Of the twenty abandoned cities chronicled on this list, none seems quite as spooky as Agdam. Once home to 150,000 Azerbaijanis, the city’s population is now officially zero, thanks to the ravages of the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Agdam was supposed to the capital of a new republic, but was instead destroyed by retreating Armenian soldiers in the waning days of the conflict. The residents who fled didn’t bother returning to rebuild, leaving a bombed-out husk of a city that would’ve made an excellent setting for the film version of The Road.
An Agdam travelogue can be found here, and an eerie photo set here. Kudos to whoever added this lone splash of color to the shattered landscape—without it, Agdam would be a good candidate for bleakest locale on the planet.
A Company Town’s Sudden Death // Jun 14, 2010 at 9:57 am
[…] created quite the obscure post-Soviet tourist destination, though—one roughly on par with the ravaged city of Agdam. Check out some contemporary photos and eyewitness accounts of the desolation here and […]
William // Jan 7, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Interesting list, but they left off the best! Gunkanjima, an island coal mine off Nagasaki was at one time (supposedly) the most densely populated place on earth. It was abandoned in 1974. Lots of stuff on the web. And don’t forget Vozrozhdeniye (anthrax) island, in what used to be the Aral sea…
The Greenless Island | Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner // Feb 11, 2011 at 10:03 am
[…] human settlements are a pet topic ’round these parts, so I couldn’t resist the urge to post about the Japanese […]