Like the set of a horror movie: abandoned Carrefour in the Bari industrial area.
3 min read
Deserted big parking areas, fully disemboweled escalators, broken glazed into a million pieces and signs on the ground: welcome to the disturbing scenery of the former Carrefour shopping center, now only a large abandoned structure located in the huge industrial area of Bari. A macabre atmosphere that deserves to be told with a series of photographs, which has nothing to do with memory of this shopping center full of people who loved shopping and who came here more or less often, activities that took place every day, it seems until 2009.
The hypermarket was inaugurated in 2003, and the details of its abandonment are not completely clear. There are several rumors about it, and when I asked some inhabitants of the area, a man told me that simply the prices were too high, while an elderly lady shopping at the nearby supermarket (thanks a lot for willingness!) she said that some people have speculated that the shopping center is closed due to the numerous theft of goods, often not only by customers but also by the employees themselves! A security man told me that everything was fine at first, but when supermarket prices increased, and with competition from other hypermarkets, failure was inevitable.
So, the entire structure is so abandoned since 2009, and never redeveloped, at the mercy of vandals and idiots, just like other abandoned buildings along the spectral State Road 96 that goes from Bari to Modugno (but that’s another story!).
Around the structure the vegetation grows spontaneously, and the former shopping center is distributed on three levels: on the ground floor and on the first floor there are the parking areas, and on the second floor the shops and the hypermarket. The parking areas are now only a vast expanse of asphalt and someone has even stolen the manholes and electric cables (what remains now hangs from the ceiling). Next to the staircase (without a railing) leading to the next floors, there is what remains of the escalator, a rusty skeleton full of broken glass. The area used for shopping is completely devastated: it is a unique environment that runs along the entire rectangular perimeter of the structure. All shops are closed by often damaged shutters, and spontaneous vegetation is growing on the floor. From the emergency stairs (the accesses have all been walled up, but someone has opened some portals), it is also possible to climb onto the roof, where the plexiglass covers have completely collapsed. From here it’s possible see in a better way the degradation of the entire structure. On the roof, in addition to some pieces of the old sign of the shopping center, some nice idiot wrote “questa zona è pericolosa” (this is a dangerous area), with the stylized drawing of an alien. And indeed, this structure full of pigeons and rubbish, seems to be on another planet …
