The marble facade hides a little-known medical museum with early surgical instruments and rare copies of canonical texts.

A new sculpture calls attention to climate change in the centuries-old city it threatens.

As can be expected from a centuries-old church built in a canal city, the undercroft of this house of worship is beautifully flooded.

Go inside to really appreciate this 500-year-old technological masterpiece.

The only museum with its curator—and her pets—buried inside.

These gutted monastery ruins still stand proudly in the middle of the Italian countryside.

The towering Pinocchio stands 63 feet tall in the Italian village his creator frequented as a child.

These medieval skyscrapers dominate the skyline of this small Tuscan town.

The largest and most famous wax anatomical collection anywhere in the world.

An incredible menagerie of more than 3 million taxidermied animals at the oldest science museum in Europe.

The oldest operating pharmacy in the world features 800-year-old recipes.

A large grotto built in the 16th century amidst Florence's famous Boboli gardens.

In Florence's great Duomo, a 26 foot fresco honors a mercenary famous for attacking Florence.

Architect Le Corbusier built his friend a cubist house to match his impressive collection of cubist art.

A museum of carnival attractions where you are invited to ride the rides.

A horde of stray cats rule in this secluded Parisian cemetery under a bridge.

France's most famous cemetery, with some of its most curious tombs.

A Parisian cemetery where the elite and artistic are interred beneath an eccentric collection of tombs.

The water-powered carriages are long gone, but for over a century this funicular railway has been the fastest route to the highest point in Paris.

Twelve grave-faced marble angels guard the emperor's tomb at Les Invalides.

Down a cobblestone alleyway is a museum dedicated to Romanticism, with a secret garden.

Known as the "Dodo Manège," this carousel features a herd of animals that have disappeared—or may be gone soon.

This Paris art space celebrates the creativity and ingenuity that springs from abject poverty, especially in Africa.

Site of a classic 19th-century physics experiment to prove the earth is rotating.