Tag: urban exploration

Remembering Undercliff Sanatorium, Meriden

Leo S

The state of Connecticut is home to many well-known abandoned mental hospitals. For decades, the Undercliff Sanatorium, a former state health facility, lied at the base of South Mountain, near Hubbard Park in Meriden. Even though it was shuttered, some claimed it was still in use….by the ghosts of former patients. It was originally opened in 1910 as the Meriden Sanatorium and, in 1918, became the first facility in the nation dedicated exclusively to treating children afflicted with tuberculosis but also measles, chickenpox, and smallpox. The name was changed to…

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Cereseto castle and its secrets

Anya016

Cereseto is about 50 kilometres east of Turin and about 30 kilometres northwest of Alessandria, Northern Italy. Probably established around 500–600 AD. and mentioned in records of the Bishop of Asti from around 957 AD., it is perched on a hill, and is dominated by its castle. The town was the property of the Graseverto family of Asti, who probably built the first castle around 900–1000 AD, but completely demolished in 1600. It was 1910 when the financier Riccardo Gualino and his wife launched construction of a new castle with…

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Rusovce Mansion: a once-fairy tale mansion in Slovakia now stands in a state of disrepair.

Ivan

We are in the Rusovce borough, part of Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. Surrounded by crumbling walls and Rusovsky Park, a beautiful sprawling English park, the Rusovce Mansion, english for Rusovský kaštieľ, is a decaying example of neoclassical architecture. There are records of a castle at this location dating back to 1266, but today visitors to the area will only see this once-glorious white building constructed between 1840 and 1906. The current mansion was built on the site of an older manor house from the 16th century, with a medieval structure…

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Casa Hamilton, the charm of abandonment overlooking the Atlantic Ocean

Danijel90

The island of Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands. It is famous for its active volcano, Mount Teide, which is considered the third-largest in the world. But here there is also a place that combines a sense of abandonment and breathtaking views: it is the Elevador de aguas de Gordejuela, better known as Casa Hamilton, a pumping station where hydraulic pumps once transported the abundant waters of the Gordejuela springs to hills and banana plantations, located in the extraordinary area by Los Realejos. This set of ruins, which…

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Abandoned Bunkers of Salpalinja, Finland

Nathan

In the early 1940s, tensions were high in Finland, as locals suspected that the Soviet Union, not satisfied with the territorial gains they had made during the Winter War (1939–1940), would plan another invasion.. As a result, in 1940, Finland began the construction of so-called Salpalinja (the “Salpa Line”), a system of more than 700 field fortifications made from concrete or excavated from rock along country’s eastern border. Stretching 1,200 kilometers from the Gulf of Finland in the south to modern-day Pechengsky, Russia, in the north, Salpalinja consisted of bunkers,…

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Sanatorio Durán: one of the most haunted places in Costa Rica

Ivan

We are along the road to Irazú Volcano, 7 kilometers north of the city of Cartago, Costa Rica. It’s said Carlos Durán Cartín, an eminent physician who briefly served as president of Costa Rica (1889-90), opened this tuberculosis hospital in 1918 hoping to treat his own daughter who was suffering from the disease, for which there was no known treatment in Central America at the time. Others say that she contracted the disease after the hospital opened but, in any case, he chose a remote location complete with good weather,…

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Ruins of Lazaretto de Isla de Cabras: the crumbling remnants of a 19th-century quarantine hospital that hint at the touristy island’s darker past.

