A Russian museum dedicated to the household staple, the samovar.

A curated museum of wooden sculptures inhabits this Russian home.

A model village fit for an emperor.

This late-brutalist masterpiece everyone forgot about was originally created to get the proletariat jazzed about the arts.

A monument to the defenders of the Arctic in Murmansk, Russia.

Russia's own leaning tower was built on a tragic historical fable.

No one knows why ancient labyrinths were built on this tiny northern island.

An abandoned town of skeletal wooden homes.

Intricate wood carvings on an island in Siberia.

This remote lake in Siberia supposedly contains a fearsome sea monster.

The Nazis lost more men trying to take this Russian-held Stalingrad apartment block than they did when taking Paris.

The USSR’s Conquest of Nature lead to the domestication of many moose—no squirrel.

Replica of mosque destroyed by Russia in the 16th century.

Church built on the site where the last tsar of Russia and his family were killed.

Monastery complex at the location where bodies of the executed Romanov royal family were discovered.

A self-taught Siberian craftsman creates a fantastical and personal design for his 19th century village house.

The past, present, and future of Russia's signature alcohol is remembered in the world's only museum dedicated to the starchy spirit.

Former prison camp dedicated to the victims of political repression.

The oldest museum in Russia is home to a fascinating collection of nearly two million anthropological artifacts and anatomical curiosities.

Some of the world's only freshwater seals live in one very special lake in Russia.

The deepest hole drilled in the name of science, where evidence of Precambrian life was found.

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

Abandoned castle was once a grand example of Russian privilege, built exclusively to win a frivolous bet between noblemen.

Moscow's most popular cemetery includes the graves of numerous cosmonauts.