This deconsecrated church has seen many uses, from a tobacco storehouse to a cinema.

A sinister pyramid in the Frari contains the heart of the famous neoclassical sculptor.

In the past, Renaissance sex workers were encouraged to entice customers on this bridge.

This Venice bookstore has resigned itself to constant flooding by keeping its books in bathtubs and boats.

Stare out over the lagoon and beyond from this 10th-century campanile on the island where the city of Venice began.

This community on a small Venetian island has taken to painting their houses in bright neon hues.

The pile of books behind the dignified writer gave the statue a most undignified nickname.

Go inside to really appreciate this 500-year-old technological masterpiece.

Two stone columns flank the grand Venice square, but there were supposed to be three.

The incorrupt tongue of the patron saint of lost things is venerated in this basilica.

Something's missing between the arcades of the Palazzo della Ragione in "the city of the three withouts."

One of the world's oldest working clocks is curiously missing the Zodiac sign of Libra.

The people of Padua pledged to construct this church if the city was spared from destruction during World War I.

The only museum in Italy dedicated to this ancient profession.

A fairytale island floats in the middle of Italy's little-known Lake Orta.

The floorboard scrawling of a tragic madman is on public display outside a Paris hospital, much to the dismay of its opponents.

This 18th-century sundial was designed to calculate the date of Easter each year.

Noirish green neon marks the location of one of the oldest private detective agencies in France.

Executions were once held near this beautiful 18th-century fountain.

With a history of slaughter, feast, and famine, remnants of the pork industry decorate this area--even its church.

The spiral staircase hidden inside this giant Parisian column was likely built for Catherine de Medici's astrologer.

César Baldaccini's iconic sculpture of a 40-foot thumb stands tall in La Défense.

The narrowest street in Paris.

The tradition of open-air secondhand and antiquarian bookselling in Paris dates back to the Renaissance.