The world is full of ghost towns, abandoned settlements that appeared as a result of either economic crises or natural or man-made disasters. Some are so far from civilization that they have turned into a real time machine, capable of transporting them to those distant times when life was seething in them. They are incredibly popular with tourists, although they can be dangerous or off-limits. We offer an overview of the most incredible ghost towns in the world.
Kolmanskop is a ghost town in southern Namibia, located a few kilometers from the port of Lüderitz. In 1908, a diamond rush swept the area and people rushed to the Namib, hoping to get rich. But over time, after World War I, when diamond sales fell, the city, which has casinos, schools, hospitals, and residential buildings, turned into a barren sandy desert.
Metal structures collapsed, beautiful gardens and neat streets were completely covered with sand. Creaking doors, broken windows overlooking the endless desert... another ghost town was born. Only a few buildings are in good condition. Their interiors and furniture have been preserved. However, most are just ruins inhabited by ghosts.
Pripyat is an abandoned city located in the north of Ukraine in the “exclusion zone”. It was once a home for workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It was abandoned in 1986 after an accident on it. Before the disaster the population was about 50,000. Now it is a kind of museum dedicated to the end of the Soviet era.
Multi-story houses(four of which had just been built and were not yet inhabited at the time of the accident), swimming pools, hospitals and other buildings - everything remained as it was at the time of the disaster and mass evacuation. Records, documents, televisions, children's toys, furniture, jewelry, clothes - everything that every normal family had remained in the dead city. Residents of Pripyat were only allowed to pick up a suitcase with personal documents and clothes. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, many apartments and houses were almost completely looted, leaving nothing of value, even the toilets were taken away.
A futuristic village was built in northern Taiwan as an upscale luxury resort for the wealthy. However, after numerous accidents during construction, the project was stopped. Lack of money and desire to continue the work caused it to stop completely. Strange buildings in a futuristic style still stand there as a memory of those who died during construction. There are now rumors in the area about numerous ghosts now wandering around the city.
Craco is located in the region of Basilicata and the province of Matera, 25 miles from the Gulf of Taranto. The town, typical of the Middle Ages, is built among numerous hills. Its appearance dates back to 1060, when the land was owned by Archbishop Arnaldo, Bishop of Tricarico. This long-standing connection with the church had a great influence on the city's inhabitants over the centuries.
In 1891, Craco's population was over 2,000. Residents had many problems related to poor agricultural conditions. In 1892-1922, more than 1,300 people moved from the city to North America. Earthquakes, landslides, wars - all this became the causes of mass migration. In 1959-1972, Craco was particularly affected by natural disasters, so in 1963 the remaining 1,800 residents left the city and moved to the nearby valleys of Craco Peschiera. Today it is a stunning ruin medieval city, which is very popular among tourists.
5. Oradour-sur-Glane (France): the horrors of World War II
The small village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France is the epitome of unspeakable horror. During World War II, 642 residents were killed by German soldiers as punishment for French resistance. The Germans initially planned to attack Oradour-sur-Vayres, but mistakenly invaded Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944. According to the order, some of the residents of the French town were driven by the Germans into barns, where they were shot in the legs so that they would die long and painfully. Women and children were kept in the church, where they were shot. Later, the Germans completely destroyed the village. Its ruins still stand as a monument to all those who died, although not far away after the war a new town was rebuilt.
Gankajima is one of the 505 uninhabited islands Japan. It is located approximately 15 kilometers from Nagasaki. It is also called “Gunkan-Jima” or “Armadillo Island”. In 1890, the Mitsubishi company bought it and began mining coal from the bottom of the sea. In 1916 the company was forced to build Japan's first large concrete building. It was multi-storey building where the workers lived.
In 1959, the island's population increased rapidly. It was one of the most densely populated islands ever recorded in the world. In Japan, oil replaced coal in the 1960s. As a result, coal mines began to close across the country. The island was no exception. In 1974, Mitsubishi officially announced the cessation of work. Today the island is completely empty. Travel there is prohibited. The 2003 film Battle Royale II was filmed here and was also featured in the popular Asian video games Killer7.
Kadykchan was one of many small Russian towns that fell into ruins after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Residents were forced to move to gain access to running water, schools and medical care. The state resettled the townspeople to other cities within two weeks and provided them with new housing.
It was once a mining town with a population of 12,000 people. Now it's a ghost town. During the eviction, residents were in a hurry to leave their belongings in the houses, so now old toys, books, clothes and other things can be found there.
Kowloon City was located outside of Hong Kong during British rule. The former guard post was created to protect the territory from pirates. During the Second World War it was occupied by Japan, and after its surrender it passed into the hands of squatters. Neither England nor China wanted to be responsible for him, so he became an independent city without any laws.
