A wunderkammer of mysterious objects and stories.

Mongolian Buddhists believe this monastery in the Gobi desert to be the center of the world's spiritual energy.

The ancient mosaics here are considered among the finest in the world, and serve as a stunning record of Greco-Roman daily life.

A naturally beautiful, seemingly bottomless deep blue spring.

Once standing on solid ground, this slender beacon is a victim of the very shoreline it was charged with announcing.

A sculpture of the iconic East German car on four legs is a tribute to those who traveled to Prague seeking asylum.

An abandoned brutalist monument whose history has been lost to the ages.

The abandoned "Red Star Train Graveyard" is the final rusting place for precious artifacts of train history.

This space age health spa looks like a supervillain's lair.

A boulder carved into the shape of the cosmonaut's head.

A national collection of Communist-era musical posters.

This peculiar border irregularity is the only way to legally enter Russia without a visa.

An old asylum graveyard that's been abandoned for half a century attracts those seeking a dark thrill.

A museum in the former home of Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

One of the world's oldest olive trees, thought to be over 2,000 years old.

This abandoned secret city is a crumbling wonderland of Soviet ruins.

The remains of a monument in the remote Kazakhstani desert dedicated to the only men to die in outer space, the crew of the Soyuz 11 rocket.

Submerged busts of communist and socialist figures from the USSR.

Former military fort and site of untold horrors during WWII, this island may become the Adriatic's next luxury resort.

Thousands of rusting train cars have been slowly falling apart on the edge of Greece's second largest city.

This Prague museum collects brutalist relics and memories from the country's former Soviet rule.

Yugoslavia's biggest underground airport lies in ruins.

This abandoned mining village was predicted to resist decay longer than any other modern human settlement.

Unfinished monument to peace between Turkey and Armenia, long divided by a dispute over genocide.