Places escapementality Wants to Go

If you want to talk to the Pope you will have to stare down this surreal vision of Jesus rising from a nuclear hell.

The Vatican's secret porn-festooned bathroom was painted in erotic murals by one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance.

A collection of objects supposedly singed by the hands of souls in purgatory.

This ancient Roman prison is decorated with an upside-down cross not as blasphemy but as saintly tribute.

Once known throughout Europe, this tiny and unusually progressive 18th century micro-nation within Lithuania now lies in ruins.

A small monument in Lithuania marks the geographic center of Europe—or at least one of the claimants.

The largest coin pyramid in the world is a carefully balanced stack of over 1,000,000 pieces.

Warsaw's fantastically preserved gasworks...almost.

Crosses of all shapes, sizes and colors litter the mountain, the site of a huge yearly Orthodox pilgrimage.

A national collection of Communist-era musical posters.

Ruins of a late 1950s Polish ski jump ramp in the middle of the city.

A program of Communist glamour in post-Stalin Poland is preserved in this colorful museum.

The world’s narrowest house makes for an awkward, four-foot-wide living space.

Giant wood sculpture in Kew first constructed in 1979.

Record-holding guitar meant to promote country.

Children's playground hidden under a big pink and blue cap.

Asbestos pit mine abandoned in 1983 is still dangerous thirty years later.

A town whose main resource was blue asbestos... what could possibly go wrong?

A special train service transported Sydney's dead from this station to "Necropolis Receiving Houses" at Rookwood Cemetery.

The smallest country in Australia is a principled little thing with a friendly emperor.

An abandoned jewel of a ballroom on the top floor of Australia’s busiest rail station echoes with the sounds of a bygone era.

This odd 1930s shop remains stranded in time and shrouded in mystery.

6000-year-old coal fire moves one meter per year.

This eccentric cave dwelling is bizarre even by the standards of a subterranean town.