What happens when you cross a mayor and a painter?

An Albanian monument to the Communism that nearly crushed the country is now a crumbling wreck.

Bronzes and busts that once stood in the city's main squares are now relegated to a small hidden courtyard.

Once the fallout shelter of a dictator, this sprawling bunker is now a combined history museum and contemporary art gallery.

In this town's main square resides a statue of none other than the 43rd President of the United States.

The elliptical citadel resisted the advance of the mighty Ottomans several times, thanks to the military prowess of the "Dragon of Albania."

This abandoned prison was so notorious that its name has become a metaphor throughout Albania.

A futuristic, brutalist masterpiece that is also strangely prison-like.

Two distorted Romanesque columns hold aloft a mine cart in honor of laborers who died during WWII.

As of 2022, the 124 rooms of Kosovo ski resort remain empty.

In the hometown of the Catholic saint and Nobel Peace Prize winner, a memorial dedicated to her legacy.

A solar-powered primary school inspires hope and experimentation in a country ripe for energy innovation.

A mosaic monument that commemorates the historical struggles of the people of North Macedonia.

An abandoned resort in North Macedonia is a relic from the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.

It's unclear what caused the fire that led to this opulent hotel's demise.

A former imperial sea-fortress and Soviet prison.

"There's nothing there," and other lies the KGB told us.

An empty relic of the Moscow Olympics crumbles away in Estonia's capital.

Relics from an era long gone, sit idle outside this Estonian museum.

This striking memorial is one of Estonia’s most controversial Soviet leftovers.

This dizzying tower was built to better broadcast the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

A decommissioned submarine base makes a great space for graffiti art.

This Soviet-era "closed town" was a top secret uranium producer often left off of maps.

An abandoned textile factory on the "island of crows" was home to Estonia's first workers' strike.