Places akiraa1 Wants to Go

A "station to nowhere" marks the site of a Siberian subway project that never saw the light of day.

The largest Buddhist city in Europe is a haven for chess fanatics.

Pictures tacked onto trees remember the more than 40,000 of Stalin's victims buried here in mass graves.

You'll find rocket launchers, not rollercoasters, at Russia's “military Disneyland.”

Russia's own leaning tower was built on a tragic historical fable.

Social outcasts and cannibalism in Stalin's Soviet Union.

Inside the world's largest seed bank, WWII botanists elected to starve to death rather than compromise their collection.

A magnificent, Disneyesque chateau built for 150 lucky kindergarteners.

This burial mound is said to be the final resting place of Russia's first Viking ruler, Oleg of Novogrod.

The laboratory where the Soviet secret police invented exotic poisons used to kill dissidents in hideous and (mostly) untraceable ways.

A self-taught Siberian craftsman creates a fantastical and personal design for his 19th century village house.

These tiny cabins on a cableway have been carrying visitors at a Baltic resort down to the beach since 1912.

A former military outpost of Ivan the Terrible, the 16th-century church contains some of the rarest examples of Eastern Orthodox mural paintings.

Rare documents, old instruments, and gruesome specimens showcase the history of military medicine.

A monument to the defenders of the Arctic in Murmansk, Russia.

Fascinating early attempt at a Jewish autonomous settlement.

An abandoned 14th-century castle and prison complex on a small island in the Neva River.

Propped high atop the peak of Mount Gamsutlmeer, this abandoned village is one of the oldest settlements in the region.

A replica of the straw hut where Vladimir Lenin lived in hiding, disguised as a hay farmer, in 1917.

300-year-old villagers houses and traditional churches preserve a nearly lost piece of Russian history.

Thanks to this small string of islands World War II still hasn't officially ended between Russia and Japan.

Europe's highest peak is a key pillar of the Seven Summits mountaineering challenge.

This massive glowering Lenin head gazes out over eastern Siberia.

An enormous Soviet aircraft, the only one of its kind, stands at the deserted shore of the Caspian Sea.