Places moonlightpearls Wants to Go

The burial place of an obscure North African saint was turned into a macabre body preservation factory for the 17th-century Neapolitan elite.

Europe’s oldest natural human mummy.

The walls and streets of the ancient city are peppered with penises.

A young Italian couple has been locked in an embrace for over 6,000 years.

An extraordinary collection of 18th century anatomical waxworks.

This abandoned island off the Venetian coast has been a radical monastery, a political prison, and a secret Nazi base.

This curious building hides eclectic details like medieval gargoyles alongside naked angels and Art Nouveau mosaics.

Roman-era ships unearthed...

An extensive collection of reliquaries containing the bones of saints housed in the largest Catholic church in Venice.

A once-luxurious, now abandoned hotel in the Italian Alps.

This half-finished "city of toys" was almost Italy's own Las Vegas.

A fake medieval village in the middle of Turin.

The Neapolitan Cult of the Dead still cares for the skulls at this mini-Fontanelle.

Overlooked amid the tourist bustle of Florence, this museum is dedicated to the craft of stone inlay.

An extraordinary house museum and cabinet of curiosities in the heart of Florence.

Medieval torture techniques with a modern conscience.

The marble facade hides a little-known medical museum with early surgical instruments and rare copies of canonical texts.

The ruins of the largest gladiatorial school in Rome are largely hidden under modern streets.

Renaissance hospital featuring a rotating door into which unwanted babies were dropped.

The skulls and bones of thousands of soldiers line the walls of this small Italian chapel.

A burial vault located under Tiber Island in the middle of the Italian capital.

Medieval town turned hippie commune, once home to the secret foreskin of Jesus Christ.

One of the largest caves in the world open to the public.

The world's most active stratovolcano is almost always erupting.