Oh, just an Utterly Insane Ghost City of Fake French Chateaux

This is not Photoshop. I repeat, this is not Photohop. Ever heard of “duplitecture”? It’s the term that’s been coined to describe replica architecture which has been popping up all over China since the 1990s (and let’s not forget Las Vegas either), where iconic landmarks and entire towns are constructed using lower-quality building materials to clone centuries…

The Supersized Ghost City

Welcome to no man’s land, sorry, Naypyidaw, the vast and empty ghost city that became the brand new capital of Burma a decade ago when the government suddenly announced it was moving the capital from Rongoon, without explanation. If you’ve never heard of the place or never seen pictures of it before, that’s perfectly normal. Most…

Lights On But Nobody Home: Behind the Fake Buildings that Power Chicago

Guest Article by Chicago Sun Times columnist, Neil Steinberg Chicago is justly famous for its architecture. Birthplace of the skyscraper, home to the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere (still, the emotion-driven claim by New York’s One World Trade Center, based on the dodge of calling an antenna a spire, is easily dismissed) Chicago offers…

Stepping Inside a Paris Cartoon

Most Paris clichés and stereotypes really bug me. Those French perfume commercials starring Hollywood actresses on Parisian balconies with perfect Eiffel Tower views? Eyes roll. But this place? Well this place brings me back to childhood, behind the scenes of an animated wonderland set in Belle Epoque Paris… We’re at the Musée des Automates in La Rochelle, on the…

Backstage Fakery at Universal City in 1963

Universal Pictures was founded by a German immigrant, Carl Laemmle, who opened his first cinema in Chicago in 1906. In the early days, other studio chiefs laughed at Carl’s haphazard Universal City and nicknamed it “Laemmle’s Folly”. But the ambitious film pioneer would become responsible for creating the “star system”, rather than just using anonymous actors in films, and…

The French Banksy of Fake Facades

The French are already really, really good at beautifying their towns and cities, but not every façade can look like it’s straight out of a postcard– that is unless you enlist the services of Patrick Commecy. Let’s just say this guy is the Banksy, the Michelangelo (or the Frida Kahlo) of fakery… This was the wall before: A…

Paris, the Film Set

So you want to see Paris, just like she is in the movies. Of course it’s no wonder why cinema so often chooses Paris as its leading lady, the Audrey Hepburn of film sets, but what if it really became one? Imagine all those facades were fake and when the cameras stopped rolling, all the actors and…

Made in America: A Bavarian Clone Town

Leavenworth was once on the verge of becoming a ghost town until it became an American “little Bavaria”. Before economic ruin took hold of it in the early twentieth century, the town was an important logging hub in Washington and served as headquarters to the Great North Railroad. Despite its rich history of pioneer settlers…

3 Ways to Spot Fake Wine: Meet the Sherlock Holmes of Wine Crime

I won’t pretend I know much of anything about buying expensive wine, but I do know that I love playing detective. Armed with blue lights and razor blades in her toolkit, Maureen Downey has become a top wine fraud investigator, helping to rid the wine industry of counterfeit and stolen wine. Yes, wine crime is actually a…

Fake Chalets: Unmasking the Bunkers disguised as Quaint Swiss Villas

Traditional wood green shutters, lace curtains, Swiss chalet beams; all the makings of a quaint little villa in the woods. But strangely, the windowpanes don’t reflect the sunlight and on closer approach, the house looks impossibly narrow. Because this is no quaint Swiss chalet but rather a military bunker in disguise. Architectural fakery is one of…