Atlas of Forgotten Places Journey to Abandoned Destinations from Around the Globe

by Elborough, Travis

• ISBN13: 9780711263307
• ISBN10: 0711263302
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2021-12-07
• Publisher: White Lion Publishing

Summary

Explore the places that time forgot. Abandoned, mysterious, sleeping monuments around the world have been relegated to the margins of history, pushed off the map and out of sight.

From ancient ruins and crumbling castles to more recent relics – an art deco New York subway station, a Soviet ghost town in the Arctic Circle, a flooded Thai mall teeming with aquatic life – Travis Elborough takes you on a journey into these strange, overlooked and disappearing worlds and immortalises their fates.

Original maps and stunning colour photography accompany Travis Elborough’s moving historic and geographic accounts of each site. The featured locations are a stark reminder of what was, and the accounts in this investigative book help to bring their stories back to life, telling us what happened, when and why, and to whom.

The book features 40 sites, including:

• Santa Claus, Arizona, USA: A festive tourist resort turned ghost town deep in the desert where once you could meet Santa Claus any day of the year;
• Crystal Palace Subway, London, UK: One of the city’s best-kept secrets is an underground, cathedral-like relic from where many Victorian commuters bustled through;
• Montserrat, West Indies: The small Caribbean island with a population of 5,000 that was evacuated when its volcano erupted in 1995. The volcano is still active and nearly half the island remains a designated exclusion zone;
• Balaklava Submarine Base, Crimea: The former top-secret Soviet submarine base that was kept off all official maps and known as Object 825 GTS;
• Volterra Psychiatric Hospital, Tuscany, Italy: Once dubbed ‘the place of no return’, this long-closed lunatic asylum once housed 6,000 patients who were never allowed to leave.

Also in the Unexpected Atlas series: Atlas of Improbable Places, Atlas of Untamed Places, Atlas of the Unexpected and Atlas of Vanishing Places (WINNER Illustrated Book of the Year - Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards 2020).

Author Biography

Travis Elborough is an author and social commentator. His books include A Traveller’s Year, A London Year, The Long-Player Goodbye, Being A Writer and A Walk in the Park: The Life and Times of a People’s Institution. Travis is a regular contributor to Radio 4 and the Guardian, and has penned articles on all aspects of travel and culture, from pirates in the Caribbean to donkeys at the British seaside. He has written for the Times, Sunday Times, New Statesman, BBC History Magazine and Kinfolk among others.

Table of Contents

Section 1: Vacant Properties

1. Büyükada Orphanage,  Istanbul, Turkey – orphanage surrounded by a dense forest of pine trees, which housed as many as 1,000 at its peak, but closed in 1964.
2. Zarnowiec Nuclear Power Plant, Poland – the first nuclear power plant in Poland. Construction was abandoned, partly due to political changes and partly due to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.
3. The Castle Dona Chica, Portugal – a Neo-romantic castle that was conceived and executed in 1915 by Swiss architect Ernesto Korrodi. The project suffered from a lack of funds early, eventually changing hands and falling into the possession of creditors.
4. Sammezzano Castle, Tuscany, Italy – a Moorish castle mostly still in ruins despite some attempted restoration.
5. San Souci, Haiti – royal seat of Henri Christopher, a formerly enslaved man who became Haiti’s only king, Henri I.
6. Rubjerg Knude, Denmark – famous abandoned lighthouse in North Jutland. The lighthouse was moved 70 metres inland in October 2019 to secure it from erosion.
7. Pyramiden, Norway – a Soviet ghost town in the Arctic Circle that was initially sold by Sweden to the Russians at the turn of 20th century.