The city's population flourished for decades. Residents built real labyrinths of corridors above the streets, which were filled with rubbish. The buildings became so tall that sunlight could not reach the lower levels and the entire city was illuminated with fluorescent lamps. It was a veritable center of lawlessness - brothels, casinos, opium dens, cocaine parlors, food courts serving dog meat - all operated unhindered by the authorities. In 1993, the British and Chinese authorities made a joint decision to close the city as its anarchic mood began to get out of control.
Varosha is a settlement in the unrecognized republic of Northern Cyprus. Until 1974, when the Turks invaded Cyprus, it was a modern tourist area of the city of Famagusta. Over the past three decades, he has become a real ghost.
In the 1970s the city was very popular among tourists. Every year their number grew, so new high-rise buildings and hotels were built. But when the Turkish army gained control of the region, it blocked access to it. Since then, entry into the city has been prohibited to all but Turkish military and United Nations personnel. Annan's plan envisaged the return of Varosha to the Greek Cypriots, but this did not happen, since they rejected it. Since no repairs have been made over the years, the buildings are gradually falling apart. Metal structures are rusting, plants are growing on the roofs of houses and destroying sidewalks and roads, and sea turtle nests have been spotted on deserted beaches.
Creepy city Agdam was once a thriving city with a population of 150,000 people. In 1993, he “died” during the Nagorno-Karabakh War. There were never any terrible battles in the city; it simply became a victim of vandalism during the occupation by the Armenians. All the buildings are empty and dilapidated, only the mosque, covered with graffiti, remains untouched. Residents of Aghdam moved to other regions of Azerbaijan, as well as to Iran.
If you don’t have any strength to look at dead cities, then it’s better to go on a trip
Previously, we compiled a list of the most beautiful cities in the world, but now it’s the turn of the scary ones. This could include countless such ugly small and medium-sized towns around the world, but these ten are the most unattractive of all capitals and major cities in the world.
It is a veritable concrete jungle or a victim of urban sprawl coupled with a lack of urban planning. If you live in one of these places, you won't agree, but here we present a completely unbiased list of cities that could be great, but are unforgivably terrible for many reasons.
10. Guatemala, Guatemala
This smoke-filled, crime-filled city is the capital of a rather beautiful country. The city looks more like a slum than a capital with most of the buildings on the verge of collapse.
9. Mexico City, Mexico
The city is known, at the moment, as one of the most dangerous, but even if it were a safe haven, it would not be visited more often by tourists anyway. This is one of the most polluted cities in the world and, in general, there is nothing to see there.
8. Amman, Jordan
The country's capital with one of the most fascinating historical attractions in the world (magical Petra) should only be the point of arrival and immediate departure (transition point) on your itinerary unless you like dirty, chaotic streets and ugly buildings that look like they are gradually falling down Each other.
7. Caracas, Venezuela
Venezuela is known for its unusual success in international beauty pageants, as Venezuelan women are known for their love of plastic surgery, but the capital of this country has absolutely nothing to do with beauty. It is filled with slums, and its central areas seem completely devoid of planning and any style.
6. Luanda, Angola
It's currently experiencing an economic boom due to the recent success of the African capital, so let's hope the new development turns into something more attractive than what we see today: hideous apartment buildings dotting the skyline of what, incredibly, is the most expensive city in the world.
5. Chisinau, Moldova
The capital of Moldova is an eyesore. An industrial city, mostly built up with very ugly Soviet-style buildings, most of which are dilapidated (and not particularly clean).
There are a lot of unattractive Soviet-era cities in eastern Europe, but we still expected more from the capital.
4. Houston, USA
The fourth largest city by population in the United States. Of course, there are many other disgusting American cities (it's worth mentioning similar American cities: Atlanta, Cleveland...), but this one has to win the title of the worst of them: an impoverished and homeless population (about 1 in 5 families live below the poverty line ) and cityscape without any formal division into districts.
3. Detroit, USA
Detroit is terrible not only aesthetically, but also in terms of quality of life, which explains why the city has lost a quarter of its population in a decade. One of the highest crime rates in the country may have contributed to this, but the city itself is dirty, dying, made of brick, concrete and glass. Not very nice.
2. Sao Paulo, Brazil
It seems that nature decided to give all the beauty to Rio and completely forgot about the existence of other Brazilian metropolises.
Sao Paulo might be one of the most impressive cities based on shopping and dining options alone, but there's no doubt that the city is one big concrete jungle.
The city is known for its congested highways, a fact that is enough to make Los Angeles unattractive. On top of that, there is nothing to see there when walking along the streets (if anyone walks there at all, since this is one of the most pedestrian-unfriendly cities in the world).
The only attractive thing is Hollywood and the beaches nearby. Otherwise, Los Angeles is not a pretty place at all. And since this is one of the most famous cities in the world, year after year there is no excuse for its lack of livability and beauty.
