Abandoned Places Part 2: More Beautiful Ruins Reclaimed by Time

In Part 1 of this series, we started in the sand-drowned rooms of Kolmanskop, Namibia — the ghost town whose faded doorway still opens this feature. Abandoned places have a pull that’s hard to explain until you’ve stood in one: the eerie stillness, the sense that time simply stopped mid-sentence. So we’re continuing the journey, this time to a Soviet monument shaped like a flying saucer, a drowned city in China, a subway platform sealed since 1945, and the ruins of a Japanese amusement park slowly disappearing into the trees. Text and image sourcing originally via Bored Panda.

Drifted desert sand floods through an open doorway inside an abandoned house in Kolmanskop, Namibia, its walls peeling in faded ochre and teal paint, framing the title card for Moss & Fog's Abandoned Places series.

The Flying Saucer on the Mountain: Buzludzha, Bulgaria

Exterior view of the derelict Buzludzha Monument, the Bulgarian Communist Party's flying-saucer-shaped former headquarters perched on a mountain ridge, its concrete shell weathered and abandoned since the fall of the Soviet Union. — The former House of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Buzludzha, Bulgaria.

Nothing about Buzludzha looks like it belongs to any decade in particular, which is precisely the point. Built between 1974 and 1981 as a monument to Bulgarian socialism, the flying-saucer silhouette was meant to be permanent, awe-inspiring, unmissable from the surrounding peaks. It lasted barely a decade in active use before the Soviet collapse left it to the wind. Today it sits sealed and crumbling, its mosaic-lined interior visible only through broken panels — a monument to an ideology, now a monument to how fast permanence can expire. Restoration plans surface periodically, but for now it remains one of the most photographed ruins in Eastern Europe.

A Fairy Tale Left to the Weeds: Nara Dreamland, Japan

A rusting fairy-tale castle spire rises above overgrown trees at Nara Dreamland, Japan's shuttered Disneyland-inspired amusement park, closed since 2006 and slowly reclaimed by encroaching vegetation. — Nara Dreamland, Japan.

Opened in 1961 as an unlicensed but unmistakable homage to Disneyland — complete with its own castle and a wooden coaster modeled on Coney Island’s Cyclone — Nara Dreamland drew crowds for four decades before newer parks made it obsolete. It closed quietly in 2006, and nature has been rewriting it ever since: vines climbing the ticket booths, moss softening the coaster rails, silence where there used to be music. Urban explorers still slip past the fences (and the occasional patrol), drawn to a version of joy that’s been left to decay in place.

The Station Detroit Couldn’t Save: Michigan Central Station

Exterior view of Michigan Central Station in Detroit, its Beaux-Arts facade and rows of broken windows towering over an empty rail yard, decades after the station's 1988 closure. — Michigan Central Station, Detroit.

Interior view of the cavernous, graffiti-covered waiting hall of Michigan Central Station in Detroit, sunlight streaming through shattered windows onto crumbling marble and scattered debris. — Michigan Central Station, Detroit.

Built in 1913 to anchor Detroit’s future as a rail hub, Michigan Central Station instead became a monument to a future that never arrived. Poor planning and the city’s long industrial decline led to its closing in 1988, and for decades the Beaux-Arts tower stood as Detroit’s most photographed symbol of decline — its waiting hall stripped bare, its windows shattered, its marble hauled off piece by piece. It found a strange second life on camera anyway, appearing in Eminem’s 8 Mile and countless music videos, before a full restoration eventually returned it to public use — proof that even the most iconic ruins can be rewritten.

Frozen Mid-Voyage: The Mar Sem Fim, Antarctica

The capsized hull of the Mar Sem Fim, a Brazilian research yacht abandoned and frozen into pack ice near Ardley Cove, Antarctica, its rusted keel exposed above the dark water. — The Mar Sem Fim, shipwrecked near Ardley Cove, Antarctica.

Some abandonments happen slowly, over generations. This one happened in a single storm. The Mar Sem Fim, a Brazilian yacht carrying a documentary crew, was caught by violent winds near Ardley Cove and forced into open water, where seawater froze over the hull, cracked it, and sent the vessel down. What’s left is one of the strangest ghost ships anywhere — a wreck locked in ice rather than swallowed by it, salvaged since but still one of the coldest, loneliest abandoned-places images on record.

Snow on Timber: Abandoned Wooden Houses, Russia

Snow dusts the collapsing timber walls and sagging roofline of an abandoned wooden house in rural Russia, standing alone in a bare birch landscape. — An abandoned wooden house in rural Russia.

