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In 2015, writer Maryam Omidi found herself in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, during a trip across Central Asia. She was only a short distance from Khoja Obi Garm, a Soviet-era sanatorium that specializes in radon water treatments. She found herself strangely smitten, “in awe of the architecture, the treatments and the hospitality … The more I read about sanatoriums, the more fascinated I was by them.”
Two years later, after visiting 39 sanatoriums across 11 former Eastern Bloc countries, and after a successful crowdfunding campaign, Omidi and London-based publisher Fuel have released Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums. Omidi worked with eight different photographers who specialize in the region to capture both the architecture and the people who still visit these once-popular—once-state-mandated—vacation destinations.

In 1920, Lenin issued the decree “On utilizing the Crimea for the medical treatment of working people.” The Labor Code of 1922 formalized mandatory vacations, and throughout the Soviet years, sanatoriums…

Beneath the gilt and glamor of King Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles wafted a terrible smell. The French Sun King had spent vast fortunes to transform an unassuming hunting lodge into his own golden wonder court, one of the most astounding palaces in the world. But the building’s location, far from a river, made sewage disposal challenging, and its marshy foundations gave off a rank odor. A lack of facilities apparently led courtiers to defecate around the palace and grounds with abandon. The few bathrooms there were poorly maintained and often overflowing with waste.
There was another, more sinister stench discernible there as well, one more troubling than the commonplace stink of humanity. In the late 1660s and early 1670s, influential members of the French nobility began to die, unexpectedly and close upon one another. Autopsies showed their insides blackened and corroded. A fever for poisoning and witchcraft seemed to have infected…