Would you vacation at Prora, the Nazi resort with a mysterious past?

On the picturesque beaches of the northern German island of Rügen, along the Baltic Sea, sits an empty 20,000-person resort. The buildings stretch nearly three miles down the coast, with all 10,000 rooms facing the beautiful bay just 500 feet from the water’s edge. (Photo: Steffen Löwe / Creative Commons)

The design, done in a Bauhaus style, won a Grand Prix award at the 1937 Paris World Exposition. (Photo: Thomas Kohler / Flickr)

Vintage Nazi advertisement for Prora: Naturally, not everyone feels good about turning a place with such a dark history into a vacation spot or forgetting the past. Prora, known by locals as The Colossus, was built from 1936-1939 as part of the Nazi program of “Strength Through Joy.” The plan was to house workers in eight identical six-story buildings, feed them catered meals in scheduled seatings, and prepare them through propaganda and social activities to do their part in Hitler’s plan for Germany.

Since German reunification, though, the buildings have largely been abandoned and fallen into disrepair. The government briefly intended to demolish the place. Instead, it gained status as a heritage site. Plans have come and gone to renovate the massive resort and make it a tourist site, but financing has fallen through more than once. (Photo: m.a.r.c. / Flickr)

A page from the brochure of the vacation apartments planned for Building 1. Building 1 was purchased in 2012 for $3.5 million by real estate group IRIS GERD. The plan is to turn the building into 163 vacation rentals called Neues Prora (“New Prora”). (Photo: IRIS GERD)

(Photo: fotonen / Flickr)

(Photo: Wusel007 / Wikipedia)

Today, the complex houses a museum (called a documentation center) that chronicles the history of Prora and a disco club, shown here. (Photo: Joakim Lewin / Flickr)

The museum (called documentation center) at Prora. (Photo: Thomas Kohler / Flickr)

(Photo: Prora Documentation Center)

In 2011, Europe’s largest youth hostel, with 400 beds, opened in Building 5 after a $2.3 million renovation. The youth-hostel association also runs a youth camping ground.

(Photo: Klugschnacker / Creative Commons)

At the hostel’s opening, there were concerns that marketing for the hostel played up its shady history and might attract neo-Nazis. "We will do all we can to prevent brown (Nazi) ideology from gaining a foothold here," said Rügen district councillor Kerstin Kassner to a German newspaper at the time. (Photo: Steffen Löwe / Creative Commons)

The buildings stretch nearly three miles down the coast, with all 10,000 rooms facing the beautiful bay just 500 feet from the water’s edge. (Photo: Stefan Baudy / Flickr)