I lay down on one of those soft, round seats dotting the post-industrial yard of Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, a dynamic cultural centre for contemporary art in the northern outskirts of Milan.
This building, originally used for manufacturing trains, comprises several large halls where site-specific installations are shown, these experimental and thought-provoking works that makes Pirelli Hangar Bicocca one of the best contemporary art sites in Italy.
If you want to do some urbex in Italy, the former mental asylum is just one of the abandoned highlights that you can explore in the province of Vercelli and, as it is pretty complicated to get in, it’s wise to go there with a plan B (and C, and D). Here is what I visited during my two trips to Vercelli, until I finally managed to enjoy a tour of the abandoned asylum: a stunning example of industrial archaeology, a ghost town with some frescoed villas and the former pulmonology hospital, now well-known for being the setting of several ghost-stories.
After exploring the most underrated islands in the Venetian lagoon, I still had a couple of days left in Veneto and that’s when the most adventurous part of the trip began. I finally had the chance to go to Poveglia, the haunted island of the lagoon, and in the following days I also visited an abandoned industrial site, a derelict amusement park, a neglected villa and a former seminary. Enjoy the report and let me know what other abandoned places in Veneto are worth a visit: I might go back soon!
This is not my first time in Venice, although it’s the first time I’ve really liked this city. Usually, I stopped in Venice for a few hours during my Rome – Ljubljana journeys, so I had never explored the Venetian lagoon as far as its most underrated islands. This time, instead, by spending almost one week in the area before heading to Slovenia, I rose to the challenge of exploring Venice off the beaten path.
If you have been following me on Instagram, you might have noticed that right before Christmas I went to the north of Italy together with a couple of friends from Turkey. Our ‘abandoned north tour’ took in Lombardy and Piedmont, which are the westernmost regions in northern Italy. We visited abandoned factories, ghost towns, former mental asylums and more locations, all of which featured in my latest urbex video (check it out!). Here are the abandoned places we saw in Lombardy: