Abandoned Places in Italy

Italy's abandoned places carry the weight of millennia of history, from ancient Roman ruins to Fascist-era architecture, from abandoned medieval hill towns to the industrial ruins of the post-war economic miracle. The country's extraordinary architectural heritage and its complex relationship with preservation and development have created a uniquely rich landscape of forgotten places.

The abandoned hill towns of southern Italy — the so-called paesi fantasma or ghost towns — represent one of the country's most poignant categories of abandonment. Craco in Basilicata, perched on a dramatic hilltop and abandoned after a series of landslides in the 1960s, has become one of Italy's most photographed abandoned places. Its medieval streets and crumbling buildings have served as the backdrop for numerous films, including Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Civita di Bagnoregio in Lazio, accessible only by a narrow footbridge and slowly eroding into the surrounding valley, is known as "the dying city" — its population has dwindled to fewer than 20 permanent residents.

Italy's Fascist-era architecture has left behind numerous abandoned structures that carry a complex historical weight. The EUR district in Rome, built by Mussolini for a world's fair that never took place due to World War II, contains numerous buildings that were completed but never fully occupied. The Colonia Elioterapica in Cesenatico, a children's summer camp built in the 1930s in a dramatic Rationalist style, stands abandoned on the Adriatic coast, its geometric forms slowly deteriorating.

The country's industrial heritage includes the abandoned steel mills and chemical plants of the post-war economic miracle. The Ilva steel plant in Taranto, once the largest steel producer in Europe, has been partially abandoned amid environmental controversies. The chemical plants of Porto Marghera near Venice, built on the lagoon's edge in the early twentieth century, represent one of Italy's most dramatic industrial landscapes — their towers and pipelines reflected in the waters of the lagoon. Italy's religious heritage includes numerous abandoned churches, monasteries, and convents, particularly in rural areas where declining populations have made maintenance impossible. The Abbazia di San Galgano in Tuscany, a Gothic abbey abandoned in the eighteenth century after its bell tower collapsed, stands roofless in the Tuscan countryside — its nave open to the sky, its floor carpeted with grass. The monastery of Santo Spirito in Palermo, abandoned after the suppression of religious orders in the nineteenth century, stands in the heart of the city, its cloister slowly deteriorating.