A whale rib was used to advertise the store by the arch that offered exotic goods from far away.

An eccentric home in Sicily turns heads on a regular basis.

One of the highest emergency huts in the world has been waiting almost a century to give imperiled climbers a place to lie down.

This elaborate hole in the ground was built as a sacred site for an ancient civilization.

A visionary Italian architect created an impressive cluster of concrete structures for a family's private tomb.

A beautifully well-preserved ancient Roman villa.

A medieval fresco which reminds visitors that death will come for us all.

An exclusive waiting room built for the royal family in the 1920s is hidden in Milan’s central station.

Two stone columns flank the grand Venice square, but there were supposed to be three.

Every inch of this chapel is covered in craftsmanship from across the world.

Mysterious tombstones thought to be remnants of Atlantis.

The oldest volcanology research center in the world.

A treasure trove of Renaissance-era funerary art in a Roman church built on top of Nero's grave.

In a city that boasts four separate inclined cable railways, this is one of the busiest funicular lines in the world.

Stumbling upon this whimsical wooded garden is like stepping into an enchanted forest full of philosophical musings.

A unique form of erosion created an uncanny landscape of boulders perched atop slender columns of clay.

Cave shrine on Monte Pellegrino.

The small peaceful island off the Venice tourist circuit is where the city began more than 1,500 years ago.

Roman-era ships unearthed...

A collection of grotesques lines the walls of this Italian villa.

On the coast of Sardinia, a once-great mining village is finding new life as a coastal resort town.

The Emperor Tiberius' palace of debauchery.

The mountaintop inspiration for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose."

A line of abandoned, alien-like fortresses dot the mountains of North Italy.