World’s Largest Abandoned Cities

There’s something about places of ruin and abandon that you just can’t tear your eyes away from. Whether they were left thousands of years ago or very recently, these places are surrounded by questions that you want answers to. And the bigger the place, the bigger the questions. So, with that, let’s take a look at some of the world’s largest abandoned cities, towns and places.

Plymouth, Montserrat

It’s not often that a capital city is also a total ghost town, but that’s exactly what Plymouth is to the island on Montserrat. Despite only being 102 kilometers squared, this Caribbean island was once home to over 13,000 people. Then, the earth shattering events of July 1995 changed everything.

A previously dormant Soufriere Hills volcano in the southern part of the island became active; huge eruptions and heaps of ash descended on the city and surrounding settlements, forcing all residents to evacuate. The continuing eruptions over the next two years meant that over 8,000 people were eventually forced to leave.

In 1997, a series of devastating eruptions trigged catastrophic pyroclastic flows and lahars which burned the town and buried its remains under 4.6 ft of ash. You can see in the image below the collapsed roof of the Plymouth Library, as well as thousands of homes once belonging to inhabitants seemingly swallowed up by the ground.

From that point, the southern half of the island was placed under an exclusion zone because of the continuing volcanic activity. The destruction of Plymouth caused huge economic problems for the island, and by the end of 1997 fewer than 1200 people remained there, and the exclusion zone is still in place.

To this day Plymouth is known as "the Pompeii of the Caribbean", so a note to any thrill-seeking tourists looking to visit; make sure your insurance is comprehensive!

Fordlândia, Brazil

In 1928, Henry Ford had had enough of paying for rubber. He decided to get around this by setting up a new venture in the Amazon jungle in a bid to produce all his own rubber. What this involved was building a city from the ground up, but he figured he could build it however he wanted.

So, in the middle of the Amazon, he built a weirdly western themed workshop city that housed all his 2000 would-be workers and their families. But the project was ravaged by ineptitude. His American managers wouldn’t take advice from the locals, resulting in chaotic crop loss.

The "western ethics" Ford put into place saw no alcohol permitted and a strict diet of oatmeal, canned peaches, and brown rice, which lead to catastrophic riots. Ford abandoned the project in 1934, but still had the rights to the land so nothing could be changed or maintained properly. Workers moved out and the place fell into a state of ruin.

Inside Henry Ford's Failed Amazon City | Rise And Fall by Business Insider

To this day you can still see the empty jungle city of the famous Fordlândia, with a handful of locals inhabiting the shells of the derelict buildings 90 years on. But it’s unlikely this rubber town will ever truly bounce back.

Gunkanjima

There’s almost nowhere in the world with a history as strange or as terrifying as Gunkanjima, also known as Battleship Island. Built by Mitsubishi back in the early 1900’s, it was constructed directly above a rich submarine coal deposit.

By 1941, the island was producing 400,000 tonnes of coal per year. Accommodations were built to house all workers and their families, turning the tiny 1 square kilometer rock into a sprawling hub of life. High rise complexes, schools, restaurants, and courtyards were all constructed, and by the 1950’s it was home to nearly 6000 residents.

Then, the coal ran out. Mitsubishi closed the mine, and everyone left, taking only the essentials with them and leaving behind the lives they once knew, the crumbling city floating in the ocean was left as a reminder of the effects of Japan's rapid industrialization.

But that’s not the whole story. A darker chapter of the island’s history revealed that during the second world war, Korean citizens and Chinese prisoners of war were used as forced labor in the mines.

In the back breaking working conditions along with malnutrition and exhaustion, it’s estimated over 1000 prisoners died between 1930 and the end of the war. If this place seems haunted to you, that’s because it probably is.

Wittenoom, Australia

At its peak, Wittenoom, Western Australia, was home to almost 20,00 residents. It was the largest town in North Western Australia, and a stunning example of how a mining community could be built on the back of a thriving industry.

