This iconic L.A. bookshop is housed in an abandoned bank—both symbolic and chic.

Northern Ireland's Brobdingnagian stepping stones.

A museum marks and documents the site of the Titanic's launch.

Built by crowdsourcing, this wooden foot bridge saved a part of Rotterdam that was languishing in wait of city funding.

These slanted cubic abodes are a creative if odd solution to a zoning pickle.

Rotterdammers' dirty minds gave this Santa a dirty nickname and cursed it to a life of wandering.

The townhouse where the "Blood Countess" Elizabeth Báthory started her murderous career.

On a winding Vienna side street, one museum has turned their windows into a monument to history’s peace-minded heroes.

In the northernmost city in the world, it's illegal to be buried because it’s too cold for bodies to decompose.

This insurance company building reminds customers that witches, bears, and gnomes are out there, best be insured.

An alien church provides much needed silence in the midst of a Finland shopping center.

A clock designed to run with perfect accuracy for 10,000 years.

Homage to the local produce now serves as a car dealer.

The city of Halifax still bears the scars of the largest explosion prior to the atomic bomb.

A statue in a Canadian zoo remembers the WWI origins of the beloved character Winnie-the-Pooh.

This historic Victorian hotel has a scandalous history of affairs and murder.

A surviving remnant of the thick ice mass that once mantled most of Western Canada's mountains.

Few other hotels can rival the grandeur of the Castle in the Rockies.

Originally envisioned by King Ludwig II to rival Versailles, Herrenchiemsee's "New Palace" remains half-gilded for lack of funds.

The fairy tale castle of the “fairy-tale king,” this was also the inspiration for Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty.”

A hugely vast Irish landscape of barren rock that stretches for miles.

This ancient Irish tower could easily have stood in for Rapunzel's prison.

Dublin's "Dead Zoo" serves as a window to Victorian museum design.

The gorgeous library at Trinity College is home to remarkable treasures of Irish identity.