Explore Burj Al Babas, Turkey’s Abandoned Town of 587 Disney-Style Castles

Burj Al Babas might have been con­struct­ed express­ly to attract the atten­tion of the inter­net. “Sit­ting near the Black Sea, the town is full of half-fin­ished, ful­ly aban­doned mini cas­tles — 587 of them to be exact,” write Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s Kather­ine McLaugh­lin and Jes­si­ca Chern­er. Orig­i­nal­ly “planned as a lux­u­ri­ous, state­ly urban devel­op­ment offer­ing the look of roy­al liv­ing for any­one will­ing to shell out any­where from $370,000 to $500,000 for their own lit­tle palace,” it now stands as an unfin­ished ghost town. And though the project only broke ground a decade ago, it’s already set­tled into a ver­i­ta­bly eerie — and high­ly pho­tograph­able — state of decay.

This, of course, more than suits the sen­si­bil­i­ties of an adven­ture-ori­ent­ed YouTube chan­nel like Fear­less & Far. Its explo­ration of Burj Al Babas — one of sev­er­al such videos cur­rent­ly avail­able — offers on-the-ground views of what we can only call the town’s ruins. “This fan­ta­sy par­adise land did­n’t sell,” says its host. “Some blame the Turk­ish real estate cri­sis; some blame the kitsch­i­ness of it all. It’s all so strange. It’s all so fake.”

Indeed, write McLaugh­lin and Chern­er, “as build­ing the town got under­way, locals became enraged with both the aes­thet­ic of the homes and the busi­ness prac­tices of the devel­op­ers,” who sub­se­quent­ly declared bank­rupt­cy, leav­ing the devel­op­ment in lim­bo.

Those who know their Mid­dle East­ern lan­guages will rec­og­nize the very name Burj Al Babas as a “non­sen­si­cal mashup of Ara­bic and Turk­ish,” as Ruth Michael­son and Beril Eski put it in an in-depth Guardian piece last month. Though locat­ed in Turkey, with an intent to take advan­tage of local hot springs, it was financed with mon­ey from Kuwait, Sau­di Ara­bia and Bahrain. Since its con­struc­tion “abrupt­ly stopped in 2016, the project has become a bizarre white ele­phant,” caus­ing scan­dal, law­suits, an attempt­ed sui­cide, “and even a minor diplo­mat­ic inci­dent between Turkey and Kuwait.” Any­one who’s seen Burj Al Babas up-close will have their doubts about its prospects for com­ple­tion — but if they’ve got a YouTube chan­nel of their own, they’ll hard­ly want demo­li­tion to start before they can pay it a vis­it them­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Vis­it to Tian­ducheng, China’s Eeri­ly Emp­ty $1 Bil­lion Copy of Paris

Dis­cov­er the Ghost Towns of Japan – Where Scare­crows Replace Peo­ple, and a Man Lives in an Aban­doned Ele­men­tary School Gym

Explor­ing the Great­est of Italy’s 6,000 Ghost Towns: Take a Tour of Cra­co, Italy

Dis­cov­er the Dis­ap­pear­ing Turk­ish Lan­guage That is Whis­tled, Not Spo­ken

A Cul­tur­al Tour of Istan­bul, Where the Art and His­to­ry of Three Great Empires Come Togeth­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.