A giant bisected onion dome remembers the Iraqis who died in the Iran-Iraq War.

A 605-page Quran penned in the blood of a dictator is locked away in a mosque.

An ancient fortified mound raised over the millennia from settlements built one on top of the other.

9th century Abbasid mosque, damaged in modern warfare.

Celebrated as a center of civilization, the remains of the ancient city have been nearly destroyed by greed, egoism, and war.

This steamship has been beautifully rusting off the coast of an Iranian island since the 1960s.

Ancient structures used to make and preserve ice in the deserts of Persia.

Putrefaction plateaus in Iran, where the dead were sent for decontamination before going to their final resting place.

Iran's colorful terraces are a rare geological masterpiece.

The palace of the King of Kings, burned by Alexander the Great.

This monument honors the life of a long-suffering lion whose story captivated the world.

Splashes of blue in an otherwise monotonous lunar landscape.

This magnificent blue mosque in Afghanistan is surrounded by thousands of white doves.

An eccentric dictator's take on a Turkmen version of Disneyland.

If you want to get married in the White Marble City of Ashgabat, you should do it in this surreal disco ball building.

A cemetery with goat-horn bedecked gravestones.

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

Touching displays of wishes for peace from the Cold War era.

The Avenue of Mausolea is a series of grand palatial tombs.

Antarctica's only sculpture garden, it has art and penguins, but no plants in sight.

This abandoned Antarctic research station is a Soviet ghost frozen in time.

These giant volcano sponges in Antarctica are thought to be the world's oldest living animal, at 15,000 years old.

One of the world's southernmost bars.

An abandoned whaling station on an active volcano offers hot springs in Antarctica, surrounded by ruined giants of industry.