Places positivelypossessed Wants to Go

A collection of objects supposedly singed by the hands of souls in purgatory.

Jesus' footprints and the first catacombs in the world.

Abandoned medieval hill town.

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

The skull of the patron saint of lovers lies in the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin—maybe.

An Italian hillside ghost town.

An ossuary built in 1210 to collect bones from the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan.

The last moments of the ill-fated Pompeiians, frozen forever in plaster.

The glowing blue Nymphaeum of Emperor Tiberius.

At the crypt of St. Mary of Eulogies and the Dead you are left alone to ponder mortality among piles of skulls.

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

Stalactites and stalagmites in a beautifully lit cave.

Thousands of well-dressed mummies below a monastery.

An alchemist's “magic door” stands in the middle of a Roman park.

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

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

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

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

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

The remains of 40,000 humans, meticulously stacked in a tiny churchyard shed.

This German bone house contains the remains of some 20,000 souls.

A church filled with the bones of hundreds of virgins martyrs—or so they say.

A house of bones — but nobody is quite sure to whom they belong.

A 1,000-year-old church holds the bones of the Christian martyrs who died hiding inside it.