16 Strange and surreal abandoned places

21.07.2023 - 08:01 / roughguides.com

Peeling paint, walls dripping with condensation and windows with shattered glass – there's something very eerie about an unlived-in building. From discarded hotels to ghost towns and flooded villages, we've rounded up some of the spookiest abandoned places in the world, for intrepid travellers with a macabre sense of adventure.

Once the world’s most expensive prison, from 1829 this Philadelphia facility boasted grand architecture, modern luxuries and notorious inmates including Al Capone. One of the first penitentiaries every built, it combined impressive design and strict discipline to inspire regret and reform in the hearts of convicts. Since its closure in 1971, the complex has crumbled into a mass of deteriorating cellblocks, which are now recognised as a National Historic Landmark. Eastern State Penitentiary is open to visitors year round.

Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, where Al Capone was an inmate © Zack Frank/Shutterstock

The formerly luxurious Lee Plaza Hotel stands windowless and exposed. It is just one of Detroit’s many abandoned places that mark the shocking decline of a major American city. Once at the centre of a booming motor industry, the successive blows of economic recessions, competition from overseas and race riots chipped away at Detroit’s early prosperity. A staggering 60% of the city's peak population has now moved away, leaving behind a living example of urban decay.

Abandoned hotel (illustration) © Cristian Lipovan/Shutterstock

Eccentric and extravagant, this Victorian mansion in California is a maze of dead-ends, secret doorways and stairs that lead to nowhere. Driven by paranoia and superstition, the Sarah Winchester, widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester began building in 1884 and ordered that construction should never cease. In the 38 years until her death, the residence mushroomed into a labyrinth of architectural oddities seven storeys high. Although damaged in the 1906 earthquake, the house is open to visitors who can explore the 160 surviving rooms.

Winchester Mystery House, California © Top Photo Corporation/Shutterstock

Settled by prospectors lured by the California Gold Rush in the mid-1800s, Bodie became a booming mining town of fortune-hungry men, saloon shootouts and barroom brawls. Its fortune was short-lived however. By the 1890s gold strikes elsewhere had drawn the crowds away, causing the population to dwindle. Frozen in time, this ghost town became a National Historical Landmark in the 1960s. Now, tourists, not miners, flock here to walk the deserted streets and admire the town’s arrested decline.

Bodie Ghost Town, California © Boris Edelmann/Shutterstock

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An urban museum of corroding classic cars, dilapidated high-rise hotels