Places Mesi Wants to Go

Once a 19th-century brasserie, this McDonald's exterior celebrates Alsatian design and the "King of Beer."

Stunning wetlands ablaze with pink lotus flowers.

An abandoned Roman salami factory has found new life as an art space home to 200 squatters.

Gods clash with machines in a power plant regenerated as a museum.

This former Roman Catholic Church still contains the embalmed hearts and organs of 22 popes.

The engineering wonder and pleasure dome of a much-maligned emperor still holds undiscovered secrets.

2300-year-old Roman road connecting the empire.

This hidden Art Nouveau courtyard is an opulent feast for the eyes.

Hundreds of lucky felines haunt the ruins where Caesar was murdered.

A former squatter's paradise outside Prague.

This beautiful park on the outskirts of Rome protects the ruins of two colossal ancient aqueducts.

This Croatian island is for sale but no one is buying due to the dozens of accused Nazi sympathizers who were massacred there after WWII.

A surreal pile of colorful junk fills a small yard in an otherwise gray neighborhood.

Mostly underground in the old days Back in the USSR, today the Beatles beckon to tourists from a wall sculpture out in the open in central Russia.

A "station to nowhere" marks the site of a Siberian subway project that never saw the light of day.

Pictures tacked onto trees remember the more than 40,000 of Stalin's victims buried here in mass graves.

The largest Buddhist city in Europe is a haven for chess fanatics.

An incredibly random collection of wax figures is displayed in a shopping center walkway.

A small and surprising passageway in Saint Petersburg devoted to the Beatles.

What was once the base for Russia's first nature reserve is now a ghost town, right on the shore of Lake Baikal.

Five mile wide circular ring of rock in the Russian Far East is a curious geological oddity.

Siberian whale bones stand as cairns marking location of an ancient butcher yard.

An abandoned town of skeletal wooden homes.

Once frequented by heavyweights of the Russian arts scene, this café is stuck in the 1800s.