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Ghost towns worth the detour

1,494 ghost towns on Detourmap, in 69 countries — ghost towns, abandoned settlements and industry left to rot. The most famous is Plymouth in Montserrat. The 96 best known are below.

On the map
1,494
Countries
69
With a page
15
Little known
1,330 of 1,494

Ghost towns by country

Every country with at least one. Those with 8 or more have their own page.

Ghost towns by continent

Europe783 Asia67 North America609

Questions about this page

What counts as ghost towns here?

Ghost towns, abandoned settlements and industry left to rot. They are a subset of archaeological & historic sites on this atlas, split out because it is how people look for them.

Which country has the most ghost towns?

United States (547), Czech Republic (377) and Spain (182). That ranks how much Wikidata records rather than what exists on the ground.

What is the most famous?

Plymouth in Montserrat. De jure capital of Montserrat, West Indies, now a ghost town.

Where does this information come from?

Every place is drawn from Wikidata (CC0), with photographs from Wikimedia Commons and a link to its English Wikipedia article. Selection is deterministic: a place is here because Wikidata files it under one of the classes this atlas carries and it has coordinates, a photo and an article. Nothing is written or chosen by an AI, and the ranking is simply how many Wikipedia language editions cover a place.

Other kinds of detour

Waterfalls1,807 Caves1,679 Volcanoes1,632 Beaches1,652 Macabre sites2,188 Nature Archaeological