Places sashacollecutt Wants to Go

This long-hidden space above Westminster Abbey now displays the battle gear of the legendary King Henry V.

19th-century scientists would make the pilgrimage here to verify the precision of their measuring sticks.

This legendary stone is of unknown origin, and throughout history has been a literal touchstone for British leaders.

Six ravens are kept captive (but well-fed) at the Tower of London to prevent the fall of the Crown.

English antique dealers with a taste for the unusual.

Thanks to modern navigational tools we now know that the true prime meridian runs through a park next door.

The site of London’s first coffee house has been serving refreshments of one kind or another for 360 years.

A student driver's nightmare.

Eighty million natural history specimens call this gargantuan museum home.

London's old-school healing garden.

This 1920s Dutch barge is now a floating bookstore.

A charming 17th-century alley is lined with secondhand bookstores and antiquarian shops.

Burbling away in refrigerators are 105 sourdough starters from around the world.

A visionary precursor to the Internet made of index cards.

The Belgian library displays burned books that were salvaged from the fires of both world wars.

Housing the groundbreaking maps and globes of Gerard Mercator.

Most prolific publishing house in the 1600s open to the public.

A maze of crosses marks the jumbled divide between the Netherlands and Belgium.

Only museum in the world devoted to bookbinding and book arts holds a permanent collection representing five centuries.

The highest point in Belgium is a staircase to nowhere.

Rare wooden escalators lead deep down into an otherwise staggeringly monotonous tiled tunnel.

A marble Lucifer hides behind the pulpit of this Gothic cathedral.

This ghost town in Belgium will lose its street art when it ceases to exist.

An engineering wonder at Pillnitz Castle protects a precious 230-year-old flowering shrub.