Anne Marie van Malssen

Anne Marie van Malssen's first encounter with photography was during her Political Science studies at the University of Amsterdam. She received her bachelor's degree, but has been fascinated by the lens of the camera ever since. After seeing a photo of an abandoned villa in disrepair in the south of France, and influenced by its beauty, her involvement in urban exploration (urbex) began. The breathtaking rush that comes with urban exploration is astonishing. You never know what beauty you will find behind the closed, forgotten and forbidden doors, ”says Anne Marie.

In 2014, she decided to buy a motorhome and start traveling full time. Always looking for decay, on the roads from Bosnia and Herzegovina to North Africa, she found some rare beauties. After living as a nomad for two years, she decided to park the motorhome for a while and stay in Marrakech, Morocco, where she currently lives.

Play that funky music (Beelitz Heilstätten)

The history of Beelitz begins in 1898, when the Berlin health insurance company built a tuberculosis sanatorium and nursing home with separate facilities for men and women in Beelitz, a town southwest of Berlin. During the First and Second World Wars, the clinic turned into a military hospital for the German army. More than 100,000 patients were treated here over a 25-year period, but the most famous was Adolf Hitler who was treated for an injured leg in Beelitz in 1916. In 1994 the last patient left the clinic and the 60 buildings are weakened and left to decay.

Stairway to the ghosts (Chateau des Singes)

Chateau des Singes (Castle of the Apes) is located somewhere south of Paris and is known for its beautiful marble staircase. The mansion has been abandoned since 1976 and the extravagant rooms with floral murals (with monkey motifs) are a real treasure to find and see. Nature is reclaiming some parts of the house where some rooms have fallen into disrepair and are covered with mold. Very little is known about the history of Chateau des Singes. The ghosts who live upstairs aren't too keen on telling stories about the house, and neither are the monkeys of the murals.