The ruined city of Ağdam in southwestern Azerbaijan once had a population of over 150,000 people, but today it’s an almost entirely uninhabited ghost town. The land around the city was part of a dispute between the Azerbaijani military and Armenian forces during the Nagorno-Karabakh war, and in July of 1993, Armenian forces moved through the city and forced out the entire Azerbaijan population.

The residents of Ağdam barely had time to pack up their personal belongings and evacuate, before the Armenians destroyed most of the city in an attempt to prevent its recapture. One of the only buildings to remain structurally intact is Ağdam’s large mosque, which is today used as an Armenian cattle stable.

Farmers are pretty much the only people who hang around Ağdam these days; as evidenced by a handful of cow fields surrounding the city. The town itself is full by weeds and underbrush, and is generally only visited by the occasional looter looking for free construction supplies.

In 1994, after six years of fighting in the area, a ceasefire to the Nagorno-Karabakh war was called, but scattered violence continues throughout the region today. The Armenians currently use Ağdam as a buffer zone for any Azeri attack, meaning that Ağdam remains empty and decaying, but not the kind of place to drop by for a spot of sightseeing.

Read more about Ağdam on travel-images.com. Also, a visitor to Ağdam wrote a blog at lonelyplanet.com, and Wiki has more information about the Nagorno-Karabakh war.

Thanks to Levon!

Locations: Azerbaijan / Categories: Abandoned, Buildings

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Back in 1949, the Oil Rocks were the site of the world’s first successful offshore venture in oil drilling, and by the 1960s 21 million tons of oil was being extracted each year.

Of course, this level of extraction couldn’t continue forever, and the quality and quantity of the oil started falling in the 80s. With it, the upkeep of the platforms and interconnecting roads fell, and today about a third of the oil wells are either inoperative or inaccessible, and many of the connecting roads have become submerged.

Despite the conditions, the platforms still have a combined population of about 5,000 men, who work in week-long offshore shifts, and collectively they produce over half of the total crude oil output of Azerbaijan.

Several action sequences in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough are set and filmed on the Oil Rocks, where terrorists used a giant helicopter saw to cut the oil pipes. Obviously.

There’s a thorough history at window2baku.com, Wikipedia has a couple of choice facts, and there’s a photo of the interconnecting bridges at travel-images.com.

Update: What we’re seeing here is actually not the Oil Rocks, but is very close. Oil Rocks is further out to sea, unfortunately in an low res area. You can get an idea of how big Oil Rocks really is from the OpenAerialMap image.

Thanks to Samir Aliyev and Panda32 in the comments.

Locations: Azerbaijan / Categories: Bridges, Movie Locations, Structures, Watercraft

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