This fantastical house shaped like a seashell brings aquatic design to architecture.

Extraordinary sculpture garden created by an eccentric English poet.

A jaw-dropping "megalibrary" that turns book-browsing into a geometric adventure.

An Aztec snake god has taken the material form of an apartment complex.

One woman's Viking Castle on Lake Tahoe.

A Swedenborgian glass church surrounded by redwoods sits perched atop a massive landslide area.

A self-made museum in Queens, New York continues to display the work of a sculptor known for paving his own way.

You don't have to be an ambassador to dine like one.

Mexican food and folk art.

In the basement of the U.S. Capitol Building is a hidden storage room full of ornate floor tiles leftover from the 1850s.

This stunning blue and gold room changed cities twice before becoming part of the Smithsonian.

An enclosed rotunda at the Henry Art Gallery in which viewers can look up and see the uninterrupted sky.

Over a century old, this restored Victorian building is surrounded by a lush garden filled with rare palms.

This old-world mansion with lush gardens is a gem in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Discover for yourself what Herb Caen referred to as "the best kept secret in the Bay Area."

A working model of the entire San Francisco Bay and much of the Sacramento River Delta, complete with regular tides that change every 14 minutes.

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

James Turrell's total color immersion art installation, hidden on the top floor of a luxury handbag shop.

A storybook European village in Berkeley.

Julia Morgan's Moorish-Gothic labyrinth of fountains, trees, natural light and Oakland's notable dead.

A restored 1920s cascade stairway provides one of the best views of Oakland's Lake Merritt.

A psychedelic labyrinth on the San Francisco bay.

The restored and active Victorian-era final resting place of San Francisco.

The long, arduous journey of the stones of the Abbey of New Clairvaux.