Abandoned Engineering Show Summary, Upcoming Episodes and TV Guide

This episode features Old Joliet Prison, a battered facility near Chicago that hosted the Blues Brothers; Tito's Nuclear Bunker, Keelung Fortifications and Vilarinho de Furna Campo Do Geres.

A dilapidated facility near Chicago that descended into open war but then hosted an iconic pop-culture moment; a vast underground base in Bosnia, saved by an act of sabotage, committed by a double agent; an ancient Portuguese settlement crushed under a wave of change, now emerging from the mud like a modern-day Atlantis; and a fortress city in Taiwan that a famed Chinese commander used to trap his French enemy and turn into their coffin.

Exploring a symbol of national pride that became a symbol of excess in the Turkish capital of Ankara.

Exploring Dover Commando Fortress in South East England, where traces of a top-secret Commando raid are still visible.

Exploring Haludovo Palace Hotel in Croatia, Wolf's Lair, a German military complex and Herouni Mirror Radio Telescope - a pioneering facility in Armenia.

The Dew Drop Inn is a music mecca in New Orleans that dared to take on the authorities and paid the price; Belgica Fort is an epic ruin built to defend the most unlikely of treasures; and the legacy of West-81, a military exercise that terrified the West.

This episode explores a grand structure in Hull, once the heartbeat of the community, reduced to rubble by Hitler's planes while those inside were laughing at him on the silver screen; Casa Albero in Italy, USS Hornet in California and the Sofia tunnels.

In the disputed region of Abkhazia lies the wreckage of a vast site that promised heroic sporting victory over western rivals; a dense forest near the Czech capital of Prague hides an eerie castle rumoured to possess supernatural powers; in Liberia, West Africa, the ruin of a luxury hotel taken by a cruel warlord, then transformed into safe haven; and in north-central Arizona, a settlement's scattered remains reveal an ancient community given life by a deadly force.

An industrial ruin in the Florida everglades that once competed in the greatest race humankind has ever witnessed; a community in Indonesia shattered by a terrifying and deadly unseen force; the graffiti covered walls of an Ibizan legend hint at a fun-loving past; and a Bulgarian school that concealed an ambitious and covert plan for revenge.

An Appalachian dream that conjured the spirit of the old west, left to rot on a North Carolina mountainside; in the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia are the remains of an ingenious sky-high solution to a ground-based problem, Chiatura, once known as the Venice of the air; Guernsey Hospital was a vast complex built when a slice of Britain lived under the Nazi yoke; and Houtouwan , a Chinese island of simple means, caught up in a brutal revolution that ushered in a tragic period of mass incarceration and murder.

The Tunnels of Gibraltar were a Second World War espionage base, hidden in the Rock of Gibraltar, which lay undiscovered for decades; at Atlas-1 Test Site, are the remains of an ingenious US Airforce project that continues to keep us safe; at Roghudi Vecchio is an ancient culture threatened when an Italian town is deserted; and at Naissaar, a highly classified Soviet munitions factory camouflaged in the forests of Estonia.

Hidden behind the mighty Niagara Falls an extensive labyrinth containing an engineering marvel, plus the ruins of a once lavish Romanian destination caught in a web of corruption, and on the banks of the Uruguay River, a fallen cathedral from a golden age of industry.

Exploring a complex in Georgia pointing into deep space that almost discovered a signal from aliens.

Exploring a crumbling dam hidden in the Welsh valleys, a quaint outpost on a paradise island, and a mastery of ancient engineering that brought life to the planes of Mexico.

Exploring a British fort that became a bizzare zoo, a brutalist school for Communist top brass and a lost world hides secrets of a vanished people.

Exploring a military strong-hold in the Philippines, a facility that spawned an American sporting great, and an English relic that hosted a cinematic sensation.

Exploring the remains of a pioneering industry town in Ohio, a once beautiful Croatian resort bombarded by enemy fire, and an otherworldly garden of Eden in Mexico.

This episode travels to Chile, the Maltese capital Valleta, Havana and Germany, to reveal: honeymoon home of a young princess that offered her a glimpse of freedom; grand monuments designed by the most notorious dictator of the twentieth century; a sprawling industrial complex?the site of a ruthless disappearance; and?the artistic dream of?a revolutionary now in?ruins.

A dystopian powerhouse in Pennsylvania, USA that once served in WWII; a dark past unearthed from a fairy-tale castle in Poland; Anglo-Saxon religious ruins across vast plains of Scotland; and a forgotten village that witnessed the rise and fall of Jerusalem.

Exploring Italian ruins immortalised by Hollywood, a crumbling Chilean city with two lives and a brutalist Scottish relic whose prayers went unanswered.

An ominous tower in the forests of Croatia, a New York City complex that broke the mould, and a grand facility guarding the London riverbanks.

Exploring a beachside resort with ties to the Russian mafia, a windswept base hiding lifesaving technology, and a site in Iowa plagued by its past.

A ghost town left high and dry in the mountains of Colorado, a marooned facility in the waters off England's south coast, the remnants of a sprawling industrial enterprise in Puerto Rico where locals struggled under colonial rule, and a remote village on the island of Cyprus that couldn't escape the clutches of war.

Bizarrely-shaped huts in India, once home to global superstars, are now eerily quiet and neglected. Also, traces of a legendary escape story hidden beneath a Polish forest, epic castles in Transylvania telling a chilling story of the world's most notorious villain, and a shattered compound in Colombia linked to a criminal mastermind.

A volcanic island just off Taiwan containing chilling ruins from its darkest era, a strange site filled with rusting metal cages and a miniature railway that lies forgotten in the woods of Arkansas USA, an Eastern European town that lived through a radioactive nightmare, and a United States Air Force base in Britain with a top-secret agenda.

A Middle Eastern region littered with ruins - the site of an extraordinary deception, an industrial relic in Buffalo that was the source of an unlikely American icon, the relics of a once thriving city-state in Tanzania, and a strange facility in Taiwan that struck fear into the hearts of those who knew its true purpose.

An iron monster lost in the Alaskan tundra, a Crusader fort thrown into a modern conflict, and a prison built to house a mafia kingpin.

An engineering masterpiece carved into the cliff-face, and a long-range beacon that transmitted one of the most infamous messages in American history.

A secretive facility in North Wales which produced horrific weapons. The Scattered ruins of an engineering disaster in the USA. A subterranean network in Ukraine. And an island prison built to stop deadly epidemics in their tracks.

A creepy collection of buildings, monuments hidden in a Parisian park and an eerie graveyard of discarded ships strewn along the banks of a mighty river.

A small isolated country littered with strange concrete mushrooms, a fort built on America's eastern seaboard, a Spanish village engulfed by tragedy and a secret Japanese facility that was once at the forefront of weapons technology.

A juggernaut of Soviet engineering which was crucial to the international space race. Deserted Scottish coastal defences, an complex that is a crucial part of American history and an ancient Greek settlement that was shaped by years of violence.

A two-hour special featuring a deserted Caribbean city, an American ghost town still burning, a Japanese no-go zone, an Arctic settlement facing a terrifying future, a sprawling Taiwanese facility that drew liquid gold down from the hills, and a once great lake that's now a barren desert.

Within a dense Polish woodland sits a forgotten complex with an explosive history. Also, grand coastal defences in Ghana reveal a tortured past, a decaying giant that had once promised to kick-start Serbia's industrial revolution, and a site built to keep America functioning in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

What happened to an infamous pirate city in Jamaica? Also, a grim gulag in Croatia, a wartime subterranean complex in Scotland and a plantation in the Deep South of America caught up in the troubled aftermath of the American Civil War.

An American prison for the violent and deranged with links to an infamous cult leader, and a cavernous tunnel network in France offering shelter from unrelenting bombardment.

Including an exploration of a marooned iron-clad structure in Portland, off the coast of England, that hides a dramatic story of war and resilience; Pratt Cotton Gin Mill, a vast facility in the heart of America's deep south that helped tear apart a nation; and a Mediterranean island fortress at Spinalonga, Greece, that became the scene of a dark conspiracy.

Including an exploration of the claustrophobic prison cells of Devil's Island; Vemork, a vast mountainside complex that held the power to change the world; Salton Sea, where a string of crumbling towns are linked by a toxic secret; and Ralsko, a sprawling secretive base that's been left standing on deadly ground.

Scorched remains that speak of imprisonment and torture... the desert town that faced a disaster of biblical proportions... a rusting cab leway leading to a deadly site in the mountains of southern Africa... vast coastal ruins that reveal a past once wiped from history.

A vast snowcovered monster in the icy wilderness of southern Alaska, a ruined super structure that overshadows everything around it in and a landscape of confusing and surprising structures that once represented a bold statement of Spain's plans for the future. Plus, a long, winding formation that was once supposed to help defend Hitler's Third Reich. And in Budapest, Hungary, the stripped skeleton of an industrial relic lies rusting away.

Once they were at the heart of the Communist empire, now they lie abandoned leaving only memories of a time before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, each haunted shell is ready to reveal its own story.

Still standing today, a fierce-looking prison and an innocuous looking office building in Berlin were actually the headquarters of a feared and ruthless organisation - the Stazi. Also, a covert Communist base hid Cold War submarines for Tito, the former leader of Yugoslavia on the island of Vis. A seemingly innocuous sports centre hides a sinister underground bunker.

And the former HQ of the Soviet Army in East Germany was a forbidden Soviet city within a city - the vast site in the East of Berlin is still abandoned today but its architecture still impresses and even the statues of Lenin still stand in this visually remarkable, place from another time.

