Places robctny Wants to Go

American artist J. Alden Weir purchased this 60-acre estate for $10 and a painting.

These Benedictine nuns have been making artisanal cheeses since before it was cool.

A famed data visualizer's personal sculpture garden is a landscape of modern and megalithic wonders.

A castle inspired by medieval architecture is hidden in the woods of Connecticut.

This statue commemorates the importance of hat manufacturing to Danbury, once known as the "Hat City of the World."

This natural rock "church" might not be a proper chapel but that doesn't mean it's not beautiful.

The remnants of a 19th-century ironmaking complex hidden in the woods of Connecticut.

An abandoned asylum once on the cutting edge of lobotomies may be reborn as a Christian college.

This amazingly well-preserved villa just outside Pompeii boasts rare examples of ancient Roman paintings.

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

The walls and streets of the ancient city are peppered with penises.

The first U.S. town to secede from the Union, only to vote themselves right back in.

No one knows how this Pacific Northwest spruce tree came to have so many trunks.

This well-preserved Cistercian Abbey in a romantic pastoral setting has inspired artists like the poet Wordsworth.

Rare collection of medieval books under lock and key.

The largest known medieval map of the world.