A grotto-like lodge decorated with gilded mosaics, rocks and a noisy waterfall was the setting for the most sumptuous pleasure house of 1900s Europe.

BDSM, 1930s Style.

The man who introduced reinforced concrete to the world demonstrated its genius by using it to build his own house.

Whisper secrets in a busy station only to be heard on the other side of this acoustic arch.

Bug-devouring flora are the stars of a special wing of the glass conservatory.

Napoleon’s home in exile, decorated with poisonous wallpaper.

The legendary building that needed ghostly approval before being built.

A harem-inspired Moorish fantasy design in a Victorian-era Welsh castle.

Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

Microscopic fossils suggest Australia may be the birthplace of sulphur-based life forms.

Barely visible foundations remain where Stow Lake’s “observatory” once welcomed visitors.

An increasingly eccentric apartment building, topped with winged beasties.

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

Thousands of locks professing undying devotion line the metal chains of Lotus Peak.

A French-Colonial era collection of taxidermy and wet specimens, secreted away in the National University of Hanoi.

Post office plaque commemorates local resistance to a cult invasion.

The gorgeous library at Trinity College is home to remarkable treasures of Irish identity.

A writer's tiny retreat built from salvaged shipwreck timbers.

Take a drunken tour inside the world's largest known geode.

Over 9,000 brains collected between 1945 and 1982 demonstrate the results of untreated mental illness.

The first island in the world designated a light-pollution-free astronomical observation point.

Rare signs of the former Soviet Union in the Caribbean, though not where you'd expect them.

A tree-like building perches on its trunk in the Steglitz neighborhood of Berlin.

Abandoned soda factory on a Cambodian roadside in a state of beautiful decay.