This immaculate and historic water garden culminates in a massive stone dining table with an inset fountain for chilling the wine of the Cardinal's guests.

An Italian hillside ghost town.

Abandoned medieval hill town.

Sitting on an Italian hilltop is this surreal fortress built by the mad inventor of electrohomeopathy.

An ossuary built in 1210 to collect bones from the Ospedale Maggiore of Milan.

The oldest operating pharmacy in the world features 800-year-old recipes.

According to the local folklore, the myriad colors of this lake are the result of a lovelorn wizard's blunder.

This 16th-century monastery has been turned into a surrealist architecture compound.

The last moments of the ill-fated Pompeiians, frozen forever in plaster.

Pompeii's less famous neighbor is still revealing her secrets.

Thousands of well-dressed mummies below a monastery.

An Italian crevasse filled with abandoned buildings gives visitors a look at the world without humans.

A new sculpture calls attention to climate change in the centuries-old city it threatens.

The only museum with its curator—and her pets—buried inside.

Go inside to really appreciate this 500-year-old technological masterpiece.

As can be expected from a centuries old church built in a canal city, the undercroft of this house of worship is beautifully flooded.

Venice's "Island of the Mad."

This community on a small Venetian island has taken to painting their houses in bright neon hues.

This bronze boar's snout has been rubbed to a golden sheen by visitors seeking good fortune.

Secret refuge and museum of the Duke of Florence.

The middle finger of modernity.

The largest and most famous wax anatomical collection anywhere in the world.

One of several skulls claiming to belong to the beheaded St. John the Baptist is on display at this Roman church.

This ritzy Italian market is built around a statue of an unforgiven heretic who was burned for his belief in an endless universe.