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Category / Desirable Digs

So What’s the Deal with Those Quakertown Pyramids?

We just love it when two utterly opposite worlds collide, which is precisely the case with the mysterious pyramids sitting smack in the middle of Quakertown, USA. That’s right, States-bound folks: you can now eschew a visit to Cairo and just head to rural Pennsylvania to get a taste of an esoteric society, the “Rosicrucian Order”,…

Paris Has a Brutal(ist) Side

Love it or hate it, brutalist architecture has an unavoidable presence in every major metropolis– even Paris. In fact, the French capital is something of a haven for futurist concrete architecture. Brutalist boomed here during the 60s and 70s in response to Modernism’s utopian vision, and after Haussmann, came superstar architects like Le Corbusier and an…

So the Real Hobbits Vacation in Sweden

In a hole in the ground, there lived a seriously pampered Swedish Hobbit. He had a private sauna, and a nearby manor retreat; a charming staff to make him a charcoal-fired pancakes and take him on moose safaris. For the right price, you too live like a glamping Hobbit. Welcome, friends, to the Kolarbyn eco-lodges: the…

The Towns That Were Moved by Horses

They say “it takes a village,” but if it was 1920-something, it took a horse– maybe a couple. As absurd as it seems today, if necessary, entire towns were known to relocate all their buildings via horse-and-buggy to proverbially greener pastures. With the rapid railway and urban development boom at the turn-of-the-century, lots of folks…

Derelict to Divine: Charlie Chaplin’s London Water Tower Home

Here on MessyNessyChic, we’ve seen quite a few obsolete buildings given new life through ambitious architectural projects, but none have been quite as astounding as this one. The Water Tower, an 1870s Venetian Gothic building in South East London in its own league. The 99 ft-high Grade II listed building was once as part of…

A Night on the Town in Bygone LA

Where were you on a hot summer night in West Hollywood, circa 1948? Or ’78? Pulling up an animal print stool at the Zebra Room, or sitting poolside at the Ambassador Hotel? Whether it was on the heels of Hollywood’s Golden Era or the époque of Joan Didion cool, Los Angeles’ hotels and restaurants have…

The Musician Searching for Forgotten Pianos Inside Derelict Wonders

Debussy said music is all about “the silence between the notes.” But for Romain Thiery, it’s about making sure that silence doesn’t grow too loud. Since 2009, the pianist, photographer, and overall urbex Renaissance man has been spotlighting the world’s grandest pianos in their final hour, in equally stunning and crumbling abodes, to give them…

Chateau Miranda is Here to Break Your Heart

Her turrets sprouted mushrooms, and vines ate up her halls once filled with aristocrats, candelabras, and plushy velvet lounges. It was one of Belgium’s grandest castles, but the Chateau Miranda had run out of time —at least according to its guardian, the Count de Liedekerke-Beaufort. In October of last year, he set the 100-room giant ablaze…

For Sale: Your ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ Fixer-Upper Awaits

When Matthew Hampshire drops us a line, we know it’s time to head into the belly of yet another crumbling beauty. This time, the photographer gave us a peek inside one of his lushest expeditions to date, in the hills of northern Italy at the ghostly Villa Moglia. Step behind her gates for yourself, but…

Picasso Drew all Over the Walls of this French Chateau For Sale

I grew up part-time near a town called Uzès in the South of France and on our way into town, we would always pass a mysterious property by the roadside. I remember my mother telling us it used to belong to a famous art collector, and she would even let us stop and sneak up to…

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