 
Section 2: Unsettled Situations

1. Craco, Matera, Italy – the hilltop town that has been uninhabited for more than 50 years.
2. Old Al ‘Ula, Saudi Arabia – founded in the 6th century BC, a walled city of mud-brick and stone houses, now abandoned.
3. Mandu, India – a 6th century ancient town in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh once called the ‘City of Joy’, which now lies in ruins.
4. Grängesberg, Sweden – a former mining town in Sweden, partly abandoned and with whole swathes of housing empty since the mine closed in 1989.
5. Döllersheim, Austria – the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, this village was requisitioned by the Germans as a military training camp during WWII and was seized by the Soviet army at the end of the war. Over 2,000 residents were forcibly resettled and it remains a military exclusion zone to this day.
6. Plymouth, Montserrat – the small Caribbean island with a population of 11,000 that was evacuated when its volcano erupted in 1995. The volcano is still active and nearly half the island remains a designated exclusion zone.
7. Kolmanskop , Namibia – a former diamond mining town that was abandoned in the 1950s after intensive mining depleted the area.
8. Kennicott, Alaska – once a flourishing copper mine, the resources were depleted by the late 1930s and the town mostly deserted by the 1950s.
9. Wunsdorf, Germany – the abandoned Soviet camp, headquarters to the Nazis and then the Soviets. Once home to 75,000 Soviet men, women and children, now abandoned.

 
Section 3: Dilapidated Destinations

1. The West Pier, Brighton, UK – Brighton’s wrecked and ruined pleasure pier.
2. Santa Claus, Arizona, USA – a Christmas themed resort town in the desert, on the road to ruin since it closed in 1995.
3. The Ducor, Hotel, Liberia – a 1960s luxury hotel gone to rack and ruin. It was visited by Idi Amin and used in during the siege in 2000 in the Second Liberian Civil War.
4. Hachijio Royal Hotel, Japan – once the largest hotel in Japan. Situated on the Uzu islands, which were promoted as the ‘Hawaii’ of the country in the 1960s, but lost out to cheaper destinations and fell into ruin etc.
5. Grand Hotel de la Foret, Corsica – a late-Victorian hotel favoured by English travellers, which fell into ruin since the decline of railways
6. Camelot Amusement Park, Chorley, Lancs, UK – an Arthurian theme park in Lancashire that closed in 2012 and now lies in ruins.
7. The Salton Sea Riviera, California, USA – a one-time resort favoured by Frank Sinatra et al. It declined in 1970s and the lake became polluted and is now an ecological disaster.
8. New World Mall, Bali, Thailand – a mall in Thailand once awash with shoppers but now teeming with fish after the abandoned building was flooded.
9. Kupari, Croatia – the now abandoned beach resort in Yugoslavia, once frequented by Yugoslavia’s military elite, which was largely destroyed in the civil war.
10. The Hellinikon Olympic Complex, Greece – state-of-the-art sports venues built for the 2004 Summer Olympics, which now lie decaying and unused.

 
Section 4: Journeys Ended

1. Nicosia Airport, Cyprus – the airport was abandoned after a military coup and now sits inside the demilitarised zone in Cyprus.
2. Uyuni Train Cemetery, Bolivia – a graveyard of abandoned locomotives on the edge of Bolivia’s salt flats.
3. Balaklava Submarine base, Crimea – a former Soviet submarine base, kept off official maps and known as Object 825 GTS.
4. Crystal Palace Subway, London – the disused subway underneath Crystal Palace Parade, which allowed access to Paxton’s vanished Crystal Palace.
5. Suakin, Sudan, Africa – one of the oldest seaports in Africa, it declined and fell into ruin when Port Sudan was built 50 km to its north.
6. City Hall Subway, New York – the city’s first underground station, which closed in 1945.

 
Section 5: Obsolete Institutions

1. St Peter Seminary, Scotland – a disused brutalist Catholic Seminary in Cardross, which was opened in the 1960s and hailed as modernist masterpiece. It has since been abandoned and fallen into ruin.
2. Roosevelt Smallpox Hospital, New York – a defunct smallpox hospital on an island in the Hudson.
3. City Methodist Church, Indiana, USA – a disused methodist church, once the biggest in the Mid-West USA.
4. Seaside Sanatorium, Waterford, Connecticut – an abandoned tuberculosis clinic for children. Plans remain to turn the ruins and grounds into a state park.
5. Alcatraz, San Francisco, USA – infamous former prison in San Francisco Bay that was abandoned in 1963.
6. Ospedale Psichiatrico di Volterra, Tuscany, Italy – the abandoned lunatic asylum dubbed 'the place of no return’, which has been shut since 1978.
7. Akampene Punishment Island, Uganda – an island where unmarried pregnant girls were housed. Empty now, but in danger of sinking into the sea.
8. Lennox Castle Asylum, Glasgow – the mental asylum in a former castle, finally closed in 2002.