Unfortunately, that industry was asbestos. Blue asbestos to be specific, which was used in everything at the time from cigarette filters to brake pads. For those of you living under a rock for the last 50 years, fibers of asbestos are known to cause lung disease and cancer, leading to respiratory failure and death.

Sadly, the residents of Wittenoom were no exception. As the findings of the toxicity of asbestos were published, the Wittneoom mines profitability fell and in 1966 it was permanently closed.

Wittenoom, Western Australia by Owl Creations

But the damage was already done. The giant allotments you see in the footage show blocks of land where hundreds of homes used to be, all of which were demolished as they contained asbestos. Even though residents fled the now permanently unsafe area, over 2000 of them are believed to have died from asbestos related diseases.

Until 2019, some stubborn residents were still determined to live there despite not receiving water or power from the government, as the once-thriving town was officially degazetted. Unfortunately for them, you can’t hide from Google Maps.

Varosha, Cyprus

It’s hard to comprehend that a once bustling tourist spot visited by the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Richard Burton, and Elizabeth Taylor could ever go out of style. However, this one did, but not by anyone’s choice.

Varosha, Cyprus, in the 1970s was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. Boasting beautiful seaside resorts and world class accommodations, it had a population of around 39,000 people along with 45 hotels, 60 apartment-hotels, 99 places of entertainment and 21 banks.

But in 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus. It followed the Cypriot coup of 1974, leading Cypriot and Turkish armies to descend on the beach with civilians trapped in the middle. All of them fled for their lives.

Varosha,Ghost town, Famagusta by drone Phantom 3 by Andrew Maine

The area has since been fenced off and used as a buffer zone between the islands remaining communities, and for 46 years no one except military and UN personal have been allowed in. Even taking pictures within what they call a first-degree military zone is considered a breach of military law.

Yujiapu, China

Another example of a Chinese Ghost City was designed as the East’s answer to New York: Yujiapu. This central business district was built based on the cityscape of Manhattan, but located in the middle of Tianjin.

Unlike its successful older brother Ordos, Yujiapu is in big trouble. Chinese local government officials are now drowning in debt from funding the cities build, with official accounts tallying the second Manhattans creation at $4.5 trillion and counting; unofficial estimates predict it could be as high as $10 trillion in total.

Yujiapu Financial District (Ghost City) - Tianjin by Koda Capital

Borrowing heavily to create the next new megacity has always been Chinas way; by selling vast amounts of land to developers, borrow to subsidize constructions costs, the resulting jobs and in these new cities will arise and pay back the debt.

But China isn’t growing as fast as is used to due to a severe economic slowdown, so places like this that are now less than 1/5th full pose a real threat to the countries bank balance. Yujiapu’s new shopping malls are desolate, the residential districts are ghostlike, and many of the six lane roads don’t have crosswalks because they’re simply not needed.

Craco, Italy

There are two types of stubborn: regular stubborn, and Italian stubborn. Don’t believe me? Well it’s been proven by the history of the village of Craco. This is an Italian hilltop town that has endured more strife than Jesus, for gods sake they even filmed part of Passion of the Christ here!

Craco was established way back in the 8th century, and throughout the medieval period they fended off wave after wave of attacks from oncoming armies of political missteps. You can see that even now these buildings have maintained most of their original structure!

The position of the town on the hilltop made it a perfect high ground to defend from oncoming attacks, even a bout of the plague in 1656 couldn’t force the villagers out. It was all going so well until 1963 when Mother Nature decided to have a go and hit the hilltop with a series of landslides and earthquakes with eventually forced the 1,800 residents to evacuate.

To land a final blow, Mother Nature tried to level her opponent with an earthquake that left the ancient site abandoned and unsafe for return. Even so, the hilltop village still definitely stands to this day.

Burj Al Babas

Every man’s home is his castle, but in some cases, those castles never really become homes. One such place may look like a scene of a dystopian novel, but the $200 million ghost town of Burj Al Babas. Built halfway between Istanbul and Ankara, this empty town contains the allotments of 732 identical Disney-esque chateaus.

