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Ghost Town

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Feb. 12th, 2006 | 10:01 pm
mood: busybusy

I've always liked pictures of places where nature or entropy is slowly reclaiming territory, and Varosha/Maras is one. A place that has been, as Bruce Sterling put it, "eaten by its houseplants."

"Famagusta was occupied by the Turkish military during the invasion of the island by Turkey in 1974, in response to the Greek-backed coup. The Greek Cypriot inhabitants fled. Consequently, most of the then-modern part of the city, known as Varosha (Turkish: Maraş), was deserted, becoming a closed-off military zone, something which persists to this day. Varosha is often described as a "Ghost Town" as it has been frozen in time with department stores still full of clothes, now many years out of fashion and hotels still fully equipped."

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famagusta

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/000985.html
http://groups.msn.com/ReturntoVaroshaFamagustaCyprus/shoebox.msnw
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.08/cyprus.html
http://www.cyprusincolour.com/image.browser.php?view=srch_view&search_string=maras
http://www.inhostage.com/gallery.html

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Comments {2}

Kit

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from: todfox
date: Feb. 13th, 2006 04:20 am (UTC)
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Don't forget rural_ruin, urban_decay and desolatelondon. :)

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Ephemera

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from: tawnygnosis
date: Feb. 13th, 2006 07:22 am (UTC)
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Did you ever read that story by Dr. Seuss about the city that is built up, polluted and then left behind by the little alien creatures? Then the plants come back and start growing over the ruins. It was always such a beautiful, hopeful image. It reminded me of those Mayan ruins in the heart of the jungle.

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