A personal essay on Castel Sandra, the abandoned luxury resort on the Cilento coast, and the summer of 2024 I spent photographing it before leaving Italy.

Over the course of three years, I hosted nearly a hundred sessions there. Each time, the house revealed something new — a corner of forgotten beauty, a room I had never noticed, a shaft of light falling differently through the cracked glass.
The place never stopped whispering ideas.

The word liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold.
To be in a liminal space is to stand at the edge of something new — not quite where you were, not yet where you’re going. It can be physical, emotional, or spiritual.

Abandoned places embody this perfectly. They once had purpose; now they linger between decay and rebirth. They invite curiosity, nostalgia and a strange sense of stillness.