An Italian hillside ghost town.

2300-year-old Roman road connecting the empire.

Pompeii's less famous neighbor is still revealing her secrets.

An all-American grocery store in Paris sells U.S. "cuisine" like Pop-Tarts and Heinz ketchup to homesick ex-pats.

The lost Latin words were reconstructed using the holes from the nails that once pinned them in place.

The castle where the Marquis de Sade lived out his darkest fantasies.

On this romantic tidal island reachable only at low tide the tomb of a famous French writer overlooks the sea.

An image of the legendary saint stands in the shadow of a cathedral she liberated.

The huge golden reliquary of a testicle-smashing saint.

This tiny cafe is one of the last meeting places of its kind, allowing revolutionaries a place to plot.

France's highest manned weather station is the only one still inhabited by meteorologists.

Immortalized by artists, this church incorporates a medieval lighthouse into its shoreside structure.

The birthplace of the ferocious William the Conqueror, this castle is awash in medieval history.

Thousands of flamingos and other bird species flourish in these Camargue wetlands.

What if all public housing projects had been designed by "the Pygmalion of modern architecture," not only their prototype?

This enormous "cloth of the conquest" depicts the Norman invasion of England in mind-blowing detail.

One of the most powerful religious centers in the Middle Ages, dubbed the founder of Western monasticism.

This 1,400-year-old abbey was once a powerhouse for music and intellectualism known across Normandy.

This church sits upon a peaceful hill and a long, turbulent history.

The world's largest solar furnace uses 10,000 mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays to generate power.

This demon atop the Notre-Dame de Paris looks utterly bored.

Beneath the city of Lourdes, France is a massive, concrete church.

Guests can stay at a hotel in the former French abbey where lie the tombs of King Henry II and King Richard the Lionheart.

Bordered by forest on three sides and the ocean on the other, the Great Dune of Pilat is the highest sand dune in Europe.