Ghost towns in Russia: list and photos of dead towns for independent visits. Modern ghost towns (103 photos) Ghost towns of Russia: list of abandoned places

There are many unexplained phenomena in the world. However, the most interesting and mysterious have always been. There are many nuances and reasons for their occurrence. In one case, these are large-scale disasters, and in the other, inexplicable phenomena. Here are a number of the most famous and interesting ten ghost towns that still excite the minds of contemporaries today.

Taiwan, the dead city of San Zhi

Sometimes even the most ambitious projects become failures due to fate, chance, or inexplicable reasons. This is the city of San Zhi in Taiwan.

It was built as the greatest and unique. The city project was created back in the seventies. A huge amount of money was allocated for the construction, and the architecture itself was amazing. For a decade, construction was in full swing, but there were no customers. Everyone was afraid of this city of glass and plastic. This is strange for us, since nowadays it attracts tourists and rich people who want to relax. At that time, such styles in architecture were frightening.

Throughout the construction, the city was plagued by failures. Mostly these were the absurd and horrific deaths of workers, installers and guides. It is worth saying that the excursion groups could not find a place for themselves and tried to leave the entertainment complex as quickly as possible. Soon the money for construction ran out, and investors abandoned the project. The local homeless people immediately fell in love with it, but they could not live in it for long, since the dead constantly appeared to them.

After lengthy proceedings in the government of the country, they decided to completely demolish the city. However, local residents did not allow this. According to popular belief, the spirits of the dead can, and as long as they have their own city, no one bothers anyone.

In any case, this is probably the most mysterious story, and the city of San Zhi rightfully ranks.

Chernobyl

Number two is one of the most terrible and mysterious cities in the world - Chernobyl, Ukraine.
Chernobyl became abandoned after the disaster that occurred in 1986. The explosion at a nuclear power plant shocked the whole world without exception.

The wind carried radioactive particles. The city was deserted within a month, as the government feared disclosure. People lived for several more days, not knowing that a mortal threat hung over them. The mass removal put an end to the existence of this small town. In those days, Chernobyl was the great pride of the USSR, but in the end it became its biggest disappointment.

It is worth noting that a huge number of films have been shot about him, and computer games have been created. Even at this moment, the phrase “Pripyat is a ghost town” causes trembling in the body. A huge amount of radiation made Chernobyl and its territory both dangerous and popular. Now tourists from all over the world and people calling themselves stalkers go there. They are willing to pay money for excursions and the opportunity to see ghosts caused by anomalies in places where radiation accumulates. Excursions are held daily to the reactor itself, covered with a dome, and simply around the territory of the city, which was abandoned. The guides show apartments with remaining furniture, toys in the kindergarten, etc. Against the general background, it actually looks creepy and unpleasant.

Abandoned Chernobyl will continue to attract tourists and ghost hunters for decades to come.

Famagusta

Among the most famous places in the world is Famagusta, a ghost town on the island of Cyprus.

On the sunny tourist island of Cyprus lies the most famous abandoned city in the world, Famagusta. No one lives in it except the wind. Silence and trees that grow through concrete walls are his lot for many years to come.

The reason for the desolation of the city was the war between two states - Turkey and Greece. They did not divide the right to the territory among themselves. And now Famagusta stands in complete desolation and is covered with barbed wire. It has become the border between two states that are not moving towards reconciliation.

The once successful and prosperous center was completely looted, only a few buildings remained intact, but they had already begun to collapse under the influence of water, wind and sun. You cannot visit its territory, but the abandoned city still attracts a huge and irrepressible desire to visit it.

Villa Epequeen, Argentina

This once wonderful place is now one of the most famous abandoned ghost towns on the planet. The villa was built on the banks of a beautiful estuary and opened as a huge spa, where the rich could recover their health at great expense. However, the city authorities found there were few buildings and clean water on the coast, and they decided to expand the territory by expanding the fresh lake. However, less than ten years had passed before water from the reservoir began to flood the beaches and resort area.

Nature warned that it was not worth interfering with the sequential course of events. However, the authorities of Villa Epequeen decided that it was worth strengthening the city’s borders with dams and dumping excess water into irrigation fields.

Nature could not tolerate this careless attitude and one day completely flooded the city. The water rose 15 meters up, and also mixed with fresh water. Residents had to leave all their belongings and leave. Salt and sun have turned the once prosperous place into whitish ghosts.

Soon a new spa resort grew up nearby, and tourists are gladly taken to the Villa, since it is a local landmark, and former residents are trying to look out for traces of their long-standing stay.

Centralia, USA

If you have ever played a game called Silent Hill or watched the movie of the same name, know that the idea was based on an example - the abandoned city of Centralia in Pennsylvania.

This is a truly scary and creepy place with smoke constantly rising from the cracks in the asphalt and in the houses. Once upon a time, this city was a successful and prosperous settlement of hard workers who mined anthracite coal. It lay very close to the surface. However, the mine was closed, and the residents successfully adjusted their lives and lived quietly, earning a living by farming and other things.

One fine day, the mayor of the city decided that it was time to burn heaps of garbage outside the city, since an inspection would soon arrive. However, he did not take into account how disastrous this would be and turn Centralia into the abandoned city of the world. It turned out that anthracite lies very close to the surface, and even after the workers burned the garbage heaps, it continued to smolder methodically.

The authorities miscalculated not only in this, but also in the fact that they closed the mine, since there was a lot of fuel left there. For a long time, everyone turned a blind eye to carbon monoxide poisoning. Centralia continued to live in peace. The impetus for complete desolation was the increasing frequency of tremors underground and ruptures of asphalt and houses at the most unexpected moments. Coal burns in the depths, and hot smoke needs to escape to the surface. Thus, city authorities evacuated people. However, it still burns to this day. Abandoned streets and houses smoke, and the air is saturated with carbon monoxide.

Neftegorsk

Among the most famous places in the world is Neftegorsk, Russian Federation.

Neftegorsk is probably the most terrible example of an earthquake. A terrible event happened in 1995. The city was founded as a settlement for oil workers who worked there on a rotational basis. However, as the years passed, high wages and jobs turned the town into a developing and successful one. However, it also became the last refuge for most of its residents.

So on the evening of May 25, an earthquake measuring 10 on the Richter scale occurred. Not a trace remained of the city; only a few buildings survived. More than two thousand people were buried alive under the ruins. They decided not to restore Neftegorsk, but only built a huge monument that reminds of the tragedy that happened on May 25, 1995. Thus, he enters the most terrible abandoned ghost towns, which were not just abandoned, but destroyed by natural disasters.

Detroit, USA

The city still exists and is partially inhabited. It is worth saying that it was founded back in the 17th century and was considered one of the most successful. A thriving industry, a huge number of majestic buildings, architecture that amazes the imagination, all this once existed. Now Detroit can be safely classified as an abandoned ghost town.

The first impetus for the desolation was the construction of huge corporations - Ford and General Motors. They are automobile manufacturers. The city is becoming industrial, pollution is only growing every year. The second step is the settlement of Detroit with a black population. Moreover, the majority of them are criminals and low-income people. The city simply began to be robbed. Crime reached unprecedented heights, and the white population simply began to leave.

Gradual desolation and lack of jobs have taken their toll, and now the ghost towns of the world have been replenished with another representative.

Time Beach, USA

A town in Missouri was destroyed by human hands. The small settlement decided to deal with the enormous dustiness of the country roads. In order to improve the situation, the authorities decided to spend money. However, either due to lack of funding or for some other reason, an unknown contractor was hired. Neither his documents nor the means with which he decided to spray the roads were checked.

For a small sum, he successfully completed the work assigned to him. However, after several years the city died out completely. It turned out that the agent the contractor used was dioxide. This is a powerful poison that causes mutations and a host of serious diseases, as well as livestock pestilence.
This is how the town was destroyed, as they say, with his own hands, due to a banal lack of finance. All that was left was dead houses and cracked asphalt.

Chaiten, Chile

The port town of Chaiten completely died out after a volcanic eruption that happened in May 2008.