Robin

Isla de Cabras (traslates as Goat’s island) in the town of Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, is known today for its beaches, spectacular views of Old San Juan, and other recreational activities, including swimming and fishing. However, atop a hill overlooking the coast, are some ruins that are seemingly out of place. Their past reveals that the island wasn’t always a beautiful tourist destination…. During the early 19th century, the island served as an inspection port for ships coming from Europe, when the threat of cholera was imminent. Thus, as a…

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San Severino di Centola: a medieval hilltop village that was abandoned at the end of the 19th century after existing for more than 500 years.

arthurodas

The ruins of the old village San Severino di Centola, known known until 1861 as San Severino di Camerota, are located on a rugged hill in southern Cilento, in the Italian region of Campania. The village was founded during the 10th-11th centuries, although it seems that some traces of inhabited settlements on the rocky spur are known since the seventh century. However, it was progressively abandoned as inhabitants chose to move their settlement just below the hill but closer to the newly developed railway. The village was strategically placed above…

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Hellingly Mental Hospital: the story of an asylum

Ivan

We are in the village of Hellingly, in East Sussex, England. Here, on 20 July 1903, the Hellingly Mental Hospital was inaugurated: an asylum, the best in the area because, apparently, the most innovative treatments were experimented there. It was also the refuge for patients who had to flee West Sussex due to the First World War. The main complex comprised an administrative block, central stores, kitchens, a recreation hall and the assistant medical officer’s residence. Like most large institutions of this age and type the sexes were separated into…

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Z Ward: a perfectly preserved abandoned criminal asylum in South Australia.

Nathan

In the sleepy suburb of Glenside, Adelaide, South Australia, rests a building long abandoned and protected from trespassers by a wall far taller than it first appears, the only complete Ha-Ha Wall in Australia. The wall doesn’t look too high from the outside but, once over it, it is soon discovered that on the other side, a deeper moat hinders any escape. The building is known as Z Ward, and it was for years closed off to the public, even though recently, access to the building was allowed to the…

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The legend of the haunted house known as Villa Clara

Anya016

Each place has a more or less known heritage of curious stories, legends and mysteries, and Bologna, Italy, is no exception. Among these, the presumably haunted house in Casalecchio di Reno, and Villa Clara. The villa a little outside Bologna, not far from Trebbo di Reno, is located in the open countryside, surrounded by fields where are not even street lighting and where, sometimes, thick banks of fog arise. The exact date of its construction is not known, although it is likely that it took place between 1572 and 1585.…

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Old Olympia Beer Brewery of Tumwater Falls – Washington

Nathan

While this famous Tumwater, Washington company owned other breweries prior to Prohibition, it gained prominence with a single brand produced in this plant. The excellence of its beer has been attributed to the excellent quality of the water – hence their slogan “It’s the Water” – but full credit should be given to Olympia’s founder, Leopold F. Schmidt who’s business model was “Quality First – Quantity Next.” The original brewery for Olympia beer is across from the Tumwater Historical Park and along the Deschutes River at Capitol Boulevard South East,…

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The curious story of Glasgow Sherbet Factory ruins – Scotland

Ivan

We are in Glasgow, Scotland. The city is not exactly short of interesting monuments and buildings, and one of the great pleasures of Scotland is that there is always something new to uncover, and each corner is full of rich history and little-known facts.If you’ve taken a stroll passed the River Kelvin, you may have come across a strange little sign. Or maybe not, because It’s easy not to notice this small plaque, that marks the reported location of where the Glasgow Sherbet Municipal Works once stood. Now a few…

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Kejonuma Leisure Land: a quaint amusement park that now lays rusting and forgotten among the foliage.

Ivan

We are in Ōsaki, in Japan’s remote Tohoku region, where an abandoned amusement park rests upon the banks of the Kejonuma Dam. Once known as Kejonuma Leisure Land, the park was originally built in 1979 in an effort to bring joy back to the community after the ravages of World War II. In its heyday the amusement park, with a campsite and driving range, boasted up to 200,000 visitors and offered an assortment of rides, including a Ferris wheel, tea cup ride, miniature train ride and carousel. In addition, the…

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Łapalice Castle – The never completed derelict mansion of a Polish artist.

