Before abandoned mansionsthe most opulent palaces and mansions were built to be enjoyed generation after generation. But some luxurious houses have not fulfilled that destination due to wars, economic changes or natural disasters. In the new book Abandoned palaces From Amber Books, author and historian Michael Kerrigan explores more than 100 of these structures, spectacular, which have become ruins.
For Kerrigan, the places in the book are as important as the pristineas abandoned mansions: «A magnificently preserved and managed stately house is a fascinating and imaginatively moving survival of the past in the present, but it has nothing to tell us about mortality or time; in fact, at least emotional level, strongly contradicts everything we know,» he says. The book shows from a Belgian castle to Russian farms, each of them from a disturbing beauty and with its own interesting story: «The key is in the way in which a good ruin (and in this sense, at least, a great palace surpasses a collapsed slums or an industrial plant; the larger and more magnificent, harder is its fall) dramatizes the devastating effects of time,» says Kerrigan. Here you can visit many of the intriguing ruins that appear in Abandoned palacesas well as others selected by AD.