Rich architectural models like buildings show what a culture is really like. Every part has meaning, from the design to the size, and will last for generations. Even the monuments that aren’t completed yet have interesting stories to tell. Here is a list of 10 famous unfinished buildings that were started but whose construction unfortunately never ended.
On the German island of Rugen in the Baltic Sea, there is a three-mile-long hotel called Prora. Its construction began in 1936 under Hitler’s orders but stopped due to World War II. Hitler started building the Prora so that German workers could use it as a place to go on vacation. There are eight identical buildings with 10,000 rooms that all face the beach.
Prora was the first project taken on by “Strength Through Joy,” a Nazi leisure organization. The group did such a good job that no other travel company would go up against them. Hitler also wanted to use the resort as a backup military base. During the war and the years after, the thousands of rooms were just left empty. This impressive piece of Nazi architecture was briefly used by the Soviets, the German Volksarmee, and the German Bundeswehr.
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The Ajuda National Palace in Lisbon is a popular place for tourists because it is where the Portuguese Royal Family lives. Its construction began in 1796, but it was never finished because of several wars and financial problems. The palace, which was only half done, is now a museum. After the earthquake and tsunami of 1755, this neoclassical palace was built to house the royal family. Several things stopped the project’s progress from moving forward. First, when the royal family fled to Brazil in 1807. Then, when the French attacked the country. Even though there were problems, the project kept going until the 19th century.
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The Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 stopped the building of the Sathorn Unique Tower when it was only half done. Now, the 49-story skyscraper is empty and stands in the middle of Bangkok, the capital city. People in the area say the building is haunted because it feels strange and creepy.
When Thailand’s economy was doing well in the 1990s, many building projects were started. The Sathorn Skyscraper was one of those buildings that were supposed to have high-end offices and homes. But after the financial crisis, most of the big building projects, like the huge skyscraper, came to a stop. Some projects were finally finished years after the financial crisis, and work on the Sathorn Tower also started up again. But there isn’t much progress because the developers are still broke and don’t want to take too many risks.
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Hitler had the idea of building the biggest stadium in the world, with enough room for 400,000 people to watch. This work began in 1937, and this colossal stadium in Nuremberg was to be used as a meeting place for the Nazi Party. The stadium was scheduled for completion in 1943. But, like most buildings built by the Nazis, it was never finished because of the war.
Currently one of the many unfinished buildings, the German stadium was going to be the biggest stadium ever. It was supposed to be 875 yards long, 500 yards wide, and 100 yards tall. But during the war, all hopes for the stadium’s completion were crushed when allied troops destroyed the nearby village. After everything was over, the foundations of the stadium and the test model were just left alone.
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The St. Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York has been under construction since 1892, more than 125 years ago. Since then, only two-thirds of the project has been completed. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is the world’s biggest cathedral. But the buildings haven’t been finished because the style changed and there were breaks in the work.
At first, the cathedral was going to be built in a Byzantine and Romanesque Revival style. But later, it was completely changed to a Gothic Revival style. In 2017, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission officially named the cathedral a city landmark. It is the sixth-largest church in the world.
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Near the famous Qutub Minar in Delhi is an unfinished tower called Alai Minar. Alauddin Khilji wanted to make it twice as tall as the Qutub Minar, which is 239 feet tall. Khilji died in 1316, and later generations abandoned the half-finished stone construction. Khilji, who called himself the “Second Alexander,” worked on the Alai Minar project to outdo the Qutub Minar built by Qutubuddin Aibak.
The Qutub Minar was a beautiful, well-known building that was the only one of its kind in India. The Alai Minar was meant to be twice as big as the Qutub Minar. Khilji was a very successful ruler in the Indian subcontinent, so he wanted to build a “Tower of Victory” unlike any other monument before it. However, Khilji only witnessed some part of the construction of his ambitious project because, after him, the Alai Minar’s construction never continued. Now, all that’s left is a 27-meter-high, six-story circular mass.
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The Palace of the Parliament, which used to be called the “People’s Palace,” is Romania’s most important communist building. It is the world’s heaviest unfinished building, has been under construction since 1984, and is still yet to be completed. Only 400 of its 1,100 rooms are used, and there are eight basements, the lowest of which is a nuclear bunker connected by tunnels, that is not used at all.
The building was meant to represent how prosperous and grand the multilateral society was. But the truth is that people had to deal with food shortages and blackouts because the project, which was only for the ruling class, cost two billion dollars.
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The largest Catholic church in England is in Liverpool. It is called the Metropolitan Catholic Cathedral. Sir Edwin Lutyens, a well-known architect, was hired to work on the project in 1933. Only the crypt of the huge building was built before World War II broke out and stopped work. If the original plan had been finished, the cathedral would be 60 feet taller than St. Peter’s in Rome.
Another genius, Fredrick Gibberd, who won a worldwide design competition, came up with the building’s current look. After the crypt was built, further construction stopped due to WWII. After that, Lutyens never cared about the project again, and he died in 1944. As of today, the Metropolitan Catholic Cathedral exists as one of the many historically unfinished buildings.
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The Basilica Temple, or Sagrada Familia, is one of the largest unfinished buildings- a Basilica in Barcelona, Spain. So far, five generations have witnessed its development and progress. Francisco de Paula del Villar began building it in 1882, and is still being built today. The temple won’t be finished until the year 2026. The beautiful temple’s construction began on March 19, 1882. Soon after, the head architect quit, and Antoni Gaudi took his place. When Gaudi died in 1926, less than a quarter of what he had planned had been done.
In 1936, the Spanish Civil War made it hard to make progress. The revolutionaries broke into the palace and immediately destroyed Gaudi’s models. The work on Sagrada Familia didn’t start up again until the 1950s. 2010 was a faster year for building because of improvements in technology. It’s unlikely that the building will be done by 2026 since the COVID-19 pandemic also halted its construction. This Spanish church is an excellent example of Gothic architecture from the past. On November 7, 2010, the place was already on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list.
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The inscriptions say that the National Monument of Scotland in Edinburgh is a memorial of the past and a call to the men of Scotland to be brave in the future. At the same time, it’s also called “Scotland’s Disgrace” because of things that didn’t go as planned. The building began to be built in 1826, but it was stopped after only three years because of a lack of funding.
The monument was supposed to honor the men who died during the Napoleonic Wars. It was meant to look just like an old temple in Athens called the Parthenon. When the work stopped in 1829, only 12 columns had been erected. Even though it has a sad past, The National Monument of Scotland is a significant building for Scotland and its architecture.
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