The main thing is that the authorities managed to evacuate the population and save them from imminent death. Despite the fact that the village is located deep in the mountains. It is worth saying that the volcanic eruption lasted from May to September 2008. The city was completely covered in ash. Only 10% of the houses remain. Everything is covered with a thick layer of ash several meters deep.

Namie, Japan

The catastrophe of our time, which occurred in September 2013, shocked. In Japan, the Fukushima nuclear power plant exploded, turning a successful city with a huge population into an abandoned one.

A big disaster has struck all countries of the world, since Japan has always been considered the most responsible and strict in its approach to electronics and inventions. However, the worst thing happened - a nuclear explosion.

Thus, the city overnight turned into an exclusion zone. No one is allowed to be on its territory, as the dose of radiation reaches unprecedented heights.

Video about the most abandoned cities

What ghost towns do you know? Write to us about them in the comments.

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 - for 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 on the territory of Iraq), the city was rebuilt from modern bricks, and thereby removed it from the UNESCO World Heritage List. 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” negated the historical value of the city

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.

The 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 necessary for a 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 an ordinary 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 settlement that was resettled after the tragedy - in fact, 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 a 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. Off the western coast of Japan there is the island city of Hashima (popularly known as Gunkanjima, “cruiser city”), founded in the early 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, the incomes of local residents were very high, and 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. The historic center of 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, the railway was dismantled in 1917, 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 town was preserved, carefully protected and opened as a national park in the 1960s - a historic mining town. 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 no less than gold fever in North America. 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 did not have time to plunder the city: the government immediately appreciated the beauty of the area and declared the dead city a 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” open-air museum. 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 - preserved Belchite, destroyed during the civil war of 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, once the best resort of Cyprus, is 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 connected only with the uniqueness of the 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.

Construction of Pripyat began in February 1970. In 1972, the settlement was given a name - in honor of the river on which it was built - Pripyat. On August 15, 1972, in a solemn ceremony, the first cubic meter of concrete was laid into the base of the main building of the power plant. Along with the commissioning of the first facilities at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the first residential buildings were built. Pripyat acquired city status in 1979. In the mid-1980s, about 48,000 people lived there.

At 01:23:47 on Saturday April 26, 1986, an explosion occurred at the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which completely destroyed the reactor. The power unit building partially collapsed, killing two people. A fire started in various rooms and on the roof. Subsequently, the remains of the core melted, a mixture of molten metal, sand, concrete and fuel fragments spread throughout the sub-reactor rooms. As a result of the accident, radioactive substances were released into the environment, including isotopes of uranium, plutonium, iodine-131, cesium-134, cesium-137, strontium-90.

On April 27, 36 hours after the explosion at the fourth reactor, the announcer of the Pripyat radio broadcast network announced the gathering and temporary evacuation of city residents.

On April 28, 1986 at 21:00 TASS broadcast a brief information message: “An accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. One of the nuclear reactors is damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Help is being provided to the victims. A government commission has been created to investigate what happened.”

This young city was a major transport hub; construction was actively underway in Pripyat. They built the Prometheus cinema, the Energetik cultural center, the Polesie hotel, the Palace of Pioneers, sports complexes, and a cultural park. The city was exemplary; foreign delegations were brought here to show how the Soviet people lived. Now the empty city is heavily overgrown with greenery. Public interest in Pripyat has only grown over the years; excursions are regularly held there.

2 Kadykchan

Kadykchan is the most famous of the abandoned villages in the Magadan region. The village was built after coal of the highest quality was found there at a depth of 400 meters in 1943. As a result, the Arkagalinskaya CHPP operated on Kadykchan coal and supplied electricity to 2/3 of the Magadan region. As of January 1986, 10,270 people lived in the village.

The population of Kadykchan began to decline rapidly after a mine explosion in 1996, when it was decided to close the village. A few years later, the only local boiler house stopped working, after which it became impossible to live in Kadykchan. By this time, there were about 400 people living in the village who refused to leave.

