Abandoned Kansai

Why on earth would you nickname an abandoned mansion in the French mountains Chateau Banana? Well, the answer is surprisingly obvious…

Sometimes I wonder if I publish too many photos with my articles… probably around 30 in average, usually between 20 and 40. So far nobody has complained about too many photos, some people actually want even more pictures, but I often feel like I am watering down photo sets by posting too many average photos that show the average or below average parts of a location – because let’s be honest, only a handful of locations are interesting enough for 30 really good photos, a more realistic number is probably between 10 and 12 per set… and “just” good Pictures, which is in the ballpark of what I’ve seen of the Chateau Banana before exploring it. People were rather monosyllabic with information and stinted with photos, giving the impression that the Chateau Banana was a spectacular kitschy version of the now legendary *Chateau Lumiere*. The location wasn’t even on my radar as I just don’t have the time to intensely follow urbex trends outside of Japan, but luckily my reader Dennis made me aware of it and pointed me in the right direction without just handing me coordinates – very much appreciated!
The Chateau Banana is a rather recent discovery even amongst European urbexers, which is why there is only little known about it. Located in the Vosges Mountains, the Chateau Banana most likely originated as a private mansion maybe 80 to 100 years ago on quite a piece of land on the edge of a small town. Luckily my friend Nina and I found a quick and easy way in, because two hours and forty-five minutes into our three hour long drive it started to rain – the main door was locked, but the side entrance through the kitchen was only closed.
Kitchen instead of kitsch… The Chateau Banana was nothing like it looked like on the photos – at first. I’m sure it once was a majestic kitchen, but not at the time of our visit. The whole area was cluttered; boxes, cartons and random items stacked over each other, along the wall till underneath the ceiling – a path just wide enough to walk through leading deeper inside the eerie building. Lighting on the ground floor was difficult in general as most window shutters were closed and nailed shut – only a few of them had been partly “opened”, with the use of force and not without damaging the shutters. The hallway and most of the other rooms on the ground floor were as cluttered as the kitchen, only the gorgeous living room was in excellent condition… like on the photos I had seen. Since the lighting situation didn’t improve during the first few minutes we decided to explored the building from the top – two more floors plus the attic. The wooden staircase didn’t inspire confidence, but I had seen worse. At least it was made from massive, solid wood, much more sturdy than the lightweight construction I am used to in Japan.
The attic was not much of a surprise, maybe except for the fact that there was still laundry to dry on the clothesline rope. The floor below looked like it was privately used, with the peculiarity that that every room had its own bathroom, some even a dressing room. It was there where I found one of most unusual abandoned items ever – a fencing mask. A little less cluttered than the rest of the house it slowly dawned on us what was going on at the Chateau Banana. This wasn’t just an abandoned mansion – this was a failed conversion, private villa to hotel. The middle floor gave even more hints – most of the rooms there were almost done and ready to welcome guests, the most beautiful room with the biggest bath was labelled private though. Interestingly enough a lot of items we found at the Chateau Banana had German text on it – like the Happy Families card game with classical composers or pretty much all of the renovation material.
By the time I finished shooting the upper floors it stopped raining and the sun came out… for a few minutes, only to hide behind clouds again, and again, and again… Nevertheless I took a couple of photos in the beautiful dining room and living room – in such good condition that some of the tableware was still in the glass cabinet. Other items left behind included a great piano, an old bible and a turn of the century stroller plus quite a few pieces of furniture; whether they just looked like antiques or actually were antiquities is impossible for me to say. Just before we left I final look around, still wondering why this was called the Chateau Banana – and then it dawned on me. A lot of the boxes between the living room and the main entrance, stacked up to the ceiling, were actually banana cartons from a variety of companies…

At first the Chateau Banana was kind of a disappointment as it didn’t live up at all to the image I had in my mind based on the pictures I had seen beforehand. Luckily my friend Nina was extremely patient and allowed me to explore and take pictures for three and a half hours, sacrificing a second location I had in mind for the same day. It wasn’t an easy photo shoot, especially since I had to deal with a really crappy tripod (if you buy one, buy a good one – sadly I left mine in Japan as I was just on vacation…), some tight spaces and ever changing lighting. And yet I ended up with 40 photos again. Usually I post them in chronologically order – this time I will post them differently. The good ones first, then the crappy ones you usually don’t see on other blogs / urbex sites. So in the end the Chateau Banana was beautiful in its own way – but my favorite location in France is still the amazing *Chateau Lumiere*.

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France and Belgium are famous for their sheer unlimited amount of abandoned mansions and villas, some the size of small castles – a kind of look you just can’t find in Japan. So when my good old buddy *Gil* suggested to explore the Chateau Lumiere during one of my summer trips to Germany (primarily to catch up with family and friends) I was quite intrigued…

Urban exploration in Europe, more often than not, is or borderlines infiltration as a lot of buildings are not really abandoned, but rather not inhabited or used anymore – regularly patrolled by security or caretakers, some with more or less tender nicknames. With the exception of *Nara Dreamland* I try to avoid locations with security and rather focus on the really deserted places; it’s just more relaxed when you don’t have to Solid Snake your way in and be paranoid while taking photos for hours. After friends reassured us that the Chateau Lumiere is one of the easy in and out locations I felt a bit better, but upon arrival after three hours on the road I wasn’t that sure anymore – the villa featured rather new “Keep out!” signs in French, clearly visible from the main street, the front of the premises almost completely overgrown. Easy in and out is relative, I guess, but in the end we found a way into the mansion… after Gil scouted the situation and came to the conclusion that there was nothing to worry about, neither security nor security systems. (Big thanks again, my friend, this exploration was all you! I just took some photos there…)

Entering the Chateau Lumiere (“Castle of Light”) it was instantly obvious why this neo-baroque style mansion from the early 1900s got its interesting nickname – even though it was a cloudy day and most of the window shutters were closed, a huge skylight impressively illuminated a big portion of the building on all floors. Gil started taking pictures on the ground floor, but I had to see more of the building, so I headed up one flight of stairs, then another, the building basically draped around the source of light in its core. Once the family home to a Swiss tobacco tycoon, it is said that the building was sold several times and used for business purposes after the original owner died / left in the 1950s. Since then most of the interior was removed or stolen, but the mansion still looked absolutely amazing, with countless details everywhere – for example massive glass blocks in the floors of one section of the hallway, allowing light to reach otherwise pitch-black areas of the villa. The wallpapers and the general setup of some hallways reminded me of something, I just couldn’t put my finger on it… but when I saw one very specific bathroom on the second floor (by Japanese count…), it hit me like the grip of Chris Redfield’s Samurai Edge – this was straight out of Resident Evil! Chateau Lumiere’s layout obviously was completely different from the Spencer Mansion, but the black and white bathroom and the narrow hallways all of a sudden gave me serious flashbacks to almost 20 years ago… Luckily there were no dogs jumping through any windows, but I developed an increasing craving for a sandwich. 😉
The rest of the building wasn’t a tiny bit less interesting – even the attic offered some nice spots to take pictures of. Sadly I forgot my tripod in my sister’s car the day before, so I had to borrow an old one from my dad… one that was a pain to handle, so I went through the villa twice – one time to take all the vertical shots, and then another time to take the horizontal ones (hence the weird looking gallery at the end of this article…). By the time I got back to the ground floor, the sun was already setting and we were losing light quickly. Even after three hours there was so much to see, so much to explore, so much to take pictures of. Unfortunately we had to leave, given the long drive home ahead of us.
If you are curious about the minor signs of vandalism – despite being one of the most respected abandoned places in Europe and mostly unharmed for years, a group of vandals severely damaged the Chateau Lumiere in spring of 2015. When pictures of the damaged mansion showed up on the internet, some local urban explorers gathered at the villa in April and cleaned up, trying to undo as much of the damage as possible, even including a regional French newspaper and the current owner – who didn’t seem to be too happy about the publicity stunt as it attracted even more attention to his property. New signs were put up and apparently one explorer ran into the guy in May, claiming that the owner threatened him with brass knuckles and tried to extort 50 EUR from him. I guess my uneasy feeling at the beginning of the exploration didn’t come out of nowhere…

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