Venice's "Island of the Mad."

This palatial spiral staircase was so unusual the name "snail" was given to the noble family who built it.

100 year tradition of fist fights, marked by marble footsteps.

Where Venice's gondolas go for a tune-up.

Those who own or stay at this 500-year-old, allegedly cursed house often meet terrible fates.

Two stone columns flank the grand Venice square, but there were supposed to be three.

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

Thousand-year-old Viking runes adorn an ancient Greek lion at the entrance to the Venetian Arsenal.

Museum celebrating the ocean, with the largest wunderkammer dedicated to sea exploration.

An Orthodox church built by the Royal Family for the Russian community exiled to the French Riviera.

This demon atop the Notre-Dame de Paris looks utterly bored.

A series of abstract, silly sculptures represent the works of a great modern classical composer.

The spiral staircase hidden inside this giant Parisian column was likely built for Catherine de Medici's astrologer.

A 400-year-old church covered floor to ceiling in ex-voto offerings from the faithful.

This Canadian island is a veritable garden of decay with countless abandoned structures dotting the landscape.

How would you like to dine in the same room where some of the Titanic's victims were embalmed?

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

Eastern Canada's ocean playground.

Go inside the house that inspired L. M. Montgomery to create one of literature's most beloved heroines.

Rusty red sands line the shores of this Canadian Province.

Home of the world's smallest dinosaur footprints.

Two thirds of this Montreal neon icon has survived to flash another day.

This 1967 experiment in modular architecture was designed to be a new model for urban living.

A grand Gothic Revival basilica with stained glass depictions of Montreal's religious history has only one soul resting in its crypt.