Russia’s Real-Life 'City of the Dead': Dargavs

Several myths and legends shroud the place, with locals claiming that no one has ever come back alive.

Source: Dateline Zero

 A real-life ‘City of Dead’ exists in Russia, north of the Georgian border, in North Ossetia. [map]

Hidden in one of the five mountain ridges that cross the region, several myths and legends have risen up around the place.

The ‘city’ rarely gets tourists. This could be due to the stories of dead coming back to life, should the ‘city’ be disturbed; or to the difficulty in traveling to its remote location in the mountains. Probably it’s a little of both.

Reaching Dargavs, the City of the Dead, entails a three-hour journey through winding, narrow roads, and several hills. The foggy mountain weather certainly doesn’t help matters. Once there, you’ll find that the city is in fact another hill covered with small white buildings. It is these very buildings that cause the place to get it’s name. The white house-like structures, countless in number, are stone crypts where locals buried their loved ones.

The city itself is an ancient Ossetian cemetery. Each family of the area has a crypt, and the higher the structure, the greater the number of people buried in it. The oldest of the crypts dates back to the 16th century.

Full post at Dateline Zero.