Places SamWPiano Wants to Go

A sprawling outdoor museum filled with larger-than-life works of art.

Over 1,000 pieces of one of the most niche art objects imaginable: the glass paperweight.

Cold War missile launch site which has been converted to a public park.

This small, but long-running hobby club has built one of the largest model rail lines in the US.

The first and only museum dedicated to stained glass and horology opened outside of Chicago in 2017.

Half-sized replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa built to honor Galileo.

To find the "unicorns of the deep" you've got to go downstairs.

No one knows how many bodies are in this vault in a Chicago public park.

You have to love a museum with a truly dedicated focus. A focus on Superman, for example.

A small abandoned and abused cemetery that has become a magnet for ghost hunters.

The legacy of an unsolved, gruesome murder rests beneath the spans of this historic bridge.

Quirky water tower advertises the long-gone Brooks Tomato Products Co.

The final resting place of up to 6,000 Confederate soldiers, the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere.

The mysterious white squirrels of this Illinois city are treated like sacred cows.

A six-story-tall golden pyramid, surrounded by a moat.

This awkward aquarium sculpture is one of the strangest statues in Chicago.

An actual 1957 Cadillac De Ville, encased in 15 cubic yards of concrete.

The iconic Chicago sculpture hides a beautiful and easily overlooked plaque on the backside.

A replica viking ship from the Chicago World's Fair is still in dry dock in an Illinois park.

A chance to follow in the footsteps of the word's most legendary animator.

The final resting place of the world's first nuclear reactor.

An avant garde art museum at the University of Chicago.

In the Shawnee National Forest, amazing rock formations peer through the treeline.

The face of a woman pushes its way through the earth.