Huge review and description of the most major cities, which developed rapidly in the past, but today are abandoned ghost towns. Quite interesting, read on.
Dallol, Ethiopia
The former mine for the extraction of sylvite, potassium and salt was abandoned in the late 60s. Most of the buildings on the site were built from salt blocks. Currently, Dallol is considered the settlement with the highest average annual temperature. Between 1960 and 1966 the average annual temperature was 35 degrees Celsius.
Most of the buildings on the site were built from salt blocks.
Currently, Dallol is considered the settlement with the highest average annual temperature. Between 1960 and 1966 the average annual temperature was 35 degrees Celsius.
Nova Cidad de Quilamba ( New town Kilamba), near Luanda, Angola
By the time the project was completed, it was supposed to shelter approximately 500 thousand people. 750 multi-colored eight-story buildings were to become homes for future indigenous residents.
The city also has all the necessary infrastructure: 12 schools, shopping centers, cinemas, a five-star hotel.
Kolmanskop, Namibia
The town of Kolmanskop was founded in 1908 as a result of the Namibian diamond rush. But after the First World War, when the “diamond reserves” dried up, the city became empty and was soon abandoned.
Tawergha, Libya
Back in 2006, the population of the Libyan city of Tawergha was 24,223 people. But in 2011, as a result of a military conflict between the opposition and the authorities, the city lost almost all its residents. Today, the once prosperous Tawerga has become completely deserted.
Pomona, Namibia
Pyramid, Russian mining settlement, Svalbard, Norway
Oradour-sur-Glane, France
The village was destroyed in 1944, and 642 of its inhabitants, including 205 children and 247 women, were killed by German soldiers on June 10, 1944. And only 47-year-old Marguerite Rouffanche was able to miraculously survive.
Adolf Dieckmann, an SS commander, blamed local partisans for the massacre in the city.
By order of the former French President Charles de Gaulle, Oradour-sur-Glane was not restored, but became a museum city, the ruins of which are intended to remind posterity of the Second World War.
Kayakoy, southwest Turkey
Oily, Switzerland
The mock city was built to train the Swiss army.
Cowpenhill Down, Wiltshire, England
Built as a life-size replica of a German village by the British Ministry of Defense in 1988 for urban combat training.
Dellersheim, Austria
As a result of the policy of forced annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938, this 900-year-old village and several neighboring ones suffered. Hitler, despite the fact that his paternal grandmother was buried in Dellersheim, ordered training bases for the Wehrmacht to be made on the site of the villages. Currently this territory belongs to Armed Forces Austria.
Great Blasket, Ireland
Until 1953, the island was mainly inhabited by a fishing community, but soon the population dropped to 22 people, and then the island became completely uninhabited.
Pegrema village, Karelia, Russia
Pegrema is an excellent example of wooden architecture. The village was abandoned after the Revolution.
Pripyat, Ukraine
The city, named after the nearby Pripyat River, existed for only 16 years. All 45,000 residents were evacuated a few days after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986. The city has an amusement park that was open for only a few hours and Train Station on the way out of town.
Luxurious residential area of Francisco Hernando in El Quiñen, Secenia, Spain
During the construction boom of the early 2000s, this supposedly prestigious 13,200-unit residential complex was built. The construction budget was almost $12 billion. Oddly enough, for some reason such utilities as water and gas supply were not in the plans of the builders. This may be why so few apartments were sold, and only a third of those sold became residential.
Sanzhi or “Ruins of the Future”, Taiwan
In 1980, a project to build future homes in the Taiwanese city of Sanzhi was abandoned due to investment losses, as well as numerous car accidents. Now, from a future city, it has turned into a future ruin and has become one of the strangest ghost towns. The futuristic houses, which in many ways resemble flying saucers, were destroyed between 2008 and 2010.
Little Paris or Tianducheng, near Shanghai, China
Today it is a protected area, but Tianducheng was conceived as a city replica of Paris. In little Paris, of course, there is the Eiffel Tower and entire architectural ensembles the original Paris and even the Champ de Mars. Residential buildings can accommodate at least 100 thousand people, but its actual population is slightly more than 2000.
Chenggong, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China
In the Chinese ghost town of Chenggong, less than 10% of all houses built became residential.
Centralia, Pennsylvania
In 1856, two coal mines opened in Centralia. The population kept growing and already in 1890 there were 2,761 people. The city has about 5 hotels, 7 churches, 2 theaters, 14 supermarkets and grocery stores, and 27 bars. The mines operated until the late 1960s, but after a fire in one of them, its population began to decline and by 2010 only 10 residents remained. By the way, underground fires still continue
The town was founded near the mine in 1859 by a group of gold miners. In 1876, the Standard Company discovered another large deposit of gold ore, and, as usual, Bodie grew from a small settlement into the largest city in California. From the late 1880s, the population began to decline rapidly. In 1900 its population was 965 inhabitants, and by 1940 there were only 40 inhabitants.
