Places WanderlustDiaries Wants to Go

A Byzantine church containing the holy remnants of three saints sits atop the site of an ancient temple.

A crushed gate and giant bronze head serve as a reminder of Greece's fight for freedom.

This graffitied 19th-century building was a prototype of European industrial architecture.

An often overlooked ancient site in downtown Athens with substantial history (and nature).

Scars of this building's past life as a violent prison still cover its walls.

The site where hundreds of Greeks were tortured by the Nazi secret police is now a cosmetics store.

One of the greatest collections of coins in the world is housed in the former mansion of an archeological pioneer.

A man's head is enshrined beneath a statue near the first building constructed for the modern Olympic Games.

This small museum once served as a royal hunting pavilion for King Otto Friedrich Ludwig.

After a catastrophic forest fire, a Greek artist transformed scorched tree trunks outside an old sanatorium into this haunting sculpture garden.

A sprawling collection of books and manuscripts about ancient Greece that would have put their famed libraries to shame.

This striking sculpture of Icarus honors Greece's fallen flyers.

The oldest standing Byzantine church in Athens is tucked within a monastery in the middle of an upscale shopping district.

This gem is often wrongly overshadowed by the larger, newer Metropolis church in Athens.

A grotesque collection of wax limbs depicting the symptoms of venereal disease.

This small 16th-century church in Athens is almost entirely surrounded by a modern building.

The ruins of an ancient Roman tomb hidden in the basement of a trendy clothing store.

The only ancient site that remains on the south bank of the sacred Ilissos river.

The abandoned funicular tunnel was a secret base for the BBC during World War II.

This old train trestle and collapsed tunnel once allowed the railroad to negotiate the steep slopes of the Colorado Rockies.

This Gothic castle-like portal is a testament to the amazing craftsmanship of the navvies who built the railway tunnel.

Gladiators once walked this ancient, subterranean passage.

Heralded as the world's first theater, these ruins are often overlooked as they reside in the shadows of the Acropolis.

This ancient hydrological marvel is now the base of a modern outdoor cinema.