What do you know about the abandoned cities of the world? Places, which used to be inhabited and popular, but things changed and people had to leave these cities. In most cases the fate of the abandoned cities is rather sad since they won’t have any future.
There are about 1000 abandoned cities of the world. They got devastated due to nature disasters, wars and crises. Lets find out more about the abandoned places and what has happened to them.
What happened to Centralia city in USA?
Centralia city is located in Pennsylvania State. The story of this city was used as a background for shooting Silent Hill movie. The city has been taken out of all the maps and was terminated because of permanent fires.
This is a deserted and abandoned place now.
Centralia used to be a very prosperous city due to coal mining. The peculiarity of the place was that the coal was very close to the surface and easy to get. But with time coal mining was stopped and people started earning for living thanks to farming.
One day on the eve of city check the Mayer of the city decided to clean it up and ordered to collect all garbage outside Centralia to burn it.
But it turned that the coal was too close to the surface and coal started burning as well. The coal mines continued to burn even after the garbage was destroyed. It made the surface of the city blow up and let the fire outside.
This process continues till now and Centralia became one of the abandoned places in the world.
In spite of almost impossible conditions for living the citizens of the city did not leave it for a long time, even when the air was polluted. Only after severe unpredictable underground pushes the authorities of the city decided to close Centralia.
Prypyat – abandoned city in Ukraine
The city of Pripyat is located in the North of Ukraine in Kiev oblast. It is world known for a sad accident that took place on the 26th of April in 1986. 43 000 people were evacuated over 3 hours from Pripyat on 1100 buses.
They were told that this is a temporary measure and they are leaving their homes only for few hours. But it turned out that even in 25 years it is not possible to live Pripyat.
The accident took place in Chernobyl nuclear station polluting a tremendous level of radiation into the air.
Later KGB pointed out to the mistakes in constructions of the reactor’s building, identified during the examination. The accident happened in the night of April 26th, but evacuation started only about 2pm on April 27.
Before this moment no one knew of what happened and no one assumed that the city will be listed as one of the abandoned cities of the world.
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Lost places of USA – Detroit
Detroit city is located to the North of USA at the boarder with Canada. It cannot be called totally abandoned since about 600 thousand people still live there. More then half of the population is struggling to survive.
A lot of the districts of the city are not available for living and people left them.
1950 was the year when the population of Detroit reached its maximum – almost 2 million people. It was a popular city and a lot of people were striving to come here to get employed at the plants.
In 1960 the workers began to leave the city and started living outside Detroit.
At the same time prices for real estate began to drop. The breaking point were a number of crises which started in the second half of XX century. It led to closure of most of the plants.
Luxury resort Sanzhi in Taiwan turns into a ghost city
Sanzhi was an amazing resort built in Taiwan. The design of the city was meant to attract maximum of rich tourists and investors.
When construction works started a lot of workers began to die because of unknown diseases, some fell down from height and many other weird things happened.
Local citizens were certain that this was a curse of evil spirits of Sanzhi. Some people say that earlier this place used to be a “death camp” organized by Japanese.
Finally authorities stopped the works in 1980. Those apartments and villas that already were built were not sold. The authorities of Sanzhi anyway decided not to destroy erected buildings, since this can make the evil spirits angry again…
Oradour-Sur-Glane, France
Oradour-Sur-Glane in France is another abandoned city of the world.
Oradour-Sur-Glane is a village, where you will see a number of ruins. These are the reminders of the horrible events which took place during the Second World War in this area.
Oradour-Sur-Glane is a fishing village, the population of which came through many sufferings and deaths during World War II.
On the 10th of June in 1944 in Oradour-Sur-Glane the Waffen SS Nazy military branches were located. They massacred the population of the village, killed men, women and children. 642 persons were killed in the village. A few managed to survive and flee.
After the war a memorial museum was open nearby. It was decided to keep the village as is, showing and reminding of the Nazi cruelty. In 1950s several soldiers, who killed people in Oradour-Sur-Glane were brought to the trial.
When the war ended, the new village has been built nearby.
I think when we have an opportunity to visit abandoned cities this is an incredible travel experience. I have been in Chernobyl a couple of years ago and even though the story of this place is rather sad, traveling there helps to view things differently. You can see life of people before and after, it also sets you thinking about our values and may be even reevaluating most of them. I’d highly recommend visiting abandoned places, this is for sure a different travel experience.
Thank you for sharing this travel information! I also would like to visit abandoned places, as a photographer, I find abandoned places very interesting for visiting.
Just curious, what is the most forgotten place in the world?
One of the most forgotten places is Pripyat, in Ukraine. Today this is a ghost city, where time stopped. People left the city years ago.
What are the largest abandoned cities in the world?
I heard that Tianducheng in China and Ashgabat in Turkmenistan are the biggest abandoned cities, but may be there are more.