Fordlandia, Brazil
The idea turned out to be extremely unsuccessful, since rubber trees did not take root at all on the hilly and infertile Brazilian soil. Residents of the city were forced to wear special badges with their identification code, and eat only American products. Such conditions led to an uprising in 1930, which was suppressed by the Brazilian army.
Chaiten, Chile
As a result of the eruption of the volcano of the same name, which woke up after 9,000 years of sleep, the city turned into a ghost. A week after the eruption, it was still buried in lava and ash.
Grytviken, South Georgia
Grytviken was built as a whaling yard for the fishing company Captain Karl Larsen in 1904. It was closed to outsiders in December 1966, but the church on the grounds is still occasionally used for marriages. The residents had their own cinema (photo below, 1933), but it was demolished a couple of years ago.
There are cities on our planet that send chills down your spine. These are dead cities, abandoned cities, or just cities in which people live, but it would be better for them not to do so. They meet in different countries and on different continents. Some of them were destroyed by the elements, and some by the people themselves.
This city was founded in the 18th century, and before the start of the war, Nagorno-Karabakh flourished and developed successfully. The last Soviet census, conducted in 1989, counted 28 thousand inhabitants. There were schools and colleges in Agdam, there was a drama theater; Wine, dairy products, and canned food were produced here; There was also a tool factory here. The city was connected with the rest of the territory of the republic and the USSR by railway.
Then in 1991 the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict began. The Azerbaijani army used the city as a location for artillery in 1992-1993. Stepanakert was shelled from here. Naturally, the Armenians did not remain in debt, and in 1993 the Armenian army stormed Aghdam in order to suppress enemy artillery.
As a result of several assault attempts, it became impossible to live in the city. It is literally destroyed to the ground; the only intact building is the mosque (but Allah, apparently, did not want to intercede for the residents). Now there are no people in Agdam, the ruins of the city are overgrown with wild pomegranate trees. Residents of nearby villages sometimes visit dead city in search of materials suitable for home construction. The entire economy of Agdam is now limited to this.
In 1841, a tavern called the Bull's Head was founded. Soon a settlement was formed around it, and in 1854 it was already considered a town. The city grew, schools, hospitals, a post office, shops and even a theater appeared in it. At first the city was called Centerville, later it was called Centralia.
The main occupation of the working population was coal mining - Pennsylvania is famous for its mines. Coal destroyed the city. In 1962, during a fire at a landfill near the city, a fire started in the mine where anthracite was mined. The fire slowly but surely spread through the coal seams. The ground was cracking and choking smoke was coming out of the cracks. The fire still cannot be extinguished.
Soon residents began to leave the city, fearing for their lives and health. Centralia is empty. Hardly a dozen people now live in the abandoned, smoke-filled city.
The town was built to accommodate workers who worked in the oil fields. Gradually, in addition to oil shift workers, many people settled in it. The city developed rapidly, high salaries attracted more and more new residents to it. Everyone was good job, and the prospects for Neftegorsk seemed brilliant.
It all ended in 1955, when on May 25 the city was rocked by a 10-magnitude earthquake. Only a few buildings remained from the entire city; more than 2,000 people died under the ruins.
The city was never restored. In its place stands only a huge obelisk in memory of the dead.
This city on the northern shore of Taiwan was built as an ultra-modern resort. It was distinguished by its most original architecture; American officers were preparing to move into houses that looked like saucers. But investors were faced with financial problems, and the project was frozen in 1980. A few years later, an attempt was made to resuscitate him. They began to build a luxury hotel and marina in Sanji, but soon the work was completely abandoned.
Throughout construction, the company was plagued by strange misfortunes. Employees died inexplicably. A few excursionists were in a hurry to leave, declaring that they were uncomfortable in Sanji. In the end, the project was abandoned completely, and the empty city was inhabited by Taiwanese homeless people. But they didn’t take root here either. Those who “changed their place of residence” in time said that the dead were wandering around the city and people were disappearing there. Information regularly appears about the disappearance of curious people who decided to look for adventure in the dead city.
The city existed for only 16 years (1970-1986). The bulk of its population were specialists who serviced the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Life in Pripyat was excellent, the city was modern, with good infrastructure, people received high salaries.
Then there was an accident at a nuclear power plant. Within a few days the city was completely evacuated. People left in a terrible hurry: the first looters who climbed into the abandoned city found scattered toys in kindergartens, plates with leftover food on tables in apartments, and unsolved problems on blackboards in schools.
Now these same looters have taken everything possible from Pripyat: fittings, valuable household items, even doors and frames. Mature birch trees have already sprouted through the asphalt. Rusty swings creak funerally in the courtyards.
