The 7 Most Amazing Abandoned Places on Earth

In 79 A.D., the sky above Pompeii turned black. A storm of ash and fire rained down, burying an entire Roman city within a day. Families were trapped in their homes as superheated ash swept through the city. Two thousand years later, you can still walk those streets. And Pompeii is just the beginning. From temples lost in the jungle to islands evacuated overnight, here are seven of the most amazing abandoned places on Earth. When the eruption ended, Pompeii was gone. But what's most astonishing is not the destruction. It's what the ash left behind. The city was sealed like a tomb. In the bakeries, archaeologists found loaves of bread In the streets, chariot tracks remain carved into the stone roads. And on the walls of houses, frescoes still glow with color. Scenes of gods, heroes, and everyday banquets. But the most haunting discovery is the people themselves. In the 19th century, archaeologists realized that as bodies decayed, they left empty cavities in the hardened ash. By filling those spaces with plaster, they revealed the final shapes of Pompeii's citizens. Mothers clutching their children. Men shielding their faces. Even dogs still chained outside doorways. These plaster casts aren't statues. They are the last moments of real lives. Pompeii is more than a ruin. It's the closest thing we have to stepping into the daily life of ancient Rome. But it isn't the only city to vanish. Only to be rediscovered centuries later. Deep in the deserts of Jordan lies a place nicknamed the Red Rose City. More than 2,000 years old. Petra. At its height, Petra was a bustling trade hub. A crossroads where caravans carried spices, silk, and incense across the ancient world. But what set Petra apart was how it was built. Its people carved temples and tombs straight into the rose-colored cliffs. For centuries, the city thrived until shifting trade routes and a series of earthquakes brought it to ruin. By the Middle Ages, Petra was abandoned. It disappeared from maps and from memory. To the outside world, Petra no longer existed. It wasn't until 1812 that a Swiss explorer disguised as an Arab traveler was led by local guides through a narrow gorge and stood before Petra's most famous monument. The treasury. Today, you can walk that same path. The treasury rises almost 40 meters high. Its facade is carved with impossible precision into the cliffs. And beyond it, Greater Petra stretches across more than 100 square miles. A lost city, hidden in plain sight. Built in the 15th century, Machu Picchu clings to the spine of the Andes at nearly 8,000 feet above sea level. Terraces step down the mountainside, stone walls rise without mortar, and temples align perfectly with the sun at solstice. For the Incas, it may have been a royal estate or a sacred retreat. No one is entirely certain. What we do know is that when the Spanish conquest spread through Peru, Machu Picchu was abandoned. The jungle crept in and the citadel vanished from memory. For centuries, only local farmers knew of its existence. In 1911, American explorer Hiram Bingham followed the guidance of locals to Machu Picchu and brought the city back to the world's attention. Today, thousands of visitors climb the winding paths each year to stand among its temples, gaze across the Aruba Valley and wonder, why here and why it was left behind? Machu Picchu is not alone. Across the world, another empire rose and fell, leaving behind a city so vast, it rivaled any capital on earth until the jungle swallowed it whole. From the 9th to the 15th centuries, Angkor was the heart of the Khmer Empire, a city of temples, palaces and reservoirs spread across more than 400 square kilometers. At its peak, Angkor may have been home to a million people, one of the largest cities on earth at the time. But beginning in the 1400s, the empire collapsed. Historians believe drought and shifting monsoons weakened the city while invading armies dealt the final blow. And as the people left, the jungle crept in. For centuries, Angkor lay abandoned. Locals knew of it, but to much of the outside world, it was a legend. When explorers arrived in the 19th century, they could scarcely believe what they found. Entire stone temples swallowed by roots yet still standing. Today, Angkor Wat is the most famous of its temples. Its towers rise beautifully among the trees, but across the jungle, countless other ruins also remain. Each one is a piece of a forgotten empire. Angkor shows us how an empire can fade slowly, its temples swallowed up by the jungle over centuries. But some places are quiet for an entirely different reason. People are simply too afraid to go. Poveglia is a small, unremarkable patch of land in the Venetian Lagoon. For a long time, nobody went in, and those who had died there were left to rot. You see, when plague swept through Venice, the sick were sent here in their thousands. For many, it was a one-way journey. Fires burned day and night as bodies were piled high in mass graves. Centuries later, the island became home to an asylum. Stories tell of cruel experiments and patients who claimed to hear voices in the walls. By the mid-20th century, Poveglia was abandoned for good, left to crumble into ruin, and today, Poveglia remains off-limits. Local fishermen steer clear, saying the soil itself is mixed with human ash. Legends call it the most haunted island in the world. Visitors who have stepped ashore speak of hearing strange whispers and shadows moving in the abandoned building. Whether cursed or simply abandoned, Poveglia carries a silence unlike any other, a silence born not of time, but of fear. In the heart of Sri Lanka, a single rock rises almost 200 meters above the jungle, a fortress in the clouds known as Sigiriya, the Lion Rock. Climb its slopes, and you'll pass through water gardens that still flow with ancient engineering. Narrow stairways head all the way to the top, the entrance guarded by the remnants of colossal lion's paws carved into the rock itself, and at the summit, the ruins of a vanished kingdom. According to a medieval Sri Lankan chronicle, this was the palace of King Kashyapa I, a ruler who seized the throne after murdering his own father. Fearing retribution, he built his stronghold here, suspended between the earth and the sky. It was a beautiful city of pleasure built from his paranoia, fountains, temples, and fortifications all in one. But here's the mystery. When Kashyapa died, the fortress was abandoned. Was Sigiriya merely the vanity of a tyrant? Or was the site already sacred, a monastery carved long before Kashyapa's time, claimed briefly by a king, and then returned to silence? Some myths speak of Sigiriya as more than a palace, a stairway to the heavens, a place where gods once walked. Stand there today with the jungle stretching endlessly below, and you can see why. It's a truly unique and eerie place with an incredible history. Across the ocean from Sigiriya, on the windswept plains of England, rises one of the most enduring mysteries of all, Stonehenge. Built 5,000 years ago, older than the pyramids, older than most of recorded history, massive stones, some weighing over 25 tons, were dragged from quarries miles away. But why? Some believe Stonehenge is a temple, a place of worship and ceremony. Others say it was a burial ground. Still, others see it as an ancient calendar. Its stones aligned perfectly with the summer and winter solstices. And yet, after centuries of study, its true purpose remains uncertain. A monument too vast to be a coincidence, and still to be fully explained. Visit at dawn near solstice and watch everything align. From there, you can make up your own mind as to what it all means. If you enjoyed this journey, subscribe to See It First for more explorations into the history and mysteries of our planet.