A surreal botanical garden with an even more surreal tour guide.

This gem-encrusted temple is said to contain some of the Buddha's hair which can make the deaf hear and the blind see.

A dead saint, a deadly poison, and a mysterious holy ooze.

Southern Italy's spinning top village.

One man's quest to fix his toilet unearthed over 5,000 artifacts spanning more than 2,000 years of history.

People have been living in the cave houses on this Italian hillside since the Neolithic era.

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

The burial place of an obscure North African saint was turned into a macabre body preservation factory for the 17th-century Neapolitan elite.

Skulls from the plague of 1656 and World War II bombings are united by a cult dedicated to caring for the ancient dead.

The last moments of the ill-fated Pompeiians, frozen forever in plaster.

Ancient snack bar of the Roman Empire re-opened.

An Italian crevasse filled with abandoned buildings gives visitors a look at the world without humans.

Deceased nuns were placed on stone chairs to decompose, while the surviving nuns prayed near the lifeless bodies.

A mushroom-shaped outcropping that has come to be the symbol for an entire town.

This immaculate and historic water garden culminates in a massive stone dining table with an inset fountain for chilling the wine of the Cardinal's guests.

Hundreds of lucky felines haunt the ruins where Caesar was murdered.

This ritzy Italian market is built around a statue of an unforgiven heretic who was burned for his belief in an endless universe.

If you want to talk to the Pope you will have to stare down this surreal vision of Jesus rising from a nuclear hell.

The final resting place of the poets Shelley and Keats.

The only "Egyptian" pyramid in Europe and the legendary tomb of Remus.

Massive galleon from a box-office bomb docked in Genoa.

Over 100 towers were built in Bologna during the Middle Ages, but only 22 survive.

Legend has it this fountain built to symbolize the Pope’s power hides a strange secret concerning Neptune's manliness.

A small window on Via Piella offers a lovely and rare peek at Bologna's lost canals.