7 Places That Are Invisible On Google Maps

Mysterious and hidden from prying eyes, some sites all around the world remain tantalizingly hidden on Google Maps, piques interest and drives conjecture. Carefully hidden from public view, these secret enclaves provide a window into a world of mystery and secrecy right beyond our digital reach.

Nestled in the lush Dutch countryside between Eindhoven and Nijmegen, the Volkel Air Force Base is one among these mysterious sites. With Wikileaks records implying the presence of 22 American nuclear missiles, silent sentinels of a bygone age, this modest military post has a chilling Cold War legacy.

Traveling southward, we come upon an oddity along the sun-drenched Spanish Mediterranean coast. Here, among the golden beaches and blue seas, Google Maps shows a black area thought to hide an American radar system closely monitoring this strategic maritime area.

Half a world away, on a hill overlooking Taipei, the vibrant Taiwanese capital, an invisible fortification guards. Home to the local intelligence service, this covert complex stays hidden in digital darkness, only reachable by one, unassuming road and conspicuously lacking from satellite pictures.

The Holy Land itself offers a special mapping challenge. Although aerial pictures of Israel are available, they fiercely resist magnification; all buildings are just hazy, indistinct blur. Across most of the country, this digital veil of secrecy leaves its complex details just tantalizingly out of reach.

Not far from the ancient city of Cologne, near the German-French border, sits the town of Geilenkirchen. Beside this modest town, a NATO air base humbles in and out of focus, its exact lines purposefully hidden from casual view.

Reaching the Spanish coast, we come upon another mystery close to the old port city of Cartagena. Here, a black mark on the map hides an unidentified installation whose goal and nature the curious onlookers’ imagination can explore.

At last we look across the great US-Mexico border, where the powerful Rio Grande follows a natural border between countries. But a part of this famous river disappears into a digital haze in Texas’s Hudspeth district. Further west, a 20-kilometer stretch close to Ciudad Juarez also vanishes from view, a deliberate obfuscation thought to impede illegal cross-border operations.

Each covered in their own veil of secrecy, these seven sites are evidence of the careful balance between openness and national security in our linked society. We are reminded that some secrets remain purposefully concealed as we wonder at the ability of modern cartography to expose the secrets of the Earth and encourage us to consider what lives beyond the pixels on our screens.