A king's pet, a pope's gift, an artist's inspiration, and a tragic shipwreck.

These slanted cubic abodes are a creative if odd solution to a zoning pickle.

Latvia's symbolic mountain-shaped national library is home to millions of cultural tomes.

A black cat protests the City Guild in Riga's Old Town.

The oldest housing complex in Riga is a mini timeline of architectural trends.

Flamboyant architecture from the turn of 20th century.

A former Latvian headquarters of the brutal KGB secret police is now open as a grim reminder of their atrocities.

3,000 market stands in five former Zeppelin hangars.

A series of caves under Castle Hill that once held the prisoner Vlad Tepes, better known as Count Dracula.

A museum dedicated to a secret military hospital hidden beneath a castle in Budapest.

Uh, pardon me, ma'am, but I couldn't help noticing that there's a Columbo statue in the middle of Budapest.

Possibly the world's largest hourglass only needs to be reset every New Year's Eve.

From Austrians to Nazis to Soviets, this historic Budapest fortress has a history as complex as the city itself.

Budapest's Communist-era statues, banished to the suburbs.

A Hungarian pharmacy museum with a box full of mummy powder.

Built in 1870 at the bridge that connected Buda and Pest, this spectacular incline railway was almost lost forever during World War II.

Museum dedicated to the terror regimes of Hungary.

Once the home of a hermetic monk, this cave now houses a small church.

This contentious squat has stood through fire, violence, and government intervention as a hotbed of leftist protest.

Hamburgers are intensely proud of their tunnel beneath the river.

Model Trains and Much More in Hamburg.

Once the tallest building in the world, this abandoned church is now a monument to the destruction of WWII.

Daily jousts and dancing barrel makers in Munich's mechanical clock.

An old department store turned Nazi prison turned artist commune.