From imperial residences and aristocratic estates to hotels and urban mansions, new book Abandoned Palaces by Michael Kerrigan contains remarkable pictures of ostentatious buildings that have fallen into ruin.


 General Joseph Howland (1834–86) was born into stupendous wealth in New York, his family having made its fortune in the China trade. He gave much of it away, as a lifelong philanthropist, endowing libraries and hospitals in the vicinity of Beacon, but the estate at Tioronda in New York, pictured, was a present to himself.



 'Dona Chica' was the title popularly given in Palmeira, Portugal, to the local landowner's Brazilian born wife, Francisca Peixoto Rego (1895–1958). Swiss architect Ernst Korrod (1870–1944) was commissioned to create a home appropriate to her prestige and beauty.


 From ancient Roman villas to the French colonial hill station in Cambodia that was one of the final refuges of the Khmer Rouge, the book charts the fascinating decline of what were once the homes and holiday resorts of the most wealthy.

It's never easy giving up those stubborn habits that make you go on the wrong path over and over again. No mater how hard you try when building new habits or building a new paths for yourself you will make the same mistakes. It's not something you do, but what we all rather do. 

The historic Owlwood Estate, which sits on 10 acres of land in the enclave of Holmby Hills, has been inhabited by some of Hollywood's most prominent figures since it was built in the 1930s. The Italian

Renaissance-style property, which neighbors Sunset Boulevard and the Los Angeles Country Club, was designed by architect Robert D. Farquhar, and regularly served as a secluded hideaway for screen legend Marilyn Monroe, who frequented it as a guest of her rumored lover, Joseph Schenck, the founder of 20th Century Fox.

1. Write whatever, whenever for a "minute"

2. Let spelling do the trick

3. Try to reach for the end