Buildings in Impossible Places (8 Photos)

Eight buildings in places that make no sense

A hut on the Matterhorn, a hotel inside a hairpin bend, a lighthouse on a rock in the open sea. Someone built every one of them anyway, and they are all still standing.

More: Ships in the wrong place

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🪵 Nageire-dō — Mount Mitoku, Tottori, Japan 🇯🇵

This wooden temple hall sits in a hollow of a sheer cliff on Mount Mitoku, propped up on long, thin stilts. Visitors must climb a steep path of roots, rocks and chains to see it, and the temple never lets anyone go alone.

💡 Throw Fact: Legend says the monk En no Gyōja shrank the hall and threw it into the cliff, so its name means “thrown-in hall.” Tree-ring dating in 2001 placed its construction in the late Heian period, between 1086 and 1184.

📷 Photo: Kazunori Fujimoto / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🌀 Hotel Belvédère — Furka Pass, Switzerland 🇨🇭

The Hotel Belvédère sits inside a hairpin bend of the Furka Pass road, with the valley dropping away below. Josef Seiler opened it in 1882 as a small lodge beside the Rhône Glacier.

💡 Movie Fact: James Bond drove past it in Goldfinger in 1964. The glacier has since pulled back more than half a mile, and the hotel has been closed since 2015.

📷 Photo (also in cover): LIU Xiao / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🏔️ Solvay Hut — Matterhorn, Switzerland 🇨🇭

This small shelter clings to the Hörnli Ridge of the Matterhorn at 13,133 feet. It is the highest hut owned by the Swiss Alpine Club, and climbers may only use it in an emergency.

💡 Cable Fact: Building materials were pulled up by cable from the Hörnli Hut, about 2,400 feet lower on the same ridge. It was built in 1917 and rebuilt in 1966.

📷 Photo: Orion666 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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⛪ Monastery of San Juan de la Peña — Aragon, Spain 🇪🇸

A cliff hangs right over the cloister of the old monastery near Jaca. Monks built underneath it in the Middle Ages, and part of the church is carved straight into the rock.

💡 Name Fact: San Juan de la Peña means “Saint John of the Cliff.” The cloister under the rock dates from around 1190.

📷 Photo: Iramonf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 es)

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🌊 Ar-Men Lighthouse — Brittany, France 🇫🇷

The Ar-Men lighthouse rises out of open water about 6 miles west of the island of Sein, off the tip of Brittany. Building it took 14 years, from 1867 to 1881, because workers could land on the rock only when the sea allowed.

💡 Work Fact: In the first season, crews managed just 8 hours of work on the rock and drilled 15 holes. The last two keepers were lifted off by helicopter on April 10, 1990.

📷 Photo (also in cover): Jocelyn Caron / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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🪨 Monemvasia — Laconia, Greece 🇬🇷

A whole town sits at the foot of a huge rock that rises out of the sea off the Peloponnese. Monemvasia is joined to the mainland by a single causeway about 1,300 feet long.

💡 Entrance Fact: The name means “single entrance” in Greek. People have lived on the rock since the sixth century.

📷 Photo: Katsikas pantelis / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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⛰️ Castelmezzano — Basilicata, Italy 🇮🇹

Houses pile up beneath sharp sandstone peaks in the Lucanian Dolomites. Castelmezzano looks squeezed into the only ground the rocks left free.

💡 Escape Fact: Local legend says people moved here in the 10th century to hide from Saracen raiders, and planned to roll boulders off the peaks onto attackers.

📷 Photo: Cinzia astorino / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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🧗 Abuna Yemata Guh — Tigray, Ethiopia 🇪🇹

This church is carved into a sandstone pillar about 650 feet above the surrounding land. The only way to Abuna Yemata Guh is up the cliff face, using hand- and footholds in the rock. From outside, the only sign of the church is the small dark doorway on the ledge.

💡 Bridge Fact: Near the top, climbers cross a natural stone bridge with a sheer drop on both sides, then a narrow wooden plank. Inside are wall paintings from the 15th century.

📷 Photo: Evan Williams / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped)