The Nazis seriously wanted to showcase the superiority of Germany and the Aryan race. And what better way to do that if not with architecture. The architectural style of the Nazis imitated that of ancient Rome, which Hitler hoped to surpass in development. His aim was to totally modify Berlin’s landscape and rename it Germania, which would be the capital of a Germany-dominated Europe.

This dream, coupled with World War II, led to the construction of some really impressive buildings. The Allies destroyed several of these buildings during and after the war, but some survived and are still around today. They have been repurposed and are now used for the good of man.

10Flak Towers

Flak towers were huge, castle-like forts, built to deter Allied aerial attacks on Berlin and Hamburg in Germany and Vienna in Austria. Eight towers were built in total, each with reinforced concrete walls of between eight and fourteen inches (20-35 cm) thick. The walls were impenetrable to Allied bombs—even when they suffered direct hits—and none were destroyed all through the war.

Each flak tower consisted of two towers: a G combat tower with eight 128 mm anti-aircraft guns and thirty-two 20 mm guns, and an L command tower with a radar and forty 20 mm guns. The combat tower could engage ground targets eight and a half miles away or aerial targets fifty thousand feet in the air with its 128mm guns, which had an impressive firepower of 8,000 rounds a minute.

Flak towers doubled as bomb shelters with room for ten thousand people, although over thirty thousand people crammed themselves in the towers when the Soviet military invaded Berlin. The forts withstood Soviet ground assaults, forcing the Soviets to bypass them and later negotiate for their surrender.

Four of the eight forts were demolished after the war. The demolition proved difficult, and one took five months of planning and three demolition attempts before it finally fell.

Today, one of the towers in Vienna, Austria, has been converted into an aquarium, while another is used by the Austrian Army. A third tower is used to store artwork. In Hamburg, Germany, one has been converted into a nightclub, and another is being converted into a renewable energy plant to provide electricity for a thousand homes and heating for three thousand.

9Vogelsang National Socialist Castle

The Vogelsang National Socialist Castle in Eifel, Germany, was built between 1934 and 1936. It was used as a school for indoctrinating young Germans with Nazi ideology but ceased operation after World War II broke out in 1939. It was converted to a military barracks during the war and a training site for the Belgian army after that. It has been returned to the German government, which wants to convert it to a museum.

Unlike many other Nazi buildings, the Vogelsang Castle still contains Nazi symbols including a swastika that is etched into the ground and covered with a mat. Several other Nazi symbols on the walls were covered over with plaster. German Jews want the castle pulled down, while other Germans, who do not share their views, want it turned into an old people’s home, a hotel, or a park.

8Dachau Concentration Camp

The Dachau Concentration Camp in Dachau, Germany, was the first of the infamous Nazi concentration camps. It was originally built to hold political prisoners but soon housed Jews, Jehovah Witnesses, Roma Gypsies, homosexuals, and criminals, who were used for medical experiments and forced labor. Like other Nazi concentration camps, the gates to Dachau bear the words Arbeit Macht Frei—work sets you free.

The camp also had its own gas chambers, which were probably never used. Instead, prisoners were sorted at the camp and those sentenced to death were transported to other concentration camps where they were killed.

Today, the Dachau concentration camp is a memorial site and museum visited by over eight hundred thousand people each year. At the entrance of its crematoria is a small Russian Orthodox chapel, built on soil imported from Russia. The chapel is too small to accommodate visitors; however, it is used for private prayers and religious services.

7Prora Holiday Resort

The Prora holiday resort on Rugen Island, Germany, was built as part of the Nazi party “Strength Through Joy” program that was intended to allow the working class to enjoy the luxuries of the middle class. Besides its role as a holiday destination, it was also supposed to function as an indoctrination camp, where visitors were educated on Nazi ideology.

The dormitory-like resort had eight lookalike buildings, complete with cinemas, large theaters, and ten thousand rooms overlooking the ocean. A swimming pool and festival hall were also proposed but were postponed due to the outbreak of World War II.

During the war, Prora housed new conscripts, laborers, refugees, and prisoners and after the war, it housed the Soviet and East German militaries.

One of the resort’s eight buildings was destroyed by the Soviets after the war. Another was converted into a hostel, two are privately owned, and the last four are being converted into luxury apartments. Renovation is still ongoing and is expected to be completed by 2022.

6Wolfschanze

The Wolfschanze (Wolf’s Lair or Wolf’s Fort), in Ketrzyn, Poland, was Adolf Hitler’s command center for most of World War II. It is the site where Hitler survived an assassination attempt by Nazi officer, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, who tried to kill him with a bomb hidden in a suitcase. Hitler only survived because the meeting was held in a building and not a bunker, and the briefcase was shifted away from him moments before it detonated.

The location of the “lair” was carefully chosen. It was hidden by thick forests and built close to a lake that prevented a ground assault from its eastern flank. It had over eighty buildings and bunkers manned by over two thousand workers and soldiers. It was also surrounded by over 50,000 landmines to stop a ground assault.

The Nazis abandoned and attempted to destroy the base as the Soviet Army advanced in November 1944. However, the task proved difficult for them, and they only managed to partially destroy it.

The buildings in the Wolf’s Lair remain unused, and it is currently a tourist attraction. However, the former Waffen SS garage has been converted into a hotel and restaurant. The Lair is maintained by the Poland Forestry Service, which hopes to lease it to anyone who can afford the £90,000 ($111,000) rent.

5Reich Air Ministry

With 2,800 rooms and seven kilometers of corridors, the Reich Air Ministry—the headquarters of the Nazi Air Force, the Luftwaffe—was the largest office complex in Europe at the time of its completion in 1936. Surprisingly for a building of its importance, it survived the war unscathed and was retained for military use by the Soviet Union.

The building housed the Treuhand committee that was tasked with privatizing the assets of the former East Germany when the Cold War ended in 1991. The committee proved unpopular with Germans and its first chairman, Detlev Rohwedder, was assassinated the same year. This is why the building was renamed the ”Detlev Rohwedder Haus.”

The building is still used as a backdrop in Nazi-era movies, and although not open to the public, is open for a free tour every August. It currently houses the German Ministry of Finance.

4Banana Bunker

In 1942, the Nazis built the 120-room banana bunker as an air-raid shelter. The Soviets took over it in 1945 and converted it into a prisoner of war camp. Later on, East German authorities converted it into a warehouse to store fruits imported from Cuba. This is why it is called the Banana Bunker.

After the reunification of Berlin, the building was converted into a performance hall and later, a nightclub dubbed the “hardest club in the world” due to its wild sex parties. Authorities later shut the club down, and the bunker remained unused until a couple purchased it to display their art collection in 2003.

3Fichtebunker

The Fichtebunker in Kreuzberg, Berlin, was built between 1883 and 1884 to store gas for the city’s street lamps. It fell into disuse at the turn of the century when the city switched to electricity, and it remained unused until 1940 when the Nazis converted it into a bomb shelter designed to hold 6,000 people.

The building was heavily renovated for its new role. Its outside walls were reinforced to 1.8 meters (six feet) thick, and the ceiling was reinforced until it was three meters (ten feet) thick. It was also segmented into six floors, each with 120 rooms.

The building exceeded its 6,000 capacity towards the end of the war when over 30,000 people sought refuge in it to escape Allied bombings. This number included the local police station, which moved in with its prisoners, who were kept in specially built cells.

The bunker was repurposed as a refuge after the war. Later on, it served as a homeless shelter and a food depot. The food stored there were the so-called “Senate reserves” Berliners could rely on in case the Soviet Union launched a land blockade into Berlin.

It fell into disuse at the end of the Cold War and remained abandoned until a private firm purchased it in 2006. The firm converted its rooms into luxury apartments, complete with a rooftop garden. It is now known as the Circlehouse.

2Reichssportfeld

Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of the Reichssportfeld sports complex for the 1936 Berlin Olympic games. At the same time, he wanted to use the event and stadium to showcase the superiority of Germany and the Aryan race.

The Nazi radio network was housed in a bunker underneath the stadium during World War II, and, after the war, the stadium became the headquarters of the British military. Its name was also changed to Olympiastadion to remove all its links to the Nazis.

The Olympiastadion maintained its sports and cultural role after the British abandoned it, and it even held three matches during the 1974 FIFA World Cup, hosted by West Germany. In 2006, the final of the FIFA World Cup, hosted by a unified Germany, was fought out in the stadium. It remains a sports complex today, and it is the home base of the Hertha Berlin football team.

1Templehof Airport

Templehof airport was Europe’s busiest airport in the 1930s. The Nazis shut it down when they came into power and replaced it with a prototype concentration camp, which they also shut down and tried replacing with another airport they never completed.

The US took over the airport after World War II and used it to airlift supplies into West Berlin in 1948-1949. The US also leased out parts of the airport in 1951. Today, several government and private institutions, including the German police, a kindergarten, and a dancing school, call it home.

