Places ProstheticShrew Wants to Go

This small island, a byproduct of 19th-century canal construction, is now home to a charming Japanese garden.

Home to the "Rat King" of Nantes and other wonders of the natural world.

The very first subway station in New York City is beautiful, decked out in chandeliers, and ... abandoned?

This series of Baroque passageways in Vienna's cultural center mix old architecture with modern art.

A neo-Gothic mansion now houses a wunderkammer of analog tech that hits on all the senses.

The Habsburgs' royal collections of art and wonders.

One of the best collections of wax anatomical models in the world.

Apartment complexes built into huge repurposed natural gas tanks.

Legends surround an ancient tree trunk riddled with nails for good luck.

A silly medieval mural preserved on the side of a Viennese house.

Beautiful Austrian natural history museum with carved ceilings and row after row of ancient taxidermy.

This museum promotes informed contraception by documenting its often secret past.

Baroque celebration of the end of the Great Plague of Vienna.

This cubist Vienna church building looks like some sort of alien stonehenge.

This Austrian museum celebrates the work of famous forgers and their inimitable imitations.

A spherical "micro-nation" in the heart of Vienna.

This former insane asylum now holds a pathological anatomy museum.

This museum showcases the art of ancient sword-making.

Stunning ruins of what was once the center of one of the greatest empires in East Africa.

Mosques carved from coral and dozens of well-preserved stone structures fill this 500-year-old Swahili trading center.

The ruins of an ancient island city built atop a coral reef in the South Pacific are spectacular and strange enough to have inspired H.P. Lovecraft.

This massive complex is made up of hundreds of smaller temples that date back to the ninth century.

Gardens representing parts of Asia, Europe, and the Mid East are tucked away among the Soviet-style buildings in East Berlin.

Looking for the train station? Try the building shaped like a train.