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

An ancient Roman temple first dedicated to an emperor's wife is now a church.

Breathtaking and huge 430 year old maps of Italy.

A slightly creepy gallery of plaster cast models in the same museum as Michelangelo's David.

This strange bovine gargoyle is said to have been put in as a passive aggressive form of revenge.

In Florence's great Duomo, a 26 foot fresco honors a mercenary famous for attacking Florence.

Next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa is a cemetery home to ancient sarcophagi and disturbing murals.

The only visible reminders of an elaborate engineering project that kept the tower from reaching the tipping point.

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

Five candy-colored villages on the Italian Riviera.

The vast, legendary catacombs hold secrets much stranger than stacked bones.

An "inside out" building in the historical center of Paris, featuring Europe’s largest modern art museum.

The very center of Paris is surrounded by a bevy of strange good luck rituals.

This iconic Parisian bookstore doubles as the "Tumbleweed Hotel" for traveling writers.

The "beautiful" equation predicting the movement of all electromagnetic particles is engraved in front of Newton's tomb.

This unassuming cheese empire in rural Oregon churns out more than 150,000 pounds of cheese each day.

Portlandia is the second-largest copper repoussé statue in the United States.

A roaring, awe-inspiring double cascade of icy water flows through woodland Oregon like something out of a Tolkien novel.

You might know it as the Overlook Hotel, but the inside is not going to be familiar.

The unbelievably opulent home built for an infamous newspaperman.

This lonesome Monterey cypress has survived centuries of wind, salt, and at least one attempt at arson.

A Wild West jailhouse that slid down the mountainside.

Ninety feet off the valley floor is an ancient dwelling put under protection of the U.S. government by Teddy Roosevelt.

After starting as a whimsical tourist attraction that eventually found its way to ruin, these renovated canals offer a lush and exotic locale on the Pacific Coast.