300 Disney-style castles lie empty in £151m Turkish ghost town - drone video by Guardian News

Originally designed as a neighborhood for the rich, workers completed 587 of these $500,000 buildings when their company went bankrupt in 2018. The weakening of the Turkish currency following plenty of political trouble has made it difficult for big businesses to repay foreign debts, which put a halt to a lot of projects up and down the country, none quite as eerie as this though.

In the two years since construction has stopped this Disneyland’s disrepair is already beginning to sink its teeth in. Since Turkey’s relaxed revision of financial criteria for foreigners was introduced in 2018, there’s still hope that the project might be resurrected. Until then, this ghost town is waiting for its fairy tale ending.

Deception Island, Antarctica

Along with having a name that sounds like it’s from a James Bond film, Deception Island’s dilapidated buildings and abandoned equipment looks like part of a movie set! This tiny island in Antarctica was once the base of a Norwegian-Chilean whaling station, which was abandoned in 1931 following a slump in whale oil prices.

There are large rusted cylinders that are actually giant boiling tanks, and they were once used by whalers to extract the oil from whale carcasses. They still stand on the beaches to this day, along with derelict wooden buildings with gutted interiors, old rotting boats and even a small cemetery.

It was re-occupied in the 1940s by the British and used a meteorological station, with other stations set up by Chile close by. In the 60s this expanded to include an aircraft hangar for flight operations, the remains of which can still be seen.

But the matter of who really owned the island caused many arguments between the UK, Chile and Argentina, before the island took matters into its own hands. Like the name suggests, there was a secret that Deception Island was sitting on, it turned out to be the site of an active volcano!

Two huge eruptions in 1967 and 1969 destroyed most of the buildings, forcing everyone to evacuate. Learning from their mistakes of building on top of an active volcano, the bay hasn’t been inhabited since. But the island does have plenty of chin-strap penguins to keep its shores occupied!

Chinstrap Penguins at Baily Head, Deception Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica by Wild Alaska Travel

Times Beach, Missouri

The small town of Times Beach, Missouri, used to be home to more than 2,200 residents. But now, when you look on updated maps, there’s almost no trace that anyone ever lived there. What happened to all the buildings and infrastructure of this riverside ghost-town?

It turns out that in the early 1970s, the town hired a contractor to spray their roads with waste oil. This was to help keep the dust levels down, but while that sounds like a really terrible idea, it was about to get much worse!

What the residents didn’t know was that the contractor had mixed the oil with an industrial waste biproduct called Dioxin, which he didn’t know was highly toxic! By spraying this all-around the town for over 4 years, it eventually caused the deaths of many animals as well as poisoning some of the locals!

In 1982, soil tests conducted by the Environment Protection Agency revealed the areas toxicity was well above what was considered safe. But then some terribly timed cosmic karma hit; just a day after the samples were collected, the local river burst its banks. Dioxin contaminated water flooded the entire town and residents were advised not to return to their homes, with many told to leave and take absolutely nothing with them.

Vintage KSDK: Contaminated town of Times Beach bought by KSDK News

The forced eviction cost $36.7 million to buyout, but the town was so polluted that the abandoned houses were torn down and incinerated! The clean-up effort alone is thought have cost around $200 million, and now in its place is the Route 66 State Park, a place thousands of people once called home.

Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

Whilst the capital city of Turkmenistan may not technically be a ghost town, it certainly feels like one. Ashgabat’s huge buildings and massive roads are built to accommodate its population of just under 1 million people, but it’s so eerily vacant you almost wouldn’t think anyone lives here.

The city is undeniably beautiful, and along with its ostentations designs it also has the highest number of marble buildings in the world, 543 to be exact. And that’s not its only boast; the city is home to the world’s largest indoor Ferris wheel, as well as the largest architectural star. But despite all these weirdly benign titles, there are very few people around to enjoy the sights!

Many tourists have commented in blogs and documentaries that these streets are incredibly empty. The beautiful parks are always quiet, the huge roads are barren, and even the glittering monuments have very few visitors.

