The writer took refuge in this home in Southern France for the last 17 years of his life.

A simple plaque on the facade is the only reminder that the treaty ending the American Revolution was signed inside.

Vaucanson's most famous automaton, brought back to life.

The people's champion of the French Revolution was so overcome by grief at his wife's death that he exhumed her in the dead of night to make one final replica of her face.

The final resting place of the "father of special effects."

Experience architect Le Corbusier's modernist design for living in the home he designed for himself.

An often-shuddersome journey into a low-tech, robotic themepark.

An unsettling shrine dedicated to the ravenous beast that prowled 18th-century France.

A sanctuary for wolves in a community which once trembled in fear of the murderous "Beast of Gévaudan."

Hundreds of secret cabinets built into the walls of legendary poisoner's private work room.

Beggars were miraculously "cured" of their fake ailments when they returned home to this 17th century Paris slum each night.

This stunning French estate was so lavish that it landed its original owner in jail for the rest of his life.

The curious underground history of keeping Paris clean.

The ruins of a Duke's bucolic dream, where camels once roamed alongside "Dutch" windmills and faux-Italian vineyards.

The headless bodies of more than 1,300 guillotined victims of the Reign of Terror are buried here in mass graves.

The Virginia farm where John Wilkes Booth met his grisly end is now largely forgotten.

America's post-nuclear-attack chambers of Congress.

A former Oz-themed attraction that has fallen into disrepair, but still holds some of the original magic.