7 Abandoned Towns With Stories Stranger Than Their Ruins

Everyone left. The buildings stayed.

What does it take to empty an entire town?

For these places, the answer involved underground fires, volcanoes, collapsing ground, and disasters nobody could reverse.

Here are seven towns everyone had to leave behind.

#7 Craco, Italy

Craco looks like a medieval town someone stopped using halfway through the day.

Built along a steep ridge in southern Italy, it had stone homes, churches, narrow streets, and a tower overlooking the surrounding valleys. People had lived there for centuries, despite the unstable clay beneath much of the town.

In 1963, that instability finally became impossible to ignore. A major landslide damaged buildings and forced residents to begin relocating to a newer settlement below. Flooding in 1972 and an earthquake in 1980 made any serious return even less likely.

Craco Vecchia was left behind.

The town did not collapse completely. That is part of what makes it so striking. Houses still cling to the hillside. Empty windows face streets that no longer lead anyone home. From a distance, it almost looks inhabited.

Filmmakers eventually started using Craco as a location, which makes sense. The place requires very little assistance from a set designer.

But the real story is less cinematic. Residents did not mysteriously vanish, and Craco was not abandoned overnight. Families were gradually forced away from homes their relatives had occupied for generations because the ground beneath them could no longer be trusted.

The ruins are impressive. Knowing that the former residents could still see their old town above them makes the view considerably harder to romanticize.

#6 Hashima Island, Japan

Hashima Island once held far more people than its size had any reasonable business holding.

Located off the coast of Nagasaki, the small island was developed around an undersea coal mine operated by Mitsubishi. Seawalls surrounded it, while concrete apartment blocks rose upward because there was nowhere else to build.

Residents had schools, shops, public baths, a hospital, and entertainment. From the water, the packed buildings and high walls made Hashima resemble a warship, earning it the nickname Gunkanjima, or Battleship Island.

Life there was not equally comfortable for everyone. During Japan’s wartime period, Korean and other laborers were brought to mining sites including Hashima under coercive conditions. Many worked in dangerous tunnels deep beneath the sea. That history remains a serious source of dispute over how the island is remembered today.

After the war, Hashima continued operating as a company town. Families lived in tightly packed apartments while miners descended into shafts extending far below the ocean floor.

Then Japan’s energy priorities changed. Petroleum increasingly replaced coal, and the Hashima mine closed in 1974.

Within months, the residents were gone.

Apartments were emptied. Classrooms were abandoned. Furniture, appliances, and personal belongings remained inside buildings now exposed to saltwater, storms, and decades of neglect.

The island still looks remarkably complete from a distance. Up close, staircases lead into damaged rooms and entire apartment blocks are slowly crumbling.

Hashima did not disappear because of one sudden disaster. It emptied because the industry supporting every part of life there stopped, and an entire community lost its reason to exist almost immediately.

#5 Kolmanskop, Namibia

Kolmanskop was built because a railway worker noticed something shining in the desert sand.

In 1908, Zacharias Lewala found a diamond while clearing railway tracks near Lüderitz in what was then German South West Africa. He showed it to his supervisor, August Stauch, and word of the discovery spread quickly.

A diamond rush followed.

Within a few years, an extravagant mining town had appeared in the Namib Desert. Kolmanskop had large homes, a hospital, a school, a theater, a ballroom, an ice factory, and even a casino. Fresh water was transported across the desert while wealthy residents enjoyed comforts that felt wildly out of place among the surrounding dunes.

That wealth came with a much darker reality. The German colonial authorities declared the diamond region a restricted zone, displacing local communities and tightly controlling access. African laborers worked under harsh and often coercive conditions while the profits flowed mainly to colonial companies and European residents.

The diamonds eventually became harder to find. Richer deposits discovered farther south drew mining operations away, and families began leaving Kolmanskop behind.

By 1956, the town was empty.

The desert moved in almost immediately. Sand poured through broken windows, climbed staircases, and filled rooms that had once hosted some of the wealthiest people in the region. Today, entire doorways open onto dunes, and brightly painted walls rise from floors buried several feet deep.

Kolmanskop began with diamonds scattered in the sand. Now the sand is taking back everything the diamonds paid for.

#4 Centralia, Pennsylvania

Centralia did not disappear because the mine closed. It disappeared because the mine caught fire and never stopped burning.

The trouble began in 1962, when a fire at a local disposal site spread into an abandoned network of coal mines beneath the Pennsylvania town. Attempts were made to contain it, but the fire continued moving through the underground seams.

For years, life carried on above it.

Smoke and toxic gases escaped through cracks in the ground. Roads became unusually warm. Residents reported fumes entering their homes, while officials argued over the severity of the danger and who should pay to fix it.

Then the ground nearly swallowed a child.

In 1981, twelve-year-old Todd Domboski was walking through a backyard when a sinkhole suddenly opened beneath him. He managed to grab onto an exposed tree root while his cousin pulled him to safety. The hole was later found to be roughly 150 feet deep and filled with dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.

After that, treating the fire as a minor local inconvenience became considerably harder.

The federal government eventually approved millions of dollars to relocate Centralia’s residents. Most accepted buyouts and left during the 1980s. Pennsylvania claimed the remaining properties through eminent domain in 1992, although a small number of residents fought for years to stay in their homes.

Much of the town was demolished. Its ZIP code was discontinued, streets ended beside empty lots, and sections of damaged highway were closed as the ground beneath them shifted.

The mine fire is still burning. Estimates suggest enough coal remains underground to keep it going for generations.

Centralia is not completely empty, but almost everything that once made it a town is gone. A handful of residents remain among overgrown streets and scattered buildings while the fire continues somewhere below them, largely unseen.

