13 Hauntingly Beautiful Abandoned Palaces From Around the World
Before they were abandoned mansions, the world’s most opulent palaces and manors were built to be enjoyed generation after generation. But some luxurious homes have not fulfilled that destiny due to war, economic changes, or natural disasters. In the new book Abandoned Palaces (Amber Books Ltd., $30), author and historian Michael Kerrigan explores more than 100 of these once spectacular structures that have turned into ruins. For Kerrigan, the sites in the book are just as important as pristine abandoned mansions. “A beautifully preserved and managed stately home is a fascinating and imaginatively moving survival of the past into the present, but it doesn’t have anything to say to us about mortality or time—indeed, at an emotional level at least, it flatly contradicts all we know,” he says. The book showcases everything from a castle in Belgium to Russian estates, each hauntingly beautiful and with its own interesting history. “The key thing is the way a good ruin (and in this respect, at least, a grand palace outpunches a tumbledown hovel or industrial plant: The bigger and more magnificent they are, the harder they fall) dramatizes the ravaging effects of time,” Kerrigan says. Here, visit many intriguing ruins featured in Abandoned Palaces, as well as several more selected by AD.
Photo: Getty Images/Dave Porter1/14Bowes Castle (County Durham, England)
Built between 1171 and 1187, Bowes Castle is a medieval palace in North East England. The stone castle was constructed on the grounds of a former Roman fort by King Henry II, who saw it as an important stronghold against a Scottish invasion. The castle changed hands several times before it returned to the Crown in 1471 and was partly dismantled in the 17th century. The ruins of the once three-story keep of Bowes Castle stand today, surrounded by a moat on two sides, and can be visited for free during daylight hours.
Photo: Rafal Cichawa/Shutterstock2/14Sans Souci (Milot, Haiti)
This palace was built by King Henri Cristophe, a former slave who was elected president of Haiti in 1807 and declared himself king in 1811. “The great imperial/royal/papal palaces of the past are all of course in their way creations of vanity, vast and portentous, but their place in the historical mainstream seems to confer a certain air of legitimacy on them. They represent historical ‘old money’, if you like,” says Kerrigan. "In compiling Abandoned Palaces, we were drawn more to the try-hard ambitions of ‘new-money’ characters. Their crumbling palaces underline the ironies and ambiguities that much more starkly. Henri Christophe’s rise, from rags to riches but from chattel slavery to tyrannical power, and even a royalty of sorts, was that much more dramatic even than a U.S. plutocrat’s. Sans Souci is staggering in its grandiosity.” The palace was abandoned after it was damaged by an earthquake in 1842.
Photo: Lev Levin/Shutterstock3/14Havré Castle (Mons, Belgium)
This medieval castle was attacked multiple times in 1578 and was restored in the 17th century. “Like so many other such strongholds, in more modern, peaceful times (or at least times in which when war came, old-fashioned fortifications weren’t going to be of all that much help), it was made over into something more château-like—ornamental on the outside, swanky and supercomfortable within,” says Kerrigan. “It’s this latter function I feel we’re commemorating here, enjoying (albeit in a poignant way) the ironies of its presentation now. It’s not just the dereliction per se but the architectural indignities: the corrugated-iron roof on what might almost be a modern warehouse building (right); the breeze-block walling and steel guttering (left).”
Photo: Lalas Stock/Shutterstock4/14Pidhirtsi Palace (Pidhirtsi, Ukraine)
Pidhirtsi Palace was built in the 1630s for Stanislaw Koniecpolski, a Polish military commander. The home was looted and damaged during World War I, and later became a sanatorium until a fire ravaged it in 1956. “Pidhirtsi Palace especially intrigues me as a monument to what’s in some ways been a forgotten history—full of wars and dynastic rivalries and revolutions and freedom struggles we’ve lost sight of,” says Kerrigan. “I think that from a Western perspective, though, the Iron Curtain of the Cold War years didn’t just block out our view of Eastern Europe in what was then its present but to a considerable extent occluded our perspectives on the region’s past.”
Photo: Matt Grant/Shutterstock5/14Abandoned mansion (Fanling, New Territories East, Hong Kong)
This mansion was built in the town of Fanling, which is close to the Hong Kong–China border and was a base from customs and administrative officials. Kerrigan notes that the destination has become popular with tourists interested in the era of British Imperialism. “I’m at best ambivalent about the empire nostalgia that’s so big in Britain, but the imperial spirit was central to the country’s self-image for a very long time,” he says. From that point of view, there’s something beautifully emblematic in this scene of embattled European elegance under siege from an exuberant tropical rain forest environment: the ‘white man’s burden’, summed up beautifully. Britain’s presence in Hong Kong was of course an important historical reality for its ‘natives’ too. From their point of view, it might offer a range of very different readings.”
Photo: Waj/Shutterstock6/14Jahangir Mahal (Orchha, Tikamgarh, Madhya Pradesh, India)
This magnificent complex was built around 1610 for the visit of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. “This is another ‘real’ palace, its status ratified by history, albeit a history (the Mughal era) that has come to seem especially remote,” says Kerrigan. “There’s no obvious danger of Mughal history dropping out of sight altogether in India. Even so, the country’s image of itself as a modern (and for the most part Hindu-dominated) state has meant Muslims finding themselves and their culture being marginalized. So the self-confidence and pomp this monument appears to possess in such abundance, suddenly seems much more problematic, its prestige contested and conditional somehow.”
Photo: Irimaxim/Dreamstime7/14Duckett’s Grove (Carlow, Ireland)
This 1830 structure is part of an estate that at one time stretched across five counties in Ireland. Kerrigan notes that Duckett’s Grove showcases the wealth and power of the Anglo-Irish Ascendency, which left a major mark on the county’s landscape and architecture. The Duckett dynasty died out in the early 1900s and the building was used in 1921 as a base of the local unit of the IRA.
Photo: Alexey Grachev/Shutterstock8/14Reinhardsbrunn Castle (Friedrichroda, Thuringia, Germany)
Duke Ernest I of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha rebuilt the structure, which had previously been an abbey and an administrative building, as an opulent retreat in 1827. It was later visited by Queen Victoria, who married Ernest’s son Prince Albert. “His father had actually had his estate developed before she came here, in an explicitly ‘English’ style,” says Kerrigan. “So this place, I feel, takes us to the very heart of the extremely (and often counterintuitively) close and intricate mesh of relations between the heads of state of Europe at this time.”
Photo: Vadim Fedotov/Shutterstock9/14Dacha Kvitko (Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia)
Located by the Black Sea, this complex was built as Sochi was just starting to become a resort destination. The aesthetic of the town shifted in the Soviet era, when barracks-like hotels were constructed. “This image tickled me because it represented such a different Sochi, with such a different tone,” Kerrigan says. “It seems to me another esprit: It has a real festive feel.”
Photo: Jon Ingall/Shutterstock10/14Grand Hôtel de la Forêt (Vizzavona, Corsica, France)
The town of Vizzavona was created to house engineers and laborers building a nearby rail tunnel and then transformed into a vacation spot once the project was completed. This hotel was built in 1893, and was once a favorite of English travelers. For Kerrigan, the town is an example of how thriving places can suddenly become abandoned. “This was the middle of nowhere for many years; then, when the railway was built to make Corsica ‘somewhere,’ the settlement sprang up to serve its engineers and laborers,” he says. “Then, finding themselves with a new village in the forest on their hands, they thought they might as well make it work for them by establishing a new resort here with its own magnificent hotel. And were triumphantly successful. Till, a few generations later, it all declined, and this was the middle of nowhere once again.”
Photo: Chris Gorman/Getty Images11/14Hamilton Palace (East Sussex, England)
Though Hamilton Palace looks like it could have hosted royalty in 1785, construction of the neoclassical estate actually began in 1985. The massive property in the town of Uckfield in East Sussex was designed by architect Anthony Browne for British businessman Nicholas van Hoogstraten, who spent £40 million on the palace by 2006. The property, which is larger than Buckingham Palace, was meant to showcase van Hoogstraten’s art collection and also included a gold-topped mausoleum. Following a falling out between architect and client and legal troubles for van Hoogstraten, the project was never finished and has reportedly been abandoned, earning it the nickname The Ghost House of Sussex from locals.
Photo: Getty Images12/14Ali Pacha Jumblatt Palace (Baadarâne, Lebanon)
Also known as the Serai of Baadarâne, the Palace of Ali Pacha Jumblatt is located in the historic Chouf region of Lebanon. The palace was built in the 18th century by Kurdish tribal leader and governor of Aleppo, Ali Pacha Jumblatt (or in Kurdish, Ali Janbulad). The Ottoman-era palace is now partially dilapidated, but visitors can stroll the grounds and take in the architecture.
Photo: Christian Balate/Shutterstock13/14Gordejuela Water Elevator (Los Realejos, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain)
“This one was so crazy we simply couldn’t leave it out of the book Abandoned Palaces,” says Kerrigan of this water elevator, which pumped fresh water from the Gordejuela Springs to a hillside reservoir, where it was then distributed to the island’s banana plantations. “I think [what] most appealed to me about this extraordinary construction, though, is that it’s an esprit, a completely gratuitous expression of creativity and humor, where something completely functional would so obviously have done,” he says. The water elevator opened in 1904 and closed 15 years later when local products were priced out by Caribbean fruit.
