1. Access to the area is still strictly guarded.
2.
3. Several dozen Przewalski's horses (an endangered species) have been released in the area, which now serves as a deserted de facto natural preserve (Wikipedia).
4. According to English Russia, Chernobyl now has six shops, two cafes, several gyms, and a library. But persons under 18 are prohibited to live there, so there are no maternity hospitals or schools.
5. The law prohibits anyone to live in the contaminated zone. Five thousand people work on a rotational basis: they spend two weeks in the zone and two weeks out. However rules are bent: one man admitted that he had been living in Chernobyl for a month.
6. Real time radiation.
7. Lenin. Still there.
8.
9. Memorial for resettled villages.
10. Monument for the rescuers, many of whom are now dead from cancer. Every year on April 26th, thousands of people come pay their respects.
11. Equipment used in the clean-up remains there, no visitors allowed.
12. The only working church left (there were 15). The priest and parishioners claim that the radiation level is lowest around the church.
13. "Here lives the master of the house" — this is how residents show their house is inhabited, to keep away looters.
14.
15. "Forgive me, my house, and goodbye!"
16. The day after the accident, thousands of buses and trucks were used to take 12,000 families and 100,000 heads of cattle, pigs, sheep, and horses away.
17. Evgeny Makarych had worked as a teacher before the accident. He said he could not leave the house built by his granddad. His wife and son left the exclusion zone without him.
See many more photos of the exclusion zone at English Russia.