This ceremonial Mexican square looks as though it belongs in a science fiction movie.

These enigmatic columns tower over the ruins of an ancient Toltec city.

Meat and seafood are part of the frozen dessert flavors available at these legendary street stands.

A sapling of the legendary tree where conquistador Hernán Cortés sat and wept after an Aztec uprising.

A hotel masquerading as a medieval castle overlooks a Mexican city.

A neo-Gothic temple in central Mexico featuring a labyrinthine network of crypts.

The winter home of millions of migrating monarch butterflies.

Kitschy horror displays now fill the house where some very real serial killing took place.

Peaceful gardens hide an underground torture museum.

Mexico's astounding mummy museum with "the world's smallest mummy."

This colonial mining complex is now home to magnificent themed gardens.

This church, buried halfway in lava rock, is all that remains of a Mexican village destroyed by a volcano.

This colonial-era hospital chapel is now a foyer and side entrance to a popular department store.

This masterpiece of muralism depicts the rich culture of the people of Michoacán and their timeless connection to the land.

One of Mexico's few murals dedicated to an indigenous language.

One of Mexico's rare urban natural parks features waterfalls and a working fish farm.

This church devoted to Mexico's "dead saint" is a festive celebration of a formerly hidden religious figure.

The old Niles Canyon Aqueduct in the San Francisco Bay Area is a bemusing and secret trail through nature for wayward travelers.

Law-protected wreckage serves as a peculiar memorial for an almost forgotten World War II tragedy.

Hidden in a hotel parking lot is a strange historical plaque erected by an obscure fraternal society.

Visible below the waves are memorials to the city's Gold Rush dead.

One of the last remnants of the city's Chinese nightclub scene is now a dive bar selling killer mai tais.

A rococo retro-futurist future-rustic vernacular between yesterday’s tomorrow and the future that never was.

A unique piece of graffiti offers a little slice of local history and mystery.