A former haven for Nazi war criminals, child molesters and their sympathizers, Villa Baviera is now a bizarrely whitewashed German-themed tourist attraction tucked into Chile’s Andean foothills. Established in 1961, the cult compound formerly known as Colonia Dignidad (Dignity Colony) hosted infamous concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele, known as the ‘Angel of Death,’ and served as a special torture center and illegal arms cache. Now you can drink beer and watch people stomp around in lederhosen as if none of those terrible things ever happened.

The insensitive nature of the transition of the 54-square-mile compound’s use is just the beginning, considering that an investigation in the ‘90s found evidence of decades of child abuse, torture and mysterious disappearances. Founder Paul Schäfer, a fugitive wanted in Germany for pedophilia, served as the authoritarian leader of 300 residents. Children were separated from their parents and siblings, all media from the outside world was banned, and sex was forbidden without Schäfer’s approval.

In the ‘70s, dictator Augusto Pinochet made use of the compound to detain political dissidents. Schäfer was finally apprehended in 1997 and died in prison in 2010, and though 20 colony elders were convicted of aiding him in his abuses, the roughly 120 remaining residents were allowed to keep the property and do what they wanted with it, which was to turn it into a money-maker. Rather than making it a memorial to the Holocaust or the crimes that were carried out on the compound, they decided everybody would rather feign collective amnesia.

The result is a 21-room hotel, swimming pool, playgrounds, wedding tents and restaurants along with all the German food and beer you can consume. A guard tower once used to spot escapees still looks out over the property, and the perimeter is still edged with barbed wire fencing, but hey, those hot tubs will help you relax away the memories of the atrocities committed there, right?

Catch more on the history of this twisted tourist attraction at Bloomberg and in the upcoming Hollywood film ‘Colonia’, starring Emma Watson.

Once they were no longer needed as bunkers, flak towers, forts, airfields and barracks, these military structures sat empty and abandoned, a stark reminder of wars past and those that may occur in the future. But these structures were built to last, and now they serve surprising purposes – like climbing walls, aquariums, hotels, apartment buildings and night clubs.

Flak Towers in Germany – Climbing Walls

Flak towers constructed in Germany and Austria on Adolf Hitler’s orders during World War II have been reclaimed as climbing walls, music schools, shops, nightclubs and even an aquarium. These extremely strong structures were built to counter airborne Allied forces, with concrete walls three meters thick. Their size and durability made them difficult to destroy after the war, and many stood empty and abandoned for decades. Climbing equipment enables visitors to scale the 47-meter-tall (154-foot) Haus des Meeres in Vienna; it was once crowned with a Wurzburg radar dome, and now contains thousands of sea creatures, including a 300,000-liter shark tank.

Airship Hangar – Water Park

The world’s largest freestanding building is an airship hangar built at an abandoned Soviet military base just south of Berlin. Measuring 1,181 feet long and 688 feet wide, the structure was created for the delivery of massive industrial machinery like wind turbines, but a Malaysian firm has converted it into something much more fun: a water park. Tropical Islands Resort contains a 3,000-square-yard swimming pool, 600 feet of sandy beach and 50,000 trees in 600 varieties.

Russian Bunker – Night Club

The 75,000-square-foot Taganskaya Protected Command Point in Russia was in military use from the 1950s to 1986, when it was abandoned. But in the early 2000s, a company purchased the disused subterranean space and transformed it into a Cold War Museum called Bunker 42, which includes a restaurant and night club.

Torpedo Facility – Private Residence

A former Cold War torpedo facility in a London suburb, once used to test submarine technology, is now a stunning round home. The structure once boasted a 160-foot-diameter dome covering a 120-foot-long, 15-foot-deep pool where model torpedoes and submarines were rotated on a large arm up to 150 feet per second. The domed structure had to be removed due to contamination, but the home still features a 4-foot-thick blast wall.

19th Century Gasometer – Apartment Building

A 19th-century gasometer that was also used as an air raid shelter during World War II is now a luxury apartment building. The Fichte-Bunker in Berlin held gas for the city’s street lamps, but when they were switched to electricity in the 1920s, it was no longer needed for this purpose. The walls were reinforced with up to three meters of concrete for its use as a shelter, and 30,000 people allegedly took refuge there on February 3rd, 1945 despite its capacity of 6,000. Once the war was over, it was used as a homeless shelter for decades, and then held emergency supplies for the Cold War. The structure now holds thirteen two-story luxury condos with large grassy upper-level terraces.

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War And Peace 15 Repurposed Military Structures

Swastikas are ancient symbols of positivity tarnished by a negative recent past, which explains why modern architects have generally avoided employing the hooked cross design in their blueprints. With that said, a little digging turns up more than a few swastika-shaped buildings – some where one might expect to find them, others most definitely not.

Barracks at Naval Air Station North Island, Coronado CA

(images via: Si1very and Google Sightseeing)

The United States Navy’s Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado, California was established in 1917 and during the Second World War it was the main naval base supporting the war effort in the Pacific. Post-war construction at the base salutes the American armed force’s victories with streets named “Tulagi” and “Guadalcanal” to name just a couple. Though nobody’s admitting it, commemorative construction may have moved beyond roadways and into the base’s buildings.

