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Photographer Andrew Qzmn (just you try pronouncing that) braved last year's Russian winter to visit the town of Chukhloma, where he found breathtaking examples of 19th-century, handcrafted, wooden architecture left abandoned among the trees.

Located about 300 miles northeast of Moscow, the houses, known as Terem, are wonderfully ornate, trimmed heavily in detailed latticework much like the Victorian "gingerbread" houses found in the U.S.

Such elaborately carved homes are evidently scattered all across Russia, slowly succumbing to the elements, though some have been incorporated into open-air museums in an attempt at preservation. Sounds like an idea worthy of adoption here in America, where our urban ruins are instead fenced off and left to the weeds.