Abandoned places

The monastic ruins of Tintern Abbey rest on the banks of the Wye in Wales. Like the abbey of Villers-la-Ville in Belgium, Tintern Abbey was populated by monks of the Cistercian Order.

In Peenemünde, Germany, the Nazi rocket testing center, a coal-fired power plant was established in 1939 to enable the energy-intensive production of liquid oxygen - the fuel for the V2 rocket.

The cobblestone section from Wallers to Hélesmes plays a starring role every year in Paris-Roubaix. But until a hundred years ago, wagons packed with coal thundered above the cobblestone strip.

After the First World War, the German army left dozens of bunkers behind in the French Illies, a village about 20 kilometers west of Lille.

The Eede-Aardenburg air watchtower is one of the 276 lookout posts built in the Netherlands during the Cold War.

At the beginning of October 1944, the British Air Force bombed the sea dike at Ritthem in the Netherlands. The aim was to flood Walcheren and force away the German army.

The German army spared no expense to make the eleven bunkers of Stützpunkt Groede resemble a cosy Dutch village.