Places Edited by Max Cortesi

This Armenian monastery was carved out of cliffs and named after the spear used to stab Jesus.

Myanmar's Mount Olympus atop a 2,500-foot volcanic plug.

China's beehive-shaped pyramids house the remains of a lost kingdom.

Three columns of volcanic rock shoot out of the ocean.

Made by a man on a worldwide sanitation crusade.

Site where Moses may have received the Ten Commandments.

Mountain of unimaginable riches that bankrolled the Spanish Empire, complete with its own underworld god.

Enormous statue of the Emperor of the Mongols.

Human ancestor’s 3.6 million year-old footprints.

An ancient stone fortress considered by many to be the eighth wonder of the world.

Vast stretch of tide-pools with a unique Moroccan charm.

Ancient and modern architecture are joined in Louis Kahn's monument to democracy.

Crumbling necropolis set high above Fez.

Traditional 11th-century outdoor tannery.

Skyscraper powered by wind turbines attached between its towers.

An Archaeological Wonder of Peru, and the largest stone ruin site in the New World.

Natural cathedral designed by Italian artist Giuliano Mauri.

Old batteries and frog skeletons reside in this lakeside monument to Alessandro Volta.

Canada's subterranean Cold War museum has doubled as a movie set.

Known as the most dangerous bridge in the world, the Hussaini Hanging Bridge is only one of many precarious rope bridges in Northern Pakistan.

Home to nearly a third of the world's mud volcanoes, Azerbaijan is home to a messy, bubbling, and sometimes explosive landscape.

Site of the largest volcanic eruption in the last 25 million years, one which may have nearly wiped out humanity altogether.

Deep in the Thar desert, a temple crawling with thousands of holy rats.

Ancient catacombs form the foundation for this Rococo orgy of a church.