Watching fancy reenactments on the History Channel is fun and all, but it’s hard not to fantasize about traveling back in time and walking those cobblestone streets, peeking into open doorways, and seeing how people lived in another time. In some towns across the world, this wish to see life in a bygone era can be granted. Often due to unfortunate economic or historical circumstances, these cities were abandoned and preserved in their final lived-in state. The notorious Ukrainian town of Pripyat, where the workers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant lived, and the volcano-encrusted Pompeii are the famous examples, but here is a list of some lesser-known places frozen in time.
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In the years and decades after WWII, one mantra echoed around the globe: never forget. In France, there’s a town called Oradour-sur-Glane that, to this day, refuses to bury its past. The small village was the site of one of the war’s most violent massacres; in 1944, the Nazis indiscriminately murdered 642 inhabitants, leaving only seven survivors. The town, with its crumbling buildings and rusting cars, was left exactly as it was found as a reminder of the terrible war crime. But the story doesn’t end there. In January, acting on evidence discovered in the files of East Germany’s secret police, Germany opened an investigation into six SS soldiers who are still alive and may have participated in the massacre.
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Berlin never had much of a boom, with a population that peaked at around 250 citizens in its short 15 years of silver mining. When miners were denied a wage hike in 1911, the residents took off for the next job, leaving behind various belongings and bric-a-brac which remain today. Berlin, with deserted wood beam houses and rusting equipment idyllically nestled at the base of a mountain, is a quintessential ghost town of the Wild West. But the 13 structures and small cemetery from the early 1900s aren’t the area’s only artifacts—the same region is home to 225-million-year-old fossils of giant ancient marine reptiles that once lived in the warm ocean blanketing central Nevada. The two fossilized attractions are packaged together in the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park.
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In 1997, 19 people were killed when a volcano poured 30 feet of ash, mud, and rocks over Plymouth, the capital of the British-owned island Montserrat. The death toll remained comparatively low because of a smaller volcanic eruption two years earlier. After the first blast, the entire city—which served as the government and commercial hub of the island—was forced to evacuate under an exclusion zone set up by the government. The area was deemed uninhabitable, and two-thirds of the island’s small population fled abroad. Today, the city, which residents are still unable to return to due to continuous volcanic activity, lies in an arrested state, and is sometimes dubbed the “Pompeii of the Caribbean.” But a few photographers have been able to visit to capture the various stages of decay—from perfectly preserved photos on a desk, to a Catholic church so buried in debris, only the highest spire peeks out. With much of its infrastructure gone, the nation has slowly been getting back on its feet, finally opening a new airport in another part of the island in 2005.
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Waves of sand cover the floors of houses in Namibia’s German-style Kolmanskop, evoking the curving turns of a surrealist painting. Located in the southern Namib Desert, the town hit its heyday in the early 1900s, when hundreds of fortune-seeking German miners moved to the area after diamonds were discovered in the sand. By 1954, the city that had become a microcosm of German culture was abandoned after decades of falling diamond prices. Today, the desert is slowly encroaching on the once-grand houses, battering their structures with wind and filling the insides with sand. Nearby, a similar mining town, Elizabeth Bay, spent decades derelict, but after two years of restoration efforts, the diamond mine is back in operation.
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It’s been three years since a tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Japan led to a devastating meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. But the levels of radiation still permeating the area make it impossible for residents to return to eight nearby towns, like Okuma, formerly population 11,500. After the disaster, some locals snuck back in, skirting roadblocks and patrols, to reclaim belongings, but the town remains virtually frozen as it was on March 11, 2010. In schools, book bags and gym uniforms are scattered in the building; homes are still filled with residents’ belongings; and streets are empty of cars—a testament to the rushed escape. Decontamination efforts continue, and former residents hope to return, but the reality remains that it could be years before safety is restored.
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Once an exclusive holiday playground for the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Brigitte Bardot, the Varosha quarter in Famagusta, Cyprus, is now a crumbling shell of its ‘60s and ‘70s glory. When Turkey invaded the island nation in 1974, the area was abandoned, and its high-rise resorts, restaurants, and blocks of shops were left to rot. Clothes from tourists still hang in hotel room closets, rows of then-brand new 1974 models remain lined up at a car dealership, and commercial jets sit abandoned at the decaying Nicosia International Airport.
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A bizarre USSR haven in Norway still boasts hammer-and-sickle signs and a statue of Lenin, frozen in temperature and time on the Svalbard Islands halfway to the North Pole. In 1927, Norway sold the coal-mining community of Pyramiden to a Russian state-mining company, and it was used as the world’s most northerly Cold War front for decades, until it was shut down in 1998. The sports center, library, school, hospital, and housing complexes remain standing, and could for a very long time—experts say that due to the freezing conditions, the major structures will endure for hundreds of years.
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Some places almost look better in a state of decay. This gorgeous Greek-style community built in the mid-1800s was left behind in 1923 after Greece and Turkey agreed to a population exchange when the Greco-Turkish War shifted borders. The non-Muslim residents of the town were forced to relocate to Greece, leaving behind around 350 homes, two elaborate churches, and endless winding cobblestone streets. The roofless, crumbling stone structures, complete with a small population of wandering goats, make the town look ten times its age. Today, Greek Orthodox and Islamic leaders have held meetings in the once-divided Kayaköy, and it was named a World Friendship and Peace Village by UNESCO.
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Once home to 40,000 people, Agdam is now an empty buffer zone operated by the Armenian military in the middle of Azerbaijan. Located in Nagorno-Karabakh—an autonomous region of Azerbaijan that has sought independence from its home country and has been supported by nearby Armenia—years of tension came to a boiling point in 1993. Azerbaijan was using Nagorno-Karabakh as a protective base against Armenian troops, who teamed up with local rebels and, in an effort to make the region strategically useless, bombed everything in sight. The death toll reached 10,000, and 120,000 civilians escaped the area. Agdam now is a hollowed-out city, with livestock living in the grand, old mosque, and skeletal building remains pillaged for construction materials.
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For a few prosperous decades, between the 1870s and 1930s, Chile emerged as the world’s largest supplier of sodium nitrate, which was in high demand to fertilize agricultural areas and fuel explosives. In the harsh desert environment of Pampa, mining towns like Humberstone and the nearby Santa Laura popped up, attracting thousands of workers to mine more than 200 natural saltpeter works. But soon, a synthetic version was invented, values dropped, and the towns were abandoned, leaving the hulking plants, rusty train line, and vestiges of a community to disintegrate. By the late 1950s, everyone had moved on, sometimes leaving behind full closets and dining room sets in their previous homes. Eight years ago, UNESCO dubbed the region a World Heritage Site, and it still stands as testament to the country’s industrial perseverance.
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