Large Hadron Collider and the Birthplace of World Wide Web.

Where Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" and John William Polidori's "The Vampyre" were born.

This colorful but controversial ceiling has been likened to a 21st-century Sistine Chapel.

This famous writer's tombstone is a literary pilgrimage site that was publicly defiled by a rival.

The official Presidential Residence of Los Pinos became an emblem of Mexico's opulence and presidential corruption.

The only castle in North America to ever house European sovereigns.

The ruins of the bathhouse used by the ill-fated last Aztec emperor still lie in Chapultepec Park.

A jewel of the Mexico city skyline now slowly crumbles after surviving an earthquake.

Part bookstore, part café, and part forest.

This colossal ancient sculpture of the monstrous Aztec rain god has a literally stormy history.

These haunting ruins of a 700-year-old Prehispanic city have witnessed centuries of wars and massacres.

Frida Kahlo's childhood home, now a museum of her life and works.

These unusual paintings give thanks to the saints and deities who granted people favors and miracles.

Meant to be one of the most extravagant hotels in the world, now an eerie, abandoned architectural gem in Mexico City.

Records of the dead describe the myriad odd ways people used to die.

A modern zoetrope on the New York City subway.

In the back of a nondescript sports bar is a museum-worthy mural by legendary cartoonists.

The smallest island in Manhattan is a manmade landfill dominated by a Buddhist peace arch.

You don't have to be an ambassador to dine like one.

This block in downtown Brooklyn was a hotbed of antislavery activism along the Underground Railroad.

Michael Jackson got Bad and Crocodile Dundee walked on heads in this iconic Brooklyn subway station.

There's a piece of New York City transportation history hidden in plain sight at a Manhattan subway stop.

This 220-year-old house is a reminder of New York City's Dutch past.

The gilded vestiges of a sterling department store can still be found in a Brooklyn shopping center.