Places Vladas U Wants to Go

The soulless eyes of 82 bronze children stare on forever in remembrance of a horrifying World War II massacre.

"There's nothing there," and other lies the KGB told us.

Remnants of cone-shaped fascist bomb shelters in Milan.

Two very green residential towers cleaning the air in one of Europe's most polluted cities.

This giant middle finger statue sends an unambiguous message to Italy's bankers.

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

This hilltop ruin is of the hundreds of stone columns built in tribute to the first German chancellor.

The Russians still use the transmitter Nazis built during World War II to communicate with submarines.

The laboratory where the Soviet secret police invented exotic poisons used to kill dissidents in hideous and (mostly) untraceable ways.

Home of Vissarion, the "Jesus of Siberia."

Ukrainian defense contractor's center for studying "pyramid energy."

A homemade anatomical collection of medical anomalies and accidental catastrophes.

A surreal pile of colorful junk fills a small yard in an otherwise gray neighborhood.

The giant Siberian crater known locally as the "doorway to the underworld" is expanding every year.

This iconic Russian space museum sits on a landmark space production facility and houses the Vostok 1, the first manned spacecraft, that was also built here.

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

Unusual, mushroom-like rock formations caused by weathering and water erosion, set to disappear, according to geologists.

A man-made island fort that has housed soldiers, scientists, and ravers.

Stalin's march toward a more modern USSR flooded a monastery, leaving a unique and extravagant nautical marker, "The Flooded Belfry."

Siberian ghost town built by gulag prisoners.

A dormant lightning machine equal to all the power in Russia.

A Marxist summer camp full of fantastical statues lies tucked away and forgotten in the forests of Moscow.

Nightmarish example of the unintended consequences of weapons testing.

Secret Soviet city once home to Russian cosmonauts and space training facilities.