A design by master architect Alvar Aalto in a small village in the Apennines near Bologna.

This castle was once the home of one of the most powerful women of the Renaissance.

Since the 1960s, this small village has invited painters to decorate its walls.

A masterpiece of modern architecture that caused quite a stir in Paris, recreated in Bologna half a century later.

Time has been frozen at this station since the bombing in 1980—or so it was believed.

This zoological museum began as the first great curiosity cabinet.

Stuck in the arcade of Casa Isolani are three arrows of mysterious origins.

A large statue of Pope Gregory XIII in Bologna was disguised as Saint Petronius to avoid destruction.

Da Vinci's equestrian statue, 500 years in the making.

A brutalist gem towering over the heart of Milan.

This grisly effigy displays an early Christian martyr who was skinned alive and beheaded.

Third time's a charm, or in this case, two testicles are.

Small on the outside, big on the inside, this church is an astonishing act of visual deception.

Sip a Negroni Sbagliato in the bar that invented it.

The train platform where Jews were sent to concentration camps is now preserved as a Holocaust memorial.

In the 1940s, Italian architect Mario Cavallè built a dozen of these round homes in northern Milan.

Artistic tombs, monuments, and a beautiful "Hall of Fame" lurk inside this cemetery.

An ancient artistic garden parlor full of hidden water wonders.

A dilapidated psychiatric facility on the outskirts of Milan where electroconvulsive therapy was developed and Napoleon once lived.

Old batteries and frog skeletons reside in this lakeside monument to Alessandro Volta.

This 1st-century CE Roman bath sits under a carpark.

This half-finished "city of toys" was almost Italy's own Las Vegas.

The abandoned "Ghost Mansion" was left to decay in the mountains of Northern Italy.

An ancient iron pillar in Delhi that seems to be rustproof.