Places Mat Wants to Go

These crumbling Latvian forts make for some haunting seaside ruins.

Flamboyant architecture from the turn of 20th century.

The secret cells in the basement of the KGB's Estonian "Grey House" have been preserved as a grim Cold War museum.

Mysterious craters may have been home to an ancient cult.

Once a year, at exactly 11:11 a.m., this monument comes to life.

A biblically accurate ark located beneath a Hong Kong bridge is fun for the whole Christian family.

Every Christmas, one Arizona city makes the most of its dry climate by creating an arid desert tannenbaum.

Hundreds of dwarf beeches create an unusual, haunting forest in the north of France.

The world's largest boar is a huge steel titan found at a French rest stop.

This striking fort on the Maginot Line looks just as it did after being destroyed in the Fall of France.

The remains of 40,000 humans, meticulously stacked in a tiny churchyard shed.

This noble mash-up in eastern Luxembourg is part Medieval, part Renaissance, all castle.

Once the local rulers had gone these enchanting ruins housed common folk in an almost real life fairy tale.

The last bastion of Roman presence north of the Alps looms over a German town.

A church filled with the bones of hundreds of virgins martyrs—or so they say.

The patron of this extravagant Art Nouveau confection insisted that nothing less than a boat should project from its facade.

The Belgian royal family's private depot now stands abandoned and forgotten alongside the tracks.

Because sometimes you need to make a batch of frites even when the stores are all closed.

This whimsical statue dumps water on its head to symbolize knowledge flowing into his brain. Or maybe booze.

A once-magnificent collegiate church is falling into ruin.

This narrow Ghent alleyway is an officially sanctioned street art tunnel.

Rare wooden escalators lead deep down into an otherwise staggeringly monotonous tiled tunnel.

An undulating wicker beast looms peacefully atop a sand dune in Belgium.

A maze of crosses marks the jumbled divide between the Netherlands and Belgium.