Places piccolo8va Wants to Go

The romantic botanic tunnel feels like a well-kept secret.

Conspiracy theories and occult legends surround this mysterious natural rock formation.

A giant portrait of an ancient king looms over the river.

Once an opulent Art Nouveau hotspot, the Constanța Casino is one of Romania's most beautiful abandoned buildings.

This fairy-tale castle would make Dracula (who is said to have been imprisoned there) jealous.

This massive underground salt mine now holds a sci-fi theme park in its depths.

Moss and stone turn this waterfall into an otherworldly liquid veil.

Thousands of biblical and pagan images are carved into this small 12th-century church.

Is it an island or a volcano? That question probably explains why it's uninhabited.

A museum dedicated to controversial Russian pianist Alexander Scriabin.

A replica of the straw hut where Vladimir Lenin lived in hiding, disguised as a hay farmer, in 1917.

The laboratory where the Soviet secret police invented exotic poisons used to kill dissidents in hideous and (mostly) untraceable ways.

A model village fit for an emperor.

Home of Vissarion, the "Jesus of Siberia."

The composer did some of his finest work in this country home, including "The Nutcracker."

A homemade anatomical collection of medical anomalies and accidental catastrophes.

Intricate wood carvings on an island in Siberia.

Social outcasts and cannibalism in Stalin's Soviet Union.

An abandoned 14th-century castle and prison complex on a small island in the Neva River.

Russia's own leaning tower was built on a tragic historical fable.

One of the world's tallest statues is also one of its most hated.

Russian researchers who have been excavating ancient squirrel burrows may have brought a 32,000-year-old plant back to life.

A former military outpost of Ivan the Terrible, the 16th-century church contains some of the rarest examples of Eastern Orthodox mural paintings.

An unusual abandoned church damaged in World War II sits in a small village outside Moscow.