Explore Urbex & Lost Places

What is urbex (urban exploration)

Urban exploration — or urbex for short — involves documenting abandoned or inaccessible places like old factories, hospitals, railways, ruined castles, and ghost towns. It’s not vandalism or treasure hunting, but a photographic and historical study of the built heritage society has left behind.

Rules: security and legality

• It is not an invitation to enter: many sites are private property and entering without permission is trespassing, which is illegal. Always check ownership and local laws.
• Structural risk is real (collapses, asbestos, voids, gas): the danger level 0–3 shown on the map is an estimate, not a safety guarantee.
• Follow the ethics "take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints": no extraction, no damage, no spread of access.

Purpose of this map

This interactive map georeferences 61,995 places in 182 countries for documentation and research: spatial analysis, heritage study, demo mapping. It does not encourage trespassing or unauthorized exploration. Names are pseudonymized at the source, and coordinates are for analysis, not as an invitation to visit.

Data and linked datasets

The data comes from LostFoundations (collected with the operator's written permission) and follows an OpenStreetMap compatible schema (ODbL license). Each place has WGS84 coordinates, a normalized category (12 classes), risk level, cover image, and keywords. The full dataset (CSV, JSONL, GeoJSON — 16 columns) is published as open data:

• Hugging Face — Urban Exploration & Abandoned Places Worldwide
• Kaggle — Urban Exploration & Abandoned Places Worldwide
• All project open datasets
• Place source: LostFoundations (authorized use)
• Map source: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)