“Adventure without risk is Disneyland.” – Douglas Coupland
Urbex (short for urban exploration), as defined by Wikipedia, is “the exploration of man-made structures, usually abandoned ruins or not usually seen components of the man-made environment.” It is often (but not always) risky and/or illegal—some abandoned places have high security while others are relatively secluded.
I “accidentally” urbexed for the first time when I arrived at the Philadelphia City Hall in March 2015 to have a look around but was initially turned away because it was too close to closing time. However, I persisted a little and was let in. As a result of it being the end of the day, virtually everyone had left already (it is a functioning municipal building during the business week), and upon seeing a service staircase up to the roof, I decided to hop onto the roof. Here are some pictures:
Since then, I have been urbexing occasionally. Here are the abandoned S-Bahn stations Wernerwerk and Siemensstadt in Berlin (June 2017):
Le Manoir Pavlovich in Île-de-France (July 2017):
Flugplatz Rangsdorf in Berlin (July 2018):
Wernerbad in Berlin (July 2018):
Damen Silos in Chicago (March 2019):
Billionaire’s Row in London (May 2019):