Editor’s Note: What, you’ve never heard of the Atlas Obscura? The founders - Dylan Thuras and Joshua Foer - be in possession of created a compendium of the world’s wonders, curiosities and esoterica, which they’ve agreed to distribute with Viator blog readers. Click here to read previous Atlas Obscura posts.
For those of you anxiously awaiting this next installment of wonder-inspiring, off-the-beaten-path places that don’t make it into traditional guidebooks. This week’s Atlas Obscura theme is self-built temples (in Italy), castles (in the U.S.) and cathedrals (in Spain)!
Temple of Damanhur, Italy
Detail of a stained-glass windown at Temple of Damanhur
The Temple of Damanhur has come to be known as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Beneath a suburban building in northern Italy lies a massive underground temple built entirely in secret by a group of non-architects, working around the clock for 15 years.
Dug out of the rock without erection or excavation plans, the Temple of Damanhur is a immense underground fane winding conducive to “over 8,500 cubic metres on five different levels, connected to one another by hundreds of metres of corridor.”
And somewhat unbelievably, its creation was all overseen by a middle-aged, former insurance broker…
Bishop’s Castle, Colorado USA
They say a adult male’s house is his castle, and for Jim Bishop, this couldn’t be more true. A frontier spirit, when Jim decided it was time for him and his wife to get a shelter, he figured he would build it himself. What started like a one-room precious stone cottage in Colorado would shortly expand to astounding proportions: Bishop’s Castle may be the largest one-man architecture project in the world.
Bishop’s Castle, Colorado
Today, Bishop’s Castle reaches past 16 stories high, has three large cathedral windows, wrought-iron walkways and a steel fire-breathing dragon. Jim Bishop is 63 and is still building. It is unlikely he will stop anytime soon.
Don Justo’s Self Built Cathedral
Don Justo in his self-built cathedral
Finally, the last of our self-built projects — though by dint of. no means the hold out of the self built projects, many to a greater degree be able to be seen on the Atlas Outsider Architecture page — is a cathedral that can competing the great cathedrals of Rome, with one notorious difference.
This one was built by a single, determined man.
It is, at its simplest, an ex-monk’s act of faith. After eight years in a Trappist order — and happy foregoing to taking his vows — Don Justo Gallego Martinez was obliged to leave, considerably weakened by tuberculosis.
Out of the order but lacking to do right by God, Don Justo began laying the foundations of a generous cathedral, exclusively of formal permission or permits and with his own hands on a plot of land bequeathed to him by the agency of his parents.
Today the frame of a large building, with a 40-meter-tall dome modeled on St. Peter’s in Rome, towers over the town of Mejorada del Campo, about 20km outside Madrid. Like the cathedrals of old, it will not get to completion during the lifetime of its 81-year-old architect.
What will happen to the building after Martinez’s death remains an open question. No one has yet stepped up to cause to surrender over the project.
-The Atlas Obscura Team
Atlas Obscura, bishop’session castle, don justo, temple of damanhur
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