This church houses the tomb—but not the remains—of St. Nicholas, the likely progenitor to Santa Claus.

The best-preserved ancient theater in the world.

A charming beach town in Turkey captures all the colors of the rainbow.

This arch granting triumphal entrance into Antalya was designed to honor the emperor's visit.

A mysterious ancient cemetery with Roman sarcophagi and Lycian inscriptions.

On top of a hill, this Catholic church overlooks the most Catholic island in Greece.

Τhis feline monument commemorates fallen soldiers on a field that saw many, many battles.

This ancient statue of Dionysus lies unfinished and abandoned in one of Greece's oldest quarries.

Legend says this sacred tree was a gift from goddess Athena.

Where commuters walk through remnants of an ancient Greek necropolis.

One of the largest single-span stone-arch bridges in the Balkans looks like something straight out of a fairytale.

Heralded as the world's first theater, these ruins are often overlooked as they reside in the shadows of the Acropolis.

Replicas of Apollo's leonine stone guard cats still line a sacred row in Greece.

The ruins of an abandoned medieval city where the last Byzantine emperor was crowned.

Giant marble phalluses on the sacred island of antiquity.

A quirky bookstore hidden beneath a sea of whitewashed Greek villas.

A Bronze age settlement on the Greek island of Santorini might have been the inspiration for Plato's Atlantis.

This black sand beach was crafted from volcanic explosions including the historic Minoan eruption.

An imperial church bombed to ruins during WWII now stands as a jagged memorial.

A monument to the three wars that led to German unification towers within a Berlin traffic circle.

A striking 12th-century-style castle built on the edge of a cliff.

The first modernist church in Europe.

Baroque celebration of the end of the Great Plague of Vienna.

Built to give thanks for the passing of a plague epidemic, this cathedral is a one-of-a-kind architectural hybrid.