These enormous, stern-faced statues greet visitors with lanterns, and sometimes costumes.

Rubbing salt on this small stone dog is said to make wishes come true.

Steampunk, humanoid sculptures crawl on all fours in a Tokyo plaza.

Vortex-shaped aquarium hosts Europe's largest school of piranhas and other ocean creatures.

The trailblazing Swedish businesswoman created a beloved minty candy called polkagris.

A forest of immensely tall and unusually straight oak trees planted nearly 200 years ago to build naval ships that never came to be.

These waste baskets play a few risque messages to discourage littering.

The unique design of this former quarry provides ideal acoustics for concerts.

The Lund University's former gym houses a museum focusing on the creative process of art.

Enigmatic bug-like sculptures mystify drivers along a Swedish highway.

A bibliophile's heaven that contains hundreds of bookstores, offering over a third of secondhand books for sale in Tokyo.

A Stockholm metro station is home to an escalator that is not only the longest in Sweden, but among the longest in the world.

The marker that allows students all over the world to be late for class.

The standard measure of Lagom, a measure of what is enough.

These ancient rune stones plucked from the countryside now call this university park home.

This Swedish astronomical clock was in storage for almost a century before its glorious workings were put on display once more.

An ornate Thai pavilion in the middle of Sweden.

A botched 18th-century canal silenced one of Sweden's most magnificent waterfalls.

The 19th-century home of Count and Countess von Hallwyl is now a museum.

A living descendant of the famous tree that helped Isaac Newton develop the theory of gravity.

A modern, secular take on a traditional Virgin Mary motif.

The former Field Marshall and Minister of War to the Russian Imperial Army.

This home designed for chocolate magnate Antoni Amatller is an exquisite treasure-box of Catalan Modernism.

Once an imperial lake garden, anyone can now visit this city park.