The most visited pilgrimage site in Armenia once held a saint in a pit for 13 years.

This Armenian monastery was carved out of cliffs and named after the spear used to stab Jesus.

A geological oddity topped with a 2,000-year-old pagan temple.

For lovers of Soviet cinema, this museum is home to a vast collection of artifacts and costumes.

One of the largest collections of socialist realist art shows the surprising depth of the official art of the Soviet Union.

This small museum is basically a time capsule of daily life in the Soviet Union.

A former special storage facility for documents during the Cold War.

One of the last examples of Soviet architectural propaganda has a few technological tricks up its sleeve.

Former estate of Lenin, now home to his death mask.

Some Moscow residents once claimed the bizarre, contorted mass of metal on top of the building was used to manipulate minds.

Hidden in a metro shop under a shopping mall, this small museum tells the story of one of the world's largest urban transit systems.

The avant-garde design was able to bypass strict Soviet regulations on architecture.

This frozen-in-time summer home outside Moscow provides a look at Russian life in the 1950s.

A sculpture park of the tossed aside relics of the USSR, from Stalin to a massive Soviet emblem.

Dr. Strangelove-esque tours reveal the inside a bunker once reserved for Stalin himself.

Seventy-five miles of limestone caves host more than a million bottles of wine beneath a sleepy Moldovan town.

A relic of the Cold War tucked away in the forested hills above Bratislava.

A line of disused military bunkers built to defend against Nazi invasion lies hidden on the outskirts of the city.

A century-old prison in the heart of Vilnius is now a lively bar, dance club, and artist residency.

Plaques celebrating Lithuanian writers freckle a wall of this picture-perfect path.

A 300-kilogram egg sculpture that embodied a neighborhood revival.

This former KGB building is now a museum memorializing the people who suffered during the Soviet regime.

The largest coin pyramid in the world is a carefully balanced stack of over 1,000,000 pieces.

An abandoned masterpiece of Soviet Brutalist architecture.