10 Ghost Towns You Can Actually Visit Around the World

Ghost towns sound like something out of a spooky campfire story, but plenty of them are real places you can drive, hike, or ferry your way into. These are settlements that boomed—thanks to mining, war, disease, or sheer bad luck—and then emptied out almost overnight, leaving buildings, machinery, and sometimes entire streets frozen in time.

We picked these ten spots because they’re genuinely open to visitors in some form, whether that’s a guided tour, a national park entry fee, or just a bumpy road and a sense of adventure. Each one has its own weird backstory, and honestly, that’s the whole point of this list.

#10. Kayaköy, Turkey

Tucked into the hills near Fethiye, Kayaköy was once a thriving Greek Orthodox village of hundreds of homes and churches. Its residents were relocated during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, and the empty stone houses have simply stayed empty ever since, tumbling gently into ruin on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean.

Unlike towns wrecked by disaster, Kayaköy was emptied by a political decision, which makes wandering its crumbling chapels and roofless homes feel oddly peaceful rather than tragic. It’s now a protected historic site, easily reached from nearby resort towns.

#9. Craco, Italy

Perched dramatically on a clifftop in southern Italy, Craco was inhabited for nearly a thousand years before landslides and a 1963 evacuation order finally emptied it out. The medieval town’s crumbling tower and skeletal buildings still cling to the eroding hillside, looking like a movie set (and indeed, several films have used it as one).

Access is limited to guided tours for safety reasons, since the ground beneath Craco is still unstable. That fragility is part of its eerie appeal—this is a ghost town that might, quite literally, keep disappearing.

#8. Wittenoom, Australia

Wittenoom in Western Australia was built around a blue asbestos mine that operated for decades before the health risks became impossible to ignore. The Australian government has since removed the town from official maps and cut off its utilities, actively discouraging people from staying—yet a handful of residents held on for years before the last of them were relocated, and the dusty streets and abandoned buildings are still there to explore.

Visitors do come, mostly out of curiosity about a town the government tried to erase, though caution around lingering asbestos fibers is genuinely warranted.

#7. Humberstone, Chile

Out in Chile’s Atacama Desert, Humberstone was once a booming saltpeter (nitrate) mining town, complete with a theater, swimming pool, and market that served thousands of workers. When synthetic nitrate production tanked demand for the natural stuff, the town was abandoned almost as quickly as it had been built.

Today it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, with the desert’s dry climate preserving wooden buildings and rusting industrial machinery in remarkable condition. Walking through its empty theater seats feels like the show ended mid-performance.

#6. Oradour-sur-Glane, France

This French village was destroyed in 1944 when a Nazi SS unit killed nearly all of its inhabitants and burned the town during World War II. Rather than rebuild on top of the tragedy, France left the ruins standing as a permanent memorial, constructing a new village nearby instead.

Visitors can walk the original streets past burned-out cars, sewing machines, and household items left exactly where they fell. It’s one of the most sobering entries on this list, existing not as an oddity but as a deliberate act of remembrance.

#5. Spinalonga, Greece

This small island off Crete once housed a leprosy colony that operated well into the 20th century, making it one of the last places in Europe where people with the disease were quarantined. Former patients built out a surprisingly functional community here, complete with shops and a social life, before the colony closed and the island emptied entirely.

Boat tours from Crete now bring visitors to wander the fortress walls and abandoned houses, with much of the colony’s layout still visible among the ruins.

#4. Pyramiden, Svalbard, Norway

Deep in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Pyramiden was a Soviet coal mining settlement that housed hundreds of workers until it was abandoned in the 1990s. It’s an almost surreal sight: a Lenin statue still stands in the town square, and Soviet-era apartment blocks sit frozen against a backdrop of glaciers and polar wilderness.

Guided tours (armed guides are required, due to polar bears) take visitors through the mess hall, gym, and cultural center, all left largely as they were when the miners left.

#3. Kolmanskop, Namibia

Kolmanskop sprang up in the Namib Desert after diamonds were discovered in the sand in the early 1900s, quickly growing into a lavish town with a ballroom, hospital, and skittle alley that served a wealthy population of miners and their families. When diamond yields dropped, residents left almost overnight, and the desert has been slowly reclaiming the buildings ever since.

The most striking sight is rooms half-filled with drifted sand pouring in through doors and windows, turning former mansions into surreal, sculptural ruins that photographers travel across the world to capture.

#2. Bodie, California, USA

Bodie was once a rowdy gold-mining boomtown in the California hills, home to thousands of miners, saloons, and a reputation for violence. When the gold ran out, people left so quickly that entire households were abandoned mid-use, and the state park that now manages the site keeps everything in a policy of “arrested decay”—preserved, not restored.

Peering through dusty windows, visitors can see furniture, dishes, and store shelves stocked exactly as they were left over a century ago, making it one of the most intact ghost towns in the American West.

#1. Hashima Island, Japan

Nicknamed “Battleship Island” for its stark, ship-like silhouette, Hashima was once one of the most densely populated places on Earth, packed with coal miners and their families living in dense concrete apartment blocks. When the mine closed in the 1970s, the entire island was abandoned within months, leaving a skyline of crumbling high-rises rising straight out of the sea.

Now a UNESCO World Heritage site, part of the island is open to visitors via guided boat tours, though most of the interiors remain off-limits due to collapse risk. Its haunting profile also inspired the villain’s lair in a James Bond film, even though the movie itself was shot elsewhere.

Whether they were emptied by war, disease, economics, or a diamond rush gone bust, these ten towns prove that abandonment doesn’t always mean inaccessible. Grab a good pair of walking shoes, check local guidelines, and go see one for yourself—just maybe skip the asbestos town if you’re not up for a shower afterward.