LENNOX CASTLE [UK]

Exploration #293 Lennox castle. Lennox Castle, near Lennoxtown in Scotland, was built between 1837 and 1841 as a grand country house. Later transformed by war and institutional healthcare, it became part of a vast hospital complex before abandonment and a devastating fire.

Designed by Glasgow architect David Hamilton for John Lennox Kincaid-Lennox, the sandstone mansion adopted a dramatic Norman castle style, with battlements, corner pavilions and a commanding tower. During the First World War it was requisitioned as a military hospital. In 1927 the estate was sold to Glasgow Parish Council, which planned a major institution for people with learning disabilities.

Lennox Castle Hospital opened in 1936 with accommodation for about 1,200 patients. The castle itself became nurses’ quarters, while new wards and service buildings spread across the surrounding estate. During the Second World War the castle again served hospital purposes, and a maternity unit operated on the wider site until 1964. By 1987 the castle had been vacated, while the hospital gradually declined as care shifted away from large institutions.

The complex finally closed in 2002. Most of the hospital buildings were later demolished, but the Category A listed castle survived in ruins. In May 2008 a major fire caused severe damage, leaving the shell that stands today as a reminder of both Victorian ambition and a difficult chapter in Scottish social history.

SHIOBARA GRAND HOTEL [JP]

Exploration #288 Shiobara Grand Takinoyu Hotel. Shiobara Grand Takinoyu Hotel is a former hot-spring hotel in Shiobara, Japan. Once part of the town’s long spa tradition, the large complex later closed and remained standing as one of the area’s most visible abandoned hotels.

Shiobara has developed around its hot springs for centuries, and the hotel belonged to the modern phase of that tourism economy. Its scale is deceptive from the street: photographs show a much larger complex extending behind the main façade, with several levels built into the slope. Little reliable information survives about its opening date or final years. A 2017 photographic record already described the building as disused and noted that it appeared to have been abandoned for some time. Period accommodation listings indicate that the hotel once operated as a substantial resort, with rooms overlooking the Shiobara area and rates of around ¥15,000 per night.

I found the hotel completely by chance while walking through the town. Its size and silent windows immediately stood out among the active buildings around it. What began as an ordinary walk became an unexpected exploration of a place that still reflects the rise and decline of Japan’s large hot-spring hotels.

CASTELLO ARBOREO [IT]

Exploration #225. A forgotten medieval castle in northern Italy probably began as a 14th-century fortified refuge. Reworked in the 15th century and later adapted as a noble residence, it preserves traces of Ghibelline battlements, older walls and a long history of feudal ownership.

The present structure is difficult to read at first glance, because each century has overwritten the one before it. Behind later elevations, sections of swallow-tail battlements remain sealed inside the masonry, evidence of a defensive phase that may have belonged to a ricetto: a protected enclosure built to shelter people, goods and harvests.

Historical records connect the area to imperial and ecclesiastical power from the Middle Ages. Over time, the castle passed through the hands of bishops, communes and aristocratic families, reflecting the unstable political geography of northern Italy. Its original perimeter was likely defended by an embankment and a moat, while traces of nearby foundations suggest that a small settlement once stood close to the fortified core.

In the 15th century the building rose higher, losing part of its military clarity but gaining the scale of a more representative residence. Later owners reshaped it again, turning a defensive complex into a symbol of status. Today the abandoned halls, damaged walls and surviving tower leave a fragmented but powerful record of medieval defence, noble ambition and slow architectural decline.

VEB MÖBELFABRIK [DE]

Exploration #287. The former VEB Möbelfabrik Colmnitz in Saxony began in the 19th century as a chair factory created from the Neumühle site. After decades of furniture production, nationalisation and conversion under the GDR, it closed in 1992.

The industrial story of this abandoned factory starts in 1885, when chair maker Carl Friedrich Hofmann bought the Neumühle property in Colmnitz. By 1896, Hofmann and Carl Albert Kittel had turned chair making into factory production, linking the village to Saxony’s furniture industry. The first chapter ended in 1937, when financial difficulties forced the business to stop. Two years later, Helmut Richter acquired the buildings and rapidly expanded furniture production through military contracts during the Nazi period.

After 1945, private ownership disappeared and the plant was nationalised as VEB Möbelfabrik Colmnitz. Under the GDR, the factory mainly produced kitchen furniture, cupboards and buffets. But the planned economy created overproduction, while a destructive storm in 1958 further weakened the business. Furniture production faded, and the site was absorbed into VEB Bodenbearbeitungsgeräte Leipzig.

Its final role was agricultural: the Colmnitz works made parts for the KS-6 self-propelled beet harvester and later spray booms for crop protection. After German reunification, the factory could not survive the market transition. The last machines were dismantled on 31 March 1992, leaving empty halls and a surviving office wing.

SCHOOL GYM [JP]

Exploration #286. In a small village along the Tenyu River in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, an abandoned elementary and middle school gymnasium stands above the valley. Probably closed after local depopulation, it now survives as a silent landmark of rural education.

The village lies on a steep slope rising from the riverbank, with houses and narrow roads clinging to the mountainside. From below, while cycling toward a hotel beyond the settlement, the gymnasium was already visible. Its position made it one of the highest buildings in the village, a sign of how important the school once was locally. Reaching it meant leaving the easy rhythm of the road. The climb became so demanding that the final stretch had to be completed on foot. At the top, the main school building was closed, but the former gymnasium stood without fences or doors.

There is little documented information about the school, but its abandonment suggests a familiar story in rural Japan: shrinking villages, ageing populations and schools closed when there are no longer enough children to fill their classrooms. What remains is a civic building shaped by everyday life. Inside the gym, grass now pushes across the floor. Plants climb toward the roof beams, softening the structure that once echoed with lessons, ceremonies and sports.

