Kolmanskop is one of the most photographed places in Africa — an abandoned diamond-mining town 10 kilometres inland from Lüderitz, where the Namib Desert has been slowly filling the rooms of the old houses with sand for seven decades. The pastel-coloured buildings, built in the German colonial style during the diamond rush of the 1900s, stand half-buried, with dunes flowing across bedroom floors and sand piled to windowsill height in the drawing rooms. The effect is simultaneously beautiful and melancholy.
The town boomed from 1908, when diamonds were found in the sand underfoot, to the early 1930s when the deposits were exhausted and the richer deposits further south at Oranjemund drew the industry away. A permit is required to enter — available from the Lüderitz museum or directly from the Kolmanskop office, which also runs guided morning tours. The best light for photography is in the two hours after sunrise; go on a weekday to avoid tour buses from Lüderitz.
The Goerke Haus in Lüderitz (the villa of a diamond company manager) has been preserved as a comparison point — showing what these buildings looked like when occupied.