Places taras Wants to Go

The odd depiction of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus is rooted in the Catholic Church's eradication of Catharism.

Sip a Negroni Sbagliato in the bar that invented it.

Nestled in the heart of Milan is a real wunderkammer of morbid curiosities.

A Milanese café entirely designed by the American director Wes Anderson.

Milan's duomo is covered in beautiful carving including a curious "dinosaur-like" beast.

This grisly effigy displays an early Christian martyr who was skinned alive and beheaded.

Small on the outside, big on the inside, this church is an astonishing act of visual deception.

An ossuary built in 1210 to collect bones from the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan.

The mark of the Devil's horns on a marble column in Milan.

Just across from the "Last Supper" painting is the famous painter's vineyard, a gift received for creating the masterpiece.

The remains of a 37,000-year-old prehistoric society were discovered in this mammoth cave, one of the largest in Asia.

A Bohemian "anti-hotel" offers off-kilter stays in Sri Lanka.

This elaborate temple was built around one of the Buddha's teeth.

This Sri Lankan cemetery is the final resting place of sci-fi legend Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

This mesmerizing architectural wonder will take your breath away with its unusual color patterns.

Learn local history while picking up groceries at this museum tucked inside a supermarket.

This Parisian café sticks almost exclusively to an ethos of reuse.

A unrivaled and rather horrifying collection of wax dermatological models.

What looks like a normal building is really a hollow facade hiding a subway vent.

Eastern Bloc nostalgia, anybody?

An abandoned saucer-shaped monument in the Bulgarian mountains.

This eclectic, mosaic-clad home includes a bamboo ping-pong loft and a "Whispermaphones" intercom.

A medieval military street hidden beneath a charming French fishing village.

A fortress on this island housed the mysterious prisoner known as the "Man in the Iron Mask" for more than a decade.