Ever seen a destination that’s been totally reclaimed by nature, leaving you in awe? That’s why there is a certain mystique to ghost towns, where boarded-up storefronts and eerily empty streets remain as a testament to a formerly bustling city’s bygone heyday. That uncanny feeling of wandering through abandoned villages has made for its own niche tourist appeal, with roundups and best-of lists curated specifically for those who love exploring the spooky vestiges of such areas.
The natural elements that overtake these towns in the absence of human residents add another layer of intrigue to the ghost town tourism pastime; sand dunes, water, and overgrown greenery can give an abandoned city the look of the reimagined locales in the History Channel’s popular 2008 thought-experiment docuseries, Life After People. The show sought to unpack what might happen in an unpeopled future—but without the constant hum of human life shaping an area in its image, a number of spots across the globe have already moved on from their more populated days. Read on for a list of places that have been reclaimed by nature.
A version of this article originally appeared in Architectural Digest.