Adam

This eerie castle rots within the small village of Łapalice, Poland. It was abandoned before it was even completed, essentially doomed to exist as a shadow of what it could have become. However Zamek Łapalice, in Polish, isn’t an ancient castle or medieval fortress at all: Its construction began in 1979, and it was meant to be a studio for local artist Piotr Kazimierczak, who was granted permission to build a 170sq/m work studio on a patch of ground overlooking the lake. But he planned for it to be a…

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The abandoned Spitzer Castle in Beočin – Serbia

Ivan

We are in the town of Beočin, on the slopes of Fruška Gora mountain, where rests a peculiar building, in ruins and long forgotten. Locally known as Spitzer Castle, the mansion was built in the late 19th century by Eduard Ede Spitzer, co-owner of the Beočin cement factory. The building is one of the rare examples of the eclectic architecture in Serbia’s northern province of Vojvodina. Spitzer hired the famous architect Imre Steindl, best known for his work on the Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest, to design and engineer the…

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Elizabeth Bay Ghost Town – Namibia

Ivan

We are in southern coast of Namibia, 25 km south of Lüderitz. Even though it often seems to be forgotten in the shadow of its counterpart Kolmanskop, also Elizabeth Bay was a lucrative diamond mining town. Diamonds were first discovered in the region around 1908. However, only in 1989 that the government of Namibia spent $53 million on the exploration and creation of a new diamond mine on the site. Its decrepit buildings and machinery tell of a dark, greedy history: the city was inhabited for only 20 years, but…

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Kolmanskop – Namibia: the remains of diamond fever taken over by the desert.

Ivan

We are in Namibia: people flocked to the area that later became known as Kolmanskop after the discovery of diamonds, in 1908. Here, Zacharias Lewala, a regular railway worker, picked up what he thought was an unusually shiny stone, and showed it to his supervisor, August Stauch, who immediately applied for a prospector’s license. Verification confirmed that the first diamond in the region had been found. The diamonds were in such supply that they could be picked off the ground by bare hands, and soon the area was flooded with…

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Festival Club: Ibiza’s first club

Ivan

We are in Ibiza. The island wasn’t always the party hotspot it is today. It wasn’t until the late 1960s that it became a tourist destination, with hotels, restaurants and clubs popping up everywhere. In 1969, construction began on this once-lively club. Such a restricted location meant that the owners of the venue were required to build an access road in order to reach the structure, which officially opened its doors in 1972. In any case, back in the early 1970s, tourists were satisfied with being transported around the island…

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The sad story of the half-constructed abandoned resort at Cala d’en Serra – Ibiza

Ivan

We are in Spain. In the far north of the island near Portinax is a beautiful little horseshoe shaped beach called Cala d’en Serra, surrounded by high pine covered cliffs with crystal clear waters. This beach was also named one of Europe’s top beaches, according one of lot reports onlline. Despite it is much like many of the smaller beaches across Ibiza, what makes this truly special is the abandoned resort situated just meters above the beach. In 1969, a luxury hotel resort was planned for construction on one of…

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The strange stories of Mouth Cemetery – Michigan

Leo S

Mouth Cemetery in White River Township, Michigan was established in 1851, even though it is believed that an unknown number of men and women were buried in unmarked graves throughout the area beginning in 1830. History apart, the cemetery and surrounding area are known for having a history of strange occurrences. Not far from the shores of Lake Michigan, popular for its countless shipwrecks and clear waters in spring, the cemetery is surrounded by dense trees in a somewhat remote area. At a little over 165 years old, however, it…

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The Truth behind Edmonton’s Haunted Hospital~

Leo S

It is known as one of the most haunted buildings in Alberta, Canada: it is the former Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton, which holds long forgotten secrets still waiting to come to light. Some have said they’ve seen figures in the windows and there are lot of locals that think their ancestors spirits haven’t found peace and they’re still wandering, because for a lot of people it was not a happy place. First established as a Jesuit College in the early 1900’s, it was then used as a military base…

