Abandoned places

Tucked away in the northern French town of Croix stands a bold statement in brick, steel, and marble: Villa Cavrois. This striking modernist mansion, completed in 1932, was the brainchild of famed architect Robert Mallet-Stevens.

Aircraft development in Germany gained momentum after Adolf Hitler came to power in early 1933.

Organisation Todt, Nazi Germany's construction company, sent an army of forced labourers to an old marl quarry in the Netherlands in the spring of 1944 to convert it into an aircraft engine maintenance site.

Three mysterious concrete structures stretch over a distance of hundreds of metres.

The unfinished concrete carcass of a ghost hotel has been receiving its first visitors since early 2025 after more than half a century of vacancy and decay.

L'ouvrage du Four-à-Chaux was one of the gros ouvrages or large artillery works of the French Maginot Line. Yet almost nothing of it can be seen above ground.

As if the Atlantic Wall defensive strongholds in the Ostend dunes were not enough, Nazi Germany erected a second line of defence in the hinterland.

At the Spanish amusement park Monte Igueldo, you can ride on the Scenic Railway, a nearly 100-year-old forerunner of the modern rollercoaster.

In 1973, the foundation stone of the nuclear power plant of the future was laid in Kalkar, Germany. However, power was never produced there. Where did it go wrong?

In 1990, a Sherman tank was parked at Balgerhoeke lock in Eeklo in honour of the Canadians who liberated the town from German occupation on 15 September 1944.