Places Sputnicktatorship Wants to Go

Man-made mineral caves house massive bat colony.

An empty relic of the Moscow Olympics crumbles away in Estonia's capital.

A secluded art gallery hidden within the cellars beneath Tallinn’s medieval monastery.

Mysterious craters may have been home to an ancient cult.

The ruins of an Estonian prison are drowning in the quarry lake where the convicts were once forced to work.

This disappearing geyser has been attributed to witchcraft, but really it's all about rainfall.

The only things left in this abandoned Latvian graveyard are a mysterious stone and a ghost story.

This controversial statue once honoured a Russian Field Marshall, before ultimately being dismantled in a push to remove symbols of Russian influence.

This seaside pine grove features an exclusive watchtower that presents amazing views.

Rent a barrel for a personal view of where the Baltic Sea meets the Gulf of Riga.

This celebration of Latvia’s freedom and independence avoided demolition over half a century of Soviet occupation.

This Latvian shot factory is still used twice a year to manufacture bullets the old-fashioned way.

How this choice of tombstone came to be is still a mystery.

This statue is dedicated to the animal cosmonauts that perished during space flight experiments.

Surreal works of unreal stone and metal dot the landscape of this Latvian art park.

This enigmatic artifact remained buried in a churchyard for years.

This remote sandstone cliff has one of the richest collections of Livonian petroglyph marks.

This ornate church has survived Nazi and Soviet occupation, including a short stint as a Soviet-era gymnasium and cinema.

This wooden recreation of a 9th century lake village looks as though it was built yesterday (which it relatively was).

This charming Latvian lane doubled as Baker Street on the Soviet Union’s version of Sherlock Holmes.

A stone marker and sculpture in the city of Riga stake a claim for the very first community Christmas tree.

This impressively complicated radioastronomy research center was once a tool of Soviet spies.

The mile-long pier stretches from a ruined fortress out into the Baltic.

The reconstruction of this prominent building fulfilled a long-written command.