Another attraction of these islands of abandonment is in being given a chance to see what the world would look like without us. It can surprise us just how quickly trees encroach on buildings or plant life erupts through tarmac. When Varosha was thriving, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were among its visitors. For decades afterwards, the beach was free from people \u2013 and that opened up new opportunities. Without human life, nature could start reclaiming the area. In Varosha, rare sea turtles returned to the empty beach to lay their eggs. During Covid<\/a> we saw some of this reclamation, when wild goats wandered into Llandudno. Or, in the absence of tourist traffic, how clear the water in Venice\u2019s canals became.<\/p>\n As teenagers in the 1980s, my sister and I climbed through the fence around Battersea Power Station, decommissioned a few years earlier. Scrambling around the ruins of the railway sidings and dilapidated buildings, we were allowed the space to imagine what this deserted expanse had once been like.\u00a0<\/p>\n In reissuing the book, we\u2019ve had a chance to update the text. So what\u2019s changed since 2016? Some places that were lying abandoned 10 years ago have now been torn down. Others, though, have been given a new purpose. The mighty might fall, but sometimes they\u2019re resurrected. A long-unused big wheel in Japan has been dismantled, rebuilt and put back into use in Vietnam. <\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n A lighthouse in Denmark has been transported further inland, away from the collapsing shoreline. The site of a shopping mall in Akron, Ohio is still in the retail business, but times change and it\u2019s now an Amazon distribution centre.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Canfranc Station never saw the passenger numbers for which it had been designed. In fact, in under a decade as a museum curiosity it received more visitors than it ever had passengers. Perhaps its time as a museum piece was its heyday? Or perhaps not. In 2023, it reopened as a luxury hotel.\u00a0<\/p>\n Varosha, too, is opening up \u2013 at least if you have a Turkish passport. And today Battersea Power Station is a retail and residential hub. Busy, clean and useful, certainly \u2013 and with many of its art deco features still beautiful. But some things are lost. A space to imagine and a sense of mystery. I\u2019ll miss those.<\/p>\n Read more from Kieron Connolly<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Abandoned Places by Kieron Connolly is out now (Amber Books<\/a>, \u00a319.99).<\/strong><\/p>\n Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n We don\u2019t follow headlines. We lead with the truth.<\/strong>\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n Every week, Big Issue digs deeper \u2013 telling stories others don\u2019t. We\u2019re free to be bold, to speak up for those society overlooks and to put people at the heart of everything.<\/p>\n If you value journalism that entertains and cuts through the noise you can help us to keep it going.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Poverty-Zero-banners_article-800x250-1.png\")
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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When we abandon places, something is lost, but something is gained too. As journalist Murray Kempton wrote: \u2018Nothing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241745,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[63594,3444,77,7056,2348,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-241744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-author-feature","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-from-the-magazine","12":"tag-history","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114804264310879788","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}