Since its original beginnings as a weather observatory mountaintop, this facility played an instrumental role in gathering atmospheric data for almost 100 years.

The natural hot spring that was integral to the creation of Canada's first national park.

This effigy of Peter the Great is greatly disproportionate.

A replica of the straw hut where Vladimir Lenin lived in hiding, disguised as a hay farmer, in 1917.

Perhaps the tiniest sculpture in Saint Petersburg is a little bronze finch inspired by a song.

A small and surprising passageway in Saint Petersburg devoted to the Beatles.

A city block packed with whimsical sculptures that seem to be plucked from a tiled fantasy world.

A scale model of Russia so big visitors are offered binoculars to rent so they can see the whole thing.

This Russian museum stresses the importance of keeping clean and even holds one of Pavlov's dogs.

A 250-year-old timepiece-automaton adorned with golden mechanical birds, which still sing to this day.

The oldest museum in Russia is home to a fascinating collection of nearly two million anthropological artifacts and anatomical curiosities.

Dedicated to the lives lost during a fatal stampede in the Nyamiha Station.

A sculpture of graceful storks sits atop this fountain in Independence Square.

A system of constructed rapids and concrete waterfalls in a linear park on the Slepnya River.

An engineering marvel at the time of its construction, this cross-border waterway sought to connect the Black Sea to the Baltic.

A window into the luxurious lives led by the landed gentry of Minsk before the 1917 Revolution.

Though it was heavily modified, fragments of the original medieval cathedral still survive.

Dozens of Soviet-era trains and carriages fill this outdoor museum.

A symbolic graveyard for the villages that perished during the Nazi invasion of Belarus.

A unique park tells the geological history of Belarus in a national “map” of thousands of boulders and blue spruce.

A beautiful and moving memorial set on a little island in the middle of the river in Minsk.

A monument in the Belarusian city of Polotsk claims to mark the exact midpoint of the European continent.

Remains of the old fortification along the Western border of the USSR, now an elaborate defense museum.

A striking Soviet memorial commemorates the liberation of Belarus from the Nazis.