10 Strangest Places to Live

These are the strangest places to live in the world. People have found ways to harmonise their homes with the surrounding landscape and the result is simply amazing. Here are the 10 strangest places for a home in the world:


1 Al Hajarah Yemen

This little town has been built in the Haraz Mountains, in Yemen, almost a thousand years ago. The picturesque of the place, with its walled buildings, its old traditions and the amazing landscape cannot be denied, but the safety was not an issue when the constructions were raised, as some of them are dangerously placed near the edges.

2. XUANKONG SI, CHINA

The Monastery in mid air” , as the name of this place is translated, was built in the 5th , by using ancient techniques that remain a wonder to this day. The monastery is located close to the base of one of the five sacred mountains in China, Heng Shan.

3. Cappadocia, Turkey

In Anatolia lies this amazing little town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which was recorded from the 6th century. Home to 2500 people, the weird looking structures are actually sandstone deposits which were transformed into houses by the inhabitants.

4. Roussanou Monastery

The Metéora, which means “rocks suspended in the air” are sandstone pillars that have survived erosion. They may be found in Greece, and it is on these Metéora that Roussanou Monastery was built (one of the 6 similar constructions).

5. Setenil de las Bodegas, Spain

Located in the province of Andalucía, this village is amazingly built within the rock : if you watch carefully the picture, you will notice how the wall of the house emerges directly from it. The village is also designed on several “floors”, the roof of the house being made out of impressive amounts of rock, above which another house was carved deep in the mountain’s wall.

6. Casa do Penedo, Portugal

Casa do Penedo, or “the house of stone”, is not as old as the constructions presented so far: it was designed and built in 1974, by an imaginative architect. After having the chance to discover four large stones, he had the idea of placing a house in the space created by these rocks.

7. Ponte Vecchio, Italy

This is an unusual bridge, located in Florence, on the river Arno. What makes is so special are the jewellery shops that spread from one extremity to the other. Though almost all merchants used to live above their shops, this practice is not common anymore these days.

8. Matmâta Tunisia

The inhabitants of Matmâta dug holes into the ground and then tunnels into the walls in order to achieve these unusual dwellings. These ancient homes, some of the strangest places to live in the world, were built so far back that no one remembers exactly when or why they were fashioned this way. One legend states that the inhabitants simply occupied the caves left behind by desert monsters, while others say that Berbers created them in order to hide from Egyptians.

9. Sealand

This World War II Sea Fort is located 13 km away from England’s shores, outside its territorial waters. Sealand is actually a really, really small sovereign state. It is ruled by is Highness, Prince Michel Bates.

10. John O Groats

John O Groats is a small town of only 300 residents, situated at the most northern point in England. During winter, this place becomes very unfriendly, with heavy snows and dense fog. The inhabitants don’t see any stranger around for the entire winter months, even though during summer, there are many tourists visiting the town and the lighthouse situated only 2.5 km further.