There are now excursions in Pripyat - there are people who think it’s funny to look at “Apocalypse Now”.
The worst thing about this city is that the people live in it. Dharavi is part of Mumbai, a huge city of slums. There are similar areas in many cities in Asia and South America, but Dharavi is the largest. The impoverished poor and simply dubious elements live here. The housing here is tiny huts built from all sorts of rubbish, packing crates, and boxes. Many don’t even have this and simply spend the night on the street. As a result, at night, Dharavi looks like a battlefield littered with motionless bodies.
The local inhabitants have no work, they do not receive any help, they eat whatever they can find. Water is also a huge problem. It is almost impossible to find a toilet in the modern sense; the population uses the river flowing through the city as this.
And what’s even worse is that children are born in this nightmare. Although the situation when three generations of a family live in a booth the size of half a modest garage is considered very successful here, some children still manage to survive. In the future, they will contribute to the further growth of the city, built up with residential soda boxes.
A city is a living organism. It exists as long as blood flows through its streets-arteries, the leukocytes of which are we, the inhabitants. But sometimes people leave - by various reasons, be it radiation or an underground fire, or maybe just the political situation. And the city turns into a mummy: it does not decompose, but dries up, deprived of blood. His arteries are cracking, his eye sockets are gaping with broken glass, and stalkers are crawling out of dark corners. We decided to raise the history of abandoned cities - and understand the reasons for their death.
Dead cities have always existed. Is the legendary Troy dead? Yes, sure. And Babylon? Undoubtedly. And what about the Crimean Chersonese, on the site of which Sevastopol stands? And he's dead. But these cities died a long time ago and, so to speak, “of their own death,” having exhausted their natural resources. Each city has its own time limit. Bukhara and Samarkand are more alive than all living things, despite three millennia behind them. And many of their peers have already been wiped off the face of the earth by enemy raids, climate change, and so on.
The issue of safety plays a significant role. The huge, once half-million-strong Babylon has survived to this day in ruins; it was destroyed in the 1st century BC. By order of Saddam Hussein (Babylon these days was unlucky to be in Iraq), the city was rebuilt from modern bricks, and thereby removed from the list World Heritage UNESCO. But Babylon and similar cities of antiquity have not survived enough to be considered “ghost cities.”
Babylon was rebuilt with almost no regard for how the original buildings looked or were located. This "reconstruction" nullified historical value cities
This is another category - archaeological excavations. There is a clear distinction between a “vanished city” and an “abandoned city” (“ghost”). The abandoned building retains the architectural appearance and infrastructure that existed at the time of the evacuation of residents. The disappeared person may lie in ruins or rest underground.
Let's introduce one more limitation. In the USSR, for example, the gradation “village - town - city” was observed according to the number of inhabitants. In the USA and Great Britain, a city can have 10-15 inhabitants, because the status of “city” is established there according to different principles. For example, in Britain, a “town” cannot become a “city” simply by increasing in size. The “city” status is awarded personally by the queen for the city’s services to the country. We will consider only those settlements that would have the status of urban settlements and above (although we may make a couple of exceptions).
Pripyat, Ukraine: Chernobyl story
If you ask random passersby what abandoned cities they know, 99% will answer “Pripyat”, and then hesitate. In the former USSR, everyone knows about the dead Pripyat - some from history lessons, some from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. This city on the territory of Ukraine was unlucky: it only existed for a decade and a half. Pripyat was founded in 1970 specifically to service the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. By 1979, the village had grown so much that it received city status. Initially it was designed for approximately 75,000 people, by 1985 the number reached 49,400. Everything went as usual until tragedy struck.
Pripyat before the disaster
Pripyat was called “the standard of Soviet urban planning.” Now we understand that the city was gray, boring, filled with standard “boxes”. At that time, Pripyat seemed to be an ultra-modern, to some extent stylish settlement, designed from scratch, entirely, for one-time development. For example, Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, was designed in the same way.
Central square, clear lines of streets with traditional names (Lenin, Friendship of Peoples, Builders, Enthusiasts), a city park with attractions, the city house of culture "Energetik", the cinema "Prometheus" - Pripyat had everything you needed for comfortable life. The layout was designed for the absence of traffic jams, regardless of the number of cars; free spaces provided visual comfort and natural ventilation of the courtyards. In general, by Soviet standards - paradise. In addition, the nuclear engineers who lived in the city were paid well.
Pripyat, a fairy tale city, a dream city. Clear layout, free space, beautiful nature. Silence
Residents of Pripyat were evacuated on one day, April 27, 1986. They weren’t allowed to take almost anything with them - tourists still pick up plastic ducks and tattered books “in the zone” (although taking souvenirs is strictly prohibited). The city has become a classic “ghost”: sidewalks overgrown with grass, an abandoned Ferris wheel, dead buildings.
