A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

A statue commemorate Tommie Smith and John Carlos's brave protest at the 1968 Olympics, a watershed moment for civil rights.

Five candy-colored villages on the Italian Riviera.

Housed in a memorial lighthouse, this museum relays the history of surfing, beginning with the antics of royal Hawaiian teenagers.

Gigantic Romanian salt mines used to heal respiratory conditions.

This snug medieval lane is one of the narrowest streets in the world.

Around 100,000 bodies are buried below the medieval headstones, many of which mark graves with multiple bodies stacked up to 12 deep.

The rest of him lived another 61 years and was buried elsewhere.

A working model of the entire San Francisco Bay and much of the Sacramento River Delta, complete with regular tides that change every 14 minutes.

Concrete strongholds stand guard over the Golden Gate.

A living time capsule of the 1960s Richardson Bay water-front.

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

The century-old bell and clock tower at UC Berkeley is the third-tallest in the world, and has fossils.

The Laureates here get something even more coveted than a Nobel Prize: free parking for life.

Elevated freight railway turned wildly successful urban park.

A vast city of the dead, where the deceased outnumber the living by more than a million.

The graffiti-covered remnants of a former triangulation station are balanced precariously on this California peak.

A 1920s speakeasy that had rum runners racing up and down the shores of California.

Neoclassical Revival mansion and set of horror cult classic Phantasm.

The longest burning light bulb in the world.

Home to the "Circus" trees created by Axel Erlandson.

This controversial depiction of the "Founder of California" looks as though it was sculpted from mashed potatoes.

This concrete ship has had four careers - World War I tanker, floating amusement park, fishing pier, and artificial reef.

From the Difference Engine to the Cray-1, all under one roof.