This lavish room at NYC's French Embassy is a rare relic from the end of the Gilded Age.

Suffocating dogs was a common spectacle in the fumes of this noxious cave.

The home of half the world's population of critically endangered mountain gorillas.

Black cat statues guard this temple-like Egyptian revival factory.

An abandoned airport in the middle of nowhere.

One of the most well-preserved temples of ancient Egypt.

An archive of ceramic eggs painted to record clowns' personal makeup designs.

The remains of the wrecked steam trawler can be found on the beach at low tide.

A little-visited waterfall in an otherworldly landscape.

This 170-year-old Swiss guesthouse built into the side of a mountain is best accessed by a cable car.

In the back of a nondescript sports bar is a museum-worthy mural by legendary cartoonists.

An isolated, rusty phone booth commemorates Iceland's first international telegraph cable.

Why a column on the entrance is inscribed with a verse from the Quran is one of Sicily's many mysteries.

A delightfully quirky blend of oddities spread throughout an old 1920s bank.

A small etching on the white marble parapet was written in runic script by a Viking mercenary.

The sand is such a bright white that on sunny days you practically need sunglasses to look at the ground.

This quirky outpost and gallery inside a former church is an unexpected trove of handcrafted art.

The burial place of an obscure North African saint was turned into a macabre body preservation factory for the 17th-century Neapolitan elite.

A great example of the inventive canal bridges that were deliberately split down the middle.

An unusual sand beach in the middle of a forest.

Discover the magic in the mundane in Iceland's Museum of Everyday Life.

A little-known cafe in an old copper bridge tower with 360-degree views of the harbor.

Micro-nation based around a nine-story high illegally built tower.

The colonial city's social history is reflected in its fanciful door knockers.