Places slecnave Wants to Go

An exploration of a small ethnic group’s heritage through their exquisite folk art.

This Hungarian stilt village is built in a lake that never freezes over due to the power plant that that uses it as a cooling pond.

A Hungarian optometrist's charming collection of Asian art and curiosities.

Hungarian mummies in beautiful painted coffins.

Once the tallest building in Chisinau, this unique tower is a relic of Soviet architecture.

A forgotten remnant of the Soviet Union, Transnistria is an unrecognized country hidden behind a heavily militarized border between Moldova and Ukraine.

One of the largest collections of socialist realist art shows the surprising depth of the official art of the Soviet Union.

An iconic Soviet statue of working-class people.

These tiny cabins on a cableway have been carrying visitors at a Baltic resort down to the beach since 1912.

Thousands of biblical and pagan images are carved into this small 12th-century church.

Pictures tacked onto trees remember the more than 40,000 of Stalin's victims buried here in mass graves.

Social outcasts and cannibalism in Stalin's Soviet Union.

Thanks to this small string of islands World War II still hasn't officially ended between Russia and Japan.

A self-taught Siberian craftsman creates a fantastical and personal design for his 19th century village house.

Fascinating early attempt at a Jewish autonomous settlement.

A former military outpost of Ivan the Terrible, the 16th-century church contains some of the rarest examples of Eastern Orthodox mural paintings.

An abandoned 14th-century castle and prison complex on a small island in the Neva River.

An unusual abandoned church damaged in World War II sits in a small village outside Moscow.

Monastery complex at the location where bodies of the executed Romanov royal family were discovered.

Monastery, army base, and infamous Soviet Gulag in the far Russian north.

A uniquely authentic display of traditional Russian culture.

This massive monument honors the first human in space.

This remote lake in Siberia supposedly contains a fearsome sea monster.

An abandoned town of skeletal wooden homes.