Tempelhof ceased handling commercial flights in October 2008 when work began on a more modern airport for Berlin. However, the control tower remains under the control of the German Army, who uses it to monitor air traffic around Berlin.

Today, Templehof’s airfield has been converted into a public park, while its buildings were converted into a refuge for Syrian and Iraqi refugees. In 2015, Berlin was preparing to take in 40,000 refugees, to be housed at the airport and several disused barracks.

Oliver Taylor is a freelance writer and bathroom musician. You can reach him at [email protected]

It’s not called “show fun”; it’s called “show business.” Movies are made to make money. It doesn’t matter if you’re Michael Bay, churning out explosion porn year after year, or Charlie Kaufman, making convoluted meta-narratives about yourself making movies; every director has to eat.

Producers find ways to cut costs that help to increase the bottom line. A big part of that is recycling props, and if you look closely enough, you’ll see that almost every film and show in history borrows and lends its props over and over again. Some are placed in movies intentionally by directors as easter eggs or hints at shared universes, while some are put on screen out of sheer laziness. Either way, there are a lot of props that have made the rounds through cinema history, and here are ten of the most fun and interesting examples.

Related: 10 Famous Props And The Actors Who Stole Them

10 Robby the Robot

To truly understand the unique story of Robby the Robot, let’s compare his story to another famous big-screen bot: R2-D2. Like Artoo, Robby was introduced as a unique character in his own movie; instead of Star Wars, it was the ground-breaking 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet. Like Artoo, Robby was a real character with a name, dialogue, and personality. But unlike Artoo, Robby’s creators weren’t Lucas-level litigious, so Robby outlived his original franchise by decades.

After Forbidden Planet, the Robby the Robot suit was left in the props department at MGM Studios, and dozens of other shows and movies took advantage of the free droid. Robby, usually credited as some variation of “The Robot,” was in multiple Twilight Zones. He battled the family robot on Lost in Space. He befriended Mork from Ork on Mork and Mindy. He was in Wonder Woman, Gremlins, and even the Addams Family. Now try and imagine Artoo freely given to all those projects instead.

9 Mr. Fusion

The Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor first appeared in Back to the Future. It replaced plutonium as the DeLorean’s main power source, as it was better for the environment and attracted fewer Libyan terrorists. Using ordinary household garbage, the marvelous Mr. Fusion could generate cold fusion energy, a full 1.21 gigawatts worth. Its usefulness didn’t stop at flying cars, though; it also helped power the spaceship Nostromo from Alien.

In several scenes in Alien, the Mr. Fusion can be seen hanging on the wall in the crew’s mess hall right above the coffee maker. While Ripley and the company fuel themselves, Doc Brown’s garbage machine fuels their ship. That, or the prop team from Back to the Future just picked the first sci-fi-looking thing they could find from a Hollywood warehouse.

8 Those Glowy Sci-Fi Tubes

Chances are, if you’ve seen a single major sci-fi film, you’ve seen this prop. It goes by many names, such as “blinking tubes without function” and “dual generators with rotating neon lights inside an acrylic tube,” but you’ll know it best by its appearance: a pair of glowing red future tubes. It is absolutely everywhere. Its earliest known appearance is in Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan, and from there, it proceeded to…do whatever it does…on nearly every ship in the multiverse.

It’s been in The Last Starfighter, Star Crystal, nearly every incarnation of Star Trek, and even superhero works like The Flash, Lois & Clark, and The Incredible Hulk Returns. It’s no surprise, then, that the online community has taken to calling it “The Most Important Device in the Universe.”

7 Okay, Actually All the Sci-Fi Equipment

The Most Important Device may have competition. Have you ever noticed that the background of every spaceship, research lab, and secret government base is always filled with wall-to-wall giant computers with big, blinking lights? It’s hard to conjure up an image of any famous sci-fi facility without them. They’re actually all a real, or at least replicating a real, computer: the AN/FSQ-7 Combat Direction Central, nicknamed the Q7.

Developed by IBM for the military in the 1950s, the Q7 was at the time the largest standalone computer ever built, spanning entire rooms and weighing a whopping 250 tons. But mainly, it looked cool—specifically its maintenance console. The consoles, or reproductions, have become the default sci-fi and espionage computers in cinema for sixty years, in films and television as diverse as Independence Day, Lost, Gremlins II, Goldmember, Logan’s Run, and WarGames. Google “AN/FSQ-7 maintenance console,” and the search results page will look like the bridge of a Star Destroyer.

