The city of Rockford, Illinois is symbolically protected by a quartet of fittingly stony sentinels.

With 8,000 pipes this giant instrument is the most versatile theatre pipe organ ever built.

Where experiments are conducted on all things wood.

This forgotten beach house built to look like a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece overlooks a hidden beach.

This striking art museum holds an amazing series of curiosity cabinets.

It was originally part of a "terrible lizards" collection at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

Amsterdam's former hotspot for public executions and dissections.

One of Amsterdam's narrowest houses is located right across the canal from its widest.

Debatably clever, or just plain honest hotel advertised as "The Worst Hotel in the World."

The world's first zoo for microbes collecting the horrible and wonderful things living on and around us.

This large copper bolt represents the benchmark for measuring sea levels in most of Europe.

This city square is home to Amsterdam's oldest church and a statue honoring Dutch sex workers.

This unusual elevator doesn’t stop or slow down.

The attic of a four-century-old canal house hides a clandestine church.

A beautifully eclectic mix of architectural styles.

The former home of a mad diplomat is said to still be marked in bloody, arcane scrawls.

This ghost town in Belgium will lose its street art when it ceases to exist.

A 14th-century fortified keep showcases the masterpieces of an ingenious 20th-century clockmaker.

The patron of this extravagant Art Nouveau confection insisted that nothing less than a boat should project from its facade.

Most prolific publishing house in the 1600s open to the public.

Rare wooden escalators lead deep down into an otherwise staggeringly monotonous tiled tunnel.

The world's largest private telescope collection hides in a secret wing of a Dutch auto museum.

Strange secondhand shop showcasing taxidermy and oddies

The compass on its front was a handy tool for 17th-century merchants who needed to know the direction of the wind.