The Most Beautiful Abandoned Places in Europe
8 places in 4 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful abandoned places in Europe are Craco (Italy), Pyramiden (Norway) and Pentedattilo (Italy). The list covers 8 abandoned places in 4 countries. Italy has the most, with 4. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Europe's abandoned places tell of landslides, earthquakes, emigration and the end of industries. In the south, hilltop villages built for defence were left behind when the ground beneath them slid or shook, or when their people left for cities and the Americas. Elsewhere, mines and company towns emptied when the ore ran out or the economics changed. Left to time, they keep a strange beauty: houses intact but silent, machinery rusting against the sea, streets that still follow the old plan.
In southern Italy, Craco crowns a ridge in Basilicata, abandoned after a landslide in the 1960s and since used as a backdrop in many films. Pentedattilo in Calabria huddles beneath a rock shaped like an open hand with five fingers. In Sardinia, Porto Flavia is a mining port of the 1920s cut into a sea cliff, from which ore was loaded straight into ships through tunnels.
The north and east add their own stories. Pyramiden on Svalbard is a Soviet coal-mining town abandoned in 1998, with its houses, swimming pool and the northernmost statue of Lenin still in place. Corta Atalaya near Riotinto in Spain is a vast stepped open-pit mine, its walls stained in reds and ochres by minerals. In Greece, Anavatos on Chios is a stone village clinging to a cliff top, and Vatheia in the Mani is a cluster of tall stone tower houses on a hill above the sea.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Craco | Abandoned village | Italy | |
| 2 | Pyramiden | Ghost town | Norway | |
| 3 | Pentedattilo | Abandoned village | Italy | |
| 4 | Baia | Abandoned village | Italy | |
| 5 | Porto Flavia | Abandoned mine | Italy | |
| 6 | Corta Atalaya | Abandoned mine | Spain | |
| 7 | Anavatos | Abandoned village | Greece | |
| 8 | Vatheia | Abandoned village | Greece |
01 Craco
Italy40.379° N 16.440° E
Maurizio Moro5153 · CC BY-SA 4.0 The site is ancient: tombs of the 8th century BC have been found here, and the name appears in 1060 as Graculum. From the 12th century it was a feudal stronghold, and under Frederick II its tower held Lombard prisoners. The town prospered in later centuries, with four large palazzi and more than two thousand inhabitants at its peak in the 16th century. Its decline came from the ground itself.
Did you know? In 1861 Craco was taken by brigand bands led by Carmine Crocco.
02 Pyramiden
Norway78.656° N 16.325° E
Bjoertvedt · CC BY-SA 3.0 The settlement was founded by Sweden in 1910 for coal mining on Spitsbergen and sold to the Soviet Union in 1927; since then it has belonged to the state mining company Arktikugol. At its height in the 1950s it had about 2,500 inhabitants. Between 1955 and 1998 some nine million tonnes of coal were taken from its mines.
Did you know? Large letters above the abandoned mine still carry the Soviet slogan Peace to the World, written in Russian.
03 Pentedattilo
Italy · 20.7 km from Reggio Calabria37.954° N 15.761° E
Codas · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Greek name is not decoration. This corner of Calabria kept a Greek-speaking population for many centuries, and Pentedattilo lost its Greek dialect only in the late nineteenth century. After the Normans took it in the twelfth century it passed through a series of feudal families, and its most notorious night belongs to them.
Did you know? In 1589 the fief was confiscated for debts and sold at auction for 15,180 ducats to the Alberti family, together with the title of marquis.
04 Baia
Italy · 14.9 km from Naples40.817° N 14.070° E
Joseph Meyer · Public domain What makes Baia extraordinary today is that the ancient town survives on two levels. On the hillside, a terraced complex of villas and baths climbs above the modern harbour, with mosaics, stucco and vaulted halls still in place. 5 metres across, was the widest in the world until the Pantheon in Rome surpassed it, and it is often cited as the oldest surviving concrete dome.
Did you know? Volcanic ground movement has left much of the ancient town several metres underwater in the bay.
05 Porto Flavia
Italy39.336° N 8.408° E
noname · CC BY 3.0 The mines of Masua, in the Iglesiente district, produced zinc and lead, and in 1922 they were bought by the Belgian Vieille Montagne company.
Did you know? The upper gallery, where the electric ore train ran, lies 37 metres above sea level, more than twice the height of the lower conveyor tunnel.
06 Corta Atalaya
Spain37.703° N 6.603° W
Vtornet · CC BY-SA 4.0 The pit lies in the Iberian Pyrite Belt, a band of metal-rich sulphide deposits formed on an ancient sea floor some 300 to 350 million years ago. People have mined copper, silver and gold here for about 5,000 years: Tartessians and Iberians from around 3000 BC, followed by Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Visigoths and Moors.
Did you know? Ore trains left the pit through the Naya tunnel to join the Riotinto railway until 1984, after which lorries took over the haulage.
07 Anavatos
Ανάβατος Χίου
Greece · 10.7 km from Chios38.401° N 26.020° E
RomkeHoekstra · CC BY-SA 4.0 Local tradition holds that the village was founded in the middle Byzantine period by workers brought to Chios to build the monastery of Nea Moni; another account links it to the pirate raids that plagued the island's west coast. The first core was a fortified enclosure on the summit, the Kastro, and under Genoese rule the defences were strengthened and the village spread down the eastern slope.
Did you know? The top of the three-storey building holds a chapel dedicated to the Presentation of the Virgin.
08 Vatheia
Βάθεια Λακωνίας
Greece36.454° N 22.466° E
KASPAR · CC BY-SA 4.0 The towers are the architecture of a feud. The Mani was a land of powerful clans, and in the villages of its southern end families built upwards, turning their homes into towers. Vatheia is first recorded by a Venetian mission in 1571, had around twenty households in 1618 and about two hundred inhabitants by 1700.
Did you know? About 330 people lived here in 1829, compared with only a few dozen today.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful abandoned places in Europe?
- On our list, Craco (Italy) ranks first, followed by Pyramiden (Norway) and Pentedattilo (Italy).
- Which country has the most abandoned places in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from Italy (4), Greece (2) and Norway (1).
- Why was Craco abandoned?
- A landslide that began in 1963, worsened by works on sewers and water systems, forced most residents to leave for a new settlement in the valley. A flood in 1972 and an earthquake in 1980 completed the abandonment.
- Why is Pyramiden a ghost town?
- Pyramiden was a Soviet coal-mining settlement on Svalbard. Mining ended in 1998 and the last residents left the same year, leaving buildings, furniture and monuments largely as they were.
- What happened at Anavatos?
- During the Chios massacre of 1822, Ottoman troops attacked the village. According to tradition, many of its inhabitants threw themselves from the cliff rather than be captured, and the village never recovered.
- How many abandoned places are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 8 abandoned places in 4 countries. Italy has the most, with 4.