Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

A nondescript building that's been functioning as a speakeasy for nearly a century and a half.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.

Internationally-recognized arts center housed in a century-old former military barracks.

A scale model of Russia so big visitors are offered binoculars to rent so they can see the whole thing.

For a century, the tallest building in Tasmania was a tower built to manufacture ammunition.

A literally moving statue of stacked metal giants just continually trying (and failing) to find love.

Tower with a double-helix spiral, adorned with letters of the Georgian alphabet.

A museum glorifying the life of Stalin, located in the city of his birth.

Luxury hotel turned into a refugee camp, then turned back into a luxury hotel.

The charmingly disheveled clock tower of Tbilisi's puppet theater.

A gigantic collection of teeny, tiny books.

One of the most poignant ruins of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster, the local football team's stadium has been quickly reclaimed by nature.

This historic observatory contains the world's oldest refracting lens telescope.

Come for the flowers, stay for the bats!

These mythological giants take time out of their busy day guarding a Victorian market to let you know what time it is.

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

The great polar explorer is remembered in this far northern town, where he embarked on his final expedition.

The mummified right fist of a 1,000-year-old saint-king sits inside an ornate golden reliquary.

Built in 1870 at the bridge that connected Buda and Pest, this spectacular incline railway was almost lost forever during World War II.

Commercial airplanes land mere feet over the heads of sunbathing beachgoers on this tiny island.

A flower grows on this giant stone that is said be able to control minds.

This elegant Colombian fortress was one of the torture headquarters for the Spanish Inquisition.