Back in 1936, Berlin, Germany, hosted the Olympic Games. It was just before World War II, and Hitler was already rising to power – by the start of the games, all flags were flown alongside swastika flags.

Berlin erected 145 buildings and a 120 000-seater stadium. Unfortunately there is now not much left.

Photographer Sylvain Margaine visited the old Olympic village to take some pictures for his new book, Forbidden Places: Exploring our abandoned heritage, and for a website called Forbidden-Places.net. Here are a few for you.

Here’s a fun fact: records from the games show that in the three weeks around the Olympic Games participants consumed 100 cows, 91 pigs, 650 lambs and 8 000 pounds of coffee.

Don’t for a second think that Germany is the only one to have wasted their Olympic Village. Greece did a marvellous job of wasting $11 billion on their one, and no one can blame Sarajevo for what happened to theirs.

The good news is that the clever countries out there are cottoning on to this phenomenon of waste, with every potential host city for 2022 pulling out. For instance, after Stockholm pulled out, a Swedish politician told the AP that “to organise Winter Games would mean a big investment in new sports facilities, for example for the bobsled and luge. There isn’t any need for that type of that kind of facility after an Olympics”.

Let’s just hope the above never happens to the Cape Town Stadium, because if that had to fall into ruin, it would not be a pretty sight.

[Source: Business Insider]