3 Gankajima

Off the western coast of Japan is the dead island of Gankajima (also called Hashima or Hashima). For a long time it was nothing more than a small reef. But in 1810, the accidental discovery of coal decisively changed the fate of this reef. Mitsubishi bought Gankajima and began mining coal from the bottom of the sea. The work required significant labor costs and manpower. Construction began and people arrived to live and work here. Thanks to the coal industry, residential areas began to continually expand.

By the mid-20th century, the population density on the island was 835 people per hectare. The reef has become an artificial island with a diameter of about one kilometer, with a population of 5,300 people. From the ocean, the silhouette of the island resembled a battleship.

Over time, coal was replaced by oil, and coal fields began to close. In 1974, one of the most densely populated islands in the world became completely deserted. Mitsubishi has officially announced the closure of the field. Visiting the island is currently prohibited.

4 Centralia

In the middle of the 19th century, a settlement called Centerville appeared on the map of the United States, in Pennsylvania. In 1865 it was renamed Centralia. And in 1866, Centralia received city status. The coal and anthracite industry was the main production here. For most of the town's history, while the coal industry was active, the population was over 2,000 residents. About 500-600 more people lived in the suburbs, in close proximity to Centralia.

In May 1962, the city council hired volunteer firefighters to clean up the city's garbage dump, located in an abandoned open pit mine. Firefighters set fire to the trash heaps, allowing them to burn for a while, and then extinguished them. But the fire did not go out completely. Deeper deposits of debris began to smolder, and eventually the fire spread through a hole in the mine to other abandoned coal mines near Centralia. Over time, people began to complain about deteriorating health caused by the release of carbon monoxide.

In 1979, local residents learned the true extent of the problem when a gas station owner inserted a dipstick into one of the underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he took out the dipstick, it turned out to be very hot - the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was about 78 °C.

Attention to the fire culminated in 1981, when a 12-year-old boy fell into a 1.2-meter-wide, 45-meter-deep earthen well that suddenly opened up beneath his feet. The boy was saved by his older brother. The incident quickly brought national attention to Centralia. In 1984, Congress appropriated more than $42 million to prepare and organize the relocation of citizens. Most residents accepted this offer and moved to the neighboring communities of Mount Carmel and Ashland. Several families decided to stay, despite warnings from government officials. In 1992, the State of Pennsylvania required a permit to expropriate all of the city's private property, citing the buildings' unfitness for use.

5 Oradour-sur-Glane

The village of Oradour-sur-Glane turned into a ghost in 1944 - the Nazis shot and burned 642 of its inhabitants in one day, and then set the village itself on fire. Among the dead were 207 children and 245 women.

Soldiers of the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Reich" under the command of General Heinz Lammerding, heading from Toulouse to the Normandy front, surrounded Oradour on June 10. Under the pretext of checking documents, they herded residents to the market square and demanded that fugitives be handed over to them, including residents of Alsace and Lorraine, who were allegedly hiding in the village from the German authorities. The head of the administration refused to hand them over, deciding to sacrifice himself and, if necessary, his family. However, the Nazis did not get by with this. They forced the men into barns and machine-gunned them. The bodies were covered with straw and burned. The soldiers locked the women and children in the church. First, asphyxiating gas was released into the building, and then the church was set on fire. Five men and one woman managed to survive.

The massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane, which never resisted the occupiers, became a symbol of Nazi barbarity. The ruins of the village were included in the list of historical monuments of France in 1945, and a new one was later built not far from the old Oradour.

6 Kolmanskop

The city of Kolmanskop is located in the Namib Desert, 10 kilometers from Lüderitz (Namibia) and the Atlantic coast. The city was formed thanks to the diamond rush.

In April 1908, Zacharias Leval, an employee of the Lüderitz-Keetmanshoop railway, saw diamonds right on the surface of the sandy desert just 7 kilometers from Lüderitz. Zacarias gave the find to foreman August Stauch, who immediately realized what was what.

