This medieval Italian town is a sheer (and beautiful) cliffside defense.

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

The astonishing collection of an infamous criminologist.

This half-finished "city of toys" was almost Italy's own Las Vegas.

Medieval town turned hippie commune, once home to the secret foreskin of Jesus Christ.

2300-year-old Roman road connecting the empire.

Rome's semi-secret peephole vista is also a former Crusader stronghold.

An ossuary built in 1210 to collect bones from the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan.

These "anatomical machines" are only one of the many strange items in this Italian crypt.

Giant, pink stuffed rabbit on an Italian mountain.

Sitting on an Italian hilltop is this surreal fortress built by the mad inventor of electrohomeopathy.

Architectureal fantasy quarter of Rome.

At the crypt of St. Mary of Eulogies and the Dead you are left alone to ponder mortality among piles of skulls.

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

A master of trompe-l'oeil creates a stunning, tourist-fooling dome out of a flat ceiling.

Renaissance villa and gardens complete with a tormented colossus.

This 16th-century monastery has been turned into a surrealist architecture compound.

Venice's "Island of the Mad."

A 16th-century horror show built in a lovely Italian garden.

Thousands of well-dressed mummies below a monastery.

This Torino museum honors a soldier who kept the city safe using barrels of exploding gunpowder, losing his life in the process.

The site of a 19th century "dream city" that almost rivaled Chicago before being swallowed by the Indiana sand dunes.

One man’s vision of living among dinosaurs credits Jesus Christ as the engine of biological evolution.

Weighing 30,000 pounds, this monument represents Detroit's first industrial era.