Places piccolo8va Wants to Go

Venice's "Island of the Mad."

According to the local folklore, the myriad colors of this lake are the result of a lovelorn wizard's blunder.

Geothermal waterfalls in Tuscany.

A master of trompe-l'oeil creates a stunning, tourist-fooling dome out of a flat ceiling.

Renaissance villa and gardens complete with a tormented colossus.

Stalactites and stalagmites in a beautifully lit cave.

Thousands of well-dressed mummies below a monastery.

Pompeii's less famous neighbor is still revealing her secrets.

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

Architectureal fantasy quarter of Rome.

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

A small island less than half a mile from Venice is a forbidden island with a dark and twisted past.

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

A submerged archeological park still holds the wonders of a Roman Sodom.

The crypts of Capuchin friars decorated with the bones of over 4,000 friars, including an entire "crypt of pelvises."

A 16th-century horror show built in a lovely Italian garden.

An Italian crevasse filled with abandoned buildings gives visitors a look at the world without humans.

This abandoned beacon is moving closer and closer to the sea.

The statue of a legendary giant who carried Christ and shouldered the world's sins.

A unique museum dedicated to the famed Soviet director and other cinema greats.

A stone marker and sculpture in the city of Riga stake a claim for the very first community Christmas tree.

A small museum contains one of the largest collections of ethnic and traditional headgear in the world.

The mile-long pier stretches from a ruined fortress out into the Baltic.

Guests become prisoners on a visit to Latvian prison.