Places Changed Forever

Locations whose fate turned on a single event or slow collapse.

Entries in this category (27)

• Chernobyl Exclusion Zone — The 2,600 km² no-go zone created in 36 hours
• Nauru — From the richest people on Earth per capita to a mined-out rock
• South Korea — The country that pivoted from steel ships to K-pop, K-beauty and K-food
• Nusantara — The $32B capital being carved out of a rainforest
• Forest City — The $100B Malaysian mega-city that became a ghost town
• Hacienda Luisita — The sugar estate at the centre of the Aquino family's land-reform battle
• Alaminos City — The gateway to Pangasinan's Hundred Islands — a city born of conflict and named after a Spanish general
• The Amazon Rainforest — The world's largest tropical rainforest — spanning nine countries and the vast Amazon Basin
• Atlantis — Plato's lost island civilization — the most enduring 'where is it' mystery in history, never definitively located
• The Bermuda Triangle — The 'Devil's Triangle' in the western North Atlantic — famous for vanished ships and planes, explained by science
• Bugis Street (the original) — The world-famous open-air nightlife strip that Singapore demolished in 1985 for a shopping mall
• Burj Khalifa — The 828-metre tower in Dubai that has been the world's tallest building since it opened in 2010 — and the answer to "how tall can we go?"
• Cagsawa Church Ruins — The bell tower that survived Mayon Volcano's deadliest eruption in 1814 — now an icon of resilience
• Easter Island (Rapa Nui) — The remote Pacific island of the moai statues — one of the most isolated inhabited places on Earth
• The Great Barrier Reef — The world's largest coral reef — a 2,300 km living structure off Australia's coast, under threat from warming
• Mount Everest — The world's highest mountain — straddling the Nepal-China border in the Himalayas
• Mountain Pass Mine — The Californian mine that accidentally became the West's rare earth backbone — found by prospectors hunting uranium
• National Library (Stamford Road) — The red-brick modernist library demolished in 2004 despite a 20,000-signature protest — Singapore's most controversial loss
• The Old National Stadium (Kallang) — The 55,000-seat stadium that gave Singapore the "Kallang Roar" — demolished in 2010 for the Sports Hub
• Petra — The rose-red city carved into Jordan's sandstone cliffs — 'lost' to the West for centuries, now a world wonder
• San Guillermo Parish Church (Sunken Shrine) — The half-buried Baroque church engulfed by Pinatubo's lahar in 1991 — now the "Sunken Shrine" and a monument to the eruption
• The Sahara Desert — The world's largest hot desert — 9.2 million square km spanning northern Africa
• Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque — The vast white-marble mosque in Abu Dhabi built to honour the UAE's founding father — one of the largest mosques in the world
• Uncontacted Tribes of the Amazon — The last peoples on Earth living outside recorded contact — hidden deep in the Amazon rainforest
• Hogwarts — The School of Witchcraft and Wizardry from Harry Potter — a fictional castle with real-world filming locations
• Middle-earth — The fantasy realm of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings — and the real landscapes that inspired it
• Narnia — The snowy land beyond the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles — a fictional realm reached through magic