The English Civil War began right here in 1642.

A striking 500-year-old mansion provides an unexpectedly sublime home for live deer and a menagerie of exotic stuffed animals.

Hidden in a grotto 26 feet below Nottingham's oldest hotel, this stylish subterranean drinking den is notoriously hard to find.

A disquieting Aztec sculpture displays hundreds of stone skulls representing the victims of human sacrifice.

The burial place of some of Mexico's most prominent residents is full of macabre stories and hidden masonic symbols.

The most complete statue of this Aztec god sits a top a throne carved with images of hallucinogenic plants.

The turquoise-studded skull of a long-dead Aztec man sits within Mexico City’s Museum of Anthropology.

The ruins of the bathhouse used by the ill-fated last Aztec emperor still lie in Chapultepec Park.

This foreboding building was the headquarters of the terrifying Spanish Inquisition in Mexico.

On a cornerstone of the City Museum is the head of a monstrous serpent stolen from an Aztec pyramid 400 years ago.

These haunting ruins of a 700-year-old Prehispanic city have witnessed centuries of wars and massacres.

The ruins of an ancient temple to the Aztec wind god discovered in the middle of a metro station.

A scientific repository of goiters, boils and other ailments throughout Mexican history.

The only castle in North America to ever house European sovereigns.

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

Gilded heaven for philatelists and architecture freaks, still in full working order despite sitting atop tremulous ground.

Twelve natural mummies are displayed in the crypt of this former monastery school.

A church dedicated to the Mexican skeleton saint.

The striking jade death mask of an ancient Maya king is displayed in a replica tomb in Mexico City.

The ruins of an 11th-century Norman castle with a rare, perfectly circular shape.

A house of courtship where the Jazz Age's most storied lovers got their start.

A uniquely lettered street sign marks the corner where the iconic word game was invented.

This charming old building's loose connection with the Scottish Reformer is what saved it from demolition after it split apart.

Every birth, death, and marriage is recorded in these color-coded leather-bound books.