The Most Beautiful Abandoned Villages in Europe
5 places in 2 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful abandoned villages in Europe are Craco (Italy), Pentedattilo (Italy) and Baia (Italy). The list covers 5 abandoned villages in 2 countries. Italy has the most, with 3. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Southern Europe's empty villages were usually built for safety: on ridges, crags and promontories that kept them clear of raiders and malaria. The same sites made them vulnerable to landslides and earthquakes, and when emigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries thinned their populations, many were left standing in stone, roofs gone but streets and towers still in place. In Italy and Greece especially, these villages survive as complete silhouettes of the past.
Craco, in Basilicata, crowns a clay ridge with a Norman tower. Landslides forced its evacuation from 1963, and the 1980 Irpinia earthquake ended life there; since then the empty town has become a favourite film set. Pentedattilo, in Calabria, sits beneath a rock whose five points gave the village its Greek name, meaning "five fingers". An earthquake in 1783 began its decline, and the village stood empty for decades in the twentieth century.
Baia, on the Bay of Naples, is older and stranger: a luxury resort of the Roman elite whose villas slowly slipped below the sea as the volcanic ground of the Campi Flegrei sank. In Greece, Anavatos on Chios clings to a cliff where its inhabitants were massacred in 1822, during the War of Independence, while Vatheia in the Mani peninsula is a cluster of stone tower houses built by feuding clans above the sea.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Craco | Abandoned village | Italy | |
| 2 | Pentedattilo | Abandoned village | Italy | |
| 3 | Baia | Abandoned village | Italy | |
| 4 | Anavatos | Abandoned village | Greece | |
| 5 | 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. In 1963 a series of landslides, apparently triggered by new sewer and water works, forced the evacuation of the historic centre; the people resettled in the valley at Craco Peschiera. A flood in 1972 ended hopes of return, and after the Irpinia earthquake of 1980 the old town was abandoned completely.
Did you know? Greek settlers are believed to have lived on the site from around 540 BC.
02 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. On 16 April 1686, Bernardino Abenavoli, baron of nearby Montebello, whose engagement to Antonietta Alberti had been broken off in favour of another suitor, forced his way into the castle with armed men.
Did you know? The Dutch artist M. C. Escher stayed here in spring 1930 and made a series of prints of the village and its rock.
03 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. The "Temples" of Venus and Diana are likewise great domed bath halls, the first probably commissioned under Hadrian. Below the waterline lies the rest of the town.
Did you know? Ancient tradition named Baiae after Baius, the helmsman of Odysseus, said to be buried on this coast.
04 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. Inside the Kastro the houses lean against each other along narrow stepped and vaulted lanes; the two-storey houses, built of local limestone on bare rock without foundations, kept animals and stores below and the family above.
Did you know? The fortified Kastro on the summit covers only about 800 square metres, reached through a single gate in its wall.
05 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. When the English traveller William Martin Leake passed through in April 1805 on his way to Cape Matapan, his guides told him the village had been split into two warring factions for some forty years, a vendetta that had already cost around a hundred lives.
Did you know? The village counts around 70 houses, four churches and five olive mills packed onto its hilltop.
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 villages in Europe?
- On our list, Craco (Italy) ranks first, followed by Pentedattilo (Italy) and Baia (Italy).
- Which country has the most abandoned villages in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from Italy (3) and Greece (2).
- Why was Craco abandoned?
- A landslide forced the evacuation of Craco from 1963, as its clay ridge became unstable. The 1980 Irpinia earthquake damaged the remaining buildings and the old town was left empty.
- Why are the ruins of Baia underwater?
- Baia lies in the Campi Flegrei volcanic area, where the ground slowly rises and falls, a process called bradyseism. Over the centuries the Roman villas sank, and many now lie in an underwater archaeological park.
- What does the name Pentedattilo mean?
- It comes from Greek for "five fingers", after the rock formation shaped like a hand that towers over the village.
- How many abandoned villages are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 5 abandoned villages in 2 countries. Italy has the most, with 3.