Hotel Monte Palace

Perched on a ridge high above the twin lakes (one blue, one green), its crumbling concrete skeleton frames a view so dramatic it feels stolen from a myth.** Built in the 1980s as a luxury retreat, the hotel was abandoned mid-construction due to financial woes, leaving behind eerie corridors open to the sky, staircases leading nowhere, and graffiti-strewn walls now dwarfed by hydrangeas. Yet its decay holds a strange magnetism: the empty pool gazes out like a dead eye over the volcanic caldera, while ivy creeps up the balconies where guests once sipped cocktails. The silence is broken only by wind and the occasional echo of explorers’ footsteps.

This is no postcard-perfect landmark—it’s a ghost of failed ambition, a collision of human folly and nature’s indifference. Adventurers who brave the overgrown path to its doors are rewarded with arguably the most breathtaking vista in the Azores: the entire Sete Cidades crater sprawled below, its lakes shifting hues with the clouds. Photographers flock here at dawn when mist clings to the water, and thrill-seekers wander its unstable floors (though it’s technically off-limits, adding to its outlaw allure).

The Monte Palace Hotel is a memento mori for travelers—a reminder that even paradise can’t guarantee permanence. Its story whispers of what the Azores could have been: a mass-tourism hotspot. Instead, the islands outlived the dream, leaving the hotel to rust as a monument to wilder, untamed beauty. For those who find it, the place asks a silent question: Is ruin the price of a view this divine?