Places Connicka Wants to Go

This beautiful building in the heart of Manhattan's Financial District was empty for decades.

Just your average Marie Antoinette–themed speakeasy in an abandoned 19th-century subway tunnel.

Order scoops of pandan, lychee, and black sesame at this family-run institution.

This lower Manhattan bar is set up in an old bank vault that rests beneath a skyscraper that hides even more historic splendor.

The oldest family-run luncheonette in New York, last renovated in 1948, still serves food and drinks the old-fashioned way.

The very first subway station in New York City is beautiful, decked out in chandeliers, and ... abandoned?

A small window on Via Piella offers a lovely and rare peek at Bologna's lost canals.

This building features dozens of faces along its facade, although one is a bit chilling.

Legend has it this fountain built to symbolize the Pope’s power hides a strange secret concerning Neptune's manliness.

Over 100 towers were built in Bologna during the Middle Ages, but only 22 survive.

Memorials at a Florence railway station remember the citizens who were deported from Italy and sent to extermination camps.

Overlooked amid the tourist bustle of Florence, this museum is dedicated to the craft of stone inlay.

This strange bovine gargoyle is said to have been put in as a passive aggressive form of revenge.

Renaissance hospital featuring a rotating door into which unwanted babies were dropped.

A medieval weapon rumored to have been used by the brilliant poet himself.

Legend says this mysterious stone head belongs to a woman who was petrified by an alchemist.

Over 50 exquisite hand-painted Renaissance maps decorate a Medici storage room.

Renaissance villa and gardens complete with a tormented colossus.

Geothermal waterfalls in Tuscany.

Nestled in the hills of Tuscany are gorgeous, multicolored hot springs.

Walk through a fairytale in Tuscany.

The doodles of a genius line the walls of a secret room under the Medici Chapel, where they were hidden for nearly 500 years.

Dim sum, served in a grand old theater.

The oldest Italian café in Boston, this spot also serves as a veritable museum of vintage coffee ephemera.