(images via: San Diego City Beat, IsraelMilitary.net and The Power Hour)

The buildings in question are a six-building complex currently occupied (according to a USN Public Affairs Officer) by the U.S. Navy’s Amphibious Construction Battalion 1 (the Seabees). Originally designed by John Mock of Hendrick & Mock Architects in the late 1960’s, the Navy’s original specs called for “a boiler plant and a recreation room; and a single ‘L’-shaped 3-story barracks.” The plan was then amended to have the dormitory building “be repeated three times and placed at 90-degree angles to the central buildings.” It was only after ground was broken on the project that the Navy realized what shape the complex would display when seen by the air but as very few people overflew Naval Air Station North Island in the early 1970s, figured it wasn’t a big deal.

(images via: About Facts)

Which it wasn’t, for decades, until the Internet and Google Earth allowed anyone and everyone to enjoy birds-eye views of anywhere and everywhere… and some folks did NOT enjoy what they viewed at the Navy’s Coronado barracks. The cost of adding additional landscaping and associated construction to camouflage the barracks’ shape has been pegged at $600,000 though a, er, final solution to the matter has yet to be implemented. Curiously, a pair of buildings just beside the barracks appear to be modeled after World War II-era bombers flying directly at the “swastika” (the other side of which sits an empty baseball field) though neither the Navy nor the architects will confirm this.

Glendale AZ Medical Buildings

(images via: Cloverangel7, Thunderbird Internal Medicine and City-Data)

Located just north of Thunderbird Hospital on W Thunderbird Rd west of 56th Ave. in Glendale, Arizona you’ll find the Thunderbird Internal Medicine building and its doppelganger to the south, the Oakeson Physical Therapy building. Known together as “The Fountains”, the buildings house a number of small to mid-sized doctor’s offices, labs and diagnostic facilities. The low-lying, nested cluster of buildings feature coppery-red terracotta tiled roofs and exhibit a blueprint more like a child’s pinwheel than a classic swastika. The coordinates of the buildings on Google Earth are 33.36.48.96 N by 112.10.43.02 W.

(image via: Phora)

Curiously, another group of 4 buildings (probably by the same architect) is situated relatively nearby at 33.28.50.87 N by 111.56.45.60 W. The two buildings at either end of the row display a full swastika/pinwheel plan while the inner pair display 3/4 crosses only. What’s up with metro Phoenix and swastika-shaped buildings? Like many such designs, structuring these buildings in a swirled cross design optimizes the exterior wall area to allow for a maximum number of outward-facing windows. While visually pleasing for those working there, the plan also eases the need for air conditioning, an important factor when planning architecture in the desert southwest.

Kenyatta National Hospital

(images via: TechMtaa and YouTube)

Located on the grounds of Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, is an “estate” of four low buildings that from the air display swastika floorplans. Two of the buildings are oriented in the traditional counterclockwise direction as employed for several thousand years by cultures as disparate as India’s ancient Sanskrit-speaking Indus Valley Civilization and the Native American tribes of the American desert southwest.

(image via: Kikulacho)

Another two buildings on the hospital grounds are laid out in the clockwise (right-facing) direction similar to the swastika design adopted by Germany’s Nazi Party in 1920. As far as the Kenya buildings are concerned, it’s estimated they house nurses who work at the Kenyatta National Hospital and/or its associated buildings such as the Kemri University of Oxford Wellcome Trust Collaborative Programme offices just across the street.

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Crossed Up 9 Twisted Swastika Shaped Buildings

When the Allied Forces came ashore in the Normandy region of France on June 6th, 1944, they freed French citizens from occupation by Germany – but the battle to do so was not without its costs, both in human lives and in the obliteration of towns along the coast. The magnitude of the destruction was jaw-dropping, with entire blocks reduced to gigantic piles of rubble.

Amazingly, many of those buildings were recreated down to the last detail and stand today as if frozen in time – a monument to life as it was in Normandy before the invasion. In a documentary photography series entitled ‘Normandy 1944 – Then and Now’, Normandy historian Patrick Elie juxtaposes shocking images of war with cheerful photographs of the same locations during modern times.

Elie, who has devoted his life to chronicling D-Day and the effects of the war on his home country of France, worked tirelessly to find the exact locations of dramatic photographs from 1944 and then took his own photos of the modern-day sites.

The images include places like Bernieres-sur-Mer, where a French Canadian infantry unit came ashore as part of Operation Overlord, and Caen, where heavy fighting destroyed much of the town. It took 14 years to rebuild Caen after the extensive damage incurred, and though many buildings were restored as closely to their original appearance as possible, the city has a distinctly ‘new’ feeling compared to the rest of the area.

In Elie’s work, some viewers may see haunting reminders of the horrors of which we are capable, while others may see the resilience of the human spirit. Either way, the contrasts – and indeed, more often, the similarities – between the photos from such vastly different eras provide an emotional connection to the events of World War II and D-Day some 65 years later.