[grofvuri]

Famagusta, Cyprus

Famagusta, Cyprus never was allowed to recover once Greek Cypriot residents were evacuated following a 1975 Turkish invasion.
Photo: Julienbzh35 | Creative Commons

In the late 1960s, Famagusta, Cyprus, was a booming island tourist destination and a port city with an estimated population of 60,000 that rose to as much as 100,000 in the high season. The 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus caused a citywide evacuation, and the Greek Cypriot residents were never allowed to return. Ever since, the city of Famagusta has stood abandoned and fenced off from the rest of the island.

Famagusta is now a post-apocalyptic time capsule: Everything was left in the shops, department stores and hotels. It’s a rare example of undisturbed decay, which made it a useful model to discuss in the book “The World Without Us.” Because of development pressures, it’s unclear how long Famagusta will remain as is. The city was named on the World Monuments Fund’s “Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites in the World” in 2008 and is one of the Global Heritage Fund’s 2010 list of a dozen sites “on the verge of vanishing.”


Chaohu and other Chinese Cities

Without notice, Chaohu, China was "cancelled" by China and divided into 3 parcels.
Photo: ChinaFotoPress | Getty Images

On Aug. 22, China’s Anhui province announced the city of Chaohu was “cancelled.” That is, the buildings, infrastructure and inhabitants remained where they were on Aug. 21, but the city formerly known as Chaohu had been divided into three parts and parceled off into the nearby cities of Hefei, Wuhu and Ma'anshan. This came as rather a surprise to the residents because, as NPR noted , there had been no consultation with Chaohu’s residents and no official notice of the change. This redistribution has made the city of Hefei, now including Chao Lake, the largest by area in China.

Other cities that vanished in China include the stunning submerged ruins of the ancient Lion City, which was flooded in the 1950s. It still contains intact relics that would have been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976, when Chairman Mao Zedong sought to eradicate capitalist, traditional and cultural elements, had the town remained above water.

Also in China, the controversial Three Gorges Dam Project created a 370 mile-long lake that submerged more than 1,000 villages, towns, and cities, forcing more than one million people to relocate. Experts estimated that 1,300 sites of cultural and archeological importance were submerged.

Click here to see more pictures of Cities That Vanished

http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/ci...-vanished.html