to share his plunder from the crusades with the Austrian duke. The legendary site – abandoned after it was blasted by the Swedes during the Thirty Years’ War – is freely accessible today and falls on the Wachau World Heritage Trail, a 112-mile (180km) hiking route running through the Danube Valley and Wachau winelands.
The Buzludzha Monument is not an abandoned spaceship, as appearances might suggest, but one of the last-surviving traces of the Communist Party’s presence in Bulgaria. Construction of the overbearing behemoth, which stands atop the Buzludzha mountain, began in 1974. Designed to commemorate the country’s socialist history, it served as an assembly hall until the Soviet-led Eastern bloc’s dissolution at the start of the 1990s. While it’s no longer possible to explore inside the derelict building, its exterior can be seen for miles and you can still walk around its base.
Haunted by a story of tragic lovers, Ungru Manor’s foundations were laid in the 1890s, after Count Ungern-Sternberg fell in love with the princess of Merseburg Castle in Halle, Germany. The count wanted to marry her but she had vowed to live forever at Merseburg, so he pledged to build her an exact replica on his land in Estonia. Sadly, following her sudden death, the mansion was left incomplete and uninhabited when the count himself passed away shortly after. It is now a protected site, but looters stripped its valuables a long time ago.
Lying entombed beneath the Guernsey countryside, this old German military hospital and ammunition store was built with the blood, sweat and tears of enforced labourers during the Second World War. Over three gruelling years, the workers – many of whom died in the process – fashioned the subterranean tunnels with explosives, rudimentary tools and their bare hands. But for all their efforts, the hospital was only operational for three months (damp tunnels aren’t the best place to recuperate), while the storage facility was used for around nine months. The site is open to the public today.
When the colourful island of Procida was declared Italy’s Capital of Culture in 2022, all eyes were drawn to its pretty pastel buildings and the ancient fortified town looming above them on a cliff edge. The most striking feature of this town, Terra Munta, is the disused prison of Palazzo d’Avalos, which housed some of the country’s most notorious criminals – including Mussolini-era fascists and members of the Mafia – until as recently as 1988. The 16th-century former palace was converted into a prison citadel in 1830, but you don’t have to have broken the law to visit now. Tickets are available in advance.
Sitting precariously on Croatia’s northern coast, the wind whistles through this stripped carcass, which looks just a powerful gust away from being taken by the sea. But its current state of decay belies its historic legacy. The city of Rijeka was the birthplace of the torpedo – a launch station for these self-propelled underwater missiles was first established here in the 1860s, with today’s incarnation dating back to the 1930s. The station oversaw the production and launch of the world’s first successful torpedo and manufactured more than 30 different models before closing in 1966. It has been slowly rotting ever since.
From a distance, the opulence of this wedding cake-like structure holds up. It’s only at closer quarters you realise the Constanta Casino is a far cry from the pristine Art Nouveau masterpiece it used to be. Built at the start of the 20th century, it emerged as a favoured gambling spot among well-heeled tourists, its Black Sea location reflected in its shell-shaped windows. But it was the advent of war on the continent that signalled the building’s swansong. Left to evanesce after the fall of communism, reports of recent renovation works suggest there could be life in this waning beauty yet.
The Grmec Monument to the Revolution is one of numerous ‘spomeniks’ that appeared among the forests and mountains of former Yugoslavia throughout the 1960s and 70s. These futuristic concrete sculptures were designed to mark significant events in the republic’s history, from individual uprisings to partisan battles. This one, resigned to a lonely fate of gathering moss on the Grmec mountain, is said to commemorate a hospital founded by communist-led resistance fighters during the Second World War.
Considered one of Europe’s largest timber buildings, the Prinkipo Orphanage was initially intended to be a high-end hotel and casino. But when bureaucratic red tape prevented the casino from opening, it was sold on and repurposed as an orphanage. After housing almost 6,000 Greek children in its lifetime, Prinkipo was shut down in the wake of rising tensions between Greece and Turkey in 1964. In 2018, cultural heritage federation Europa Nostra placed the abandoned orphanage on a list of the continent’s most endangered heritage sites.
In 2002, increased desertification and coastal erosion led to the abandonment of Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse, which for 120 years had teetered above the North Sea on a shifting sand dune, facing an inevitable future. Perilously close to dropping into the water at any moment, local authorities stepped in to save the historic lighthouse from an untimely grave in October 2019, when they had the 720-tonne tower moved inland by 230 feet (70m) – adding a further 40 years to its life expectancy.
Ogrodzieniec Castle has dominated a jagged hilltop in Poland's southern highland region since the 14th century. Though abandoned long ago, with its remnants now melting into the rocky pedestal beneath, the castle is still an imposing sight to behold. During the country’s war with Sweden in 1702, Ogrodzieniec was set alight and left a burnt-out wreck. The dramatic ruin opened to the public in 1973 and was recently immortalised by an appearance in Netflix fantasy series The Witcher, based on the book series by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski.
Opened in 1969 as VEB Kulturpark Planterwald, Spreepark once welcomed around 1.5 million annual visitors who came to enjoy rides on its beloved Ferris wheel and roller coasters. Despite surviving the fall of the Berlin Wall, it finally closed in 2002 after the owner declared insolvency (and was ultimately found guilty of drug-trafficking). It was thought an arson attack on the apocalyptic-looking park in 2014 would be the nail in the coffin, but it is currently being transformed into new green space set to be finished by 2026. Until then, there are guided tours offered on weekends.
These intimidating juggernauts were used to defend against aerial attacks during the Second World War, equipped with anti-aircraft guns that had a range of over seven miles (14km) and a 360-degree field of fire. Erected on Hitler’s orders, the stone fortresses – three in Berlin, two in Hamburg and six in Vienna – were each capable of firing 8,000 rounds a minute. But as artillery and military aviation became more sophisticated with time, the flak towers fell into disuse. Most of the towers in Vienna remain vacant (pigeons excepted) apart from Flak Tower 2-L, which has been converted into the Haus des Meeres aquarium.
In another life, Spis Castle belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary, and its foundations were laid in the 12th century on the site of an earlier fortress. The high castle walls protected a Romanesque palace, which shape-shifted with the times as the site changed hands, taking on a Gothic and then a Renaissance style. It was at Spis that John Zapolya, the last king of Hungary before the Habsburg dynasty, was born. But disaster struck in 1780 when a fire ripped through the historic stronghold, resulting in its ruin. UNESCO designated the impressive cinders a World Heritage Site in 1993.
The graffitied skeleton of this formerly lavish restaurant lives on today as one of Lisbon’s more unusual ‘miradouros’ (panoramic viewpoints). Inaugurated in 1968, the drum-shaped building hosted Lisbon’s elite in its glory days, who would come not just for the wraparound scenery but for the stunning artworks and tiled panels – some of which survive today. After also being used as offices, a disco, bingo hall and warehouse, the property was abandoned in 2001 and subsequently vandalised. Since 2017, tourists have been able to visit the relic safely and catch the views from the third floor.
Deep in Germany’s Black Forest, the empty corridors of Schlosshotel Waldlust echo with ghosts. The 140-room luxury hotel opened for business in 1902, counting kings, celebrities and artists among its clientele in its most successful years. But the countdown to its downfall began ticking in 1949, when the owner at the time was found murdered in one of the rooms. After her death, the ailing guesthouse was repurposed as a military hospital, but was closed and abandoned in 2005. These days, the now-protected cultural monument occasionally opens for tours and concerts.
The Italian island of Poveglia has gone down in history as one of the world’s most haunted places. In the plague epidemics of the 1570s and 1630s, it was used to quarantine thousands of sufferers who were shipped out to its shores to contain the spread of disease. Those who succumbed to the Black Death were cremated here. In the early 20th century, a psychiatric hospital was established on Poveglia by the government, with reports alleging one of the doctors was experimenting on patients. The sinister isle has long been a no-go zone for visitors, and lies eerily in the middle of the Venetian Lagoon.