Prague's Modern Ruins in Photos

The Urbex collective has made a name for itself by scaling fences, climbing walls, and burrowing beneath ground to film the Czech Republic’s inaccessible modern ruins. Fearless leader Rendy, who asks to remain anonymous for legal reasons, compares his group’s activities to contemporary hobbies like geocaching, parkour, or spelunking, though such urban expeditions date back to Walt Whitman’s 1885 explorations of Manhattan caves and the French Dadaists’ early 20th-century meetings in Paris’s abandoned churches. Photographer Margot Buff joined Urbex on a recent tour of decaying industrial and residental sites, capturing the haunted beauty of forgotten Prague in the process.

Hotel Vaníček is currently a large squat

An overgrown teplárna, or electrical plant

Inside the teplárna, an old power plant

From the depths of the teplárna, blue skies

Barrandov Terraces, formerly owned by the family of Václav Havel

A southern view of the Barrandov Complex, long overdue for reconstruction

View from inside; reconstruction plans are currently at a stand-still

Urban explorers slip into the tunnel

Tunneling beneath an unnamed run-off sewer

An abandoned factory in the midst of a massive renovation

A bird’s-eye view of factory blight

Would you like to explore Prague’s modern ruins? While Expats.cz doesn’t condone breaking into abandoned buildings to do so, we invite you to Holešovice Market on Thursday, April 10, for Pop-Up Klub Blink Excelent’s Urbex Night. View projections of eerily abandoned spaces while experiencing Prague’s first-ever silent disco.

You can also check out more Czech ruins on Opuštěné Stavby a Facebook page devoted to abandoned spaces.

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Cast your vote for Prague’s most beautiful ruin here.