3. Craco, Basilicata
Okay, we are cheating a little bit with this one. This is a photo of the ghost city of Craco, Basilicata in Italy, but somewhere amongst all of those nearly identical stone buildings is the town’s church. Craco was a medieval village in Italy, constructed on a rocky hilltop as a strategic defensive position, allowing for easy visibility of any potential attackers.
Some estimates date the original settlement back to the year 540 AD, making Craco almost 1500 years old. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the last of its residents were finally evacuated due to dangerous conditions— the site has a long history of earthquakes and landslides which have taken a toll on the city’s structural integrity as well as the stability of the ground itself.
Now that the incredibly ancient site is completely abandoned, it makes one wonder what has been left behind in those strange stone buildings.
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