A jaw-dropping "megalibrary" that turns book-browsing into a geometric adventure.

Part bookstore, part café, and part forest.

The only museum with its curator—and her pets—buried inside.

Go inside to really appreciate this 500-year-old technological masterpiece.

This Venice bookstore has resigned itself to constant flooding by keeping its books in bathtubs and boats.

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

Legend says this mysterious stone head belongs to a woman who was petrified by an alchemist.

The famous sculptor left his mark on this Italian wall in an internationally protected example of street art.

A popular legend claims that the famous pizza was invented at a restaurant in this alley.

This shining multicolored metro station deep under Naples is said to be the most beautiful in Europe.

A rather vulgar example of the transition from Latin to the Italian vernacular.

One of Catholicism's four major basilicas has a series of papal portraits that are said to predict the end of the world.

This curious, round temple is the oldest still-standing marble building in Rome.

A Nesting Doll of Churches.

This former Roman Catholic Church still contains the embalmed hearts and organs of 22 popes.

The final resting place of the poets Shelley and Keats.

The skull of the patron saint of lovers lies in the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin—maybe.

The yawning maw of this pagan visage is said to bite off the hands of liars.

The crypts of Capuchin friars decorated with the bones of over 4,000 friars, including an entire "crypt of pelvises."