The Old Melbourne Gaol in Australia once served as a place of punishment and rehabilitation for the nation’s criminals. Now, it looks like one of the hippest and hottest events venues in the city!

Introducing the ‘Tropical Islands’ waterpark in Krausnick, Germany. The whole place was built inside an enormous airship hangar in the former Brand-Briesen military air base. It’s the world’s biggest indoor waterpark and one of the biggest buildings on Earth in terms of volume.

Some lucky people get to live in this old police station, which has been repurposed into a modern apartment building. You can see a little piece of the building’s history by looking at these stunning old cell doors, which have since been painted to look a little classier.

This one is very impressive! This huge piece of an old and rusty ship looks like it belongs at the bottom of the ocean. Instead, it has been totally repurposed to create a cozy urban park space, complete with lighting, wooden floors, and seating areas.

Over in Saigon, this old apartment building is no longer needed for housing people. So a bunch of businesses decided to make it their own, turning the whole space into a complex of restaurants and boutique stores.

Interested in visiting one of the most beautiful bookstores on the planet? Well, you might need to book a trip to Maastricht in the Netherlands. That’s where you can find this gorgeous bookstore, which was evidently once a church.

Many old buildings have been transformed into hotels and hostels in the modern era. This is an amazing example, showing a hotel room in a building that was once used as a chapel and still has the old stained glass windows.

This one is a little harder to guess just from looking at the picture, but when you look at that row of monitors and the counter-like structure behind the desks, you start to recognize the layout. Yes, this satellite lab was once used as a McDonald’s fast food joint!

Working out in a beautiful environment can actually help you stay motivated and train harder, so if you want a really good workout session, you might want to visit this gym. It used to be a bank and still retains many original features like those classy pillars and that gorgeous ceiling.

A church might not seem like the obvious place to repurpose into a climbing gym, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Churches tend to have very high ceilings and lots of interior volume, allowing for those huge climbing walls to be installed more easily.

The old FBI headquarters in NYC has been transformed into a Target! You can go and browse the store, buying the same sorts of things and having the same sort of experience you’d expect to find in any other Target. The only difference is that this one has a massive safe that the company decided to keep. It would probably cost a fortune to remove, anyway.

There are no prizes for guessing what this place used to be! It’s pretty obvious from the bowling lane on the floor that this thrift store was once used as a bowling alley.

Any skater might think they’d died and gone to heaven after stepping foot in this place. It’s an old church in St. Louis, Missouri that has been transformed into one of the coolest skate parks on the planet. The sound of skaters echoing around that huge chamber must be quite a special thing to hear!

In Nashville, Tennessee, this old industrial laundromat has been repurposed into a classy modern bar. With some ambient lighting, hanging plants, and cool artistic flourishes, the owners really made this place their own.

Interested in spending the night in a cell, without any crime involved? Well, you might want to visit this amazing ‘Jail Hostel’. The cells have been transformed into rooms, but still look a lot like they did for the prisoners incarcerated there.

This apartment building was once used as a YMCA. A bunch of original features have been left intact to add charm and character to the place, and we can see parts of an old basketball court here in the hallway.

What is it with churches and skate parks? Over in Spain, another church that dates back over a century has also been transformed into a skater’s haven. This place is especially beautful with those colorful murals on the walls and ceiling.

You can find McDonald’s pretty much everywhere on Earth at this point. A lot of them look more or less the same, but there are a few extra special examples out there, like this one. Located in Melbourne, this McDonald’s was once a classy 1930s hotel.

This old church in the United Kingdom has been transformed into one of the coolest indoor swimming pools we’ve ever seen. The big windows let in lots of natural light and the pool just seems to go on and on and on.

Check out the Liberty Hotel in Boston. The owners were pretty clever when they decided on a name for this place! It used to be the Charles Street Jail, built in 1851 and responsible for housing some of Boston’s toughest criminals.

Believe it or not, this is a school library. It used to be a bank, as we can see from the gigantic safe. The school kept the safe and turned it into a cozy little reading space for students to enjoy.

Churches are very popular when it comes to repurposes and redesigns due to their huge size and the amount of things you can do with all that space. This church in Charleston, South Carolina has been turned into a lovely restaurant and bar.

An architect saw a challenge when he came across this old cement factory. He loved the curves and shapes of the building, and he wanted to make it his home, so he repurposed the whole place. We have to admit we’re pretty jealous that someone actually gets to live in such a cool building!

This old prison in Oxford, United Kingdom has been turned into a hotel. We can clearly see the history of the building in its layout and design, but the owners have done a nice job of bringing it into the 21st century with some contemporary features and classy design elements.

This building was once used as a grain silo in Oslo, Norway. Nowadays, it serves as student housing. This is a great example of old buildings being recycled to save space and resources.

Here’s another one from the United Kingdom. It’s an old courtroom, as we can see from the layout and features, but it now serves as a cafe. The cells have even been repurposed into toilets!

Back in 2008, the Summer Olympics were held in Beijing. This massive building was used for swimming events, but when the Olympics came to an end, the authorities didn’t want to let it go to waste. The place was repurposed into an amazing waterpark, complete with giant jellyfish floating overhead.

This video game arcade can be found in New Jersey. It used to be a bank, but now it houses a bunch of old arcade classics and retro pinball machines. It’s called ‘The Game Vault’.

Breweries need a lot of space to store all that huge equipment, so a church is actually an ideal location for making beer. This brewery is located in The Netherlands and the owners have really made great use of the former church’s high ceilings.

This little library was clearly once a jail. The owners could have ripped out the cell doors and reorganized things a little to mask the building’s past. Instead, they decided to keep these cool original features, turning the cells into storage areas and mini book stores.