What is Pripyat like today? Overall, an entertaining tourist attraction. There are companies that organize trips to the dead city, and such “trips” are a success. They are safe for health: in a few hours the dose of radiation will not exceed the norm we receive in a couple of days in normal big city. There is talk of assigning Pripyat the status of a museum city. There are several establishments in the city (checkpoint, fluoridation station, special laundry). The station's maintenance personnel live in the city of Slavutich, located 50 km from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Are there self-settlers in Pripyat? Oddly enough, there is: the author of this material saw them with his own eyes and even talked to them. These are mostly old people who moved to the dead city many years after the accident. The authorities turn a blind eye to them: the self-settlers do nothing wrong. The city is unlikely to ever come to life, but it may well become a museum. And yes - the real city has almost nothing to do with “Pripyat”, shown in games and books. There are no mutants there.
The Ferris wheel in the city center has become a popular topic among the authors of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. project.
Few people remember that there is a second one locality, resettled after the tragedy, is actually the city of Chernobyl. Before the accident, 12,500 people lived in it, now - 500, so it cannot be called completely dead. The residents are mainly shift workers working at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and self-settlers who have returned to their former homes.
Interestingly, the first mention of Chernobyl in the chronicle dates back to 1193, that is, it is more than 800 years old! For a long time the city was a famous Hasidic religious center. Chernobyl will most likely be revived in the future: today the local church has been restored and is functioning, and there are shops in the city. So we will live.
In addition to those mentioned, the secret city of Chernobyl-2, which served an over-the-horizontal radar station, as well as a number of villages, was evacuated due to the accident.
A masterpiece of design thought: the receiving antenna of the Duga over-the-horizon radar system, the city of Chernobyl-2
San Zhi, Taiwan: city of the future
They didn’t even have time to populate the futuristic San Zhi: he died without being born
An interesting ghost town was San Zhi, built in northern Taiwan in the early 1980s. It was built according to a single plan as a city of the future. The original design, strange architecture and layout promised to make San Zhi one of the resort centers of the island. However, accidents began to occur frequently during construction. About fifty workers died.
The city was completed, but by that time its notoriety had become such that there was no one willing to buy real estate in San Zhi. The city stood abandoned for a long time, and since 2008 its gradual liquidation began. True, San Zhi is being demolished to this day - the work is proceeding slowly, since it does not have a clear economic justification.
Victims of the economy
There are several tens of thousands of disappeared cities in the world, about 1,500 abandoned ones. About fifty are located on the territory of the former USSR. Among them there are several quite well-known ones (we, of course, cannot list them all).
For example, Kadykchan in the Magadan region. A working settlement at a coal mine (Arkagalinsky deposit) received the status of an urban-type settlement in 1964. The village gradually grew and by 1989 reached a peak population of 5,700 people. In post-Soviet times, mining was slower, and in 1996 there was an explosion at the mine that claimed six lives. By that time, there was little need for the mine, and the authorities closed it. The only source of work in the village disappeared - and people began to leave. In 2001, the city still had a couple of residential streets, but today Kadykchan is inhabited by a single elderly person who simply has nowhere to go.
Kadykchan was perfectly preserved - this was facilitated by his recent death and the climate - cold and dry. From the outside you can’t say about Kadykchan that there is no one there. An ordinary Soviet village. Just very, very quiet.
Another example is Halmer-Yu in the Komi Republic. Its history is similar to Kadykchan: in the 1940s, coal seams were discovered, a working settlement appeared, reaching its peak (7,000 inhabitants) by 1959. In the early nineties, mining was declared economically unfeasible, the mine was closed, and the residents were resettled to other cities and towns (and they had to be evicted by force). Subsequently, Halmer-Yu was used as a military training ground, many buildings in it were destroyed by air strikes.
Halmer-Yu lies in ruins today
In 1910, on the island of Western Spitsbergen, the Swedes founded small village, which 17 years later became the property of the Soviet Union and was named Pyramid. At its peak it had 2,000 inhabitants; it has many permanent buildings, a school, a kindergarten.
But coal mining in northern latitudes has proven to be unprofitable. By 2000, the last employees of Arctic Coal left the village. It is now mothballed. No one wants to live in the climate of Spitsbergen of their own free will, so there are no self-settlers there. The houses are in excellent condition, and if economic necessity arises, the Pyramid can be reoccupied.
“Economic disease” is not limited to ex-Soviet cities. U west coast Japan has the island city of Hashima (popularly called Gunkanjima, “cruiser city”), founded at the beginning of the 19th century solely to service coal mines. The tiny reef, about a kilometer in diameter, had a population of 5,300 at peak times! At the same time, income local residents were very large, the “coal kingdom” flourished.
