Places Avalon Wants to Go

This sprawling mini-golf empire is an impressive testament to a disappearing attraction.

The face of a woman pushes its way through the earth.

An outdoor urban gallery of large-scale artworks by the world's most influential street artists.

This grave in a ghost town cemetery marks the death of a witch on a day that never happened.

One-of-a-kind preserved ruins of an abandoned 1880s church in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood.

The city of Rockford, Illinois is symbolically protected by a quartet of fittingly stony sentinels.

One of the largest pieces of scientific equipment ever carried on a NASA space shuttle sits in a Chicago alley.

What may be America's largest classic video game arcade lurks inconspicuously in a Chicago suburb.

First planned industrial community in the United States.

Former hotel turned into haunted playground.

Recognized the world over as the home of the McCallisters in the 1990 movie "Home Alone."

Built to house a chapter of the Knights Templar, this grandiose building is a relic of Freemasonry in Chicago a century ago.

A shining sculpture made of 3,115 lights, the number of visible stars in the Northern Hemisphere.

River pirates, murderous bandits, and serial killers used this Illinois cave as their debauched hideout.

Chicago's North Park Village was once the largest municipal sanatorium in the country.

This alley in downtown Chicago held the bodies of over 600 people after the fateful Iroquois Theatre fire.

The world's only known button museum.

Each of these gorgeous, intricately decorated rooms is painstakingly crafted to the scale of 1 inch: 1 foot.

This museum celebrating the almighty dollar lets visitors literally stand in the shadow of a million bucks.

Pizza with a side of fine art.

Shop of curiosities with a dinosaur museum tucked in its basement.

Internationally known record store and purveyor of "dusties."

All of Chicago's wood-paved streets are long gone but two alleys remain.

Nonprofit art center that promotes outsider, intuitive, and self-taught art.