The owner of this house, which used to be a bank, says that they use the old vault as a kind of basement, storing all their stuff in there.

Bunn’s Barcebue in Windsor, North Carolina was once a gas station! The owners decided to keep many of the original features, including a vintage gas pump which sits right outside the front door.

This was once an old power station, as you can imagine when you look at the high ceilings, tall pillars, and gigantic windows. The space has now been repurposed into a contemporary cafe.

The main building on this college campus makes use of an old hotel as part of its design. With that chandelier, shiny floor, and delicate features on the walls, you can still see and feel the history of this place.

This is one of the weirdest ones on the list, but it’s pretty awesome nonetheless! If you only look at the bottom half of the photo, you see a pretty normal-looking grocery store. But take a peek at the top and you see a gigantic hockey scoreboard floating overhead.

Here’s another awesome example of an old gas station being turned into a super cool diner. The owners added some tables and chairs outside to make use of all that exterior space.

Here’s another awesome entry from Europe. This time, we’re heading to The Hague in The Netherlands to see a church that has been turned into a trampoline park. You can jump for days in here and never have to worry about hitting your head on the ceiling!

This one is very interesting. It’s located in Richmond, Virginia. It was once the Tredegar Ironworks, used to create cannons for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Fittingly, it now serves as a Civil War Museum.

It’s clear to see from the tiled floor and unique shape of this place that it was once a swimming pool, but it has since been changed into a stylish apartment building.

Over in Detroit, a former firehouse has been turned into one of the city’s most popular hotels. The place has changed a lot, but you can still see some of the original design in the form of those huge windows on the right.

This one works really well. It’s not even a building exactly, but it deserves a spot on this list for the clever way in which it has been used. It’s an old brewing kettle that has been transformed into a small but awesome bar.

This Starbucks drive-thru was made out of an old car wash! You can still see a lot of the original features as you drive through to order your coffee.

This is an amusement park known as Wunderland Kalkar. It’s just outside Dusseldorf in Germany and it was built on the site of an old nuclear power plant that was never actually used due to protests and other problems. The cooling tower seen in this picture has been fitted with a climbing wall and swing ride.

Someone actually lives here! It’s a former Freemason Temple, dating back to 1926 and measuring up at 20,000 square feet. The owners have been renovating the place for a few years, gradually making the space their own.

Situated in San Francisco, this former machine factory has proven to be the perfect setting for a modern brewery and bar.

Here’s another home with a difference. It used to be a police station and one of the cells now serves as the owners’ bathroom.

We’ve seen a few examples of old buildings been turned into breweries, but here’s one that works the other way around. This place used to be a brewery, but has since been transformed into a hotel. The owners kept some of the old brewing equipment for decorative purposes.

This old sugar refinery has super high ceilings and lots of volume, making it a perfect fit to be used as a climbing gym.

We’ve seen some intriguing uses for churches throughout this list, but this might be one of the most fascinating of all! This church has been used as a data center, storing dozens of servers and supercomputers.

Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens were once a bunch of abandoned city lots that were scheduled for demolition. An artist named Isaiah Zagar decided to buy them and turn them into an artistic space for everyone to enjoy. He created huge mosaics and a large gallery space which hosts the work of artists from all over the globe.

When you think about it, a mall isn’t a bad space to repurpose into a college. It’s big enough to cater to hundreds of students and has lots of individual spaces to be turned into classrooms and other amenities.

This hotel was once a train station. They even kept some of the old train cars and reused them, turning them into awesome hotel rooms for guests to enjoy.

Over in Essen in Germany, this old coal mine was left to rust after closing down. Someone saw an opportunity and decided to transform the space into an enormous ice rink.

This is the tallest indoor climbing wall in the world. It was also once used as a grain silo.

This is an apartment found in Brooklyn, NY. It was once a church, and the owner has paid homage to the building’s past by including chandeliers and decorating the large church window behind their sofa.

Here’s another awesome church-to-home concept. Imagine being able to sit and eat breakfast in that kitchen each morning, looking out through such a beautiful stained glass window.

This is The Professional Cooking School in Cadiz, Spain. Interestingly, it was once used as a slaughter house. Now, instead of being the place where meat is made, it’s the place where meat is cooked in all kinds of delicious dishes.

This apartment building was clearly once a school, as evidenced by the rows and rows of lockers that have been left behind.

This Walgreens was once a bank. As with other examples on this list, the owners clearly decided that removing the vault would be too much hassle and probably too costly too, so they kept it and turned it into a ‘Vitamin Vault’.

This Subway was made from an old gas station. Cleverly, they reused the outdoor space, creating a little seating area for any customers who want to enjoy their sandwiches outside.

This might be the weirdest entry on our list! Can you imagine a happy and vibrant place like a fast food restaurant being turned into a crematorium?

This old water tower is located in Jonava, Lithuania. Now, since it’s no longer needed for storing water, it’s used as a huge climbing wall for bouldering enthusiasts.

A gorgeous old theater in Buenos Aires, Argentina has been transformed into one of the most magical bookstores on Earth. Any true book lover would never want to leave such a wonderful place.

Here’s one more church, located in the United Kingdom, that has been transformed into a gorgeous home. The owners have kept many of the original features, like those stunning stained glass windows, while repurposing the altar area into an entertainment zone with a big TV and sound system.

Situated in Brooklyn, NY, this old clock tower has been transformed into a triplex penthouse apartment. It measures up at over 6,800 square feet and enjoys wonderful 360 degree views of the whole city, looking out over the Brooklyn Bridge and the skyscrapers of Manhattan. What an amazing place to live!