cold war defense bunker (NO)

During the cold war a line of 6 defensive combat facilities where planned in the Norwegian forests. The fear of a possible Soviet attack was very real in the late 80ties and early 90ties. This bunker was built in 1989. After the ‘fall of the iron carpet’ the plans was abandoned and only 3 of these bunkers where built – all looking the same. The facility accommodates for MG-3 machine guns, mobile 20 mm anti air guns and Carl Gustav 84 mm recoilless rifles (RFK84mm). The bunkers are now owned by private land owners.

This bunker was very dark and wet resulting in a lot flash light use and some long exposure shots with candles. The ceilings was covered with water droplets since the dehumidifier was turned off a long time ago. One of the other bunkers, closed when I visited still has power and is dry inside. Take a look at these amazing shots.

The entrance to the well hidden defense bunker.

Stair down to one of the main rooms.

Blue lamp in the ceiling. Notice the water drops. The whole place was very humid.

One of the main rooms.

Floor plan of the facility.

The middle room with water tank.

Case with “Signalammunisjon”, pyrotechnics.

A lot of unused phones.

Ladder up to an emergency exit.

Looking up at the ladders to the observation point.

Tight corridors leading from the entrance room (right) to the Carl Gustav 84 mm recoilless rifle positions to the left.

Carl Gustav 84 mm recoilless rifle (RFK84mm) positions.

MG-3 position.

Looking out from the MG-3 position.

Phone on the wall.

Small kitchen area.

Standing in the kitchen area looking out to generator room and another exit.

Generator and dehumidifier room 1.

Generator and dehumidifier room 2.

One of the emergency fire exits.

Positions for 20 mm mobile anti air guns.

360 degrees observation post.

forgotten house in the fields (no)

A forgotten swiss villa in the middle of a field and hidden by thick vegetation and trees. No roads headed to the house so I had to cross the muddy field to get there. I crawled through a broken window to get inside just to discover that a whole wall was missing in the other room. Sometimes I just have to choose the difficult entry point. It was pretty empty, but not vandalized. Just natural decay. In the kitchen a nice oven and some other stuff was spread around.

The old house hidden in the vegetation.

Exterior front.

Exterior side.

The kitchen.

Nice old oven.

Room in the middle of the house.

Another angle./em>

Nice paint peeling and collapsed ceiling.

Creepy window.

Side exit with lot of vegeation.

Main entrance and exit. Difficult to use.

Asylum BG (UK)

Another stop on the grand UK tour earlier this year. We had a quite interesting walk to get to this place. Over large fields and through a huge forest. A few dogs where barking in the distance the whole time – they was definitely aware of us. The first thing we saw on the hospital grounds was huge piles of ruble and bricks here and there. The place was literary being demolished as we walked through the area. Now and then we had to hide from workers in orange suits. Some of the buildings still stood, and we got a few shots of whats left. The most interesting wards and buildings were gone.

This mental hospital in Bristol opened 3rd May 1939 build in colony plan layout which means that there are a lot of buildings spread around in the huge forest. Abandoned in 2006. More info about the place here with several other links.

Exterior of one of the remaining buildings.

Entrance

Another exterior shot.

Sign found in the building above.

Smaller hospital building in the area.

Interior of one of the smaller buildings.

Decayed room.

An intercom. One of the only objects left behind in the empty rooms actually.

Another room with great decay and paint peeling.

Paint peeling close up shot.

Me in the mirror.

Quite nice wall painting with animal theme.

Hospital M (UK)

We went to visit this hidden, closed down hospital in the middle of a busy English city. The place was quite large and had some really nice secrets like the X-ray rooms, classroom and cool chairs.

The first parts of this place was built in 1877 and opened in 1890, but extensions has been added on many times. The latest addition was in 1950 and was a new ward block with 60 beds. The place was abandoned in 1992 and the medical services moved over to another hospital. A business man has bought it to build something, but nothing has happened. Urbexers are happy but the neighbors are not.

The entry point was on one of the upper floors and we had to climb through a difficult route of obstacles, fences and windows high up. The exit was through the main gate by the help of a security guard that catched us. :/

Corridor next to the Xray rooms with red doors.

