There is something weird and mysterious about stairways that don't go anywhere, and yet they're surprisingly common: inside and outside old buildings, among demolished walls, in big cities and small villages, or in artists' imaginations. They get your mind going, spurring you to imagine secret places and invisible doors. Try climbing the next one you encounter. Or just imagine climbing these.


Green stairs to nowhere, University of Vermont campus.


Photo: zappowbang

University of Cincinnati

Photo: srecd

Ocean stairs, San Sebastian, Spain.


Photo: Lauren Manning

Center of the World, Felicity, California (salvaged from the Eiffel Tower in 1989).


Photo: Mike Towber


Photo: SFB579 :)

One of the famous stairs of Malta.


Photo: Mads Johansen


Photo: moleratsgotnofur

Waiting in Whitby, Great Britain.


Photo: gregwake

Wooden staircase of Tors Cove, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.


Photo: ffreshness

Ancient stairs carved into rock. Petra, Jordan.


Photo: Neil and Kathy Carey

Leicester, Great Britain.


Photo: karlos of syston

Stairway on a house. Offenbach Marktplatz, Frankfurt, Germany.


Photo: vollefolklore

Alcatraz, San Francisco, CA.


Photo: aquababe

Floating stairway over the Hudson River, New York.


Photo: twinxamot

Staircase of a demolished house. Looks like a dinosaur. Columbus, Ohio, US.


Photo: mikelietz

An old brewhouse, Philadelphia, US.


Photo: fish2000


Photo: Andrea Schwartz

Stairs on the bank of the River Danube. Budapest, Hungary.


Photo: Attila Nagy/Gizmodo

Michel De Broin's mind bending sculpture: 'Révolutions'. Parc Maisonneuve-Cartier, Montreal, Canada.


Photo: Evelyne Awaad/art_inthecity

Staircase sculpture at the KPMG Building in Munich, by Olafur Eliasson, entitled 'Rewriting'.


Photo: Alaskan Dude

'Winding stairs' monument by Rudi van de Winton, dedicated to those who lost their lives in a 1977 air disaster. Tenerife, Spain.


Photo: Arturo Rodriguez/AP

'Crouching Tiger and Turtle, Magic Mountain', by sculptors Ulrich Genth and Heike Mutter in Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.


Photo: Funny-Leo

Did we miss your favorite stairway? Post it in the comments!