Sometimes cities successfully repurpose parts of their Olympic set-ups, like in Montreal.
But oftentimes, these giant investments are torn down or abandoned, as these photos show.
It can be an expensive — and potentially damaging — undertaking for a country to host the Olympics.
This year’s games in Italy are costing just $1.6 billion, Reuters reported. While that’s nothing to scoff at, it’s a mere fraction of the $55 billion Brazil reportedly spent in 2016.
A significant part of the expense is building new facilities for the events and housing for the athletes. Then, after the closing ceremonies, some stadiums are used again — there’s always going to be a market for a soccer stadium — but other venues like Olympic pools, kayaking facilities, ski jumping, and beach volleyball can fall into disrepair almost immediately.
These Olympic venues from Berlin, Sarajevo, Athens, Sochi, Rio de Janeiro, and Beijing have all seen better days — take a look at what they looked like once the crowds left.
James Grebey contributed to an earlier version of this story.
In Berlin, there are still remnants of the 1936 Games, 90 years later.
A set of Olympic rings in abandoned former swim hall at the site of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Village on May 17, 2021 in Elstal, Germany.
Maja Hitij/Getty Images
This building, pictured in May 2021, was once a swimming hall.
Some of Berlin’s Olympic Village still stands, almost untouched.
Original, abandoned houses for athletes marked with their housing complex names stand at the site of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Village on May 17, 2021 in Elstal, Germany
Maja Hitij/Getty Images
Reports since 2015 have indicated that German developers are renovating some structures — and building new ones — to create residences at a section of the Olympic Village in Berlin.
The 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, took place less than a decade before the Bosnian War.
The medal podium at the ski jump venue.
Ioanna Sakellaraki / Barcroft Im / Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Yugoslavia has now been split into Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia. Sarajevo is in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The city was under siege, and though it’s largely recovered in the years since, many Olympic sites, like this ski jump, have been left to the elements.
The ski jump.
Dado Ruvic/Reuters
In 2024, when Sarajevo marked the 40th anniversary of the Olympics, some of the slopes remained abandoned.
The bobsled course on Mount Trebević is overgrown and covered in graffiti.
The broken down bobsled track at Mount Trebević.
Ioanna Sakellaraki / Barcroft Im / Barcroft Media via Getty Images
However, the city repaired the cable car, which ferried people to the bobsled events on the mountain, and it reopened in 2018, making it a tourist destination once again.
“In the past few years … the mountain has slowly returned to something like its former self,” The Guardian wrote in 2018. “Hotels, restaurants and cafes have been rebuilt, mines swept away and hikers from all over Sarajevo visit en masse.”
Occasionally, it gets used by brave BMX bikers.
Dado Ruvic/Reuters
Despite some rejuvenation to parts of the area, the bobsled track remains abandoned and covered in graffiti, and moss grows along its walls.
Athens went billions over its planned budget of $1.6 billion for the 2004 Summer Olympics.
Yorgos Karahalis/Reuters
The Greek government had to pay for everything, and, sadly, there just wasn’t any use for most of the buildings, stadiums, and courses after the Olympics, Time reported eight years later.
A decade later, photos showed a crumbling pool full of fetid water.
Yorgos Karahalis/Reuters
The pool, pictured in 2014, was crumbling.
These huge, abandoned investments must have been especially painful in light of Greece’s financial crisis.
Understandably, its money wasn’t going toward renovating abandoned buildings.
General view of derelict buildings at the Helliniko Olympic complex in Athens, Greece on July 31, 2014. Ten years ago the XXVIII Olympiad was held in Athens from the 13th – 29th August with the motto “Welcome Home”. The cost of hosting the games was estimated to be approx 9 billion euros with the majority of sporting venues built specifically for the games. Due to Greece’s economic frailties post Olympic Games there has been no further investment and the majority of the newly constructed stadiums now lie abandoned.
Milos Bicanski/Getty Images
“Welcome home” says the sign, a reference to Greece being the original site of the Olympics.
A decade after the crowds left, nobody was playing baseball or softball at the stadium in Athens.
Reuters/Yorgos Karahalis
A worker told the London Evening Standard in 2012 that it’s not technically abandoned, it’s just that nobody ever plays softball.
The baseball stadium was used to house refugees in 2016, CNN reported.
It was finally demolished in 2023.
The beach volleyball court in Athens was consumed by weeds.
Reuters/Yorgos Karahalis
The stadium was completely empty — apart from the weeds — when it was photographed in 2014.
The Beijing National Stadium, built for the 2008 Summer Olympics, has struggled to find events to fill its 80,000 seats.
REUTERS/David Gray
It was used again at the 2022 Olympics and became the first stadium to host the Summer, Winter, and Paralympic opening ceremonies.
The kayaking facility hasn’t seen much use either.
REUTERS/David Gray
It’s rusted.
The rowing facility is largely ignored.
REUTERS/David Gray
As the 2022 Olympics were in the winter, much of the specially built summer equipment wasn’t used.
Many venues, like the beach volleyball court, are simply closed to the public.
Reuters/David Gray
Climbing on the fence is not advised.
Half of the Beijing National Aquatics Center was eventually remodeled and turned into a water park.
REUTERS/David Gray
It reopened in 2010.
Here’s an abandoned Beibei, one of the Olympic mascots of Beijing, pictured in 2018.
This photo taken on July 20, 2018 shows Beibei, one of five mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, lying amongst trees behind an abandoned, never-completed mall in Beijing.
The 2014 Winter Olympics were held in Russia’s largest resort city, Sochi.
Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
It was the most expensive Olympics in history, costing the Russian government $55 billion, according to AP.
The Fisht Stadium was originally a dome, but it was converted to an open-air stadium for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Artur Lebedev/AP Images
Sochi was just one of many cities to host games during the World Cup.
But many other structures have seen limited use, like these ski jumps in Estosadok.
View onto the ski jumps of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, 31 January 2018. The installation above the village Estosadok near Krasnaja Poljana has hardly been used since then
Friedemann Kohler/picture alliance via Getty Images
By 2018, when this photo was taken, the facilities had hardly been used.
The Summer Olympics were held in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. In the years that followed, venues like this aquatic stadium became ghost towns.
Buda Mendes/Getty Images
Hopefully, this year’s facilities in Milan and Cortina will have better luck.
Maracanã Stadium was renovated for the Olympics, but it has largely been abandoned.