The X-ray machine.

X-ray machine from another angle.

Adjacent room to the X-ray rooms.

Some stairs.

Chairs in a corridor.

The top floors.

The hidden piano.

Poisonous flasks in a lab room.

Scientific lab with some really nice equipment and a fantastic PC.

Corner shop – a Voluntary shop to be precise.

A large and very decayed kitchen.

Body fridges in the abandoned morgue.

Detail shot of the stretchers in the morgue fridges.

Some sort of left over bench in a corner.

Another dark creepy corridor.

Behind the counter.

A phone.

Wall signs.

A nicely decayed classroom.

Another angle of the classroom.

Just a room with some stuff.

A record player left alone.

Some sort of medical thing.

The cool chairs in a room which looked like a small gym.

There were lots of corridors here.

College U (UK)

The visit to this abandoned seminary with chapel was really worth it and I’m really glad I have seen this location. The abandoned part is the junior section of a huge priest college built in 1859. The rest of the complex is still active but there are rumors of full shut down during 2011.

It is a beautiful place and the chapel is truly amazing. It’s quite sad to see a place like this in such a state of decay. The statues, the marvelous colored glass windows and the whole magic atmosphere was a rare experience. The ceilings and walls are hand painted with incredible detail.

The rest of the complex contains what I believe is sleeping quarters, a lot of rooms and corridors and even a part with prison steel doors for some reason.

This is one of the places I really doesn’t hope get destroyed and vandalized even more and I would be really sad if I in the future see pictures of the place with the statues stolen.

The front of the amazing chapel.

Interior of the chapel room.

View towards the back.

The organ.

Some really nice statues which are still there.

Fisheye shot from the floor up to roof.

The walls were hand painted with incredible detail.

Another statue.

Details from the back of the chapel.

My guess is that these halls used to be sleeping quarters, but I’m not sure.

“Please knock”

Small room adjacent to the sleeping quarters.

Stairway with huge amounts of bird poo and a big bell haning underneath the roof.

Dark corridor with nice paint peeling.

Sign with a request to clean your boots. Not as easy as it used to be perhaps…

Corridor with smashed wheelchair.

Courtyard between the buildings.

Quite an outstanding exterior as well.

Photographer at work. The chapel is the building on the right.

The friendly guard horses met us outside.

Sanatorium E (DE)

Another German sanatorium that is abandoned and forgotten near Potsdam. This one lays in a forest with roads and heavy traffic passing by. The building is a gem and a cool urbex stop. It was built between 1912 and 1914 which means it’s almost a 100 years old. It was built as a lung hospital, probably treating tuberculosis patients, by a doctor called Walter. The sanatorium itself is named after his wife. Before it was abandoned it served as a skin clinic, but since 1994 it has stood empty.

The rooms are mainly empty. The main attraction is the magnificent piano which is left behind. Pianos and dentist chairs are heavy objects that are rarely moved from buildings. Seen a lot of them.

Soon I will start upload my pictures and posts from several locations from United Kingdom. Very difficult country do to urbex in, but very rewarding and exiting as well. Some pictures have already found their way to my flickr stream.

The exterior of the main building.

Another angle.

The main stairs in the middle of the building.

The stairs. The roof is almost collapsing.

Door to ‘Station 1′, whatever that means.

The leftover grand piano is quite nice.

Just a detail shot of the piano.

From second floor.

A room with tiles. Something to do with a kitchen or shower room.

A room on the upper levels.

Another room with a view.

From the loft.

In a room in the top of the loft this desk stood with a huge map over Berlin.

Stairs to the basement.

No keys.

The exterior of the building from the opposite side.

Collapsed theater (DE)

We arrived at this theater in Germany, or ‘House of the officers’ as it is refereed to some places, just after sunset and it was really dark. Parts of the roof had collapsed down in the theater room and the floor felt disturbingly soft here and there. Soviet symbols were everywhere. I was pretty sure I saw a flashlight in the other end of the room, in the stage area, so I’m not pretty sure we where alone in there. Because of the darkness and so on I only managed to get these shots.

