15 49.0138 8.38624 both 0 bullet 0 4000 1 0 horizontal https://www.messynessychic.com 300 4000

Category / Abandoned

A Love Letter to the Lost World of the Parisian Pneumatic Post

Years before the Paris Métro opened, there was another subterranean transport system rattling away beneath the city streets. Instead of messages floating around in the internet ether of apps and social networks, if you wanted to send a note to someone in your city in the 19th century, you tube. A network of sealed lines…

Reviving the Abandoned ‘Life of Pi’ Art Deco Pool in Paris

If you ever got around to watching Life of Pi you might recall the hero of the film, a young Indian boy living in French colonial India, was ironically named ‘Piscine Molitor Patel’, after a historic 1920s Art Deco swimming pool (piscine) right here in Paris … At the start of the film, our lead character “Pi”, short…

The Inexplicably Fascinating Secret World of Thomasson

“Thomasson: noun \ to-ma-son \ a preserved architectural relic which serves no purpose”. We’ve all come across an example at one time or another– probably didn’t give it too much thought and surely had no idea these random urban oddities actually had a name, let alone an entire movement dedicated to observing them as conceptual art. That’s right, art. People have…

The Forgotten Houseboat Hotels of Kashmir

There was a time when these floating hotels that have rested on the lakes of Kashmir since the 1800s, were host to movie stars, artists, writers, famous musicians and wealthy western travellers searching for inspiration and tranquility. Lou Reed left a letter in the guestbook after his stay of one of the houseboats called Buckingham Palace,…

Documenting the Disappearance of Small English Shops

It’s no secret that long before Covid made its way to the English isles, the British high street was withering. Big names and local names alike have been noticeably vanishing from communities ever since the internet got its wings. But of course, it’s always the erosion of a once proud little family business that hurts…

The Resurrection of a Sleeping Art Nouveau Palace

Gatsby’s mansion has nothing on Chateau Laurens. Perched majestically on a river bend on the outskirts of Agde, a former Ancient Greek colony in the south of France, this exceptional place lost in time has spawned countless stories and speculation about what went on behind its mysterious walls. Some say that the lavish villa was…

Greetings, from North America’s Uranium Ghost Towns

North America has its own Chernobyl(s). There are gold rush ghost towns, and then there are uranium ghosting towns; settlements which grew out of the “uranium fever” of the first part of the 20th century and testaments to an era when fear of nuclear war led to an unprecedented rush for a previously low-value mineral. But…

Rocky Horror Picture Show in the Paris Catacombs

For our latest adventure on the Don’t be a Tourist in Paris web series, we go 30 feet beneath the city to discover the subculture of iconic midnight movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show just in time for Halloween. Below ground, we’re in the subterranean cinema of Alexander J E Bradley a photographer, filmmaker and catacomb-dweller (aka. cataphile).…

Murder at the Tiki Palace: When Swinging Went Sour in the 70s

Chattanooga, Tennessee: known for its southern charm, Civil War battlefields and … an infamous swingers palace? Indeed, perched in the hills overlooking the city, Tennessee once had its own Playboy mansion of sorts. The tiki-themed estate was centered around a highly unusual indoor swimming pool, built with underwater canals that disappeared into bedrooms where Chattanooga’s…

Forget Versailles, Tune into the Forgotten Château that Became France’s Abbey Road

Imagine the sweet sound of a duet between Elton John and Frédéric Chopin, or a Van Gogh painting interpreted in song by David Bowie. What if the lyrics for a Fleetwood Mac verse or a Pink Floyd anthem were ghost written by the famed 19th century female novelist George Sand? There’s only one place that…

1 2 … 36 OLDER POSTS