It might have something to do with the country’s OCD inspired laws, which explicitly state the government will “get rid of everything that makes our capital untidy, slovenly and tasteless”. This means it’s forbidden to smoke in public places, drive a dirty car, or any car that’s not white for that matter!

With strict rules like this, along with its culture of isolation and secrecy, it’s not surprising that it’s become a ghost town. But a very pretty looking ghost town nonetheless!

Kitsault, Canada

At first glance, the neat rows of houses on the tree lined streets of this town in British Colombia make it look like a gorgeous place to live. It has shopping centers, a library, bars and even a theatre. But while the lights are on, nobody’s home. In a shocking twist of events, this town, known as Kitsault, was abandoned just 18 months after it was built, and no one has lived here since 1982!

Exploring Ghost Town Frozen in Time You Won't Believe Exists | Kitsault BC 【4K】 by Exploring with Wade

It was quickly erected in 1979 after a significant deposit of molybdenum was discovered in the area. 1,200 miners and their families were brought in to dig up the rare element, and the Phelps Dodge Corporation that employed them built the $250 million community to house them. But less than two years down the line, molybdenum prices tanked and money in the area ran dry.

Devastated, residents began a mass exodus over a six-month period. But there was a remote chance that molybdenum prices could spring back, so one lonely caretaker was left there. His job was to keep the heat running in the houses and fix any damage to ensure the buildings weren’t reclaimed by nature.

The town was then bought for just $5.7 million in 2005 by millionaire Krishnan Suthanthiran, who has plans to restore the town to its former glory. But it’s been over 15 years, and while the houses look pristine, they remain empty.

Nagoro, Japan

While it may not be one the largest abandoned places in the world, the village of Nagoro in Japan is certainly one of the creepiest. With it’s population having shrunk from over 300 residents in the 1950s to just 27 in 2019, it’s rare to see anyone walking along the deserted streets.

But what can be seen are bizarre life sized dolls dotted around the decaying landscape. These were made by resident Tsukimi Ayano, in a strange attempt to try and fill the void in the village of those who left or passed on.

This Japanese Town Replaced Humans With Scarecrows by Tokyo Lens

With few opportunities for young people, limited resources, and being a fairly inconvenient place to live nowadays, the village has become devoid of children and young families. Instead, places like the schools are filled with a few dozen dolls waiting for class to begin.

Old meeting spaces, like this one, are now crammed with the stuffed citizens. Some perch on bikes and sit by the side of the empty roads. And others even take part in thinly attended festivals.

Pyramiden, Norway

Anyone visiting the small arctic town of Pyramiden, Norway, would easily think that this place was simply abandoned overnight, but its remains are unlike any others in the world. Located on Svalbard, freezing conditions have kept this ghostly mining town well preserved since the 1990s, with some estimates believing it could take as long as 500 years to decay!

But at its peak, it was home to over 1,000 residents, many of whom worked in the local mines. It was bought by the soviets in 1927, and as proof of ownership they installed a giant bust of Lenin to look out over the towns center! These people were literally living under a communist gaze.

But in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Pyramiden’s situation turned sour. Low salaries, resource shortages and poor living standards didn’t make it much of a place to call home, and in 1998 the mine was closed.

Almost overnight, at least 300 workers set down their tools and left with their families, followed over the coming months by many others. The place was left totally abandoned, with many in a hurry to leave, you can still see object like old film reels and personal affects that they left behind.

Kayaköy, Turkey

When you look at this image below of the abandoned city of Kayaköy in Turkey, how long would you guess it’s been abandoned for? With those roofless stone houses and worn narrow streets, it looks like some kind of long-lost, ancient ruin.

However, it’s only been abandoned for about 100 years. In the 1920s, this area was a bustling hub of life, home to approximately 20,000 residents of the orthodox Greek community. However, a hideous war ruined it all, as war does with most things.

