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.

Mental asylum TZ (DE)

Another great abandoned area in Germany. It was a quite foggy morning that made the buildings look even more haunted. Some of the buildings was inaccessible and some accessible through a maze of underground tunnels between the buildings. A really great explore with lots to see an photograph. The building with the large tower is really immense and looks real unsafe with large cracks on the walls. We walked up some floors, but collapsed elements of the building made it quite dangerous and difficult to find a safe passage so we went down again.

This facility was built between 1905 and 1908 and served as a state mental institution. It was closed in 1923 due to a economic crisis, but reopened in 1925 with capacity for 1400 beds. In the thirties the capacity increased to 1800 beds. During the war the hospital was damaged and many of the buildings was used as an army hospital for Soviet Forces after 1945. There are around 28 buildings on the site. It was completely abandoned in 1992, but some of the buildings are turned into homes for people.

The sun set quickly and when one of the crew members had lost his backpack somewhere, we had to go through some buildings in the darkness to look. Quite cool since I’m not used to be at places like this in the pitch black. Luckily we found what we were looking for.

The massive tower building doesn’t look to safe.

Looks like a haunted house.

Nice foggy morning.

Fisheye shot of a overgrown porch .

Some showers.

The large theater (or cinema) with large parts of the roof collapsed.

Stairway in one of the buildings.

Lots of letters and stuff with Russian text laying around.

More nice stuff and a phone.

The laundry building is really cool. Lots of rusty machines.

More washing machines.

Lovely evning light in this room, also in the laundry building.

Details form the ironing boards.

A cash register.

Great room with a really nice painting on one of the walls. Another view here.

A surgery room shot with fisheye.

Some nice bottles.

More left over medical stuff.

Some parts of the buildings were burnt. Like this one with a bed.

The whole floor had collapsed in this room. Not a very safe place to be.

Love this room. The green wallpapers match the vegetation growing through the floor.

An apartment room.

Close up of the crazy tower.

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.

Kaserne Krampnitz (DE)

These are pictures from another huge abandoned place just outside Berlin – ‘Kaserne Krampnitz’. It was built in 1937 as barracks for the riding army and driving school. The architect was Robert Kish. The military grounds were abandoned at the end of WW2 in 1945. After just one day the Russian troops occupied Krampnitz. They left completely in 1994 leaving the area as a derelict ghost village.
Now and then the place has been used for movie and television production. Scenes in movies as ‘Enemy at the Gates’ and ‘Inglorious Basterds’ are shot here.

One of the buildings is called ‘the officers mess/casino’ and it’s in quite good shape after all. Some of the rooms are large halls with dark brown wood walls and fireplaces with old destroyed Nazi eagles. The yellow casino room it’s amazing lamp is quite spectacular.

The soviets destroyed all of the German symbols and swastikas so one of the large discussions going on about Krampnitz is whether the large ceiling mosaic in one of the other buildings is real or not. The mosaic shows an eagle on a German cross with swastika. Some says its put up for the movie ‘Enemy at the Gates’ but I haven’t seen it in that movie. In one of the corners some mosaic pieces has fallen out (look at the large version) and it looks quite real and too much work to put up something like that for a movie. Others claim it is real, painted over by the soviets, and restored for movie making. It is illegal to show the swastika in public in Germany today and it is even sometimes censored as decal in model kits.

We had heard this place was well guarded and was prepared to be thrown out, but didn’t encounter any problems. Wish we had more time on this fantastically large area.

Outside the officers mess. Also seen in the movie ‘Enemy at the gates’.

One of the magnificent halls in the officers mess. Used in ‘Inglorious Basterds’ and ‘Enemy at the gates’.

Large hall with view towards casino room

Hallway. Beginning of chapter four in ‘Inglorious Basterds’ is shot here

One of the fireplaces with destroyed German eagle symbol

Sovet wall decorations

The casino room with it’s incredible lamp

A tennis court between the buildings

Interesting soviet symbols

The almost famous mosaic room

Close up. Large version for detailed view.

The stair from the mosaic location

The theater in another building. Another angle.

Lots of abandoned buildings

From the heating house

Details from the heating house. Also seen in ‘Enemy at the gates’.

Exterior of the building

Krampnitz underworld

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: