London: Run-down and left to the elements, these abandoned buildings offer a sometimes macabre, often poignant insight into their history - as a leper colony.
The centuries-old institution on the Greek island of Chios once housed dozens of outcasts who had contracted the disease, which is still often misunderstood today.
These evocative photos by Kelly Katsarou vividly reveal the environment in which the lepers were forced to live out their lives.
The colony, called Lovokomeio, opened in 1378 as the first leper colony in Greece and one of the first in all of Europe.
It was intended to isolate those suffering from leprosy and other contagious skin diseases from the rest of society in order to avoid infecting others.
The origins of leprosy, now known to be caused by a bacterium, were then unknown, adding to the stigma placed on its sufferers.
The disease was so poorly understood, many of the 'lepers' sent to the colony did not even suffer from it - rather, they had other skin diseases or fungal infections.
Such was the fear and stigma, settlements were usually built in isolated locations such as islands.
Sometimes, however, they were deliberately set up to be accessible so that they were kept in the public eye, and thus received a steady flow of donations.
Lovokomeio was no such colony. Fitting with the commonly held belief of the time that the disease was a punishment from God, there was a church dedicated to St Lazarus, the patron saint of lepers.
It is just one of the run-down buildings on the colony, where children’s notebooks and medicines lie scattered alongside open tombs.
Doors are smashed, stripped beds lie rusting, and rotting floorboards give an ominous creak whenever someone is foolhardy enough to put their weight on them.
While it would of course have been miserable to be separated from one's family and placed in a colony, these pictures show that there were positives to be found in life at the colony.
Some areas of the complex are undeniably beautiful, and it could have been a consolation to spend time with fellow sufferers who could empathise with each others' plight.
The colony at Chios began to decline during the 19th century, when the island was the centre of fierce fighting in the Greek War of Independence.
By the middle of the century Chios was largely deserted, and the situation was worsened by an 1881 earthquake which killed nearly 8,000 people
The colony was finally shut down for good in 1957, by which time a cure had been found for leprosy and much of the stigma had disappeared in the West.
However, there are still hundreds of leper colonies open around the world, particularly in India.
