An artsy hidden staircase leads to breathtaking views of San Francisco.

The world’s first penitentiary, meant to be humane, drove men insane.

An award-winning children’s garden enchants visitors at the intersection of natural beauty and fairy tales.

The longest covered bridge in Delaware.

The longest living non-clonal organisms on Earth.

Horrifically creative torture devices and shame punishments line the walls of this chilling museum.

The prototype for all Nazi concentration camps.

The fairy tale castle of the “fairy-tale king,” this was also the inspiration for Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty.”

A island reachable by a causeway at low tide is possibly one of the earliest Western European locations to be identified in text.

France's most famous cemetery, with some of its most curious tombs.

A crash site in the heart of polar bear territory has become a beloved local landmark.

Despite attempts by local police to discourage it, Beatles-inspired graffiti has been a means for artists to air grievances for decades.

A small Wyoming town is home to the state's oldest-operating soda fountain.

The world's oldest known salt mine.

How this Pine Barrens hill got its name is uncertain, but on a good day the view from the fire tower is crystal clear.

A dramatically eroding canyon thousands of miles from the desert.

These remote Florida islands have a history of sea turtles and sunken treasures, and one of the world’s largest coastal brick fortresses.

This grisly effigy displays an early Christian martyr who was skinned alive and beheaded.

This 17th-century street hidden beneath Edinburgh was once a breeding ground for the black death.

The artist and his brother are buried in a landscape straight out of a van Gogh painting.

A hotel and restaurant serving as the mecca of kitsch.

The legendary building that needed ghostly approval before being built.

A beautiful memorial tells the story of a formerly enslaved woman whose kindness shaped a burgeoning city.

Few things look more out of place than the electric blue ponds in the reddish-brown desert of Utah.