Once a bustling fishing village and trading post, today these Cape Verde ruins provide a home only for seabirds and turtles.

At the very tippity-top of Europe is a cliff from which you can view the midnight sun.

Over two-thirds of the world's population of giant tortoises live among this coral formation.

A newspaper editor turned this abandoned island into a tortoise nature preserve that's now the world's smallest national park.

The world's largest bioluminescent area was undiscovered by science until 2005.

These small, spectacular monkeys are making a comeback after deforestation destroyed much of their rainforest habitat.

This mountaintop refuge rehabilitates tigers, lions, bears, and more from illicit wildlife trade—and offers overnight lodging.

The most alien-looking place on Earth.

An enormous concrete structure built over a nuclear crater.

Mysterious craters may have been home to an ancient cult.

An enormous, 30-story-deep hole in the middle of Guatemala City.

A picture-perfect town, perfect for blowing up.

The birthplace of both the Atomic Age and Godzilla, and the namesake of the bathing suit.

A Maori village obliterated by an 1886 volcanic eruption.

A fiery crater has been burning in the Karakum Desert since 1971.

China's beehive-shaped pyramids house the remains of a lost kingdom.

It seems that the residents of of this megalopolis suddenly vanished, but they were never actually there.

Rock-cut caves and 7,000 Buddhist sculptures carved into the nearly sheer face of a sandstone mountain.

These tiny statues form a terracotta army from China's Han dynasty.

The largest lake in the Faroe Islands seems to be held hundreds of feet above sea level thanks to an optical illusion.

This landlocked lake is the world's largest on an island.

More than 50,000 gannets claim the cliffs of Bonaventure Island.

The ghost town left by the worst nuclear disaster of all time is being taken over by nature and urban explorers.

The remains of diamond fever taken over by the desert.