Elaborately carved to showcase the glorious wealth that the age of exploration brought to the Portuguese empire.

This eccentrically decorated palace is replete with grottoes, fountains, tunnels, and caves.

This unreal Portuguese palace looks as though it's made from a pile of different castles.

A fortified city, home to a remaining population of five families

Fortune tellers, snake charmers, poets, and storytellers all gather on this historic square in Morocco.

Road signs in Namibia mark the location of one of the five major circles of latitude.

This "dead marsh" sits among the largest sand dunes in the world, a forest frozen in time.

The largest known meteorite on Earth was too big to move.

Tracks of ceratosaurus and Coelophysis rhodesiensis tracks can be found fossilized in the sandstone near Mt. Etjo.

The oldest church in the Estonian capital is home to over 100 fantastical cemetery coats-of-arms.

These enormous, stern-faced statues greet visitors with lanterns, and sometimes costumes.

The tiny, studious rodents greet visitors to the National Archives of Finland.

This insurance company building reminds customers that witches, bears, and gnomes are out there, best be insured.

This irregularly shaped sea fortress has defended not one but three different sovereign states.

This church also serves as a lighthouse complete with a beacon.

A cathedral resurrected from the ashes of one of Europe's greatest urban fires.

A replica of the home of a famous fictional troll family.

The church's remarkable frescoes incorporate Finnish artist Hugh Simberg's trademark themes of death and the supernatural.

A 246-foot-high revolving restaurant rises unexpectedly from a forested Finnish hilltop.

A stick-sprouting statue watching a duo of disembodied dancing deities.

Nuclear waste experts study this prehistoric crater lake to envision landscapes one million years in the future.

This functioning parish church is also the site of many concert performances due to its wonderful acoustics.

Roughly 17 million letters to Santa have found their way to this Arctic Circle post office.

If you visit Santa's village, you can get your passport stamped to show you crossed into the Arctic Circle.