This Italian stadium makes liberal use of fascist statuary to evoke classical sporting arenas.

A beautifully well-preserved ancient Roman villa.

The mountaintop inspiration for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose."

Legend says this mysterious stone head belongs to a woman who was petrified by an alchemist.

A lavish 16th-century mansion filled with spectacular staircases, fantastic frescoes, and gorgeous gardens.

A cave in southern Italy adorned with thousand-year-old Biblical frescoes existed in obscurity until fairly recently.

An open-air museum in a mountain valley features works designed to blend in with—and disintegrate back into—their natural surroundings.

An eccentric artist's abode in this small Italian town has been transformed into a surreal temple of mosaic madness.

Inside this McDonald's you can dine on your Big Mac and fries next to a 2,500-year-old Roman wall.

Crumbling ruins of the thermal baths that once attracted royals and aristocrats from throughout Europe.

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

Machismo turned on its head: the lady's hand goes to the dude with the bigger brain.

These gutted monastery ruins still stand proudly in the middle of the Italian countryside.

A formerly opulent Italian village is now a crumbling ghost town that no one really knows what to do with.

A star-shaped fortress town fort built in the geometric model of the Renaissance utopian city.

A lover's walk between hilltop towns, decorated with graffiti love notes.

A once-luxurious, now abandoned hotel in the Italian Alps.

The Roman Emperor's lost summer home and grotto full of enormous sculptures sit along the Italian seashore.

This museum is rotten with a century of wax medical deformities.

This winding road through an Italian canyon may be the most scenic drive in the world.

This Tuscan lake hides a 13th century town that is still visible when the water recedes.

Romans built the world's tallest artificial waterfall in 271 BC.

This real life asylum of horrors is now an abandoned ruin that hides the unbreakable code to one patient's insanity.

This palatial spiral staircase was so unusual the name "snail" was given to the noble family who built it.