The Greco-Turkish war saw Greece and Turkey at one another's throats. Even though the Greek residents of Kayaköy had gotten along peacefully with their Turkish neighbors, the government demanded a compulsory population exchange in 1923. This meant the Greek community were forced to move back to Greece, so they abandoned their beautiful village and were banned from returning.

With no-one occupying them, approximately 350 of these homes have sat empty for almost a century, along with two derelict churches and decrepit water fountains. Harsh winters and strong winds have stripped the buildings down to their stony brickwork, making them look ancient. But that’s somehow made this place all the more intriguing, because there are almost no photos of what this place looked like before the war!

Kadykchan, Russia

Anyone looking at the state of the old Russian mining town of Kadykchan wouldn't be surprised that it’s abandoned. But what may shock you, is that it’s only been unpopulated for about 10 years!

It was initially built in the 1930s after a large deposit of coal was discovered in the area. But it was under the rule of the Soviet Union, and they used prison labor to lay the foundations of the town.

Kadykchan - the Largest Ghost Town in Eastern Russia by BaikalNature

Despite its heinous beginnings, Kadykchan slowly began to attract a community, and the business from two mines supported over 10,000 residents. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the mines became unprofitable.

After the first mine closed in 1992 people began leaving, and an explosion in the second mine in 1996 drove away many more. Of the 10,000 residents it had, only 300 were left by 2007, and in 2010 the area was officially considered depopulated.

Most residents were apparently eager to leave quickly, with posters still hung on walls, books laid across tables and many other belongings left behind on their way out. Like Pyramiden, there’s even a decaying bust of Lenin in the town center, so it seems fitting that it’ll crumble along with the memory of the old soviet regime!

Kolmanskop, Namibia

The derelict structures of Kolmanskop in the Nambian desert may look any other abandoned outpost, but can you believe this ghost town was once a luxurious desert haven? That’s because in 1908, diamonds were discovered in this part of the desert!

Word of the precious stones spread fast, and by 1912 many prospectors had set up shop in this tiny town. It’s insane to think that these dilapidated buildings used to be the homes of over 1,000 diamond miners, prospectors and their families. And even more so when you learn they produced about a million carats of diamonds a year that was 12% of the world’s total diamond production at the time!

But by the 1930s, intensive mining efforts had dug up just about all the precious stones the area had to offer. People began leaving the town in droves, abandoning their houses as well as possessions that were too cumbersome to trek back through the desert.

Without human activity to keep the sand at bay, the dunes began rolling through the abandoned town, bursting through doors and windows to fill up the empty rooms with tons of sand.

And whilst some buildings have nearly been swallowed up, others have been stripped bare by the winds, to the point that even their foundations are exposed! Talk about being stripped of your wealth.

Pripyat, Ukraine

Founded as ‘The Nuclear City’ back in 1970, Pripyat in the Ukraine has one of the most haunting pasts of any abandoned metropolis on earth.

4K Chernobyl: Drone Footage Reveals the Abandoned City Pripyat by Binne-Louw Katsma

It was built with almost 13,000 apartments and schools for 5,000 children for families and workers of the nearby nuclear power plant, a little place you might have heard of called Chernobyl. That’s right, when the reactor of this plant blew in 1986, it released a huge amount of toxic radiation into the atmosphere.

Pripyat, being less than 2 miles away from the disaster epicenter, was evacuated the very next day. The extent of the fallout was so bad that for over 30 years the city has remained abandoned.

Staunch reminders of the impact the disaster had can be found in Pripyat’s lost amusement part, with its decrepit Ferris wheel and slowly rotting bumper cars that haven’t been ridden in decades.

Because evacuees were given just 50 minutes to leave, many apartments and old classrooms still hold their decayed belongings. They’re become a surreal reminder of the 50,000 people who lost everything they had that day.

And while visits to the area have been allowed to this part of the nuclear exclusion zone in recent years, it could be anywhere from 20 to 300 years before it becomes habitable again.

North Brother Island, New York

While many of these abandoned places seem far away, for some Americans there’s one that might be closer to home than you realize. On New York’s East river lies a small island covered in derelict red-brick buildings with a haunted past.

