Places Edited by Samir S. Patel

The Old Mill shown in the opening credits of “Gone With the Wind” is actually fairly new, and was never a mill at all.

What was once the base for Russia's first nature reserve is now a ghost town, right on the shore of Lake Baikal.

This museum was invented in a novel before being made real by the author.

Erotic art covers the walls of the largest ancient pleasure palace.

This prehistoric sinkhole lured exclusively male mammoths to their death, much to the delight of science.

The inventor of a number of hybrid corn species is immortalized with a field of giant corn.

Sitting on an Italian hilltop is this surreal fortress built by the mad inventor of electrohomeopathy.

The mental institution where Van Gogh created some of his most famous work now allows guests to walk in the artist's footsteps.

A toweringly silly piece of modern art has been delighting locals since the 1980s.

Each spring, a dreamlike carpet of bluebells overtakes the forest floor.

A pedestrian island in the middle of world-famous Times Square emits a strange (and purposeful) humming noise.

A mysterious and terrifying public art goblin seemingly meant to inspire local legend.

Underneath a chalk hill in France lies what Hitler hoped would be the underground launching base for a devastating new weapon.

You thought Santa Claus didn't exist, but it turns out you were wrong.

A museum devoted to the victims and the survivors of the most catastrophic fire in American history.

One of the world's steepest streets seems to have houses sliding down it.

Rusting, graffiti-covered tanks litter the beach of this island, once used by the U.S. military for target practice.

Giant busts of 42 U.S. presidents sit, crumbling in a field in Virginia.

A jewel of the Mexico city skyline now slowly crumbles after surviving an earthquake.

The gravestone of a delicate singer-songwriter bears a fittingly introspective epitaph.

When this test site was abandoned, they didn't even bother to take the rocket with them.

This former luxury resort in Kaua'i is now an abandoned relic.

The name of this ancient Indonesian temple translates as "Elephant Cave" but it could be more accurately called "The Hellmouth."

An urban forest overtakes what was the greatest failure of utopic urban housing.