6 Let’s/Heisler/Morley

You probably ignore the generic brand labels on the food and drink that movie and TV characters eat. That’s good; producers don’t want you to. Instead of creating new props for every film, producers love reaching into the same standby bag of tricks and pulling out the same few brands movie after movie. That’s why Let’s Chips, Heisler Beer, and Morley Cigarettes each have filmographies that would make Sam Jackson blush.

There is a specific wiki for fictional businesses, and a visit to the page for any of these faux products will elicit a gasp. They’ve been everywhere. Heisler edges out the others in the sheer number of appearances; after all, you’ll find more scenes are built around characters having a beer than splitting a cig these days. Let’s, however, have to be the most famous. Community, in its typical meta style, made Let’s Chips a running gag on the show, often comparing them to “that other greasy brand,” Splingles.

5 Red Apple Cigarettes

Speaking of cigarettes, one of the most famously reused props in cinema history has to be Red Apple Cigarettes, the brand featured in almost every movie Tarantino has released. Unlike most of the entries on this list that were reused to save money, Red Apples are deliberately placed by Tarantino in his movies, denying Morley a handful of precious film credits.

There are a few theories as to why these cigarettes appear so frequently. Many cite Tarantino’s desire to place all of his movies in the same universe; it is true that many already are. Another theory is based on the director’s love for symbolism, positing that the logo of a hideous worm emerging from an otherwise pristine apple is meant to hint at the ugliness within even the most beautiful things. It is also possible that Tarantino’s just having fun.

4 The Starship Troopers

Starship Troopers produced a lot of iconic imagery, including the classic slate grey space-marine armor worn by the titular soldiers. Nearly every main character wears the armor in the film, and most do so for the majority of their screen time. It’s even featured prominently on the home media covers. That’s why it’s weird that dozens of the suits would show up, barely modified at all, in the completely unconnected show Firefly.

The main antagonist of the Firefly series (rest in peace) was the galactic government known as the Alliance. Throughout the show, we see Alliance soldiers more than most characters, and they’re always clad in Starship Trooper armor, just default-issue Mobile Infantry armor from head to toe. It’s unmistakable and a bit jarring for fans of both franchises.

3 That Same Dang Newspaper

There are few props more inconspicuous than a simple newspaper. Who would pay attention to filler text in the background of a routine breakfast scene? Yet one newspaper has appeared in such an insane amount of movies; it’s starting to draw focus.

This prop paper has been around since the ’60s, with a blank front that allows for custom headlines but always the same two middle pages; it’s always open to the middle pages. Photos of a dark-haired woman, a man in a top hat, and warehouse burning jump out at you, as seemingly every character in every show and movie in history is always reading about them. Once you first spot this paper, usually the woman’s headshot, you’ll notice it for the rest of your life; it doesn’t make much sense to engineer an entirely new paper, after all.

2 The P.K.E. Meter

This entry ranks higher than most because the P.K.E. meter from Ghostbusters is a pretty central piece of hardware to the movie. In both films, the ‘Busters use it to detect the presence of ghosts. For a Ghostbuster, that’s kind of a big deal. Its appearance also demands attention, with extendable wings and rows of blinking lights. It’s odd, then, that John Carpenter decided to reuse the meter as an alien-detector in They Live.

Such a specific and literally flashy prop is hard to miss, which is why it’s even odder that it makes another appearance in the tragic accident that was Suburban Commando. Imagine, for example, if the proton packs had appeared in Twins or the ghost trap showed up in The ’Burbs.

1 Gwyneth Paltrow’s Head

It’d be a safe bet to say that the most famous movie prop in history that we never actually see is the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. If there’s a clear runner-up, I’d argue that it’s the contents of the box from Seven. Spoiler: the box contains the severed head of Gwyneth Paltrow’s character, though we never get to see it. A prop head was made for the scene, however. An eerily lifelike reproduction of Paltrow’s head was made but cut from the ending of the movie. Then the bespoke severed head sat in a storage vault for 16 years until it finally found use.

In Contagion, Paltrow’s character again dies, this time from a deadly virus. When it came time to film the autopsy of her body, producers were able to save a few tens of thousands of dollars and give Paltrow the day off. Instead, they dusted off the old severed head from Seven and placed it atop a dummy. That makes the head somewhat unique in that it only makes one film appearance and yet is absolutely a major reused prop.

Artists across generations and continents have breathed new life into old buildings while preserving their historical integrity through a process dubbed “adaptive reuse.” Though their architectural features are typically maintained, their purposes often shift dramatically: cathedrals become concert halls, windmills become wineries. This list takes a look at 10 of the weirdest and most wonderfully repurposed buildings.