Without attracting undue attention, Stauch hastened to stake out vast areas along a narrow saddle in the dolomite ridge near Lüderitz. Along this peculiar corridor, the wind carried sand from the southern part of the Namib Desert adjacent to the mouth of the Orange River further to the north. There, small diamonds carried by the river into the ocean and then thrown ashore by the surf were transported along with the sand.

A city quickly appeared on this site. Large beautiful houses, a school, and a hospital were built in Kolmanskop. Residents expected long-term prosperity in the diamond city. But the flow of diamonds quickly dried up. Living in Kolmanskop was difficult due to sandstorms and lack of drinking water. And ten years after its founding, a mass exodus of local residents began. Now most of the houses are almost completely covered with sand.

7 Varosha

Varosha is a quarter in the city of Famagusta in Cyprus. It was a popular tourist destination until 1974, when it later became a "ghost town".

In the 1970s, Famagusta was the main tourist center in Cyprus. Due to the growing number of tourists in the city, many new hotels and tourist facilities were built, and especially many of them appeared in Varosha. Between 1970 and 1974 the city was at the peak of its popularity. Varosha housed many modern hotels, and its streets were home to a large number of entertainment venues, bars, restaurants and nightclubs.

On July 20, 1974, the Turkish army invaded Cyprus in response to the political upheaval in the country, and on August 15 of the same year, the Turks occupied Famagusta. As a result of these actions, the country was split into two parts: Greek and Turkish. The Greeks living in Varosha were ordered to leave the city within 24 hours, taking with them only what they could carry, and since then they have been prohibited from returning to the quarter.

Soon after the closure, the quarter was looted, first by the Turkish military, who took furniture, televisions and dishes to the mainland, and then by residents of nearby streets, who carried away everything that was left.

Unlike many other places in Cyprus, where the abandoned houses of the Greeks were occupied by their Turkish neighbors or migrants from Turkey, the Turks from Famagusta did not settle Varosha. The Turkish army surrounded the deserted village with a barbed wire fence, checkpoints and various other obstacles, effectively mothballing Varosha.

We bring to your attention a selection of photos of ghost towns of our time, scattered around the globe

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.

This city near Angola's capital Luanda was designed and built several years ago by China International Property Management Investment Corporation.

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.

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.

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.

It was once home to the world's richest diamond mine in the 1910s. They say that the local diamond mine produced about 1 million carats. Now this is Spergebiet - a restricted area.

This settlement was founded by Sweden in 1910, but in 1927 it was sold to the USSR, as recalled by the bust of Lenin right in the city center. The mines, and consequently the settlement, were closed to access in 1998 and have remained untouched since then.

The current owner, Trust "Arktikugol" (since 2007), is restoring the hotel and, soon, excursions will be held for everyone who wants to wander around the ghost town.

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 Diekmann, 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.

The village was founded on the territory of the ancient Greek city of Carmiless in the mid-18th century. The Greek population left the village due to the Greco-Turkish War. As usual now, it is an open-air museum with superbly preserved Greek-style buildings, as well as two churches.

The mock city was built to train the Swiss army.

Built as a life-size replica of a German village by the British Ministry of Defense in 1988 for urban combat training.

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. At the moment, this territory belongs to the Austrian Armed Forces.

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 is an excellent example of wooden architecture. The village was abandoned after the Revolution.

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 a train station at the exit of the city.

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.

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.

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 of the original Paris and even the Champs de Mars. Residential buildings can accommodate at least 100 thousand people, but its actual population is slightly more than 2000.

In the Chinese ghost town of Chenggong, less than 10% of all houses built became residential.

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 continue to this day.

The city was deserted as a result of the volcano that awakened in July 1995. By 1997, all residents of the island had been evacuated.

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.

This city was founded by none other than Henry Ford in 1928. Instead of purchasing expensive English rubber for his plant, he decided to supply it with Brazilian rubber, which is why the city of Fordlandia was needed.

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.

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 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.

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-storey buildings (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. Between 1892 and 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 the stunning ruins of a medieval city that is very popular with 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 Japan's 505 uninhabited islands. 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 a multi-storey building in which 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 health 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 it, so it 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.

The creepy city of Aghdam was once a thriving city 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