But in 1974, Mitsubishi, the owner of the mine, announced it would cease production due to unprofitability. In just a few days the city was resettled back to the main japanese islands; personal belongings, toys, and furniture remain in the houses to this day. Access to Gankajima is closed to everyone today. The Japanese cannot decide what to do with the strange city, which is no longer capable of bringing any benefit.
Abandoned island city of Hashima, Japan
In addition to the coal fever, the diamond rush also gave rise to “temporary” cities. For example, in Namibia there is the famous city of Kolmanskop, located right in the middle of the desert. The city was founded in 1908 by the German Zacharias Leval, who found diamonds in this place and staked out a number of plots for himself. The city grew in just a year: prospectors rushed to Kolmanskop from all over Africa.
But the deposit turned out to be very small - it gave the impression of promise due to its shallow depth. Over the course of 10 years, the city managed to build several dozen houses, a hospital, a school, and a sports ground - and then the diamonds ran out and the miners left their homes. Today Kolmanskop is gradually covered with sand, although it is sometimes cleared a little for tourists.
The Namibian Kolmanskop is gradually covered with sand. A photographer's paradise
Gary, Indiana, hometown of singer Michael Jackson, was founded in 1906 and by 1960 had a population of about 180,000. But bankruptcy and the closure of the steel mills on which Gary's wealth was based meant that today there are barely 75,000 people left. Half the city consists of abandoned buildings, churches, and factory floors.
Gary: birthplace of Michael Jackson
The city of Cairo on the Ohio River (Illinois) is also worth mentioning. He lived mainly on income from the pier of wheeled (and other) steamships. But over time, river trade declined, and the city's population dropped from 20,000 to 3,500 people. Historical Center Cairo is uninhabited and preserved as a historical monument.
The US auto industry crisis has left once-prosperous Detroit with several abandoned areas. Pictured is the famous Michigan Theater, which “starred” in the film “Only Lovers Left Alive”
In general, there are many tiny ghost towns in the USA. For example, abandoned mining villages from the Gold Rush or cattle towns. There are 5-10 of them in each state. The most famous is Bodie (California), founded in 1859 by gold miner Waterman Bodie. By 1880 the city had grown to 10,000 people. Then the gold ran out and it was dismantled in 1917. railway, and in 1942 the city lost its post office - that is, it officially disappeared. But the landowners decided not to abandon the city to plunder and hired guard rangers.
The city was mothballed, carefully guarded and opened as a national park- the historical city of prospectors. Bodie's state of preservation is amazing: not a single glass has been broken, all the furniture has been preserved, and in the local casino there are chips lying on the table. Vintage trucks parked anywhere don't even have punctured tires: wash, pump up, fill up - and off we go.
The town of Bodie, California, has been perfectly preserved, right down to the glass in the windows and the interior of the buildings. But they abandoned him in the 1940s!
But perhaps the best preserved dead city is in Chile - Humberstone. Founded in 1872 on saltpeter mines, it grew and became richer every day. Saltpeter fever in South America was not inferior to the gold one in the North. The city was beautiful, it even had a large theater with a permanent troupe and a sports swimming pool.
But by the 1950s, saltpeter reserves were depleted. In 1958, the mines closed and the workers left the city. The ghost was almost not plundered due to its distance from other settlements. In 1970, the Chilean authorities declared it a national monument, restored it, and since then Humberstone has been “living” a strange temporary life. There are even fairs for tourists, although there is no permanent population.
In the Chilean Andes there is another equally well-preserved mothballed city - Sewell, founded in 1915 for copper mining. Once a population of 16,000, the town “died” in 1967 when the mine was nationalized, declared unprofitable, and closed. They didn’t have time to plunder the city: the government immediately appreciated the beauty of the area and declared the city dead tourist area, “a monument to prospectors.” That's how Sewell stands to this day.
The former mining town of Sewell, Chile, is bustling with people. Only all these people are tourists
War and politics
Another class of “ghosts” includes cities destroyed by war. For example, the famous Agdam in Azerbaijan, the birthplace of port wine of our youth. Before the Karabakh War, which began in 1991, Aghdam had several large factories, excellent infrastructure and a population of about 35,000 people. During the war, the city was completely destroyed - and not during the assault, but after. Of the entire buildings in Agdam, only the mosque from 1870 remains - the Armenian soldiers did not raise their hands to it.
Today, about 360 self-settlers live in the city in rare preserved buildings. You can immediately see from the ruins that a war took place here. Aghdam is still in ruins due to a lack of funding and the ongoing conflict between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan.
The ruins of Agdam surrounded by greenery
But the French Oradour-sur-Glane is a deliberately “frozen” museum under open air. By American standards, Oradour would be called a city, but in France it was still considered a village - 660 people lived there in 1944.
