Original subtitles

Tom ward (narrates): A site in Azerbaijan

shattered by rivalry.

A whole city is forced to leave their homes.

A once socialist ruin in Estonia

founded by the ultimate capitalist.

He was known as Europe's rockefeller.

A sicilian utopia infiltrated by the mafia.

Death, destruction, organised crime and corruption,

what these people went through is harrowing.

And a gothic horror in the American mid-west.

This seemingly old world European castle

became the very seed and cesspool of deviance.

Decaying relics,

ruins of lost worlds.

Sites haunted by the past,

their secrets waiting to be revealed.

Their secrets waiting to be revealed.

(Theme music)

In the shadow of the caucusus mountains

in Azerbaijan is a ghost town with a desolate past.

Nestling among green trees are hundreds of buildings

but they've been annihilated with only their shells remaining.

It's an eerie sight.

It looks like something out of a disaster movie.

The roads and streets are deserted.

There's no-one to be seen anywhere,

but there's this one building that survived.

The mosque gives a clue to the heritage of this place.

As does another unexpected find.

In the middle of all this rubble

is a beautiful painted mural

is a beautiful painted mural

maybe it foreshadows some kind of revival

of this shattered city.

What disaster struck this once bustling city

and displaced over half a million civilians from this remote region?

(Dramatic music)

The disputed territory of karabakh is difficult to access,

here war correspondent emin ibrahimov

knows only too well the dangers that come with his job.

In October 2020 I was covering the karabakh war

between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Fortunately I had a dash cam that was able to capture everything.

One day I got a chance to go to a village

that was just recently liberated

and it was going to be an exclusive, I was supposed to be the first...

And it was going to be an exclusive, I was supposed to be the first...

The first journalist to go there.

So, I took my car and on the way

I saw a rocket just in front of me.

Past just above the car and I felt an impact,

a shockwave from the impact just behind me.

Emin was caught up in a war

that has plagued this part of the world for many years.

So, that's when I realised that I was attacked

and the first thing that came to my mind was...

Was the question that

how long will it take the guy to reload and shoot again?

So, I really stepped on it,

trying to go as fast as I can without losing control of the car.

The next thing I know maybe

30 seconds later I was already in... in the village,

I found some cover, got out of the car

and it's probably only then that I realised

that I just barely escaped death.

That I just barely escaped death.

(Dramatic music)

Emin will never forget the exact spot

where his life so nearly came to a sudden end.

So, this is where it happened.

The rocket was fired from the top of that hill...

And these magnetic stickers

with the logo of the channel were on both sides of the car.

They got blown away by the... the shock wave.

Shocking just how close they came to being hit by a rocket.

It goes to show just how dangerous of an environment

it is for ordinary people in the area.

The border region of karabakh

has been the centre of a dispute in a tug of war

between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

(Loud blasts)

In the last three decades alone

the conflict has taken tens of thousands of lives,

yet, it's relatively unknown.

People didn't hear much about this conflict

the way they do about conflicts in other regions,

it happened in an area that most westerners don't know much about

and between two groups of people

who are often overlooked by history.

Whole cities were annihilated

in two bloody wars in the early 1990s and 2020.

And it has left a deadly legacy.

Today you can only travel on the main roads

because of the danger of the mines.

If you want to step off the main road

you actually have to have a team of de-miners

check the area before you do.

This region was once riddled with nearly 100,000 mines.

We're on the central square,

of the most popular place among city residents.

Of the most popular place among city residents.

Behind me, used to be city hall and this building

or what is left of it used to be a drama theatre

which was built in the 50s.

It was the cultural centre of the region.

You wouldn't believe that

this was once a thriving bustling city

with people living normal lives here.

Amid the rubble is a stark reminder

of those who lived here.

The beautiful mural depicts three attributes

of Azerbaijani culture.

Woman is holding a tray with the symbols of novruz holiday.

A singer is holding a saz, an instrument,

and a woman with a child is wearing a shawl called kalagayi.

All three are protected by unesco

and are parts of the intangible heritage of the humanity.

This.. Is the Azerbaijani city of agdam

this.. Is the Azerbaijani city of agdam

once the cultural hub of the region.

Agdam was a very modern progressive city for this area.

Any westerner could have strolled through the streets

and visited the cafes and felt right at home

and yet all of that was swept away

in a relatively short period of time.

The mural adorns a once celebrated museum.

The building behind me used to be a bread museum.

It had over 1,500 exhibits

and one of the most interesting ones

was a... a piece of bread that was bought back

from the space by the astronauts.

The building was shelled in 1992

and now there's only three walls remaining.

