It's been exactly 1 year since the hot summer afternoon I started this blog by putting together photos of an abandoned villa, not far from where I live. And here we are today, after 55 posts and more than 550,000 visitors from almost 200 countries.
To celebrate the occasion, I made a list of the top 10 most popular posts during the last 12 months.
Thanks everyone for visiting and don't forget you can follow us on twitter or like us on facebook to stay in touch! :-)
1. The Haunted Hotel at Tequendama Falls
The most popular post of this blog was visited more times than the other 9 posts combined! Hotel del Salto, built in a magnificent location near Bogota, Bolivia, had been abandoned since the early 90s but is still being visited by thousands of tourists. A friend of the blog who visited the hotel a few months ago confirmed it has now been turned into a museum, and taking also a few pics for the blog.
2. The Abandoned Movie Set of Cameron's 'The Abyss'
To film some underground scenes of his 1989 film, 'The Abyss', director James Cameron used an uncompleted nuclear power plant in South Carolina. The cost of deconstructing the set afterwords though was considered too high, so the set was left abandoned becoming a destination for urban explorers and also the 2nd most popular post on this blog.
3. Detroit's Abandoned Houses
Detroit is a city well-known for its deserted places. Photographer Kevin Bauman took photos of those beautiful homes for his series '100 Abandoned Houses' which was very popular with the visitors of this blog.
Featured in the latest James Bond movie, Hashima is an abandoned island off the coast of Nagasaki in Japan. It was built to house workers in an underwater coal mining facility and it was once the most densely populated place on earth. Today it's in the process to become an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since 2009, small groups of tourists are able to visit the island.
Spreepark used to be the only theme park in East Germany and it really has a fascinating history! Closed since 2002, the park has now become a destination for urban explorers and graffiti artists.
It's a secret not many know. Under the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in Manhattan there is a secret subway platform once used by VIPs (most famously Franklin D. Roosevelt) who wanted to make an entrance or exit the hotel without being seen or having to go through New York's traffic.
Villa Epecuén was a very popular Argentinian tourist village until 1985 when an enormous amount of water broke through a mountain lake and completely submerged the town. In 2009 waters began receding and the ruins of houses and streets came to surface.
8. Prypiat, the Ghost Town of Chernobyl
Prypiat, the town housing workers at the Chernobyl nuclear plant and abandoned after the terrible nuclear accident, is a dream destination for many urban explorers. Some guided tours are now allowed within the city but the safest way to visit it, is through these magnificent photos.
Mainly due to the economic crisis which was also felt in the advertising market, many billboards around the streets and towns of Greece are now empty, carrying no message.
A mistake Greek government made during the preparation of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games was not making plans for the future use of most of the sites built exclusively for the Games. The results can be seen in these photos.
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Have you done the Buckner Building in Alaska yet?
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