A formerly luxurious and strategic mountain-top villa on the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean that's been ravaged by acts of revenge by locals since 1955. A structure covered in symbols and signs that spirals down into the depths of the unknown. The rust covered carcass of a vast industrial relic deep in the woods of West Virginia, and lone towers battling the might of the ocean at the ends of the earth. But how and why were they ever built, and why are they now left abandoned?

A ghostly town in West Virginia that fell victim to the pace of change when steam trains were rendered obsolete. A colossal dry dock structure on the American west coast may now be crumbling but has written itself into military folklore. An elaborate underground complex in Italy that had been abandoned for nearly 2000 years, continues to mystify explorers today. And an island paradise in Costa Rica hiding a grim history of violence within an old, abandoned prison. But how and why were they ever built at all, and why are they now left abandoned?

A little-known dark past explains the vast monolithic structures that dominate the small British island of Guernsey.

A settlement in Argentina destroyed by floods, a town in the US that has been erased, and a Soviet dream-town that turned into a nuclear nightmare.

A village ruin, a ghostly fleet of ships, a bridge to nowhere hidden in a forest and strange metal structures in a wood all feature.

A devastated cliff-top ruin in a pock-marked landscape that helped turn the tide of war, an extraordinary tall ‘tower of death' in the middle of a busy city, an eerie concrete structure stranded at sea that came to a gruesome end, and a mysterious heavy metal monster abandoned in a remote field.

In this episode, concrete channels hidden in a mountaintop forest, a collapsing bridge, a marooned military base and the upright rusting carcass of ship - but why have they all been abandoned?

A mysterious group of rusting ships stranded in an arid desert; a monstrous defensive line on the snow-covered peaks of the Italian Alps; a ghostly collection of ornate buildings deep in the German woodland; the sunken remains of a unique maritime vessel with a story to tell... Once these extraordinary places and objects were at the cutting edge of design and construction, but now they stand disused, sometimes contaminated and sometimes dangerous. But who was it that built these mysterious structures? What secrets do they hold, and why were they abandoned?

The Georg Thiele was a technological masterpiece, but it is a shipwreck, lost to the sea in a Norwegian Fjord after running aground during a naval battle in WWII.

Also in this episode, a mysterious concrete giant which echoes the Communist era atop a mountain peak in Bulgaria, a fantastical structure built in the middle of an American river, and one of the world's first and finest Artic feats of engineering, The Miles Glacier Bridge in Alaska, which, when it was first built in the early 1900s, was known as the Million Dollar Bridge.

The Canfranc Railway Station is an elaborate abandoned Nazi railway station built near a town of only 500 people in the Pyrenees in Spain. But why was it built there and what secrets does it hold?

Also examined in this episode is the Salton Sea Navy Base in California - a military post in the middle of the desert in the American west, the Kola Superdeep borehole - a wrecked record-holding Arctic facility in Russia that goes deep, deep underground, and a huge tower looming over an industrial area in Belgium. All of these extraordinary places and objects were at the cutting edge of design and construction, but now they stand disused, sometimes contaminated and sometimes dangerous.

Hear the fateful story of the disused Vajont Dam in Italy, the site of a tragic disaster in 1963 which resulted in the deaths of around 2,000 people.

A dark past explains why the Pölitz Synthetic Fuel Plant in Northern Poland is now a derelict industrial site littered with tunnels, bunkers and huge crumbling concrete structures lost in dense forest. The site was built in 1937 as part of Nazi Germany's drive to become self-sufficient on fuel, but it was no ordinary refinery. It used the latest technology at the time, at great expense, to turn coal into oil. In 1945 an Allied air raid pulverised the plant, severely wounding the German war machine and leaving the site in ruins.

Other structures examined in the first episode include the incredible vertical Phoenix Shot Tower in Baltimore, which was built to provide America's own ammunition, the former American spy instillation called Teufelsberg (or 'Devil's Mountain') in Berlin which waged the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and the now derelict Rubjerg Knude Lighthouse which was built on Europe's second-fastest moving sand dune in Denmark.

How Europe's most advanced power station became a film set. Plus, the structures made by scientific pioneer Nikola Tesla in his thwarted quest to prove the US with free electricity.

Soaring across some of the widest rivers and deepest valleys on the planet, bridges have always been at the cutting edge of engineering. We travel high into the mountains of the Colorado desert to find out why a hidden engineering masterpiece could disappear at any time. We ask why a stretch of overgrown concrete in a Czech reservoir is known as 'Hitler's bridge'. We find out how the highest bridge in the world collapsed in less than one minute. Finally, we uncover the story behind Cape Town's invisible bridge, which never carried a single vehicle.

Empty buildings and infrastructures are full of the echoes of real people and vanished lives, leaving many questions unanswered and mysteries unsolved. We explore the worlds strangest engineering projects that created empty silent cities. We ask why a ruined cold war air base has become a no-go area and how a tiny Japanese mining island become the most over-crowded place on the planet. We find out if the street layout of the Soviet Union's model city become a matter of life or death for its population. And how did Nazi Germany create a huge mind control facility at a holiday resort?