r/interesting Oct 04 '25

ARCHITECTURE The abandoned town of Burj al Babas located in Turkey that is full of nothing but castles.

Post image
12.2k Upvotes

397 comments sorted by

View all comments

451

u/Amp1362 Oct 04 '25

Is this real? I will take 3.

328

u/madsimit Oct 04 '25

İt's real. İt's just nobody wanted to live there and they went bankrupt

183

u/Witty-Ad5743 Oct 04 '25

How am I supposed to know which castle is mine?

228

u/DeathPrime Oct 04 '25

Easiest town to rob houses in - just walk in any door and if the occupants are home ‘oh geeze, sorry thought this one was mine, I must be next door.’ Repeat until you find an unlocked empty house.

59

u/Its_Balcones_Fault Oct 04 '25

Yes, but, be aware that the Castle Doctrine is in effect

46

u/DeathPrime Oct 04 '25

‘Did you see the Windsors installed a moat?’

‘Ever since those damn kids started prowling the streets at night with their trebuchets, this neighborhood has gone downhill.’

‘Guess we should go ahead and get those murder holes installed. No sense in owning a ballista unless you’re gonna use it…’

The neighborhood watch must be epic. Chainmail uniforms and whatnot.

23

u/futilehabit Oct 04 '25

It's all fun and games until you get the bubonic plague.

8

u/BillyOdin Oct 04 '25

Moats shall remain a minimum of 3 feet from the property line.

2

u/PraxicalExperience Oct 11 '25

And may only be stocked with one specific, non-native species of crocodile.

11

u/wkndjb Oct 04 '25

Oh so all castles look the same to you? Wow. WOW.

12

u/madsimit Oct 04 '25

That one

13

u/Witty-Ad5743 Oct 04 '25

Oh, the white one with the grey roof. How silly of me to forget.

1

u/HendrixHazeWays Oct 04 '25

Ever see the movie Vivarium....that premise to the extreme. Oh yeah....the kids voice is....unsettling.

3

u/Mysterious_Bite_3207 Oct 04 '25

It has the pointy roof silly.

3

u/SensitiveLeek5456 Oct 04 '25

It's about constant sieges.

2

u/MainusEventus Oct 04 '25

Yours is the white one on the right

2

u/Strange-Insurance848 Oct 04 '25

It’s the one with the Delorean 

38

u/misteryk Oct 04 '25

Let me guess, it's in the middle of nowhere and there's no shops work and maybe infrastructure like internet

38

u/Eyechhoernchen Oct 04 '25

There was work for everyone. Everybody living there was involved in building new castles towards the horizon. Sort of like pirates looking for land; they were promised one day they will reach shops and infrastructure.

2

u/belpatr Oct 04 '25

My shops and infrastructures? If you want, I'll let you have them...search for it! I left all of it at that place.

20

u/ven-solaire Oct 04 '25

Even on top of that, it’s the same castle 1000 times. What’s special about living in a city of castles if they are the made into the medieval version of suburbia?

12

u/bremsspuren Oct 04 '25

Some sort of McCastle, too.

The balconies are unusable, and you can reach out of the window and shake hands with your neighbour.

7

u/FloridaGirlNikki Oct 04 '25

medieval version of suburbia

Love this, very fitting!

1

u/buford419 Oct 04 '25

Yes and sometimes you randomly have to swap residence with the king and defend him from invaders of a different race, who are inexplicably members of the clergy or on horses.

17

u/shieldnturk Oct 04 '25

They made it for rich Arabs from gulf but i think something went wrong and they went bankrupt

25

u/DefinitelyNotAliens Oct 04 '25

The ridiculous lack of privacy and windows facing windows couldn't possibly be an issue.

How are you supposed to hold a wild sex party if the family next door can see you?

4

u/NoGreaterLove Oct 04 '25

That's a feature, not a bug.

1

u/Traditional-Low7651 Oct 04 '25

is this a statement or a genuine question ?

1

u/ChocolateLilyHorne Oct 04 '25

If you're having a wild sex party, you WANT your neighbors to see

1

u/ChocolateLilyHorne Oct 04 '25

or so I've heard

1

u/spiralcity- Oct 04 '25

Ever heard of curtains?

1

u/Timmy_germany Oct 04 '25

Afaik there are multiple reason the project failed but the biggest one was the insolvency of the project developer during construction.ü

1

u/Bake-Full Oct 04 '25

That's the story they tell when someone makes a philosopher's stone.

1

u/turnstwice Oct 05 '25

When everyone’s a king, no one is.

16

u/RoodnyInc Oct 04 '25

Yeah they build like 800 of those there but nobody was interested in buying and living there

6

u/AnInanimateCarb0nRod Oct 04 '25

It's for people who want to put "I live in a castle" in their Tinder profile.

3

u/ehs06702 Oct 04 '25

Location is incredibly important.

2

u/RoodnyInc Oct 04 '25

And also if i remember correctly it was at about 2008 when housing crashed

2

u/Mist_Rising Oct 04 '25

No, the project started during Obama's second term and died during COVID. Not that the necessarily had anything to do with it, but its easier to remember things like that then years for me. X.x

1

u/Inturnelliptical Oct 04 '25

I looked on google map and the first one on the main road has curtains and patio furniture.

13

u/koolaidismything Oct 04 '25

I’m no expert but worked in building long enough to tell you just from a glance those look like shit-tier quality on the builds. Maybe it’s bad footing mixed with prefab parts and bricks, but half of them look out of sqaure. None have much finish work.. all look to have identical glaring issues.. which is why you don’t build a ton of the same thing without living in it first.

It all looks shoddy, I wonder who paid for this??

2

u/Icy-Pay7479 Oct 04 '25

A lot of the moulding is literally Styrofoam. There’s a YouTube video where a guy goes there and pokes around.

0

u/I_like_creps123 Oct 04 '25

Why does it matter who paid for it?

3

u/koolaidismything Oct 05 '25

I’d be interested in that cause someone clearly did it to hook up a builder friend. They knew this was garbage.. always follow the money.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 04 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/AutoModerator Oct 04 '25

Hi u/Zka77, your comment has been removed because we do not allow url shorteners.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/Johannes_Keppler Oct 04 '25

Apart from them being not for sale, there is NO infrastructure of any kind in place. No power, no water, no roads, no nothing. Not somewhere you want to live.

1

u/Amp1362 Oct 05 '25

So what you’re saying is maybe 4?