An abandoned pasta factory in the centre of Bucharest, once home to Bulgarian revolutionaries and a hub of crime.

The bust of Romania’s most notorious ruler, Vlad Dracula aka "Vlad the Impaler," keeps watch over the ruins of his medieval court.

This communist behemoth is the heaviest building in the world and a legacy of a brutal regime.

This metro station doubles as an unintentional paleontology museum.

A medieval church built up to defend its village.

The Natural History Museum that time forgot.

This massive underground salt mine now holds a sci-fi theme park in its depths.

A musical instrument played by the sea.

Large, airy hallways hide within an impenetrable fortress that beckons urban explorers.

Once an opulent Art Nouveau hotspot, the Constanța Casino is one of Romania's most beautiful abandoned buildings.

A fire once nearly devoured this gorgeous 14th-century Gothic cathedral.

This solitary monastery may hold the remains of Vlad the Impaler (but probably not).

This enormous abandoned prison was once dubbed the "Bastille of Romania."

Conspiracy theories and occult legends surround this mysterious natural rock formation.

This elaborately decorated, fairytale-like Romanian royal palace is one of the most striking castles in Europe.

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

After immigrating to Paris in the 1970s, two brothers from Laos built a grocery store empire.

The post-apocalyptic remnants of a bucolic town ruined by a plane crash.

One of Jeff Koons’s largest sculptures and his first commemorative work.

Noirish green neon marks the location of one of the oldest private detective agencies in France.

This off-limits room in the National Library of France is home to a system of pneumatic tubes, once used to bring books to readers.

A magical, macabre wax museum, beloved by locals, uses real artifacts to depict an assassination from the French Revolution.

For more than a century, Parisians have come for affordable dishes in a grand converted train station.

This abandoned bunker looks out over the Atlantic from its clifftop perch.