The marble facade hides a little-known medical museum with early surgical instruments and rare copies of canonical texts.

An island on the Venetian Lagoon hosts this stone chair that has nothing to do with the King of the Huns.

This Roman statue is missing a limb from when the Venetians stole it from Constantinople during the Crusades.

The small peaceful island off the Venice tourist circuit is where the city began more than 1,500 years ago.

Originally a leper colony, the island is now an Armenian monastery that's home to an incredible manuscript library and eclectic museum.

Armenian monks at an island monastery in the Venetian Lagoon make a rare rose petal jam.

Venice's "Island of the Mad."

According to tradition this is the oldest church in Venice, but its actual age is a mystery.

Thousand-year-old Viking runes adorn an ancient Greek lion at the entrance to the Venetian Arsenal.

As can be expected from a centuries old church built in a canal city, the undercroft of this house of worship is beautifully flooded.

The pile of books behind the dignified writer gave the statue a most undignified nickname.

One of the tallest bell towers in Italy plays a particular melody at just two times each day.

This deconsecrated church has seen many uses, from a tobacco storehouse to a cinema.

The only museum with its curator—and her pets—buried inside.

A local legend says the theft of a holy relic explains the hand-shaped bloodstain on the facade of this cathedral.

A slightly creepy gallery of plaster cast models in the same museum as Michelangelo's David.

One of Jeff Koons’s largest sculptures and his first commemorative work.

A museum on the history of Paris, including a set of Napoleon's toiletries, Proust's room, and relics of the Revolution.

A Parisian cemetery where the elite and artistic are interred beneath an eccentric collection of tombs.

19th century pendulum and a clock restored by a rogue group of guerilla artists.

This iconic Parisian bookstore doubles as the "Tumbleweed Hotel" for traveling writers.

The first modern cemetery of Lyon is complete with more than 200 chapels and monuments.

Art historians have debated the identity of this medieval stone rider since the 19th century.

For over 300 years this little carving has been the city’s good luck charm.