Places hanssterkendries Wants to Go

This breathtaking monastery was established by Saint Benedict himself 1,500 years ago.

This overgrown mountain village has been abandoned for nearly a century.

A once-luxurious, now abandoned hotel in the Italian Alps.

This gaping hole in the middle of a remote mountain lake looks like a portal to another dimension.

A windswept necropolis carved into the rocks overlooks the "most Portuguese town in Portugal."

A formerly opulent Italian village is now a crumbling ghost town that no one really knows what to do with.

A kaleidoscopic warehouse-maze of handmade neon signs.

A beautiful, but toxic, lake formed by mining.

The castle was reconstructed to fit Kaiser Wilhelm II's romanticized vision of the Middle Ages.

Natural time capsule containing an alien ecosystem.

An abandoned whaling station on an active volcano offers hot springs in Antarctica, surrounded by ruined giants of industry.

Fire meets ice at the southernmost volcano on Earth.

A salty red wasteland in Tanzania is a breeding spot for endangered flamingos.

Crumbling pyramids and temple ruins stand within the shadow of this sacred butte.

These Nubian pyramids are strange and unique, even by pyramid standards.

Over two-thirds of the world's population of giant tortoises live among this coral formation.

These homes carved into the mountains seem to defy the laws of nature.

The central mosque of this Mali town is entirely built from mud.

Magnificent Roman ruins lie vulnerable to destruction on the edge of the Mediterranean.

Empty since 1989, now falling into ruin.

The world's largest church atop a political fault line.

Massive stele returned to Ethiopia after 70 years in Rome.

Supposedly this Ethiopian chapel holds the Ark of the Covenant, guarded by virgins who cannot leave the building.

An Ethiopian "Jerusalem" featuring a church hewn out of a single rock.