There was no single day when everyone fled. Centralia simply became less livable year after year, until most of the town had vanished from the surface while the reason for its disappearance kept burning underneath.

#3 San Juan Parangaricutiro, Mexico

San Juan Parangaricutiro was not built beside a volcano. The volcano appeared beside San Juan Parangaricutiro.

On February 20, 1943, farmer Dionisio Pulido noticed the ground opening in one of his cornfields in Michoacán, Mexico. Smoke, ash, and stones began rising from the crack. By the end of the day, a volcanic cone was already forming.

It kept growing.

The newly born Parícutin volcano reached roughly 30 meters within its first day and continued expanding over the following months. Scientists arrived to document it, giving researchers a rare opportunity to study a volcano through its entire life cycle.

For the local Purépecha communities, it was less of a scientific opportunity and more of a disaster unfolding in slow motion.

Ash covered crops and contaminated water supplies. Lava destroyed the nearby village of Parícutin before advancing toward the larger town of San Juan Parangaricutiro. Residents watched the landscape around their homes become increasingly unrecognizable.

About a year and a half after the eruption began, the people of San Juan finally left. They departed together in a procession, carrying the image of their patron saint as they abandoned the town their families had occupied for generations.

They later established Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro and rebuilt their community elsewhere.

The original town was swallowed beneath as much as 50 feet of hardened lava. Homes, streets, and farmland disappeared.

Most of the church went with them.

Two towers and part of the sanctuary remained visible above the black volcanic rock, creating one of the strangest surviving landmarks in Mexico. Visitors can still cross the uneven lava field and reach the ruins, where the old church rises from the place where the town once stood.

Parícutin continued erupting until 1952 and then went quiet.

The volcano had lasted only nine years. That was enough time to create a mountain, erase two communities, and leave a church standing in the middle of solidified lava.

#2 Plymouth, Montserrat

Plymouth was the capital of Montserrat. Then a volcano buried most of it beneath ash, rock, and hardened mud.

The Soufrière Hills volcano began erupting in July 1995 after centuries of quiet. Earthquakes had already unsettled the island, but the first explosions made the danger impossible to dismiss. Ash darkened the sky over Plymouth, and residents were ordered to evacuate.

Some returned when the immediate threat appeared to ease. Then the volcano forced them out again.

A growing lava dome made the eruptions increasingly dangerous. Pyroclastic flows, fast-moving clouds of superheated gas, ash, and rock, began traveling down the volcano’s slopes toward populated areas.

In April 1996, Plymouth and much of southern Montserrat were evacuated for the final time.

The worst loss of life came on June 25, 1997, when a major dome collapse sent pyroclastic flows across several villages. Nineteen people were killed. Later that year, additional flows and eruptions burned buildings, destroyed the island’s airport, and pushed farther into Plymouth.

By then, the capital was finished.

Government offices, hotels, churches, homes, and streets disappeared beneath layers of volcanic debris. In some areas, only the upper floors of buildings and sections of rooftops remained visible.

The disaster changed far more than the island’s appearance. Thousands of residents left Montserrat, many relocating to Britain or other Caribbean islands. Families lost homes, businesses, and communities that could not simply be rebuilt a few miles away.

Plymouth now sits inside an exclusion zone covering much of southern Montserrat. From approved viewpoints and guided boat tours, visitors can see the remains of the city stretching toward the volcano that destroyed it.

Unlike many abandoned towns, Plymouth was not slowly emptied by a failing industry or changing economy. It was a functioning Caribbean capital until the land above it became uninhabitable.

The city is still there. Most of it is simply buried.

#1 Pripyat, Ukraine

Pripyat was built for the future.

Founded in 1970, the Soviet city housed workers from the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and their families. It had modern apartment blocks, schools, shops, restaurants, a hospital, sports facilities, and an amusement park waiting to open for the May Day celebrations.

Nearly 50,000 people lived there.

At 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, Reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl exploded during a late-night safety test. The blast tore through the reactor building and released enormous amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Residents of Pripyat were not immediately told to leave.

Children went outside. Weddings continued. People watched the strange glow and smoke rising above the power plant without understanding that invisible contamination was spreading through their city.

The evacuation finally began on the afternoon of April 27, roughly 36 hours after the explosion. A long convoy of buses arrived, and residents were told to bring identification, a small amount of food, and only essential belongings.

Officials said they would be gone for about three days.

Most never returned.

Apartments were left with furniture, photographs, toys, and dishes still inside. Classrooms held abandoned books. The amusement park’s yellow Ferris wheel remained standing above the empty streets, becoming one of the most recognizable images of the disaster.

Pripyat was later enclosed within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Radiation, weather, looting, and decades without maintenance slowly damaged what remained. Trees pushed through pavement, buildings deteriorated, and wildlife moved into areas once occupied by thousands of people.

The city was not destroyed by the initial explosion. That is what makes it so unsettling. Pripyat remained almost entirely intact while becoming unsafe for the people who had built their lives there.

Every town on this list was abandoned after something changed beneath it, around it, or inside the industry keeping it alive. Pripyat stands at number one because an entire modern city was emptied in a single afternoon, with residents expecting to return before the week was over.

Sources & image credits

Sources: Italia.it: Craco · UNESCO: Hashima Island · Geological Survey of Namibia: Kolmanskop · Pennsylvania DEP: Centralia Mine Fire · Smithsonian: Parícutin Volcano · Montserrat Volcano Observatory: The Soufrière Hills Eruption · U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Pripyat Evacuation

Image credits: Hashima Island photograph by kntrty, CC BY 2.0 · Kolmanskop photograph by Ralf Hüsges, CC BY 4.0. Photographs were cropped and incorporated into ListImmerse historical reconstructions.