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Postcard From Pripyat
Scenes from Chernobyl's ghost town.
This photo, by Timm Suess, captures Lenin Square in Pripyat, the town closest to Chernobyl. Once, the mayor imagined planting a rose here for every citizen. Now, the town center is little more than an overgrown ghost town. Though the site of a devastating nuclear accident is empty, tourists have started visiting in small numbers. The Ukrainian government opened the site to visitors in 2011, a bid to draw more tourists to Ukraine ahead of the 2012 European football championship.
Officials say radiation levels in parts of the dead zone are "returning to normal levels," but visitors must sign a waiver, and are instructed not to touch and irradiated vegetation or metal structures. According to a report from the Daily Telegraph: