Places Edited by Sarah Brumble

This religious complex carved into a cliff is steeped in legends of miraculous stags and the Holy Grail.

Go inside a revolutionary, cage-less zoo where 35 species live and some of them roam free alongside their human visitors.

A former zoo turned public park, where visitors can hang out in the old animal cages.

An ornate plague column – built to celebrate life – claimed the lives of numerous artisans during its construction.

Helen Keller once broke ground on this historic center for the study of technologies to benefit the hearing impaired.

Industrial ruin decimated this tiny New England company town in a fashion no one saw coming… and even fewer remember today.

The country's oldest continually-operated mini golf course lies hidden in plain sight, eclipsed by one of D.C.'s most popular tourist attractions.

The mysterious remains of a martyred teenage saint are venerated inside a small country chapel.

When the big city meets the edge of the frontier, log skyscrapers are born.

Long-abandoned art nouveau baths beneath Milan's Piazza Oberdan.

Each time a baby is born in Ghent, these streetlights flash in silent celebration.

One day a year it is legal to jump off of this astoundingly tall bridge that spans an Appalachian gorge.

This phantom island appeared on maps for over a century before amateur radio enthusiasts beat Google Earth to the punch in its "undiscovery."

Nepal's first aviation museum found a logical home in the most unexpected place.

This secret gem of a toy store houses a rideable carousel populated with fantasy animals.

This crumbling, graffiti-covered mansion sits tantalizingly within reach of the proletariat who frequent a public park.

This claimant to the title of "smallest church in the 48 states" doubles as an equally tiny, quasi-post office.

If God were a skater, this would clearly be His park of choice.

In Gloucester, Massachussets, fishermen celebrate a successful year at sea by charging a lubed pole to capture an Italian flag.

One man's lifetime collection of tiny objects of wisdom gathered from around the world, on display for public enjoyment.

An illuminated manuscript comprising the life's work of a lone monk, inexplicably decorated with a portrait of Satan himself.

The home-turned-museum of Barış Manço, the mustachioed Turkish Elvis for children.

Take a steam-powered ride straight out of the past on this Appalachian rail line.

A strangely forgotten claimant to the much contested title of "Source of the Nile."