First founded in 1472, this is the oldest bank in the world. Its history may explain why we call financial institutions "banks."

These medieval skyscrapers dominate the skyline of this small Tuscan town.

The towering Pinocchio stands 63 feet tall in the Italian village his creator frequented as a child.

The graveyard is filled with beautiful funerary art and boasts breathtaking views of Florence.

Next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa is a cemetery home to ancient sarcophagi and disturbing murals.

The only visible reminders of an elaborate engineering project that kept the tower from reaching the tipping point.

The first botanical garden, a feather in the cap of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

A local student's chance encounter with Keith Haring led to the creation of one of Europe's largest murals.

The doodles of a genius line the walls of a secret room under the Medici Chapel, where they were hidden for nearly 500 years.

This strange bovine gargoyle is said to have been put in as a passive aggressive form of revenge.

This bronze boar's snout has been rubbed to a golden sheen by visitors seeking good fortune.

The middle finger of modernity.

This concrete tangle of square pipes has stood as a proud thorn in the city's side since the '70s.

San Francisco's newly reopened hands-on science museum.

This teeny-tiny park built by a San Francisco man in 1962 is mostly stairs.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

The only visible piece of San Francisco's most famous shipwreck.

Visible below the waves are memorials to the city's Gold Rush dead.

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

Get lost in this haunting fairytale art walk through a man-made eucalyptus grove.

There is no trying to fall in love with this Star Wars fountain, you just do or do not.

Inside this museum, the history of the Walt Disney Family empire is on full display.

Beneath the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge is the “Gibraltar of the West Coast,” a fort built to protect the San Francisco Bay from naval attack.