Found by chance, this abandoned school gym became an unexpected exploration, suspended between landscape, memory and the quiet decline of a mountain village.

LOST RELIGION

LOST RELIGION is an urbex photography project dedicated to abandoned churches in Italy and across Europe. Through rural chapels, forgotten sanctuaries and empty parish churches, the project documents religious places that have lost their original function and are now suspended between memory, decay and nature.

Many of these abandoned churches once stood at the heart of small villages, where bells marked daily life, celebrations, mourning and community rituals. Today, their silence reflects wider changes: the decline of church attendance, especially among younger generations, the lack of funds to restore and maintain historic religious buildings, the shortage of priests and new vocations, and the depopulation of rural areas where a church was once a constant presence.

This photographic research does not judge the loss of faith, nor does it romanticize abandonment. It observes what remains when communities move away, when worship stops, and when sacred architecture is left without care. Frescoes peel from damp walls, altars collapse under dust and debris, vegetation enters through broken floors, and light falls from damaged roofs like an accidental liturgy.

By exploring abandoned religious sites, “lost religion” becomes a visual archive of forgotten sacred spaces and a reflection on cultural change in Europe. Each image captures the fragile border between devotion and neglect, history and disappearance, human belief and the slow return of nature..

LOST BUS n6 [JP]

Exploration #284. A forgotten bus resting in a field, found completely by chance while I was driving through the Japanese countryside.

KAARSENFABRIEK [BE]

Exploration #280. Kaarsenfabriek. This candle factory, known online as Kaarsenfabriek, began in 1902 in Belgium. Converted from a 19th-century gin distillery, it produced stearin candles, devotional candles and floor wax until its closure in 1983.

The former Kaarsenfabriek is not a monumental industrial complex, but a compact factory rooted in local Belgian production. In 1902, the Verougstraete family transformed an older distillery into a candle works under the Union brand, supplying both domestic use and religious demand with household candles, church candles and votive products. Its growth followed the needs of the early 20th century. Around 1925, a new brick building was added behind the main site, giving the factory more space for production. By the 1930s, Union candles had become well known locally, enough for the company to present its products in a striking Art Deco display cabinet at the 1935 Brussels World Exhibition.

After the Second World War, production moved away from manual casting. A wheel-casting system allowed candles to be made in a more efficient line, marking the factory’s shift from craft-based work to small-scale mechanized industry. The decline came with the same pressures that affected many family-run Belgian manufacturers: automation elsewhere, cheaper imports and a changing market.

The factory closed in 1983. Today, its dark rooms, brick halls and surviving industrial traces preserve the memory of a modest but complete candle-making world.

CARTIERA VI-MA [IT]

Exploration #285. The VI-MA paper mill in Cairate was born in the post-war boom as a separate production pole linked to the Vita-Mayer group. Built south of the older mill, it served the rising market for disposable paper before the crisis and closure of 1977.

In the industrial landscape of the Olona Valley, the Cartiera VI-MA of Cairate represents one of the clearest signs of Italy’s economic expansion after the Second World War. It must not be confused with the historic Vita-Mayer paper mill, whose roots go back to the nineteenth century. VI-MA came later, when Astorre Mayer redirected production toward mass consumption and disposable paper goods. The new plant answered a practical need: the original factory, compressed between Cairate and Lonate Ceppino, had almost exhausted its available space.

Around the 1950s and 1960s, demand was growing fast, and the wider Vita-Mayer system reached its peak, with thousands of workers, heavy freight traffic and an annual output reported at 80,000 tons of paper. VI-MA was therefore more than an annex. It was the modern face of the company’s final expansion: reinforced-concrete buildings, large industrial volumes and a layout designed for scale. Its story follows the same curve as many Italian paper industries: growth, technological ambition, then sudden decline.

From 1971 the sector was hit by international competition, shortages of timber and wider social and political instability. Floods of the Olona added further damage. In 1977 the group collapsed, leaving VI-MA silent together with the rest of the Cairate paper-making district. Today the former VI-MA paper mill is part of a vast industrial archaeology area between Cairate and Lonate Ceppino. Its abandoned structures preserve the memory of a working valley shaped by water, railways, paper and the fragile optimism of the post-war industrial age.

(main source: https://www.cartieracairate.it/la-storia/).

SHUMEN CENTRAL CITY SQUARE [BG]

Exploration #283 Shumen central city square. Conceived in the late 1980s, the Central City Square of Shumen was an ambitious urban megastructure designed to redefine the city center. Interrupted by the political collapse of 1989, the project was never completed and remains one of Bulgaria’s largest unfinished socialist-era constructions.

Designed as a revolutionary civic complex, the project aimed to integrate commercial, administrative, and social functions into a single architectural system. Plans included shops, a hotel, restaurants, cafés, municipal offices, and ceremonial halls, all connected through a vast, multi-level concrete structure extending across an entire city block. At its core stands an imposing 18-storey tower, rising from a six-storey base embedded into the terrain. The complex was conceived with underground levels, tunnel-like passages, and direct connections to nearby buildings such as the Hotel Madara, reflecting a highly modernist vision of urban continuity and functionality.

The redevelopment of the surrounding city center was carried out in parallel, incorporating symbolic elements linked to Bulgarian history. Sculptural motifs and architectural details echoed the nearby Monument to the Founders of the Bulgarian State, creating a cohesive ideological and visual narrative rooted in national identity rather than explicit political symbolism.

However, the fall of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1989 led to economic instability and the abrupt abandonment of large-scale state projects. The Central City Square became one of many unfinished constructions left behind, though none matched its scale or ambition. Today, the structure stands as a striking example of failed utopian planning—an unfinished vision of a self-contained urban center that reflects both the aspirations and the sudden collapse of late socialist architecture.