MUDURNU, Turkey — A town of 700 Renaissance-style villas now sits unfinished and abandoned on the slopes of a mountain in Turkey.
The ghost castles have become a mammoth symbol of Turkey's deep real estate crisis and attracted attention from around the world in a series of viral videos and pictures.
Launched in 2014 about a four-hour drive from Istanbul, the project initially aroused curiosity. The houses were offered at more than $450,000 each.
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Block after block, the town has the false air of an amusement park. In fact, the architecture was borrowed from Disneyland and from French and Turkish castles.
But the fairy tale quickly turned into a horror film when the overheated Turkish real estate market forced the developer to declare bankruptcy. It was just one of nearly 1,000 construction companies in Turkey to go bust.
Within a few months of the crisis, the home sites were deserted by the workers.
The promoter says a lot of foreign buyers invested in dream homes that became a nightmare.