On the morning of June 10, 1944, the Germans entered Oradour-sur-Glane, having heard that the partisans were holding a captured Sturmbannführer in the town. Without even checking this rumor, the soldiers of the 1st battalion of the Der Fuehrer regiment drove all the residents into the square. Women and children (445 people) were driven into a church, which was then set on fire, and men (202 people) were shot right in the street with machine guns. In total, 26 people from the village were saved. The village was partially destroyed. Oradour was never restored - a new town with the same name was built nearby (today about 2,000 people live in it). And old Oradour was preserved forever - as a memory of the war.
Oradour-sur-Glane, city-museum, eternal memory of the war
In Spain there is a similar monument - the preserved Belchite, destroyed during civil war 1937
The political reasons for the conservation of cities also lie close to the military. A well-known example is the Varosha quarter in the city of Famagusta on the border of Cyprus and Turkish (Northern) Cyprus. Until the 1970s, Varosha was the most prestigious, expensive and popular resort in Cyprus. Hotels and casinos were built here, and world cinema stars vacationed here.
But on August 15, 1974, the Turkish army captured Famagusta. Today it is a border town; Varosha turned out to be a “buffer” quarter. It was simply closed; it serves as the border between the two Cyprus. Since the zone is controlled by the military, it was hardly looted. In the bars of Varosha there are still bottles and glasses left there in 1974, and in the shops you can find the most fashionable clothes from 40 years ago.
Varosha, no time best resort Cyprus, now a dead city
Disaster victims
Economics and politics are the most common reasons that force people to leave their homes and go into the unknown. Natural disasters usually either wipe out cities and immediately relegate them to the “disappeared” category, or do not cause enough damage that people have to leave. Cities evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster are rare examples of a disaster that led to the appearance of “ghosts”.
But one of the most famous cities in the world suffered precisely from a man-made disaster. This is Centralia in Pennsylvania (there are eleven Centralias in the United States). The small town was powered by the coal industry, and by the end of the 19th century its population was 2,000 people. The tragedy occurred in 1962: local firefighters cleared the city landfill by burning it out (as they had done more than once) and were unable to contain the fire. The flames penetrated underground - into abandoned coal mines a century ago.
Roads in Centralia are covered in places with smoking fissures like these.
Due to the underground fire, a lot of carbon dioxide began to be released into the air. Residents did not leave the city until the early 1980s, unaware that coal was burning underground. The deterioration in health was attributed to other reasons. When the fire was discovered and it became clear that it was impossible to put out the fire, residents were asked to move out. Most of them left in 1984, the most stubborn were forcibly evicted in 1992 - through alienation of property. In 2002, the city was declared abolished, most of the buildings were demolished. Along with Centralia, several other small towns, such as Byrnesville, suffered and were resettled for the same reason.
Now Centralia is not at all similar to the Silent Hill from the video games, for which it became the prototype. It's basically just a rural landscape with a few ruins, a couple of houses and the Church of the Virgin Mary, half-hidden in the woods. The popularity of the city is associated only with its uniqueness natural phenomenon: an invisible fire that has been burning for 50 years. According to forecasts, coal will burn for about two and a half centuries.
Cemetery in Centralia. There are more dead people on it than there are inhabitants in the city
The small town of Craco in the Apennines was abandoned by residents due to regular tremors. Crako was first mentioned in manuscripts in 1060, and until the mid-20th century a population of about 2,500 people lived there quietly. The city had an ancient castle and a monastery - Krako was a typical medieval European town. The city had been “shaken” before, but in 1959 an entire block slid downhill, after which a mass exodus of residents began.
Today Krako is closed to the public due to danger, but tourists still climb the mountain to look at the untouched fusion of 16th-century architecture and 20th-century life. Another Italian town, Poggioreale, also had a similar fate, also abandoned by its residents in 1968 due to seismological danger.
Another victim of the disaster is the Chilean city of Chaiten, which suffered from a volcanic eruption. Usually such catastrophes demolish cities to the ground, but the Chaiten volcano, which began to “play pranks” on May 2, 2008, one might say, spared its city. Pyroclastic flows did not hit the city, but ash fell abundantly, plus a sluggish lahar (mud flow of water, volcanic ash, pumice) reached Chaiten and partially flooded it. The population had already been evacuated by that time.
At the end of the eruption, the ground in the middle of the city parted and gave a new channel to the Rio Blanco River. They decided to rebuild the city in another place. Modern Chaiten looks very interesting: it is about a meter flooded with a gray, viscous, gradually petrifying mass. And silence all around.
The city of Chaiten can be dug up if necessary. True, there is no economic benefit in this
How to conclude this review? Perhaps my advice is to go to one of the ghost towns someday. Either in the American-Chilean tourist one, or in the Russian ownerless one (it is advisable that it is not a closed area - it’s worth checking in advance). Each has its own charms. Remember: cities are like people, they also have a deadline. And sometimes this period is less than a human life.
