Who wouldn’t want to live in a city filled with Disney castles? Well, Turkey’s Burj Al Babas development was meant to be such a one-of-a-kind project.
It cost around £150 million to build but now lies abandoned.
The project was once intended as a luxury retreat featuring hundreds of mini-palaces.
However, the whole thing stalled when Turkey’s economy faced financial challenges.
Currently, nearly 600 completed castles sit empty, creating a huge ghost town, according to The New York Times.
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Construction on Burj Al Babas began in 2014. Plans to build over 700 luxury homes are aimed at wealthy clients, particularly from the Middle East.
Each property had amenities like private pools, jacuzzis, and underfloor heating.
Prices reached up to £440,000 ($542,000), with the town also designed to feature a shopping mall, restaurants, spas, and even a golf course.
However, financial struggles forced the developer, Sarot Group, to declare bankruptcy, halting construction and leaving the town unfinished.
The project has become an eerie symbol of Turkey’s troubled construction sector.
One of the buyers, Jassim Alfahhad, a Kuwaiti Air Force colonel, expressed his disappointment.
He described his excitement about owning a castle-inspired home in Turkey’s countryside.
He told The Guardian: “That’s how the tragedy starts.” He then explained that the company had promised his castle would be complete by the end of 2018.
It wasn’t, leaving him and other investors frustrated as they waited for a project that now may never be finished.
Since then, the empty castles have gained attention online, with drone footage of the ghost town going viral.
Despite being unfinished and overgrown with weeds, Burj Al Babas has become an odd attraction for tourists and influencers and some music videos have even been filmed there.
Adem Tekgöz, a representative of the Sarot Group, recently showed a reporter the abandoned complex and mentioned plans to resume construction next summer.
He suggested that reconnecting electricity and finishing up landscaping might finally complete the town’s vision, though no concrete timeline has been set.
