Places akiraa1 Wants to Go

An incredibly random collection of wax figures is displayed in a shopping center walkway.

A tea party concludes each visit to this Russian spice cookie sanctum.

Russia's giant concrete QWERTY keyboard is likely the largest in the world.

The mummified remains of Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, Russia's most important Buddhist.

An unusual abandoned church damaged in World War II sits in a small village outside Moscow.

The Nazis lost more men trying to take this Russian-held Stalingrad apartment block than they did when taking Paris.

An art museum inside an active factory.

Five mile wide circular ring of rock in the Russian Far East is a curious geological oddity.

Perhaps the tiniest sculpture in Saint Petersburg is a little bronze finch inspired by a song.

What was once the base for Russia's first nature reserve is now a ghost town, right on the shore of Lake Baikal.

Stalin's march toward a more modern USSR flooded a monastery, leaving a unique and extravagant nautical marker, "The Flooded Belfry."

A man-made island fort that has housed soldiers, scientists, and ravers.

One of the most well-preserved mammoth specimens in the world.

This iconic Russian space museum sits on a landmark space production facility and houses the Vostok 1, the first manned spacecraft, that was also built here.

Monastery complex at the location where bodies of the executed Romanov royal family were discovered.

Monastery, army base, and infamous Soviet Gulag in the far Russian north.

A small and surprising passageway in Saint Petersburg devoted to the Beatles.

A uniquely authentic display of traditional Russian culture.

This 15th-century cave complex is one of the very few monasteries to stay open throughout World War II and the Soviet regime.

Two islands just 4 km apart separated by an International Border and Date Line.

This remote lake in Siberia supposedly contains a fearsome sea monster.

Site of the world's largest nuclear explosion.

The giant Siberian crater known locally as the "doorway to the underworld" is expanding every year.

An abandoned town of skeletal wooden homes.