John Gimlette

The world’s best wrecks and ruins

Oliver Smith takes us on a tour of train graveyards, bunkers, ghost towns, crumbling palaces – and a 7,000-bedroom hotel in North Korea that never even opened

Sans Souci Palace, ‘the Versailles of the Caribbean’, built by Henri I of Haiti in 1810-13 [Alamy]

  • Atlas of Abandoned Places: A Journey Through the World’s Forgotten Wonders

    Oliver Smith

    Mitchell Beazley, pp. 224, £20

Already a subscriber? Log in

This article is for subscribers only

Get a free bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label when you subscribe to The Spectator for just £12 in our Black Friday sale

  • Free bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky, worth £30
  • Unlimited access to our website and app
  • Enjoy Spectator newsletters and podcasts
  • Explore our online archive, going back to 1828

Read next

Trending

Graeme Thomson

What a remarkably bad electric guitar player Bob Dylan is

From the magazine
Finally, a taste of the authentic Bob Dylan live experience. On the two previous occasions that I’ve seen Dylan, in the early 2000s and again two years ago, he was disappointingly well-behaved for a man with a reputation for operating a scorched-earth policy towards his catalogue. Once upon a time, seeing Dylan live was a

Also in Book Reviews

Also by John Gimlette

Latest

Comments

Black Friday sale: Get 10 weeks for just $1

Unlimited access to the The Spectator, online and via the app

Already a subscriber? Log in