27 Places That Were Tourist Gold Until Everyone Forgot They Existed

It all started a few days ago, when the user u/FrozenOppressor asked netizens in the AskReddit community to point out several tourist places that were once very popular, but are now largely forgotten or even abandoned.

The topic starter themselves suggested several such places: Bodie, California, Varosha, Cyprus, Belle Isle Amusement Park in Detroit, Hashima Island (Gunkanjima), Japan and Spreepark, Berlin.

People responded to the call, and as of now the thread has over 2.2K upvotes and nearly 1.1K different comments. And we, Bored Panda, have compiled a selection of the most interesting, in our opinion, such places.

The main reasons why certain cities or entire countries lose their tourist appeal, as always, are economics and politics. Often closely interconnected. For example, the resorts of Syria on the Mediterranean coast were once a real gem for tourists - however, today, for obvious reasons, travelers are better off not venturing there.

The same applies to several towns in Cyprus, which ended up in the demilitarized zone during the military conflict of 1974. A classic example is Varosha, once a tourist quarter of the city of Famagusta, which was willingly visited even by world celebrities of the sixties like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Raquel Welch and Brigitte Bardot.

Today Varosha has been closed to visitors for more than half a century; it has become a real "ghost town," and only a few desperate travelers or journalists, who from time to time receive permission to go there, publish photo reports about houses that have forever remained in the mid-seventies...

Many of the once-popular tourist destinations, however, are falling into decline due to competition, ill-considered management decisions, or economic crises. Some towns and places manage to find the right solutions, repurpose their activities for something else - and some remain on the sidelines of life, nostalgic about the lost greatness...

However, the only positive aspect of all this is that abandoned baths, hotels and castles sometimes look incredibly picturesque, so photographers from all over the world sometimes reveal the whole charm of the aesthetics of decline in their brilliant collections of images.

Well, some places that used to be truly popular among travelers are falling into decline due to the shift in the economic vector of development of entire regions. For example, if life was once in full swing in some areas - let's say, because the mining industry was developed there - then sooner or later they were overgrown with places for entertainment.

But time passed - mines or factories closed, money left like melt water, and people left with it. Accordingly, these tourist places were also closed, remaining in human memory only as lines in this selection of ours, and some nostalgic photographs too.

In any case, we do think it will be really interesting to read this selection, look at the photos from places where life was once in full swing, big money was in circulation, and people from all over the world came here to enjoy life to the fullest...

So now please feel free to scroll this selection to the very end, take one more glance at the pics - and maybe add your own ideas of such places in the comments below the post.