More great shots of this place on ill-padrinos flickr set.

The white little dot of light on the lower left corner of the stage was either someone with a flashlight or a mirror.

The roof had collasped.

Soviet symbols.

Amusement park S (DE)

In the morning fog this huge amusement park in Germany is quite an incredible sight. With a large Ferris wheel just visible in the mist and large dinosaurs laying dead in the grass, the mood was fantastic. Suddenly a face with a humorous nose with mustache appeared behind some bushes – the mad car ride attraction. It’s been all standing still for at least 8 years, abandoned in 2002 because of huge debts. The problems started in 1999 caused by few parking spaces and increased entrance fees, the visitor numbers went down. Since the park opened in 1969 the largest amount of visitors a year was 1.5 million. During the troublesome years it went down to 400.000.

The owner moved to Peru with his family. They brought with them some of the attractions, trying to start a new park in Lima. In 2004 the owner was sentenced to seven years in jail for trying to smuggle 180 kg of cocaine in one of the attractions back to Germany, desperate for money. Later his son was also sentenced to 20 year in jail for drug smuggling.

The park still stands, somewhat decayed and derelict. For how long nobody knows.

Farris wheel in the backround and dinosaurs in front.

Lost dinosaur

Some water attraction ride in the morning fog.

From the same attraction as above.

The swan boats

Walkways in the mist.

The rollercoaster ride.

First wagon ready to go.

The tunnel with cat face I think.

A mad car ride attraction wagon.

Starting point.

Another view. Gotta love those faces in the creepy setting.

The majestic Ferris wheel.

Cinema (DE)

One of many cool places I visited together with a bunch of awesome photographers from Flickr on a new great urbex tour i Germany. This is an abandoned cinema somewhere around Berlin. The rest of the building was quite empty and dark, but this room had a secret: A large movie projector along with lots of film on the floor. The last movie this machine ever projected was “Free Willy 2″.

By the way – I have removed the commenting option on the posts, but you will still be able to post comments in the Guestbook. All old comments, are still available for reading.

The projector room.

The projector.

“Free Willy 2″ film.

Beelitz-Heilstätten sanatorium (DE)

This amazing hospital complex just outside Berlin is considered to be one of the absolute top locations by many European photographers and urban explorers. The huge buildings and the size of the area is quite overwhelming. This was my first trip outside Norway with sheer urbex photography in mind. I traveled with two other great guys and we did saw some cool places around Berlin.

Now back to the location. Beelitz-Heilstätten was built in 1898 as a tuberculosis sanatorium but turned into a military hospital in the beginning of World War 1 by the Imperial German Army. In October 1916 a young corporal called Adolph Hitler was sent here to be treated for an injury he got in the Battle of Somme. He even wrote about this stay in Mein Kampf.

After the end of World War 2, Beelitz-Heilstätten was occupied by Soviet forces. They left in 1995. There have been several attempts so continue the activity here, but in 2000 most of the buildings was abandoned.

The area looks quite like a ghost town with its 60 buildings. The area is huge, and we spent a whole day there photographing, but didn’t cover all the buildings. Some of the buildings are open to public and it’s quite vandalized. Other buildings are closed for public, but they were easy to enter as well. They were in a somewhat better shape.

I’m glad I have seen this place before it’s completely destroyed by all the people who want to see this fantastic place. I have uploaded some more artistic pictures from this trip on my flickr account.

The Mens Sanatorium

Terrace at the Mens Sanatorium

The famous stairs, angle 1

The famous stairs, angle 2

Wide angle corridor

There were a lot of corridors

Mens Gymnasium

Entrance to the Mens Sanatorium

A Beelitz-Heilstätten building

The morgue

The vandalized auditorium

The Bath building – main room with bath in the middle

The enatrance are to the bath with columns

Sideroom with bath tub and showers

Amazing entrance hall to the bath

Some sort of dancing halls on the top floor

Pipes in a maintenance room

Surgery building – an operation theater with lamp

Long corridor through the huge surgery building

The ruind – notice how trees grow on the roof

Corridor in the ruin

I have a lot of pictures, but I think this is enough. One last shot – Photographers at work: