Ghost Towns and Lost Cities of the World (1)

Published admin

October 6, 2009

Kolmanskop (Afrikaans for Coleman’s hill, German: Kolmannskuppe) is a ghost town in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz. It was a small mining village and is now a popular tourist destination run by the joint firm NamDeb. It developed after the discovery of diamonds in the area in 1908, to provide shelter for workers from the harsh environment of the Namib Desert.

Driven by the enormous wealth of the first diamond miners the village was built like a German town, with facilities like a hospital, ballroom, power station, school, skittle-alley, theater and sport-hall, casino, ice factory and the first x-ray-station in the southern hemisphere as well as the first tram in Africa. It had a railway link to Lüderitz.

The town declined after World War I as diamond prices crashed, and operations moved to Oranjemund. It was abandoned in 1956 but has since been partly restored. The geological forces of the desert mean that tourists can now walk through houses knee-deep in sand. Kolmanskop is popular with photographers for its scenic settings of the desert sands reclaiming this once thriving town. Due to its location within the restricted area (Sperrgebiet) of the Namib desert, a permit is necessary to enter the town.

Prypiat (Russian: При́пять, Pripjat’), or Pripyat, is an abandoned city in the zone of alienation in northern Ukraine, Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. The city was founded in 1970 to house the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers, and was abandoned in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. Its population had been around 50,000 prior to the accident.