Abandoned Places Map: 20 Urbex Maps of Lost Places Worldwide

Urban explorers rarely keep a simple list. One sorts 2,230 spots by how much is left of them and moves the gone ones to a layer of their own, another hides 40 French châteaux behind code names, and a German map marks its 1,774 factories as verified, to do or problem. The notes are where these maps come alive: who got caught where, which fence has a gap, which ruin became a parking lot or a field of solar panels.

1. Urbex Map: 2,230 Abandoned Places Sorted by Decay

   The layers tell you what to expect: Intact, Damaged, Clean, and “Destroyed / re-developed (no longer spots)” for places that are gone, with more imported from other explorers’ maps. The 2,230 spots reach into 89 countries, and the notes read like advice passed between friends. At Poupliere’s castle in Normandy: “If you meet the owner tell him that you know the youtuber ‘mammytwink’ they are friends and it’ll probably save you from trouble.” The Charleroi metro is “a metro Line that never went into service”, the Belgian village of Doel is “covered with street art, really beautiful”, and of a building near Split a note asks: “There might be homeless people, be nice but be carefull :)”.

   

   Objects

   2,2302,228 points, 2 areas

   Countries

   FranceUnited StatesItalyand 86 more

   Made with

   Google My Maps

2. Abandoned Hotels Map: The Ruined Spa Town of Kinugawa

   Kinugawa Daiichi Hotel and its neighbour Kinugawa-kan Honten competed by adding wing after wing until they could sleep more than 500 guests; both are ruins now. This small Japanese map colours the hot spring town in red for ruined hotels, yellow for closed ones and green for related hotels still open. Kinugawa-kan was famous for its glass-walled “kappa bath”, Motoyu Hoshi-no-ya opened in 1925 and closed in 2010, and the west wing of the Kinugawa Kanko Hotel was torn down around 2007: had it survived, the author writes, Kinugawa’s hotel ruins would be beyond compare. A former annex built in 1988 is now sold as 34 condominiums, and the Takimi bridge is marked as the place to see the whole row at once.

   

   Objects

   1616 points

   Countries

   Japan

   Made with

   Google My Maps

3. Abandoned Asylum Map: Britain and Ireland's Lost Hospitals

   Cane Hill, the Third Surrey County Pauper Lunatic Asylum, built 1882, has the status “Magnificent ruin”. Most of the 190 entries carry the same card: original name, years, architect, status. Coney Hill was planned for 860 patients and built for 324, closed in 1994, part-demolished in 1995 and burned in 1999, “not much remains really”. Murthly in Perthshire, the second district asylum to open in Scotland, was one of the first to build villas in its grounds and is now “Completely Demolished”; West Park, number five of the Epsom cluster, stands closed and mostly intact, its main hall lost to fire. The Irish entries quote old registers down to patient counts on 1 January 1881.

   

   Objects

   190188 points, 2 lines

   Countries

   United KingdomIreland

   Made with

   Google My Maps

4. Dead Mall Map: Every Stop of Dan Bell's Series

   A fan has mapped the 47 malls and shops of Dan Bell’s Dead Mall Series on YouTube, each linked to its episode, and sorted them by what happened next: 29 still open, 12 closed, 5 demolished, among them Owings Mills Mall, which got two videos. White Sands Mall in New Mexico is marked as the pilot episode, a Big Kmart in Baltimore comes “From Chapters 1-2”, and Seminole Mall in Florida is flagged “Not an episode”. One layer holds a single mall, Bal Harbour Shops in Florida: “Not Dead”.

   

   Objects

   4747 points

   Countries

   United States

   Made with

   Google My Maps

5. Abandoned Châteaux Map France: 40 Manors by Code Name

   Instead of real names, this map of 40 châteaux, manors and houses uses the code names urbexers gave them: Château Cernunnos, the “château of books”, Manoir Abysse, Maison Lierre, Maison Criminal Case, Manoir Parasomnia. Most carry the credit of the explorer Flowmichto and a link to a photo album, one is “found by Jérôme on 29-03-2019”. The warnings are specific: Château Darkaïque is “impossible, recently squatted, and when we approach there are big dogs”; Manoir Game Over has alarms and cameras and the police turn up, as someone called Orlando found out. Maison Louis was visited in November 2018, its gate padlocked when checked in March 2019, its staircase half collapsed.

   

   Objects

   4040 points

   Countries

   France

   Made with

   OpenStreetMap uMap

6. Storm Drain Map: 801 Tunnels Under Australian Cities

   Australian explorers go underground, and this collection of 801 entries rates every storm drain from Bad to “Excellent !!”. The 10th in Melbourne is a “Massively huge drain. Can drive cars in it”, 172 Steps is “presumably named for the amount of steps in the tunnel”, and Abyss in Sydney has a 50-metre drop and an entrance through a manhole on a golf course path. The drains run from Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra to Adelaide, Brisbane and Darwin, where a note sums up the first find: “Look, it’s a drain!”. Most entries cite urbanadventure.org, between them a few abandoned buildings such as an old saddlery in Newcastle.

