Poetry and Sadness of Abandoned Places

“The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.”

(Cyril Connolly)

Maison of the Philosopher, picture found here.

I’ve always felt a fondness for things and places old and slightly tattered, where the moldy, dusty and sweet scent of the passing of time lingers in the air and every abandoned every day object is woven with stories and secrets. Abandoned houses, manors and castles posses such a sad, poetic beauty and their solitary abandoned state and slight decay makes them much more romantic to my eyes because every broken window, every crack on the wall, every tattered wallpaper, every porcelain cup, doll, a clock or a bed left behind tell a tale of a life once thriving between the four walls. Mystery and romance shrouds everything that would usually seem mundane in abandoned places; a left notebook, train ticket, old shoe, everything seems so precious and mysterious. I’d chose a cracked facade overgrown with ivy and perhaps even red roses, if I’m being fancy and decadent, over a brand new white facade any day because the former has so much vivacity and life in it, and a new building hasn’t lived much at all. Pristine and pretty perhaps it is, but doesn’t awake my curiosity at all.

With all that said, you can imagine my delight when I discovered a YouTube channel called “Bros of Decay“; two twenty-something year old brothers from Belgium make delightful videos about abandoned places; from very fancy and rich castles and manors with often odd and bizarre history behind them, to more average homes of working class people. Their filming locations range from Belgium and France to Italy, Spain and Portugal, even Japan, and I really enjoy observing the differences in architecture of different regions.  French countryside manors seem so dreamlike and I can’t help but imagine myself a little girl living in one of them; sleeping in a bedroom with white floral wallpapers, washing my face in a basin in the morning, playing with my porcelain dolls and practicing piano in the lovely drawing room downstairs with a view of the loveliest garden full of roses and lilies, maybe even a pond with a weeping willow stretching its branches over the water…. Yes, these videos are definitely fueling my daydreams! (As if they need further fueling) And that is why I felt the need to recommend them to all of you; I think they are just so well-made, the way they are filmed is great because you can real observe and soak in all the details, and also the lads are very polite and respectful and it’s really pleasant to watch over all. I hate when these types of videos are sensationalist. All the pictures in this post are from their site and of course you can watch the video for any of these lovely locations. Oh, and to add to the intro quote, dried roses are dead and they also smell sweet!