Inside an eerie Italian town left abandoned after a devastating earthquake

The devastating 2009 L’Aquila Earthquake, registering a staggering 5.9 on the Richter scale, ripped through central Italy, leaving in its wake a scene straight out of a nightmare.

Years later, the ghostly remnants of Fossa have become a haunting testament frozen in time — and TikTok users have gotten a new peek into its abandoned aftermath.

During the tragedy, buildings collapsed, vehicles crashed and the cacophony of destruction echoed through the once serene town.

The damage was catastrophic, crippling the city’s infrastructure — roads, bridges, railways and essential services like water and electricity were also in shambles.

Thousands found their homes and livelihoods obliterated, with an estimated $16 billion in destruction.

Ramy, a globetrotting urban explorer known on TikTok as @pimpmycamel, ventured into the eerie streets of this abandoned town, where former residents have been barred from returning for more than a decade.

Ramy’s exploration uncovered poignant scenes — a child’s room adorned with forsaken toys, a kitchen frozen in time with dishes scattered by the quake and intricately carved furniture now succumbing to decay.

Each corner of Fossa whispers of lives interrupted, dreams shattered and a community displaced, never to return.

Adjacent to L’Aquila, Fossa once thrived as a historic Italian community until that fateful night. The town, now a shell, holds the memories of generations.

Zoë Boccabella, rooted in this town through generations of her family, expressed the heartbreak of witnessing her ancestral home reduced to rubble.

“I admit, I did find it hard to watch at times — the place where generations of my family lived for centuries and many parts of the village where I’ve walked and lived and of course written about in both my books,” she wrote on her blog.

“It gave me goosebumps to see and I felt bewildered, sad, captivated and protective all at once. For this is not just a curiosity, it is where people’s lives were lost and for others where life, as they knew it, ended.”

Efforts to resurrect Fossa are finally underway. Neglected buildings, cloaked in abandonment for more than 13 years, are receiving much-needed attention.

Yet, the journey toward rebuilding this once-vibrant town is a slow, arduous process.

“I’ve always held hope to return to the village and my family’s house even if it is still a ghost town,” Boccabella added. “However, most of all, I hope to see it and the other towns affected by the 2009 earthquake once again as they were.”

“Vibrant, full of people of all ages, cooking aromas, Vespas going past, cats asleep in doorways, women shelling peas, [TVs] blaring, kids playing football in the piazza, birds chirruping among the lanes and the church bell clanging, everything that was beautiful and glorious about Italian village life.”