Across rural Russia, entire villages of hand-built wooden houses sit empty as younger generations move to the cities their grandparents left the countryside to reach. There’s rarely a single dramatic reason for these abandonments — just decades of quiet emigration, one household at a time, until only the structures remain: roofs bowing under snow load, carved window frames still intact, a kind of vernacular architecture disappearing without ceremony.

The City Time Forgot, Underwater: Shicheng, China

Divers explore the eerily intact stone archways and carved facades of Shicheng, the submerged Lion City beneath Qiandao Lake in China, lit by shafts of green underwater light. — Shicheng, the “Lion City,” submerged beneath Qiandao Lake, China.

Most abandoned places decay in open air. Shicheng was deliberately drowned. Built more than 1,300 years ago in China’s Zhejiang province, the city — nicknamed Lion City for the mountain it sat beneath — was flooded in 1959 to make way for the Xin’an River Hydropower Station. What could have been lost to demolition instead became remarkably preserved: the water sealed the stone archways, carved lions, and memorial arches away from wind, rain, and time, leaving a fully intact Ming- and Qing-dynasty city visible today only to divers.

The Subway Stop Beneath City Hall, New York City

The ornate, vaulted tile ceilings and brass chandeliers of the abandoned City Hall subway station in New York City, its curved platform empty since the station's 1945 closure. — The disused City Hall subway station, New York City.

Some abandoned places were never meant to be forgotten — they were simply too beautiful for their own practicality. The City Hall station, opened in 1904 as the showpiece of New York’s first subway line, was fitted with vaulted Guastavino tile ceilings, brass chandeliers, and skylights, all wrapped around a dramatically curved platform. That same curve made it unworkable for longer, modern trains, and nearby stops left it chronically underused. It closed in 1945 and has stayed sealed ever since, glimpsed today only by riders on the 6 train who stay on board past Brooklyn Bridge, or by the lucky few on an occasional guided tour.

Battleship Island: Hashima, Japan

Crumbling concrete apartment blocks crowd the seawalls of Hashima Island, Japan's abandoned 'Battleship Island,' once a densely populated coal-mining settlement now stripped bare by wind and salt air. — Hashima Island, Japan — nicknamed “Battleship Island” for its silhouette.

Collapsed stairwells and exposed rebar thread through the gutted interior of a ruined high-rise apartment block on Hashima Island, Japan, left untouched since the island's sudden 1974 evacuation. — Hashima Island, Japan — nicknamed “Battleship Island” for its silhouette.

From the late 1800s until 1974, Hashima existed for one reason: undersea coal. Workers and their families packed the tiny island so densely that it briefly held the highest population density ever recorded on Earth, ringed by concrete seawalls that gave it its nickname — Battleship Island. When Japan pivoted from coal to petroleum, the mine closed and the island was evacuated almost overnight, leaving apartment blocks, a school, and a hospital exactly as they were left. Half a century of typhoons later, it stands as one of the starkest ghost towns anywhere — a company town with no company left.

Houses From Another World: San Zhi, Taiwan

Rows of futuristic, pod-shaped 'UFO houses' stand abandoned and overgrown at the former San Zhi resort in Taiwan, their curved windows and pastel shells weathered before the complex was ultimately demolished. — The San Zhi “UFO houses,” Taiwan — demolished in 2010.

Few abandoned places look as purely science-fictional as San Zhi. Conceived as a futuristic resort — partly aimed at U.S. military officers rotating out of postings in Asia — its pod-shaped houses were meant to signal a glamorous, space-age vacation future. Financial collapse and a string of fatal accidents during construction shut the project down in 1980, only a few years after ground broke, and the pods sat empty and rumored to be haunted for three decades before being demolished in 2010. What remains now is only in photographs — which makes this particular ruin, unlike most on this list, one you can no longer visit at all.

What draws us back to abandoned places, again and again, is that they’re never really about decay — they’re about scale. A saucer-shaped monument on a Bulgarian mountainside and a fairy-tale castle in the Japanese hills are both proof of how much ambition, money, and belief can pour into a place before time quietly takes it back. If you want to see that same instinct pointed forward instead of backward — architects re-imagining ruins as livable spaces rather than photographing what’s left of them — Ruins Reinvisioned is worth a look. And if this kind of image stayed with you, our guide to the world’s most breathtaking photography goes even further into the places and moments that photographers travel the world to find.