Sub-Saharan Africa from the perspective of the Anglosphere cultures: WAS an exotic place full of fantastic peoples and treasures NOW is a hellhole of poverty, kleptocracy, and AIDS.
Canada from the perspective of the US. WAS British, loyal to the Crown, and aristocratic. NOW is a fun place with friendly people, good whiskey, more sensible drug policies, and a lower drinking age!
California then: The Promised Land, where to go when your farm blew away
California now: Go away, we’re broke!
If you’re growing smokestacks.
Nobody other than a Canadian has ever thought this in history. 
Good one. Nowadays, Mexican border towns are thought of as drug-ridden, nearly anarchic hellholes that no sane person wants to go anywhere near.
Vietnam. From war zone to vacation spot.
Spoken by someone who never left the Turnpike. NJ was good enough for Malcolm Forbes and Jackie Onassis.
Sure. Louis XIV fought wars all over the continent. And there was also a guy named “Napoleon.”
By the mid-1800s, France had the same reputation that Germany did in the mid 1900s.
And they’re both dead. For at least 15 years.
Beirut specifically but even much of Lebanon in general. Beirut was a Mediterranean party spot, an international destination for the in crowd. Now it and much of the rest of the countryside periodically becomes war by proxy battleground for Iran and Israel. I’ve seen tears of anguish well up in my older friend’s eyes as he tells me what a Garden of Eden Lebanon used to be.
Baltimore used to be known as the city of crackheads and urban blight. Now it’s known as the city of crackheads.
Kabul was a place where people went for a a weekend.
Acapulco was where Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor went to party. Where Elvis filmed one of his movies.
Now it is being fought over by three drug gangs.
During the Nazi regime, the name of Nuremburg was infamously associated with the annual Nuremburg Rally of the party and the antisemitic and discriminatory Nuremburg Laws. Today the first historical image invoked by the name of Nuremburg in most people’s minds is the Nuremburg Trials.
Not much change there, according to contemporary accounts…
I seem to remember reading a book about that once. It was talking about . . . angry raisins? 
A few centuries ago, Switzerland was synonymous with mercenaries, enough so the the general term for mercenaries for any country was switzers.
A few centuries before that, Scandinavia was synonymous with vikings.
Kids I went to college with would backpack across Afghanistan, stoned out of their gourds all the way.
Or they’d go to Spain, lay off the dope while there, but even so, if three or more people stopped to talk on the street, the cops would jump right on them.
Detroit, MI, and Flint, MI- two cities that used to be thriving, middle-class, upwardly mobile cities. Now both are places you do not want to be when the sun goes down. Or even when it’s up.
“nearly anarchic”? You don’t have to be so polite—;).