Until 1991, agdam

and the region known then as nagorno-karabakh

had been under Soviet control for over 70 years.

Had been under Soviet control for over 70 years.

During the Soviet era, nagorno-karabakh

was a part of the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan,

but 77% of the area's population were Armenians

and they naturally wanted the area to come under the control

of the Soviet republic of Armenia.

As it did in other republics that it controlled,

the ussr was able to enforce

a kind of peace in this sometimes fractious region.

But as the collapse of the Soviet union looked imminent,

tensions began to rise.

This is a common thing we see

when a super power controlling

regional nationalistic ethnic groups in some kind of Harmony,

when that super power recedes

all those tensions and conflicts and divisions can flare up again.

With guns at the ready,

with guns at the ready,

agdam was at the flash point between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

In 1993 Armenia was convinced

that Azerbaijan was about to launch an offensive

and they quickly reacted.

Thousands of Armenian troops

tore through agdam and shelled the city to smithereens.

The skeleton Azerbaijani army

had no chance against a force this big.

It was an incredibly bloody and heart-breaking affair...

For the for the residents.

40,000 of the city's population

and half a million Azerbaijani's in the region

were forced to leave their homes.

And it wasn't just the fighting taking civilian lives.

Not everyone got out safely,

some residents fled to nearby forests

and in the harsh winter quite a few froze to death.

By 1994 Armenia had captured the region

by 1994 Armenia had captured the region

including the city of agdam.

Yet one building somehow survived it all.

The only building that was still standing

was an old mosque built in the 1870s.

Armenians actually used it as an observation tower,

a barn and to correct the artillery fire.

The Armenians had controlled agdam since 1993.

Although the city sat deserted for more than 25 years,

neighbouring Azerbaijani kept it in its sights.

The Azerbaijan army wanted to retake terrain

that had been lost in the 1990s conflict.

And then in 2020 the conflict ignited again.

While the rest of the world

was dealing with the coronavirus pandemic,

nagorno-karabakh was dealing with another battle,

nagorno-karabakh was dealing with another battle,

a war that raged in the region for 44 days.

This conflict has since been recognised

as a significant moment in military history.

This is thought of as the first war in history

in which drones played a critical role in its outcome.

Azerbaijan's drone led assault scored a decisive victory,

and by November 2020 agdam was back in their hands,

but for the city's residents the struggle is not over.

The guns may have fallen silent

but it's still a traumatic time for civilians on both sides,

for the Azerbaijani's who can't return to their homes

and for the Armenians who once again had to be uprooted.

Agdam remains derelict

agdam remains derelict

but something surprising has survived the carnage

giving hope for its future.

There's hardly anything left of agdam,

but one thing incredibly is still alive.

The city's football team.

They play in the Azerbaijan football leagues,

but now based of course in the nation's capital Baku.

The fact that they're still existing as a team associated

with the city shows you that there's a hope

that this city will come back to life.

There's a chance they'll be able to play in agdam again

as the government announced plans to turn the ghost town

in to a super modern Metropolis.

The master plan of a new agdam has been approved in may 2021

and the renewed city

will have a population of 100,000 people.

On the outskirts of downtown Kansas City,

Missouri is a curious structure that looks like it doesn't belong.

Missouri is a curious structure that looks like it doesn't belong.

This is a modern Metropolis,

lots of people, great jazz,

even better barbecue

and yet on the edge of this very modern mid-western city

is this castle that looks like it's been plucked out of the 1600s.

It seems completely out of place,

it seems not only to be in the wrong time period

but to be in the wrong continent.

This ruined castle isn't out the moors of Scotland somewhere.

It's in Kansas City Missouri.

Inside, modern features hint

at the true age of the stone fortresses.

Looks like it could be hundreds of years old.

Then you notice the steel beams holding parts of it up,

so, clearly it's somewhat more recent

so, clearly it's somewhat more recent

than the castles of Scotland.

Yet, the neglected remains give few clues

about the original purpose of the building.

The windows are boarded up, there's graffiti on the walls.

There's trees growing out of the ruins,

the roof is missing.

Clearly this building has been unoccupied

for a very long time.

This is a place that is stripped bare

of human habitation and yet the graffiti,

the signs and symbols show

that at one time people did live here.

Who were they?

Property developed vewiser Dixon

is breathing life back in to this building.

I remember as a child growing up here,

I was a little afraid of that building

because that was where they kept some of the bad guys.

Because that was where they kept some of the bad guys.

Vewiser is the current owner.

When he was young though, the building was already abandoned.

But I had friends that went over there you know,

and they'd come back and tell

cool stories like place was haunted,

you know, different things like that.

But I wouldn't go.

Mum said, you know, you don't want to go over there.

The origins of the bizarre castle can be traced to an era

when alcohol was considered the scourge of america

and to a particular quirk of Kansas City's geography.

When you go back to the late 1800s,

around 1881 you've got two Kansas City's

and you still do to this day, you've got Kansas City Missouri,

Kansas City Kansas

and they're split by the Missouri river.

Kansas outlawed alcohol in 1881,

Kansas outlawed alcohol in 1881,

almost 40 years before the federal law went in to effect.

That made Kansas a dry state.

It also made Kansas City

which is right next door in Missouri a very popular place

for all kinds of people who wanted to have a good time.

There were bars and brothels and entertainment joints

and people came from all over.

And so, they would just hang around,

you know, and get in trouble with the police.

This is what eventually led to the demise

of Kansas City's reputation.

With all these changes it becomes a centre for crime,

petty crime, and vagrancies.

And the authorities at the time

just didn't have the resources that they needed

to take care of the problems.

As crime soared the police had nowhere to house

the drunks and drifters now littering the city streets.

The solution was this, the Kansas City workhouse.

The solution was this, the Kansas City workhouse.

Its doors first opened in 1897.

This was the front entrance going in to the administrative side

to be admitted into the into the prison.

This whole area right here

was basically where they kept about 100 men,

all this area right here.

Technically this is not a prison, it's a work house.

And the concept of a work house goes back centuries,

the idea is that someone who's a petty criminal

or simply very poor and homeless

could be sent to this place

where they work their way back to society,

they perform labour.

And in fact the Kansas City work house

worked inmates a lot.

Worked inmates a lot.

Pretty much if you were down on your luck

you were pretty safe to come here

and try to get back on your feet because they had programming

to do that for those that needed it.

Sometimes this work was functional and had an economic benefit

for the prison managers,

but sometimes work would be manufactured

that had no purpose except to employ labour in.

The prison itself was quarried

by prisoners themselves, they cut the rock.

I don't know if you've heard working on the chain gang,

well they quarried all the yellow limestone

that this particular building

and other buildings around Kansas City

were built in, so, they had hard labour.

Yet none of this explains why a facility to house

petty criminals looked like a medieval castle.

When you think about it, the Kansas City work house castle

when you think about it, the Kansas City work house castle

is kind of an oxymoron.

A work house is a place for... For criminals or the destitute

and a castle is a place for the aristocracy,

but here in Kansas City they put them together.

When you hit the late 1800s,

in Kansas City you have this tendency

to kind of romanticise the idea of architecture

and one to go back to old European style architecture.

So that when they're sitting down to design this prison,

the idea is well what's more European than a castle?

The workhouse originally built on the ideals of reform

and rehabilitation offered inmates a route back to society.

But any misbehaviour was severely dealt with.

If you acted up in the programme some kind of way

they would put you in solitary confinement.

If you come here you'll see actual prison bars

if you come here you'll see actual prison bars

that still standing today.

So, I'm thinking that could have been

where you had to stay if you got really bad.

I wouldn't want to be put in no... No cell like that you know,

if you close that door you were in there by yourself.

But before long the supposed reformatory

was surrounded by controversy.

The work houses had been created to prevent deviance

but they became the very seed and cesspool of deviance.

Under the stewardship of those trusted

to help vulnerable prisoners,

it quickly transformed in to a den of iniquity.

The superintendent of the work house

was a man by the name of Patrick o'Hearn,

he was particular corrupt and so didn't run a very tight ship.

From what I hear a lot of illicit activities

were born here.

If you were a prisoner and if you was a big gangster

if you were a prisoner and if you was a big gangster

or if you was somebody,

you could get all the kind of drug paraphernalia,

maybe a woman or two.

This was not a great environment to rehabilitate

these petty criminals or alcoholics or homeless people,

it was dirty, the food was bad.

It was easy to get your hands on drugs or alcohol.

So, as a social experiment in rehabilitation,

you can't say it was a success.

Things got so bad that the mayor of Kansas City

opened up an investigation in 1909, and after that investigation

they very quickly fired the superintendent.

Two years later,

the male inmates were moved

to a newly built work house farm less than 10 miles away.

The female prisoners remained,

but the Kansas castle's days

as a reformatory were coming to an end.

Despite the changes that were put in to place after 1909,

despite the changes that were put in to place after 1909,

things just weren't going well.

And so, by 1924

they completely shut down the castle

and inmates were sent to other places.

As often happens with old prisons

or other abandoned public buildings.

They found a few other uses for it over the years,

they used it for storage for a while,

it was used as a marines training facility for a while

but it was finally completely abandoned in the 1970s.

For decades the castle stood empty,

I filled with graffiti and broken windows

and all sorts of trouble.

I just... just a horrible space.

That is until vewiser

stepped in with big plans to transform the castle

and build new homes on the land

and build new homes on the land

creating fresh opportunities for local people.

This particular building we want

to make it in to a boutique hotel

where you can come here and have a different

kind of a wow experience.

I'm the steward of the land,

the promise land is what we call it,

a place where we can live, work, and play for entrepreneurs.

In sicily's belice valley

are the remains of a bold architectural statement.

It looks like the whole town was just dropped

on to the landscape completed one day.

The angles are brutal, it feels strikingly modernist.

It isn't completely empty but it's very close to it.

On the hillside just a few miles to the north,

on the hillside just a few miles to the north,

lies another sprawling ruin.

Narrow winding streets, a crumbling church,

this is or at least it was a traditional sicilian town.

It's as if a bomb went off, bang!

It's completely devoid of life

except for the occasional stray dog hunting around the streets.

These strikingly different towns share the same name.

They must be connected,

but it's hard to see how.

It began with an unavoidable tragedy,

but it ended with something much more insidious.

Girolamo cangelosi

has lived in poggioreale since it was built.

He has been the town's mayor for four years.

The unifying vision behind the central square

was part of an ambitious plan for the entire town.

Instead of being densely packed

and with narrow streets,

it would have wide boulevards

and large open communal spaces.

The circular streets were the nuclei of the town

and each was supposed to have

a significant building in the centre.

Public services were going to be more easily accessible

public services were going to be more easily accessible

and more available to everyone who lived there.

All of these different design concepts

and ideas they hoped would come together

to bring the residents in to the modern world.

You might think that this is all a good idea,

but as you can see it didn't work out so well.

The story of how this once visionary settlement

became a faded memory

begins with the sprawling ruin two miles north.

This is the original town of poggioreale.

Calogero petralia was born here in the 1950s

and spent his childhood amongst its once busy streets.

But now the heart of the town

is strictly off limits to the public.

Is strictly off limits to the public.

The walls look like they could come down at any moment,

the floors look like they could collapse at any moment.

To this day it's a complete death trap.

On January 14, 1968,

the destruction began.

But the fiercest tremor was to come later that evening.

By then, many of the town's residents had already fled

to the countryside.

Houses collapsed

and the town was destroyed in mere instance.

In addition to the damage,

three people lost their lives

but that was just the start of poggioreale's suffering.

Death, destruction, organised crime, and corruption,

what these people went through is harrowing.

The danger doesn't cease when the earthquake stops,

the aftermath can be just as devastating.

Overnight, the entire population of the town became homeless.

The government relief effort was slow,

disorganised, and underfunded.

Eventually temporary housing was set up for the residents,

but it was only tents and prefabricated barracks.

Finally they came up with a plan

to permanently re-house the victims

in an entirely new city built just down the hill.

But you wouldn't believe just how long it would take.

Not a single house was built until 1976,

which is eight years after the earthquake.

And there's only one thing that can explain that.

Corruption.

It appeared that the money

earmarked for the reconstruction of the town

had been siphoned off

into the pockets of politicians and the mafia.

The first residents moved in to the new town in 1982,

14 years after the earthquake.

Girolamo, was one of the first to arrive.

Girolamo, was one of the first to arrive.

Beyond simply rehousing people,

the architects were promoting a social vision.

The futuristic design of the town

was intended to bring the inhabitants

in to the modern world.

But the dream failed to become reality.

That simply didn't line up

with what the people of poggioreale needed.

The people wanted investment in the economy,

they wanted jobs rather than money

being poured into this new town

that was really more of a work of art than anything else.

Work on poggioreale was completed in the 1990s.

Work on poggioreale was completed in the 1990s.

The Italian government spent several billion dollars

on reconstruction across the region.

It had the capacity to house 10,000 people

but it never saw a fraction of that.

Many of the residents never made it to the new town,

just because they had to wait long periods of time

before being able to move back home,

and so they just decided to locate elsewhere.

And the town's fortunes haven't improved much since.

Today we see these homes selling for a pittance

because really who wants to move into a town that's dying?

Today, girolamo hopes to improve the fortunes of the town.

The old town though has not been forgotten.

And is a key factor in this area's new found popularity.

Despite the lofty vision of the new town,

today it's actually the old town

that is proving far more attractive

with thousands of tourists coming every year

to get a glimpse of the broken streets

and dilapidated houses.

In the baltic country of Estonia,

a red brick mega structure sits eerily out of place.

The complex is huge,

you have buildings spread across this island

and then spilling out on to the banks of the mainland.

Through the large windows

rays of sunlight pour in on a sunny day,

huge empty rooms with rows upon rows of decaying pillars.

But these now peaceful halls belie a troubled history.

The working and living conditions were brutal,

corpses were being carried all over the streets.

What went on here in these buildings

would be more associated with another land.

This enormous structure was once referred

to as a bit of england on Russian ground,

but what's the connection here to england?

And how did the seeds of the world's

biggest ever revolution come to be sown here?

This place is on the island of kreenholm

and it sprawls across the border between two nations.

One part of the complex is in Estonia

and the other part is in Russia.

Here architectural restoration expert

madis tuuder studies its origins.

It was built in the 1850s,

this date gives a clue about

why this English-style building ended up here.

Back then, northern britain was covered in similar structures,

built to house the cotton mills

that grew out of the industrial revolution.

But industrialisation had not yet reached

the Russian empire although that would soon change.

In 1856

a wealthy German merchant named baron Ludwig noop

bought kreenholm island.

He was known as Europe's rockefeller.

He founded 200 cotton mills

he founded 200 cotton mills

in Russia, england, and the United States,

but kreenholm was going to be his crowning glory.

The kreenholm factory complex

was built for one purpose...

To produce cotton.

Kreenholm was the most modern textile factory

in the Russian empire and the largest in Europe.

At its peak,

the factory would house nearly half a million spindles.

This accounted for 10% of all the cotton cloth production

in the entire Russian empire.

Noop had lived and worked in industrial britain,

drawing on what he'd seen there,

he filled his latest factory with state of the art technology.

The new technology wasn't limited to the cotton mills.

Premises were heated by hot water

and steam, and there was illumination

through gas light as well as a ventilation system.

By 1889 there was even a telephone system installed.

The complex grew to accommodate

the thousands who came to work here.

Kreenholm became a town in its own right.

Kreenholm was more than just a factory.

It was so large,

it operated more like a city state.

But life here was far from easy.

Kreenholm had become fertile ground

for a bitter revolution.

The Russian empire's one of the last places

in Europe to industrialise,

they do it very quickly and they do it on a massive scale.

So, small surprise there are issues with work conditions,

workers health.

Kreenholm also used child labour

from an orphanage in st Petersburg.

In its heyday you would not have wanted

to be one of the workers here, it was absolutely brutal.

Despite their horrifying treatment,

the peasants of the feudal Russian empire

had not yet challenged the system.

At kreenholm that was about to change.

That fuelled the unrest.

A devastating and terrifying cholera epidemic

broke out in Estonia in 1872.

Many of kreenholm's workers fell ill

and about 400 of them died.

Corpses were being carried

through kreenholm in full view of the factory's population

and it must have been grim wondering

if you would be the epidemic's next victim.

Workers were terrified

of catching the infection themselves,

but their pleas to leave kreenholm

which was really a perfect petri dish

for the spread of the disease, those pleas fell on deaf ears.

The employees were left in a desperate situation.

As a measure to prevent catching cholera,

workers would open the windows,

but it became so cold

that it was very difficult to work.

In August 1872 they decide enough is enough

and they go on strike.

When the factory's internal police force got involved,

it turned in to a riot.

It kick started a violent confrontation

between the employers and the workers.

Troops were called in and were met with stones

being thrown at them by the workers.

The epidemic triggered the most serious labour unrest

that Russian Estonia had ever seen.

They eventually managed to quell the unrest

and the factory kept on rolling.

At the turn of the 20th century,

an eight-hour working day was introduced

and life for the workers became a little bit easier.

The factory thrived.

With the fires of descent had been lit

in the Russian empire...

Ultimately, riots around the empire like kreenholms

led to the 1917 Russian revolution

that not only spelt the end of the Russian empire

but also changed the world.

Estonia broke away from Russia,

but the island's cotton factories

carried on producing.

By the first world war

the factory was employing 10,000 people,

producing 17.5 tonnes of yarn

and almost 47,000 miles of fabric a year.

In 1940,

Estonia became part of the Russian empire once more

only this time under Soviet rule.

At its height in the 1970s

the plant covered 32,000 acres

and employed 12,000 people.

When Estonia regained its independence,

when Estonia regained its independence,

kreenholm was privatised,

but the company continued to lose money.

The number of its workers dwindled over the years,

until in 2010 it went bankrupt.

The kreenholm factory complex

maintains its place at the vanguard of revolution.

Retrospect the speed and conditions

of industrialisations there

were creating a sort of perfect mix

for political radicalism to spread.

And you can see the origins of that

or at least a foreshadowing of it in what happened at kreenholm.

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