Places strangersigh Wants to Go

Shop of curiosities with a dinosaur museum tucked in its basement.

A plaque marks a former safe house on the secret route, now hidden next to a McDonald's.

In the middle of Calvary Cemetery stands this singular memorial to a small boy who died too young.

Chicago's North Park Village was once the largest municipal sanatorium in the country.

Chicago's museum dedicated to the history of bondage and fetishism is more textbook than titillation.

Assemble a masterpiece at the first and only North American school exclusively dedicated to mosaic art.

This morbid, delightful curiosity shop offers everything from animal bones to human teeth.

An avant garde art museum at the University of Chicago.

An antiquated German apothecary on Chicago's North Side.

A small Chicago museum filled with thousands of preserved butterflies, beetles, and more.

The world's only known button museum.

Former meatpacking facility turned vertical farm and sustainable business complex.

A lush green oasis in the middle of Chicago.

This unauthorized stone mermaid was secretly carved out of public stone before being permanently preserved.

A giant bronze coil of feces is both a tribute to doggie defecation and a reminder to pick it up.

The subtle science of a master molecular gastronomist.

One-of-a-kind preserved ruins of an abandoned 1880s church in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood.

The 30,000-volume library is one of the world's most impressive poetry collections.

A century-old network of freight tunnels underneath the city's historic business district.

In Chicago, a pizza-enthusiast has opened a museum dedicated to the history of pizza.

The taxidermy remains of the first mammal ever cloned from an adult cell are on display in Edinburgh.

This 16th-century house tells the city's history through old artifacts and quirky tales.

An ornate "graveyard" for some of the country's forlorn building relics.

A quartet of brightly colored mythical beasts stand sentry at this gateway.