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Weissensee Abandoned Children’s Hospital – Berlin

randomcollabs

We are in Berlin, where an empty, tumble-down, complex sits amidst handsome new apartment buildings in Weissensee neighborhood. Though a curious passerby probably never wouldn’t guess it, this crumbling graffiti gallery was once a cutting-edge pediatric medical facility, abruptly banished 20 years ago to a bizarre limbo that continues to this day. The story of so-called Kinderkrankenhaus-Weißensee (Weissensee Children’s Hospital) began in 1908, to help combat rising infant mortality rates at the time. Construction got underway in June 1909, overseen by the prominent architect Carl James Bühring, who built a…

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Blub swimming and leisure center – Berlin

Anya016

A lost waterpark sits in the Britz area of Neukölln district in Berlin, Germany, or, at least, what remains of it. The place seems to be inhabited only by rats now, and all they wanted was to swim and frolic like anyone else, even if today the place is totally destroyed. And, It seems, that the problem of people was only rats and the thought of peaceful coexistence never even occurred to them. Allegations were made, with accusations and threats. Gangs of youths took over the pools, scared other people…

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Tintic Standard Reduction Mill

Nathan

Miles south of the Utah state capitol city of Salt Lake City on the outskirts of the small town of Goshen lie the remains of the Tintic Standard Reduction Mill, a nearly century old ore refinery that has become a ruin filled with graffiti and a crumbling industrial architecture. Its construction began in 1921: a place where the precious metals such as gold and silver (as well as lead and copper) from nearby Eureka could be processed. The site used an acid-based process known as the “Augustin Process” that no…

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The truth behind the haunted house that fascinates all Bologna – Italy

Anya016

Are you familiar with the classic abandoned houses, dark and falling apart? Those houses that seem a set of a horror movie? In short, the houses in the middle of the woods where in horror movies a group of idiotic students goes to take refuge for some idiotic bet, or to spend an “exciting” weekend. So, the villa located in Casalecchio, a municipality very close to Bologna, Italy, is exactly like that. The only difference compared to traditional horror movies is that this villa is not isolated, but in close…

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The abandoned disco Par hasard: it was the VIPs’ club

Anya016

Sixty years of history, music, loves, dances and foreign customers of the local spas were not enough to save this disco, now abandoned to itself. And here, at the Par Hasard in Abano Terme, Italy, music and psychedelic lights have definitively shut down. It was a historic dance club, opened more than sixty years ago under the name of Dancing San Daniele and then became a Par hasard Village disco in the 90s. It worked until autumn 2015, and the structure that has entertained generations of young people and not…

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Fort de la Chartreuse: the fort that was never used…as a fort!

Anya016

The Fort de la Chartreuse is an about 150-year-old fortification that once should have been defend the Amercœur neighborhood of Liège in Belgium, but is now an abandoned big ruin that is slowly being overtaken by foliage and graffiti. Built between 1817 and 1823, the fortress rests on the grounds of a former Carthusian (Ordre des Chartreux) monastery in operation until the French Revolution, on an elevated hill in Liège, and it is part of the fortification line along the river Meuse which crosses Belgium. It was originally built by…

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Metelkova: the alternative cultural center in Ljubljana

Ivan

If you ask any local in Ljubljana, they will point you in the right direction, 5 minutes from the city centre of Slovenia’s capital city. The area now known as Metelkova (full name in Slovene: Avtonomni kulturni centre Metelkova mesto, “Metelkova City Autonomous Cultural Centre”) was once a military barracks, but you would never know it by its state today, covered in a psychedelic cacophony of colorful street art, graffiti, and every kind of punk rock visuals. Originally commissioned by the Austro-Hungarian army back in 1882 and completed in 1911,…

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Panam Nagar: a ghost town of Sonargaon – Bangladesh.

Ivan

We are in Sonargaon, about 30 km southeast of Dhaka, along the Meghna River, Bangladesh. As early as the 14th century, Sonargaon was the ancient capital of Bangladesh, or more accurately, it was the capital of Isa Khan’s Bengali empire. The cotton textile industry and trading were always a part of life and livelihood of Bengali people besides agriculture. In its heyday, Panam Nagar was home to a prosperous community of Hindu merchants that turned the medieval Bengali capital into a thriving textile trading hub around 19th century. They built…

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