{"id":41593,"date":"2024-12-03T16:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-03T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=41593"},"modified":"2024-12-02T17:33:40","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T17:33:40","slug":"ihbc-features-heritage-from-the-global-doorstep-explore-burj-al-babas-turkeys-abandoned-town-of-587-disney-style-castles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=41593","title":{"rendered":"IHBC features \u2018Heritage from the Global doorstep\u2019:\u00a0 Explore Burj Al Babas, Turkey\u2019s Abandoned Town of 587 Disney-Style Castles"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-open-culture wp-block-embed-open-culture\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"Zea2KxSRgF\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.openculture.com\/2024\/11\/explore-burj-al-babas-turkeys-abandoned-town-of-587-disney-style-castles.html\">Explore Burj Al Babas, Turkey\u2019s Abandoned Town of 587 Disney-Style Castles<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;Explore Burj Al Babas, Turkey\u2019s Abandoned Town of 587 Disney-Style Castles&#8221; &#8212; Open Culture\" src=\"https:\/\/www.openculture.com\/2024\/11\/explore-burj-al-babas-turkeys-abandoned-town-of-587-disney-style-castles.html\/embed#?secret=dak5sq6Xrs#?secret=Zea2KxSRgF\" data-secret=\"Zea2KxSRgF\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Burj Al Babas might have been constructed expressly to attract the attention of the internet, report write <em>Architectural Digest<\/em>\u2019s Katherine McLaughlin and Jessica Cherner in <em>Open Culture<\/em>: \u2018Sitting near the Black Sea, the town is full of half-finished, fully abandoned mini castles \u2014 587 of them to be exact,\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p><em>Open Culture<\/em> writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Originally \u2018planned as a luxurious, stately urban development offering the look of royal living for anyone willing to shell out anywhere from $370,000 to $500,000 for their own little palace,\u2019 it now stands as an unfinished ghost town. And though the project only broke ground a decade ago, it\u2019s already settled into a veritably eerie \u2014 and highly photographable \u2014 state of decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This, of course, more than suits the sensibilities of an adventure-oriented YouTube channel like Fearless &amp; Far. Its exploration of Burj Al Babas \u2014 one of several such videos currently available \u2014 offers on-the-ground views of what we can only call the town\u2019s ruins. \u2018This fantasy paradise land didn\u2019t sell,\u2019 says its host. \u2018Some blame the Turkish real estate crisis; some blame the kitschiness of it all. It\u2019s all so strange. It\u2019s all so fake.\u2019 Indeed, write McLaughlin and Cherner, \u2018as building the town got underway, locals became enraged with both the aesthetic of the homes and the business practices of the developers,\u2019 who subsequently declared bankruptcy, leaving the development in limbo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those who know their Middle Eastern languages will recognize the very name Burj Al Babas as a \u2018nonsensical mashup of Arabic and Turkish,\u2019 as Ruth Michaelson and Beril Eski put it in an in-depth Guardian piece last month. Though located in Turkey, with an intent to take advantage of local hot springs, it was financed with money from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Since its construction \u2018abruptly stopped in 2016, the project has become a bizarre white elephant,\u2019 causing scandal, lawsuits, an attempted suicide, \u2018and even a minor diplomatic incident between Turkey and Kuwait.\u2019 Anyone who\u2019s seen Burj Al Babas up-close will have their doubts about its prospects for completion \u2014 but if they\u2019ve got a YouTube channel of their own, they\u2019ll hardly want demolition to start before they can pay it a visit themselves.<br><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.openculture.com\/2024\/11\/explore-burj-al-babas-turkeys-abandoned-town-of-587-disney-style-castles.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Read more&#8230;.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Burj Al Babas might have been constructed expressly to attract the attention of the internet, report write Architectural Digest\u2019s Katherine McLaughlin and Jessica Cherner in Open Culture: \u2018Sitting near the Black Sea, the town is full of half-finished, fully abandoned &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=41593\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,30,51,45],"class_list":["post-41593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ihbc-newsblog","tag-culture","tag-environment","tag-global","tag-urban"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41594,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41593\/revisions\/41594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}