In the mountains of North Ossetia, there’s a place that’ll make your skin crawl. Dargavs – a necropolis where stone crypts dot a lonely hillside like abandoned houses. They’re the final resting places of the Ossetian people, built between the 12th and 17th centuries.
Each crypt looks like a small stone house with a peaked roof. Locals call it the “City of the Dead” – and, that name fits. Imagine nearly 100 structures sitting silently on a mountain slope, each holding generations of ancestors.
The Alanians – the people who built these crypts – had some fascinating burial practices. They’d bury people with their personal belongings, clothes, tools, and weirdly, even boats. Boats. In a mountain location. Think about that for a second.
Local stories suggest during a devastating plague, infected people were left in these crypts to die alone. No rescue. No hope. Just waiting for the end. Some legends warn that anyone who enters might never return.
Getting to Dargavs isn’t a casual day trip. The roads are rough, the terrain unforgiving. Most people don’t make it here. And maybe that’s how the dead like it.
