I Photographed Beautiful Abandoned Buildings in Italy

Every year I travel to and through Italy. At least twice. Once for holiday and once for exploring abandoned buildings. A lot of things in this country attract me to it which wants me to keep coming back. I can easily imagine myself living here one day. In October 2017 I will be taking Italian language classes. The first step in fulfilling my dream.

In this post I would like to share a couple of photos that I’ve taken in the past four years of exploring in Italy. While most people think about pizza, pasta, wine, espresso and sun when they think about Italy, I mostly think about the beautiful architecture of the abandoned buildings (when I’m not thinking about those other things). 

The people in Italy have always been very nice to me and I simply love the food of the country. Compared to where I live the wine is amazing and it’s at least half of the price that I would pay in a restaurant around here. The roads are, in general, quite good and the landscapes are amazing. Even the weather has treated me well every year. These are some extra reasons, besides the fact that the (abandoned) buildings are just beautiful, why Italy is my favourite country to explore.

One place was obviously harder to visit than the other. Most of these buildings were a walk in the park, everything was open and no-one was looking after it anymore. Other places were quite challenging to enter because of a tight entrance I had to squeeze myself into, climbing up to the 1st floor by using very rusty iron frames (while it was pouring rain) or homeless people living on the terrain. It has also happened that I simply couldn’t drive further on the road because it was in such a bad state.

 

 

In these photos I’ve tried to capture the beauty and the architecture of abandoned places in Italy. Places like these can be very old carrying lots of history with them, and often a lot of craftsmanship was involved into constructing or decorating the building. A lot of the buildings that I’ve seen in Italy have been decorated with beautiful paintings, drawings or fresco’s. The level of detail and quality of these don’t get a lot better. It is stunning to see, especially in an abandoned buildings. It just amazes me every time again. I can’t get enough of seeing them, even after photographing abandoned buildings in Italy for over 4 years. Every one is different. The churches and chapels in Italy all have a similar feeling when I’m standing inside them. It’s very calm and the construction looks alike, even though the buildings differ a lot in size.

The photos show you all sorts of abandonment. There is a typical old Italian car standing in a garage in an extremely good condition. An abandoned castle with a room so big and covered in so many details it took my breath away. A few beautiful abandoned churches. Part of a large cellar with huge wine barrels in them. The photo only shows 5 of them but the cellar had a couple of rooms and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were at least 30 wine barrels in there.

The photo of the abandoned house where I’m standing on the balcony (header image), overlooking the beautiful Italian landscape, is my personal favourite. The building is standing on the most amazing location and I can easily imagine myself living here. The photo of the abandoned train is rather unique in a way that the train is located on the top of a mountain, kind of in the middle of nowhere. I have no idea how it ever got there since the road leading towards it was quite narrow and it’s about 30 minutes away from a properly sized city. Then there is the photo where there are bones on the floor that seem to be taken out of the graves in front of the altar. Quite a creepy thought.

More photos of the beautiful abandoned places in Italy can be found below. In three weeks (late August 2017) I’ll be visiting Italy again for a 6-day trip shooting lots of new abandoned places. Next to that I’ll be hitting a few spots with beautiful a beautiful landscape or scenery. Can’t wait to show you the result of my trip.