Places livelavalora Wants to Go

This overgrown Illinois water park offers a whole new type of adventure.

Museum dedicated to the art of cutting and polishing stones.

The company moved out of its sprawling headquarters, leaving plenty of traces behind.

Urban explorers embraced America's now demolished first suburban mall, south of Chicago.

Despite its name, this fast food museum is actually a replica of the ninth McDonald's store.

A former atom smasher turned into an art gallery.

This historic store hides a museum exhibiting a shoe-sizing x-ray machine and a pair of kicks that once belonged to the world's tallest man.

The overgrown remains of a folly temple/playhouse, in an unmaintained section of a Dupage County Forest Preserve.

Explore an underground labyrinth of miniature railroads.

Where a brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel, and a recluse met one Saturday and changed their lives forever.

The final resting place of one of Chicago’s most iconic drill rappers.

Burial site of the notorious Chicago gangster.

One of the finest examples of a black soil prairie that was barely saved by the Great Depression.

Before the Vatican, there was Dolton: This is the childhood home of the first American pope.

Julia Buccola Petta's body was peculiarly well-preserved when it was exhumed six years after her death.

In a cemetery full of holy men, mobsters, and haunted graves, among the most remarkable graves an ordinary husband and wife's spinning headstone.

Recognized the world over as the home of the McCallisters in the 1990 movie "Home Alone."

A board game enthusiast's love for the game, memorialized forever.

This old steel industry company town has a tradition of parking cars on the sidewalk so people can walk in the narrow streets.

Medical museum focused on antique anesthesiology equipment.

Just outside Chicago, one of the few traditional Mongolian restaurants in the U.S. serves a misunderstood cuisine.

Inside the center are Italian works of art and a replica model of St. Peter's Basilica.

A science teacher's dream.

A towering Art Deco movie palace made to look like a Mayan temple.