A dilapidated psychiatric facility on the outskirts of Milan where electroconvulsive therapy was developed and Napoleon once lived.

This trail was once used to smuggle cigarettes, sugar, and other black market goods between Italy and Switzerland.

Memorials at a Florence railway station remember the citizens who were deported from Italy and sent to extermination camps.

The mummified relic of St. Antoninus.

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

This private skyway is filled with art and was expanded explicitly so that Hitler could appreciate a river.

Drink wine handed out through a window as part of an age-old tradition.

A large grotto built in the 16th century amidst Florence's famous Boboli gardens.

The oldest operating pharmacy in the world features 800-year-old recipes.

The middle finger of modernity.

The doodles of a genius line the walls of a secret room under the Medici Chapel, where they were hidden for nearly 500 years.

The oldest of Venice's plague quarantine stations, designed to keep the medieval city safe from disease.

This abandoned island off the Venetian coast has been a radical monastery, a political prison, and a secret Nazi base.

The marble facade hides a little-known medical museum with early surgical instruments and rare copies of canonical texts.

Venice's island of the dead.

The plague quarantine island home to the alleged "Vampire of Venice."

Venice's "Island of the Mad."

As can be expected from a centuries old church built in a canal city, the undercroft of this house of worship is beautifully flooded.

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

This aged paving stone, marked by a maiden's foot imprint and the tales of her plunge from the cathedral tower, serves as a memorial to a tragic local legend.

Just off the city’s central station hides a quaint lamp-lit alley into medieval Elsinore.

A small artistic "graveyard" where clichéd expressions have been buried.

It might look like just a pile of sticks—because it is. But there's a dark history to how this stack got its start.

The final home of the legendary Danish sailor said to have lived to be 146 years old.