It's name is North Brother island, home of the abandoned Riverside hospital. It’s made up exclusively of old hospital buildings, from morgues and nurses houses to a specialized Typhoid infirmary; It’s location in the middle of the river made it a perfect place to isolate highly contagious patients, something we could have used recently, if you catch my drift!

In the 1950s it became a treatment center for adolescent drug addicts, of which many were said to have been held against their will until they became clean, you can even read the cries for help they carved into the walls! Like it wasn’t creepy enough already.

Being a controversial practice, it was shut down in 1963 and has been left to decay ever since. After nearly 60 years of abandonment, this eerie island is in a state of near collapse. Many of the roads and pathways have been consumed by vegetation, and the crumbling buildings have been reclaimed by nature.

North brother island NYC by The Yago

But reminders of the hospitals infections past remain, like the many abandoned rooms and wards containing rotting furniture. There’s even a creepy old library in what used to be a boys dormitory, filled with hundreds of books that were left behind!

Copehill Down, Britain

From above, the beautiful little village of Copehill Down in Britain looks like an idyllic dream. The neat gardens and driveways make it look like any other English hamlet, but on closer inspection it really isn’t what it seems.

Short drone fight over Copehill Down on Salisbury Plain by Tom Palmer

The architecture is oddly European, and the entire residential area resembles more of a bombsite than a populated area. That’s because these eerily empty buildings have never been occupied!

Copehill Down is actually a fake village which was built by the Ministry of the Defense at the end of the Cold War. It was used by the British Army to practice their urban warfare and close combat fighting skills in an Eastern European setting. But once the war ended, the site was still used for drills and combat exercises.

In more recent years, the facility has been expanded to include a small shanty town built up of cargo containers. These have been laid out to emulate the streets of Afghanistan and Iraq where the British army were once deployed.

They even added in burned out cars and carriages of an old train to help them prepare for almost any situation! They definitely ruin the ‘sleepy English town’ aesthetic though.

Houtouwan, China

Far from being a collection of crumbling bricks and rotten interiors, Houtouwan village on China’s Shengshan Island is almost the opposite of what you’d expect an abandoned city to look like! Located just 40 miles from Shanghai, these buildings and old houses have been completely taken over by the local wildlife, turning the village into a green gem on the islands shoreline.

Plants Are Taking Over This Abandoned Fishing Village | National Geographic by National Geographic

In the 1990 s this was a thriving fishing village, but the tiny bay became increasingly unable to meet the massive demands of Chinas growing fishing industry. This was a devastating blow for the 2,000 fisherman and their families who inhabited more than 500 homes in the village, and many began to migrate towards the mainland in search of jobs.

Over the years, the village slowly emptied, and by 1994 only a handful of villagers remaining. That’s when mother nature began plastering every wall, nook and cranny of the settlement with a lush blanket of fast-growing climbing plants. It almost looks like the walls of the buildings are made completely out of greenery!

Ordos Kangbashi, China

Welcome to the ghost town accidently designed to be a ghost town! It's name is Ordos New Town, located in the remote province of Inner Mongolia, China. It’s sat on 1/6th of Chinas coal reserves and boasts enough accommodation to house 300’000 residents. But initially, that was it.

Having built towering high-rises and an impressive downtown area in just five years, there were no communal facilities. This lack of urban infrastructure and basic services gave this colossal city a hard time attracting new residents. As such, it stood almost empty for many years.

Ordos New Town, China's largest ghost city by Tech Insider

It sounds crazy, but this is a typical example of how Chinese mega cities are built. They’re not created with the current population in mind, but more around the "build it and they will come" theory.

Buildings and monuments are built big to make its residents feel small, a classic soviet architectural move common in emerging Chinese towns. The sprawling nature means that even though the city currently has around 100,000 residents, it still feels emptier than the inside of Logan Paul's head.

If you enjoy learning about abandoned cities, you might also want to read about abandoned places forgotten by the world. Thanks for reading!