Freelance writer and avid adventure-seeker
Darmon Richter is well-versed in the art of "
urban exploration," or the practice of exploring "derelict, closed and normally inaccessible built environments" (in other words, scaling the fence and ignoring the DO NOT ENTER signs).
His fascination with the road less traveled (usually for legal reasons) has taken him to a Buddhist Hell Garden in Thailand, a stone forest in Bulgaria, and a local market in North Korea where tiny little old ladies happily sold him several large bags of weed.
Richter is now scouring Eastern Europe for its darkest and least hospitable attractions, and recently came across a Soviet-era circus languishing in disrepair in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau (a 15th century town with its own macabre history). Designed in 1981 by Semion Shoikhet and A. Kirichenko, the circus once entertained nearly 2,000 people per show with clowns, trapeze artists, bears, lions and elephants. Today, the arena sits in darkness, its once grand staircase collecting dust while its graying murals are covered in anarchist graffiti and decapitated tigers.
Richter acknowledges that the dilapidated building "may give the impression of a faded monument to a forgotten regime." But a deeper exploration of the building, as seen in these photos, and the circus' history, reveals "that the Chisinau Circus is not as dead as it seems - but rather, merely sleeping."
