Historic fortifications form the boundary of Vatican City, but it’s not entirely surrounded by walls.

These mysterious Viking chess pieces spent centuries hidden on a remote Scottish island.

This magnificently macabre shield shows the power of chivalrous love in medieval times.

This intriguing Bronze Age artifact spent centuries hidden within a Welsh faerie hill.

Outstanding taxidermy dioramas showcase the grandeur of the continent's wildlife with spooky realism.

A gruesome and mysterious ancient sculpture of a pagan deity from the Roman occupation of Celtic Britain.

Here be dragons.

Creating this diorama spurred naturalist Carl Akeley to begin advocating to protect the apes.

This “living museum” at UCLA exhibits thousands of plant species from all over the world.

Like a kitschy mirage in the Mojave, this eatery serves up classic 50s-style diner meals and a dinosaur sculpture garden.

This taxidermy scene brings the struggle for survival in the Indian jungle to a quiet corner of a Manhattan museum.

This poignant display is now a memorial to these regionally extinct species.

Historical figures from New York City's Catholic community reside in Midtown.

A mysterious shape catches the eye in this 16th-century painting.

This legendary urban waterfall creates a dazzling display of rainbows.

This bewitching Babylonian goddess haunts a hallway of the British Museum.

Climbing this abandoned railway leads to breathtaking vistas of O‘ahu.

An effigy of Vancouver's Gastown neighorhood's namesake.

Las Vegas's very own 40-foot-tall fire-spewing praying mantis.

A 19th-century cabin built into a hollowed-out Sequoia tree.

One incredible room in the Santa Barbara Courthouse is covered in wall-to-wall canvas murals.

Get up close to emus and ostriches, or buy their tasty meat.

Standing in a state of "arrested decay," this ghost town allows for a detailed peek into Gold Rush life in an unusually harsh climate.

The longest continuous lava tube in Oregon.