10 From Theatre to Bookstore: El Ateneo Grand Splendid

Book lovers and Broadway nerds, rejoice! Hidden in plain sight on a lively avenue of Barrio Norte, Buenos Aires, is one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. The building first opened its doors as the Teatro Gran Splendid in 1919, hosting an eclectic array of performers, most famously “King of Tango” Carlos Gardel. Ten years later, the theater underwent its first renovation and became the first cinema to show sound films in Argentina. Upon being threatened with demolition at the turn of the 21st century, the former theater was leased to Grup Ilhsa.

Today, the Grand Splendid’s architectural grandeur has been maintained—or as many may argue, enhanced—to spotlight books instead of performers. El Ateneo Grand Splendid pays homage to its musical legacy, with live piano performances serenading readers as they browse shelves and sip coffee. The frescoed ceilings, sumptuous velvet curtains, and abundant ornamentation of the theater make this bookstore a resplendent escape for bibliophiles, thespians, and architects. ^[1]

9 From Church to Skatepark: Kaos Temple

What was once a spiritual haven for Christians of Llanera, Spain, has become a colorful sanctuary for skaters. The Church of Santa Barbara was built by architect Manuel del Busto in 1912 but soon found itself deserted. After being abandoned for almost a century, the space was reprised in 2007 by the Church Brigade, a collective that transformed the former church into an indoor skatepark.

In 2015, Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel was commissioned through a crowdfunding campaign to paint the church in his distinctive geometric style. Today, bold colors and kaleidoscopic depictions of humans, animals, and nature ornament the building’s original domed ceilings and walls. Where once were pews are now halfpipes and ramps to provide indoor refuge to skateboarders in one of Spain’s rainiest regions. The original façade of the Church of Santa Barbara remains, housing the skatepark’s interior amalgamation of neo-Gothic detail and vibrant contemporary art. Kaos Temple blends old and new to appeal to artists and athletes alike. ^[2]

8 From Railway Station to Museum: Musée d’Orsay

Best known for its expansive collection of Impressionist paintings, Paris’s Musée d’Orsay has another peculiar pull: The museum’s foundation initially served as a train station. The 20th-century station’s artfully anachronistic design can be attributed to a collaborative effort between French architects Émile Bénard, Lucien Magne, and Victor Laloux. Located on the Left Bank of the Seine, it was built to transport visitors to the Paris Exposition of 1900.

After being deemed unsuitable for the increasingly mainstream use of longer trains, the building served several purposes beyond the architects’ original intentions. Before the museum’s inauguration in 1986, it was used as a World War II mailing center and set for several popular films, such as Orson Welles’s The Trial. Today, the Musée d’Orsay’s stunning construction and exhibits by Monet and Renoir have made it one of the world’s most popular museums, with well over a million annual visitors.^[3]

7 From Grain Silo to Rock Climbing Gym: Upper Limits Rock Gym

Bloomington, Illinois, hosts the perfect outing for athletes and agricultural enthusiasts: cylindrical rock climbing walls inside 65-foot-tall (20-meter) grain silos. They transformed the abandoned set of four silos to develop an experience that is both unique and sustainable. Utilizing the foundation of the previously deserted structures, the gym is powered by solar panels. In addition to the interior climbing walls, routes have been added to the 115-foot-tall (35-meter) exterior.

Once a giant in the global grain market, rural Illinois’s skyline is still dotted with silos and grain bins. Rock climbing is just one of several unusual purposes the state’s renovated silos serve. Originally a grain bin in Alvin, IL, the Has Bin Guest House has been converted into a charming bed and breakfast. Meridian Nursery similarly repurposed a Rockford silo to host intimate events in a nontraditional rustic setting.^[4]

6 From Cathedral to Bookstore: Boekhandel Selexyz Dominicanen

This 13th-century Catholic cathedral in Maastricht, Netherlands, was repurposed several times over the past seven centuries before settling on the sprawling bookstore it hosts today. After being consecrated in 1294, the building served as a religious sanctuary for half a millennium. Following the 1794 invasion of the Netherlands, however, the gothic church’s cavernous interior appealed to French dictator Napoleon Bonaparte as a strategic—if excessively ornate—storage space. In more recent history, the cathedral was used for bike storage.

In 2005, the building was transformed by Dutch architects Merkx and Girod into a massive bookstore, its grand architecture and lavish interior design capitalized upon to draw lovers of history, art, and stories to its shelves. Now featuring three stories of bookshelves and walkways underneath stunningly preserved frescoes, the renovated church earned the 2007 Lensvelt de Architect Interior Prize and remains a popular destination for today’s locals and literary tourists.^[5]

5 From Jail to Luxury Hotel: The Liberty Hotel

Dark tourists who find themselves in Boston, Massachusetts, can spend a night in what used to be the storied Charles Street Jail. Constructed in 1851 according to the controversial Auburn penal system, the county jail once housed such inmates as activist Malcolm X and anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. The overcrowded prison closed after almost a century and a half, but its rich history and charming architecture found a second life in The Liberty Hotel.

The ironically named Liberty Hotel opened in 2007, featuring almost 300 guest rooms alongside the original central rotunda. Guests can dine surrounded by portraits of prisoners at the aptly titled Clink and Alibi restaurants or take a walk in the former prison yard. Curiously, Boston’s Liberty Hotel is just one of several prisons transformed into hotels. Those interested in jail hopping can stay overnight in the former Het Arresthuis jail outside Amsterdam or at a Turkish Four Seasons housed in the former Sultanahmet Prison.^[6]

4 From Bullring to Hotel: Hotel Quinta Real Zacatecas

If the macabre history of Boston’s Liberty Hotel doesn’t strike your fancy, consider traveling to Zacatecas, Mexico, to spend the night in this 19th-century bullring-turned-hotel. Quinta Real Zacatecas hotel was constructed within the 1866 San Pedro bullfighting arena, also known as the Plaza de Toros, which hosted the sport for well over a century. In 1989, fourteen years after the Plaza’s final bullfight, the Quinta Real opened its doors.

Today’s visitors can appreciate the hotel’s preserved Spanish Colonial façade from the courtyard where the bullring once stood. And if your hankering to explore uniquely repurposed buildings hasn’t yet been satisfied, a ten-minute drive will take you to Museo Rafael Coronel. In one of the more niche renovations of historic religious buildings, this museum, housed in the former San Francisco convent, features more than 5,000 Mexican masks.^[7]

3 From Shopping Mall to College: Austin Community College’s Highland Campus

Central Texas students flock to Austin to live and learn within the walls of the former Highland Mall. Once anchored by a JCPenney store, the building is now characterized by its sustainable and tech-based approach to higher education. In a $46 million renovation effort, the 32,000-square-foot (2,973-square- meter) mall property has been transformed to accommodate nursing skills labs, kitchens, a television studio, and other modern facilities for hands-on education.

ACC’s newest campus champions a distinct suburban charm in its maintenance of quintessential mall features and the less traditional banana split sculpture marking the former food court.

The Highland Campus has bolstered the local economy and community by drawing young professionals to the campus’s surrounding area, which, paired with its sustainable design, makes it a compelling choice for the next generation of college applicants.^[8]

2 From Grain Silo to Museum: Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art

With their domineering form and non-malleable construction, grain silos seem to lend themselves less to adaptive reuse than many of the other repurposed structures on this list. Yet, from climbing walls to galleries, these agricultural hallmarks have been transformed into a number of cultural institutions, with one of the most successful being the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (MOCAA).

The early 20th-century silos in Capetown, South Africa, were repurposed in 2014 by Heatherwick Studio to house the public, not-for-profit museum. The Zeitz MOCAA exhibits and preserves both temporary and permanent collections of contemporary art from the African continent and diaspora. The building, built upon a foundation of 42 hollowed-out silos, is a work of art in itself—one that, paired with its storied interior, has made the MOCAA the most visited art museum in Africa.^[9]

1 From Film Set to Theme Park: Popeye Village

This final list item transcends a singular building’s transformation. Built for the 1980 musical comedy Popeye, starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall, this former film set has been repurposed as an amusement park. The Maltese village, inspired by the fictional hamlet of Sweethaven, comprised 19 wooden buildings which served as the stomping grounds for the live-action Popeye and Olive Oyl. Following Popeye’s lukewarm media response, the set was abandoned.

Rather than letting the prop village succumb to nature, local entrepreneurs converted the neglected set into a theme park, maintaining the colorful architecture to house water trampolines, restaurants, and a winery, among other attractions. Actors still walk the streets of Sweethaven as the comic book and cartoon characters, but for tourists and comic enthusiasts instead of the camera. Whether you have an appreciation for salvaged infrastructure or simply a soft spot for cartoon sailors, Popeye Village belongs on your Malta itinerary.^[10]