From www.tasteofcinema.com:
"Ruins are physical traces of a past that no longer exists. They can be entire cities, levelled by natural disaster, or villages ravaged by war; in fiction, ruins can take an even greater variety of forms, from the aftermath of apocalypse to disintegrating fantasy worlds.
Ruins make for powerful images in cinema because they are visible manifestations of loss and time's passage, and as such are often incorporated in films as visual metaphors for dying and decay.
The following list presents in order of release ten films that use ruins in thematically, atmospherically, and aesthetically compelling ways. Rather than simply operating as the backdrop against which narrative events happen to unfold, the wreckage and debris described here are crucial to understanding the films in which they appear."
