I Photographed An Abandoned Villa With Holes In The Floors

It's a tradition to visit Italy at least once a year to photograph abandoned buildings. Preferably I go more often since this is my favourite country thus far. Not only for the abandoned buildings but also for the people, the food, the landscapes and so on. Read more about that here.  I'll also go on holiday very soon for two weeks in Italy.

This time my yearly urban photography visit took part in the northern part of Italy and Tuscany. It's a big difference regarding the scenery between the areas which is awesome to see. One of the buildings I photographed was this amazing abandoned villa with holes in many of the floors. The villa has been decaying and crumbling for the past years. It’s been abandoned for a very long time and nature is clearly reclaiming its space. The villa is surrounded by high trees and plants, hidden away from society so no-one can see it when driving or walking past. You have to know where it is to find it. Unfortunately I have been unable to recover traces of the history and people that used to live hear. I’m convinced the former owners either simply loved wine or had a business making it, since I’ve found wine barrels and equipment to bottle wine.

The hardest part was locating the villa and finding a way towards a potential entrance without causing too much attention. Something that occurred a lot during this tour is that I’ve entered by using the hardest possible entry only to figure out a few minutes later there was a much easier entry point. Lets just say that adds up to the experience. So, after entering I was looking for a way to shoot the hole in the floor from the best position. To get there I figured I had to jump down in the hole and climb my way up at the desired spot. Thus that happened. When walking around in the building I found a couple of other holes in the floors, which you can see in the picture. I really had to be careful where I stepped to prevent myself from falling down.

I’ve tried to capture as good as possible how the decay has kicked into this building. I was amazed by the size of the holes in the floors and ceilings and I’ve caught all the holes on photos. The main room was very colourful and detailed, while most of the other rooms weren’t. It must have been a beautiful place back in the days this was somebodies home.

For this set I’ve used the Sony A7Rii with a 16-32mm wide-angle Zeiss lens, and a 24-70mm zoom Zeiss lens. When shooting abandoned buildings, I mostly use my wide-angle to try and capture as much of the room as possible.

More info: romanrobroek.nl