The once forbidden "secret cabinet" of erotic art from excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The oldest operating pharmacy in the world features 800-year-old recipes.

A large grotto built in the 16th century amidst Florence's famous Boboli gardens.

An Italian hillside ghost town.

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

At the crypt of St. Mary of Eulogies and the Dead you are left alone to ponder mortality among piles of skulls.

Geothermal waterfalls in Tuscany.

The last moments of the ill-fated Pompeiians, frozen forever in plaster.

Architectureal fantasy quarter of Rome.

The middle finger of modernity.

An Italian crevasse filled with abandoned buildings gives visitors a look at the world without humans.

The crypts of Capuchin friars decorated with the bones of over 4,000 friars, including an entire "crypt of pelvises."

A new sculpture calls attention to climate change in the centuries-old city it threatens.

A submerged archeological park still holds the wonders of a Roman Sodom.

The curious underground history of keeping Paris clean.

This bridge was constructed from the rubble of the infamous Bastille.

Natural history museum celebrating biodiversity with a parade of taxidermy animals.

A museum of carnival attractions where you are invited to ride the rides.

Paris' fabled purveyor of exotic taxidermy and natural history curios.

135 bronze medallions mark a French meridian line which once rivaled the hotshot Greenwich timeline.

A surrealist timepiece by the artist of melting clocks.

This former “ante-chamber to the guillotine” has been refurbished to illustrate the brutal history of French justice.

An overlooked marble is the only surviving in-place 18th century example of the measurement that changed how we define distance.

This surreal statue brings a famous French novel about a supernatural cad to arresting life.