Long-abandoned art nouveau baths beneath Milan's Piazza Oberdan.

This 18th-century dissection theater's frescoes display a gorgeous tension between the terrestrial and esoteric.

A military museum, art park, mausoleum, and architectural oddity all on one fascist's estate.

A rambling museum which honors the beauty in everyday objects.

The oldest botanical garden in the world that technically isn't the oldest.

Island wonderland for communist autocrats.

Five candy-colored villages on the Italian Riviera.

A lover's walk between hilltop towns, decorated with graffiti love notes.

This zoological museum began as the first great curiosity cabinet.

The first botanical garden, a feather in the cap of the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

This Tuscan lake hides a 13th century town that is still visible when the water recedes.

Fortified medieval tower house with lovely roof garden.

The naturally mummified body of a peasant girl saint.

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

Walk through a fairytale in Tuscany.

Filled with goldfish swimming in a shallow pool of sea water, this ancient crypt is more wishing well than burial site.

Renaissance villa and gardens complete with a tormented colossus.

Overlooked amid the tourist bustle of Florence, this museum is dedicated to the craft of stone inlay.

Secret refuge and museum of the Duke of Florence.

A large grotto built in the 16th century amidst Florence's famous Boboli gardens.

The middle finger of modernity.

This real life asylum of horrors is now an abandoned ruin that hides the unbreakable code to one patient's insanity.

Medieval torture techniques with a modern conscience.

On rare days, this abandoned castle's gatekeepers open its doors, revealing the eye-popping splendor hidden inside.