   

   Objects

   801519 points, 279 lines, 3 areas

   Countries

   Australia

   Made with

   OpenStreetMap uMap

7. Haikyo Map: 101 Japanese Ruins, Visited and Revisited

   One explorer photographed these 101 ruins in western Japan between 2005 and 2010 and checked them all again on Google Maps in 2024. A country clinic opened around 1921 and closed in 1949, when its doctor died at 72 without an heir; by 2024 the ruins around it were gone and the clinic renovated, only the gateposts left. Ruin after ruin has become a solar farm, among them a health spa of 1971 with a 65-metre water slide. Nara Dreamland, opened in 1961 and closed in 2006, was sold for 730 million yen and is now a car park, while the Oji Arcadia Resort Hotel, built for the visitors the Seto Ohashi bridge would bring, was abandoned unfinished when the bubble burst.

   

   Objects

   101101 points

   Countries

   Japan

   Made with

   Google My Maps

8. Abandoned Buildings Map: 3,851 Spots Anyone Can Add

   Its main layer is called “Add Locations Here!”, and thousands of strangers did, from Pennsylvania mills to Utah warehouses, Australian drains and a European tour. Knoxville College, a historically black college opened in 1875, was “suspended” in 2015 and never reopened; a girls’ reformatory in Alabama was abandoned in January 2012 after an EF-3 tornado tore down 11 of its 15 buildings. Other notes are one line: “Sealed again”, “Demolished as of November 2019. R.I.P”, and at a hydroelectric plant in Richmond, “Easy to find and see, hard to climb onto. Bring tall bois.”

   

   Objects

   3,8513,607 points, 244 lines

   Countries

   United StatesAustraliaBelgiumand 33 more

   Made with

   Google My Maps

9. Abandoned Buildings Moscow: A Photo Show Hidden in Ruins

   The exhibition 13/41 hung its photographs inside Moscow’s abandoned buildings, and this map is its catalogue: 30 numbered stops, each with how many pictures are there and how to reach them. Under the Dorogomilovsky bridge 4 of 10 photos remain; the canteen of the Chaika camp shows pictures of Soviet statues all through the building; in an unfinished car park 20 photos hang on the top floor. At the abandoned restaurant Leto “we carefully tore off the grating at the back”, and near an abandoned boat on the reservoir hangs a single icon, “which did not help this tub”.

   

   Objects

   3030 points

   Countries

   Russian Federation

   Made with

   Google My Maps

10. Lost Places Map: 7,124 Sites in 78 Countries

    Many explorers fed this map, each in their own voice. In Bratislava a group grades access (“Easy to enter, no problems”) and adds “Bonus: a tree without legs!”; at an orphanage they note on 25 September 2012 that the hole in the wall has been fenced. A drainer in Canberra marks every manhole of “The Zoo”, where a cage-like room is called the penguin enclosure, and admits: “I came up through it and had no clue where I was haha.” In Taiwan someone marks a factory seen “every time I take the bullet train… not sure what it is”, and German entries keep the honest “Noch nicht besucht”, not yet visited.

    

    Objects

    7,1247,059 points, 54 lines, 11 areas

    Countries

    GermanyBelgiumNetherlandsand 75 more

    Made with

    OpenStreetMap uMap

11. Soviet Sanatorium Map: The Spa Town of Tskaltubo

    Tskaltubo in western Georgia was a Soviet spa town, and this map walks its empty sanatoriums: 19 sanatoriums and hotels named Metalurgi, Geologist, Sakartvelo, Imereti and Megobroba (Friendship) II. A second layer numbers the bathhouses, with No. 4, 5 and 8 marked abandoned, and a third collects the town around them: Stalin’s dacha, a Soviet-era bus stop, the reliefs on the old post depot and the magistrate court, a former cinema.

    

    Objects

    4545 points

    Countries

    Georgia

    Made with

    Google My Maps

12. Urbex Map Ireland: 147 Convents, Baths and Big Houses

    Blackrock Baths “once had the deepest pool in Ireland” and can only be reached at low tide. This Irish map reads like a crew’s plan of where to go next: the Troll’s Lair is “an underground tunnel for a road that was never built” beside the M50, Williamstown House has a rotting piano inside, Stephenstown House was built in 1785 by a lord for his bride. Boland’s Mill “looks easier to get permission than get in”, and the Magna Donnelly factory, which made mirrors for cars, got a late “REVISED: Looks to be a non-runner”.

    

    Objects

    147145 points, 2 lines

    Countries

    Ireland

    Made with

    Google My Maps

13. Abandoned Factory Map Germany: 1,774 Industrial Ruins

    Wire works, power stations, breweries and mines across Germany, 1,774 of them, each with a terse verdict: “stillgelegt, steht aber noch 10 / 2010”, shut down but still standing, a few buildings torn down for fear of collapse. The Stendal nuclear plant “is being demolished”, the Schlösser brewery in Düsseldorf was “torn down in 2009”, the old Coca-Cola factory in Berlin is gone. In Augsburg the tram depot Senkelbach of 1898, closed in 1964, is now listed, and for a railway heating plant in Munich the advice is to climb through a window or try the cellar in rubber boots. Layers named Verifiziert, TODO and Problem show the work still open.

