Places lovexdumpling Wants to Go

An abandoned mansion is now a haven for urban explorers.

Located along Lysaya Mountain, this monastery is home to the largest statue of Buddha in Russia.

A model village fit for an emperor.

One of the notorious Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's many summer retreats.

A tiny park off the beaten path covered in ingenious scrap metal sculptures.

A solemn, monumental, kitschy palace of worship honoring victory in the Great Patriotic War.

Mostly underground in the old days Back in the USSR, today the Beatles beckon to tourists from a wall sculpture out in the open in central Russia.

The composer did some of his finest work in this country home, including "The Nutcracker."

Thousands of biblical and pagan images are carved into this small 12th-century church.

Intricate wood carvings on an island in Siberia.

Pictures tacked onto trees remember the more than 40,000 of Stalin's victims buried here in mass graves.

A self-taught Siberian craftsman creates a fantastical and personal design for his 19th century village house.

You'll find rocket launchers, not rollercoasters, at Russia's “military Disneyland.”

This burial mound is said to be the final resting place of Russia's first Viking ruler, Oleg of Novogrod.

The laboratory where the Soviet secret police invented exotic poisons used to kill dissidents in hideous and (mostly) untraceable ways.

A former military outpost of Ivan the Terrible, the 16th-century church contains some of the rarest examples of Eastern Orthodox mural paintings.

300-year-old villagers houses and traditional churches preserve a nearly lost piece of Russian history.

One of the most well-preserved mammoth specimens in the world.

An incredibly random collection of wax figures is displayed in a shopping center walkway.

An unusual abandoned church damaged in World War II sits in a small village outside Moscow.

The mummified remains of Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, Russia's most important Buddhist.

The Nazis lost more men trying to take this Russian-held Stalingrad apartment block than they did when taking Paris.

One of the last examples of Soviet architectural propaganda has a few technological tricks up its sleeve.

Monastery, army base, and infamous Soviet Gulag in the far Russian north.