Until it was abandoned in 1958, the village of Naukan on Cape Dezhneva was the most easterly settlement of Eurasia. Naukan was founded in the nineteenth century but cleared as part of a campaign of consolidation of rural settlements.

This peeling facade was once the grand entrance to the Crystal Pool at Glen Echo Park, a long-gone attraction in what is a now a slightly spooky incarnation of its former self. While still in existence, there’s a sense that time and technology have long since passed the park by.

Abandoned streetcars are an unusual sight in a redeveloping area of Brooklyn. But in the reviving waterfront district of Red Hook, the rusting wrecks are as much a part of the streetscene as the converted warehouses looming over them.

Eurasia is often considered a “supercontinent” but usually refers to the post-Soviet states, the Central Asian republics, and the Transcaucasian republics. So it’s no wonder Eurasia has its fair share of ghost towns, straddling a landmass intrinsically tied to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There’s a reason Sheffield brought you the Full Monty, and there’s more to it than a unique blend of Yorkshire humour and good-natured dourness. The fact is that Sheffield, despite all its good points, is extremely run down, with abandoned steel works, factories and other buildings blighting the cityscape.

It’s tempting to associate abandoned towns and cities with America’s old west or the wild expanses of former Soviet Russia. But ghost towns exist on every continent. Europe has its fair share, not least due to war and conflict. In some cases, abandonment has put these towns on the map and made them more popular with visitors than they were while inhabited.

While fascinating and mysterious, abandoned places and objects are not usually known for their joyful appearance or radiant colours. But apply HDR photography techniques and suddenly the reinvigorated colours and contrasts are enough to bring even the most dreary building or wrecked vehicle back to life.

Abandoned cities are strange and alluring places, often reflecting some great upheaval that led to their demise. Asia is no stranger to urban abandonments, from antiquated to modern, deserted due to natural disaster or simply a lack of raison d’etre. In abandonment, their buildings take on a different physical form to the bustling communities they once were.

The Old Treasury building in Perth, Australia, is an important part of the city’s historical landscape, and certainly one of its most impressive urban abandonments. Built in 1874 and occupied by the state government for more than 120 years, an eerie silence now fills the deserted rooms of this iconic building.

Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens are a popular attraction in the Scottish city, hosting thousands of visitors each year. But lurking deep beneath its tranquil flower beds and grassy knolls is an abandoned railway station, with two silent subterranean platforms hidden away for 70 years.

One commentator recently branded Athens’ abandoned and out-of-use stadiums hanging over from the 2004 Summer Olympics as “the newest wonder of the world: the ruins of modern Greece”. With such state-of-the-art facilities stuck in limbo, it’s ironic that one of the more active stadiums in the Greek capital was around as far back as 329 BC.

In 1917, when the United States entered a distant war half a world away in Europe, two large forts were constructed in New York City with one purpose in mind – to defend the homeland against potential attack.

Exploring the Rust Belt is bound to turn up myriad faded treasures. The boom times of manufacturing led to unparalleled prosperity in America’s industrial cities, with the creation of lavish buildings rendered eerily abandoned by more recent economic decline. Join us on our virtual road trip through America’s industrial heartland.

Modellers across the world (of plastic kits, not catwalks) instinctively know of Airfix, a brand that has become so synonymous with the hobby that even kits made by other manufacturers are routinely referred to as “Airfix kits”. But when owner Humbrol’s plant was abandoned in 2006, the company’s Hawker Hunter mascot was left out in the cold.

Planes, trains and automobiles are three of the greatest – and most useful – inventions of the industrial era. But what happens when these heroic heralds of advancing technology become useless themselves? Some are simply forgotten while others are scrapped. But along the way, most go to vehicle graveyards.

Streetcar lines were a common sight in America’s towns from the late 1900s, and by the early twentieth century the golden age of rail travel was upon us. But many routes have now been dismantled, lost in the long grass that has replaced their tracks. Today, the discerning explorer may still find a surprising amount of evidence of their existence.