2 Best Sights in Rhodes and the Dodecanese, Greece

The ghost village of Eleousa (formerly Campochiaro) is one of many vanity projects built under Italian rule (1912–43). The central island was useful to the Italians for its resources and agricultural potential, so villages such as the one here were created in the 1930s to accommodate workers shipped in from northern Italy. Roads were built to link it to the capital and other prefab towns, and an official residence was created for the island's governor. Like everything the Italians did on Rhodes, it was a show of power designed to promote their fascist ideology to locals. It didn't last. Under a new governor, the village became a military outpost and a prison for Greek insurrectionists. When Italy surrendered in 1943 during World War II, it lost control of the islands and the last Italian families here disappeared. In later years the town was renamed Eleousa and its abandoned buildings used as a sanitarium for tuberculosis patients, but even this fell out of use by the 1970s. Today, its eerie vision of Italian "greatness" provides a remarkable glimpse into a strange past.

There was no grand reason for the abandonment of the hill village of Haihoutes; its 450 villagers just ebbed away over time, drawn to the more profitable, fertile plains below until, by the 1970s, no one remained. What was left behind crumbled due to neglect and earthquakes, then hikers discovered it and Haihoutes grew a reputation as a scenic ghost town. By 2013, a local couple had moved in and opened up an excellent taverna among the ruins, reviving the old village kafeneio (café). They cleaned up the church and created a small museum, too, in a renovated house that documents what the village was like only a few generations ago.