Places Jilda Caccavo Wants to Go

Originally a leper colony, the island is now an Armenian monastery that's home to an incredible manuscript library and eclectic museum.

This abandoned island off the Venetian coast has been a radical monastery, a political prison, and a secret Nazi base.

An extensive collection of reliquaries containing the bones of saints housed in the largest Catholic church in Venice.

The marble facade hides a little-known medical museum with early surgical instruments and rare copies of canonical texts.

Thousand-year-old Viking runes adorn an ancient Greek lion at the entrance to the Venetian Arsenal.

The plague quarantine island home to the alleged "Vampire of Venice."

Venice's "Island of the Mad."

Florence’s archaeological museum displays an ordinary stool that once shattered one of its most prized artifacts.

A plaque on the base of this statue holds a bewitching design.

In Florence's great Duomo, a 26 foot fresco honors a mercenary famous for attacking Florence.

Some say this medieval church is where the poet Dante married his wife and also met the love of his life.

Many famous English poets including Elizabeth Barrett Browning are laid to rest at this Swiss-owned cemetery in Florence.

More than 450 years ago, an Italian nun became the first woman to paint the iconic subject.

An extraordinary house museum and cabinet of curiosities in the heart of Florence.

Art and armour fill every inch of this rich kid's Italian villa.

This strange bovine gargoyle is said to have been put in as a passive aggressive form of revenge.

Renaissance hospital featuring a rotating door into which unwanted babies were dropped.

The mummified relic of St. Antoninus.

This museum is rotten with a century of wax medical deformities.

Legend says this mysterious stone head belongs to a woman who was petrified by an alchemist.

An incredible menagerie of more than 3 million taxidermied animals at the oldest science museum in Europe.

A medieval weapon rumored to have been used by the brilliant poet himself.

The graveyard is filled with beautiful funerary art and boasts breathtaking views of Florence.

This bronze boar's snout has been rubbed to a golden sheen by visitors seeking good fortune.