    

    Objects

    1,7741,774 points

    Countries

    GermanyPolandSwitzerland

    Made with

    OpenStreetMap uMap

14. Closed School Map: 1,693 Lost Schools of Hokkaido

    This map counts the schools Hokkaido has closed: 1,693 primary, junior high and high schools, many of them under the old name of a town merged since. Many link to photos on a blog devoted to Hokkaido’s closed schools, and others are honest about doubt: “school facility exists, name unknown”, “location not confirmed”, “a building that looks like a school”. Toyohama Gakuen, a note records, was built on the sports ground of the old Toyohama school.

    

    Objects

    1,6931,693 points

    Countries

    Japan

    Made with

    Google My Maps

15. Urbex Map London: Deep Shelters, Ghost Stations, Vents

    The notes are the confessions of London’s underground explorers: at the Mansion House vent “few of us arrested here”, thanks to a tip-off from a man with a phone, and at the ABC Cinema in Luton “we were arrested when we tried”. The 133 entries cover disused stations at Aldwych and King William Street, Luton’s deep shelters, each opened through a heavy pit cover in the road, with cones and barriers advised, and the Hyde Park Corner vent, “currently padlocked tight (21/12/10)”. Further out lie the Cardington airship hangars, the Shivering Sands army forts and Cane Hill, simply “(RIP)”.

    

    Objects

    133129 points, 4 lines

    Countries

    United Kingdom

    Made with

    Google My Maps

16. Abandoned Places Estonia: 322 Manors, Bases and Peat Villages

    Rabasaare was built for a peat works of more than 500 workers and died with it; two or three people still live in the ghostly empty village, the power cut from the vacant houses and water fetched by bucket. A second point beside it notes a garage where a radio is always playing. This Estonian map of 322 places mixes manors and farms with Soviet sites such as the Hara submarine base, founded on 12 September 1953 to take the magnetic field off submarines, which made them visible and set off mines. The “Tondiloss” in Elva, a ghost castle left unfinished after independence, has a late update: “Demolition in full swing!! The building no longer exists!”

    

    Objects

    322312 points, 10 areas

    Countries

    EstoniaRussian Federation

    Made with

    Google My Maps

17. Urbex Blog Map: One Explorer's 391 Ruins Worldwide

    Every point links to a post on the blog Urbex Stalker, so the map is one explorer’s travels through ruins in 52 countries: an abandoned water park in Hue, an amusement park in Myanmar, the abandoned village Rudnik near Vorkuta, a graveyard of airplanes at Monino, a lonely boat in the centre of Vienna. Italy is thickest, from the amusement park Veneland to the asylum of Aguscello and abandoned trulli in Apulia.

    

    Objects

    391391 points

    Countries

    ItalyRussian FederationFranceand 49 more

    Made with

    OpenStreetMap uMap

18. Lost Places Map Austria: 4,923 Ruins and Rooftops

    Written mostly in German and thickest in Austria, this map is full of explorers arguing. The Siegendorf sugar factory is “uninteresting according to mav, interessssant according to bC”, the TB children’s clinic has an “evil neighbour who calls the police at once”, and Villa Cornides gets an “edit: boarded up everywhere, no getting in any more”. In the spa town of Bad Gastein a hotel is skipped as “only recently abandoned and not very interesting, as still quite new”. The 4,923 places spread over layers for Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the UK, the USA and Ukraine, and one for rooftops and underground.

    

    Objects

    4,9234,872 points, 44 lines, 7 areas

    Countries

    AustriaGermanyUkraineand 47 more

    Made with

    Google My Maps

19. Abandoned Places California: Salton Sea to Scotland

    The blogger behind Places That Were mapped 183 visited places, each linked to a post. A road trip of 2015 runs around the Salton Sea, from the North Shore yacht club and Bombay Beach to Slab City and East Jesus, then out to Eagle Mountain and Amboy. A second layer crosses to Scotland: Gartloch Hospital, the ruins of Slains Castle, the Dunmore Pineapple, an abandoned synagogue and a jute mill.

    

    Objects

    183183 points

    Countries

    United StatesUnited Kingdom

    Made with

    Google My Maps

20. Abandoned Places Sakhalin: 493 Japanese and Soviet Ruins

    On Sakhalin the ruins come in two layers of history. An airfield used until 1963 was Osawa under the Japanese, later a driving school; there are a Japanese barrack built in 1941, a Japanese power station and the remains of pulp and paper mills at Chekhov and Tomari. The rest is Soviet: tank turrets, an unfinished bomb shelter from 1988 to 1989, resettled apartment blocks and a layer of buildings already torn down. The settlement of Vladimirovka is marked “abolished in 2024”.

    

    Objects

    493213 points, 280 areas

    Countries

    Russian Federation

    Made with

    Google My Maps