***Travel Tuesday with Riley*** Back in 2017, I visited Po..

***Travel Tuesday with Riley*** Back in 2017, I visited Ponte City Apartments, located in Johannesburg. It was one of my most fascinating visits. Those who know me, know that I have something for abandoned places, and the reasons behind those. But Ponte City was more than that. It's gigantic. It has history. It has a story that not many people know. So here are pictures taken by me and some info about the place. Ponte City is a skyscraper in the Berea neighbourhood of Johannesburg, South Africa, just next to Hillbrow. It was built in 1975 to a height of 173 m (567.6 ft), making it the tallest residential skyscraper in Africa. The 55-story building is cylindrical, with an open centre allowing additional light into the apartments. At the time, Johannesburg bylaws required kitchens and bathrooms to have a window, so Grosskopff designed the building with a hollow interior, allowing light to enter the apartments from both sides. At the bottom of the immense building were retail stores and initial plans were to include an indoor ski slope on the 3,000-square-metre (32,000 sq ft) inner core floor.The centre space is known as "the core" and rises above an uneven rock floor. The neon sign on top of the building is the largest sign in the southern hemisphere and advertised for the Coca-Cola Company prior to 2000. It currently advertises the South African mobile phone company Vodacom. Built as a luxury building for the city's white elite in the 1970s, during the height of Apartheid, it had spacious apartments, a shopping mall, a movie theatre and even a bowling alley. It was meant to be a "village" within the city where residents wouldn't have to leave. And, for a time it was, but as Berea and the neighbouring Hillbrow became crime-riddled and drug-infested, residents fled for the suburbs and the drug lords moved in and hijacked the building. It became a place where you could buy anything from a bag of crystal meth to a hired gun. Where brothels took up entire floors. It was a place where old TVs, glass bottles and junk were simply thrown out of windows. It was a place where no-one bothered to take the rubbish out. Instead, stinking bags were thrown right down the centre of the hollow core until the mess stood five floors deep. A place where that same core served as a suicide drop, where the bodies – if you believe some stories – were only pulled out during the eventual clean up. It became the world's tallest urban slum. It was originally built to house around 3500 people, but was home to more than 10,000 people at the peak of its "hijacked" statues. Things have now turned around a little for the building. When I visited, a non profit was using it as its main offices. You'd pay for a tour of the building and the area, and all the profits would go towards giving a safe harbour to children inside the building. There's so much more that could be said about this gigantic project that quickly became an horrible place. If you ever are in Johannesburg, trust me... you won't be disappointed by visiting this place.