This iconic L.A. bookshop is housed in an abandoned bank—both symbolic and chic.

A palatial art deco restroom.

An old soap company building now houses one of Minneapolis’s oldest independent non-profit art galleries.

Secret hideaway for an alternative beach experience.

20,000 pieces in a Frank Gehry-designed building.

Funhouse of found art and participatory sculpture.

This lab's maddening silence is good for business but bad for sanity.

One of Canada's oldest museums, the beautiful Redpath has been serving up Natural History and Ethnography since 1882.

This 1967 experiment in modular architecture was designed to be a new model for urban living.

Two thirds of this Montreal neon icon has survived to flash another day.

Tucked in a nondescript downtown Brooklyn mall is a bar containing a remarkable turn of the century anatomical wax collection last seen in 1920s Berlin.

These World War I shooting range tunnels are now haunted halls of underground graffiti accessed through the roots of a tree.

The intricate stonework of Machu Picchu serves as a testament to Incan engineers.

Keshwa chaca, among the last handwoven Incan bridges, crosses Apurimac Canyon in Peru.

An explosion of natural color known as "the river that ran away from paradise."

This everlasting lightning storm may be the world's largest generator of ozone.

An eccentric inventor's castle home with its own indoor weather system.

Protecting the future of some of the rarest and most misunderstood mammals of North America.

Hidden in an ordinary Midtown building is a one-room museum dedicated to the greatest escape artist.

Unlock the secrets of the conjuring arts.

An abandoned horticulture institute gloomily presides over rows of derelict and vine-wrought greenhouses.

The remnants of two World's Fairs are here, complete with a 12-story globe, a mini-Manhattan, and a UFO-shaped pavilion.

A semi-scholarly approach to sex.

A pedestrian island in the middle of world-famous Times Square emits a strange (and purposeful) humming noise.