This deconsecrated church has seen many uses, from a tobacco storehouse to a cinema.

100 year tradition of fist fights, marked by marble footsteps.

Despite their macabre past, these hooks are said to bring good luck to those who touch them.

This palatial spiral staircase was so unusual the name "snail" was given to the noble family who built it.

Memorials at a Florence railway station remember the citizens who were deported from Italy and sent to extermination camps.

The pile of books behind the dignified writer gave the statue a most undignified nickname.

The only museum with its curator—and her pets—buried inside.

A copy of the famous statue can be found in this Florence piazza, along with one of the most breathtaking views of the city below.

A slightly creepy gallery of plaster cast models in the same museum as Michelangelo's David.

Waterway populated with abandoned projects, including a submarine.

Where Venice's gondolas go for a tune-up.

Venice's island of the dead.

Go inside to really appreciate this 500-year-old technological masterpiece.

A twisted steel beam from the wreckage of the World Trade Center is the centerpiece of this memorial for those who died on September 11, 2001.

One of the largest squares in Europe contains an entire artificial island.

The oldest botanical garden in the world that technically isn't the oldest.

The world's oldest surviving anatomical theater, where "the dead are pleased to help the living."

One of the world's oldest working clocks is curiously missing the Zodiac sign of Libra.

Built to repay the sins of the father, this church is home to one of the most valuable works of Western art.

What looks like a normal building is really a hollow facade hiding a subway vent.

This surreal statue brings a famous French novel about a supernatural cad to arresting life.

The storefront of a ramshackle Parisian puppet theater.

A French artist's vague warning hangs over Belleville.

If you look closely at the oldest bridge in Paris, you might notice hundreds of ugly faces leering from its sides.