Corfe Castle in England. A lovely little ruin that is near a lovely little town, and it's all surrounded by lovely sheep pastures on rolling hills that look like they came right out of the Hobbit. Well, actually, the Hobbit came right out of this landscape, and I can't help but wonder if Tolkien ever took a holiday here and drew on a scene like this for inspiration when he was thinking about the ruins of Numenorean kingdoms.
Romantic, decaying architecture makes me smile. A good ruin goes through a gradual evolution. First, there is the stage of impractical salvage, where the space enclosure system is mostly intact, but dysfunctional and not worth the effort of repairing. Then, the enclosure system becomes a wildlife habitat and ad hoc garden. As the destruction progresses, the space becomes more and more porous and irregular. Near the end, it is nearly pure sculpture--a few stones piled on each other.
A lot of the stuff we build today has little romance while in it while it's being used and even less romance after people stop using it.
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