The Most Curious Places in the World

38 places in 19 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Las Pozas

   Mexico · 26.5 km from Tamazunchale ♤21.397° N 98.997° W

   

   James came to Xilitla in 1945 with his friend and guide Plutarco Gastélum, bought land around the pools and began by growing orchids, at one point some 29,000 of them. When a rare frost killed the orchids in 1962 he turned to building instead, and for more than two decades until his death in 1984 he employed scores of local workers, carpenters and mould-makers to cast his visions in reinforced concrete.

   Did you know? Carpenter José Aguilar turned James's sketches into wooden moulds, into which concrete was poured to cast the garden's flowers, columns and arches.

   More about Las Pozas →

2. 02 Swallow's Nest

   Ластівчине гніздо

   Ukraine · 8 km from Yalta44.431° N 34.129° E

   

   In 1927 a major earthquake shook the Crimean coast hard enough to be felt as far as Yalta, and while the building itself came through largely intact, the cliff it stands on cracked badly.

   Did you know? The pioneering colour photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky photographed the earlier castle on the cliff in the early 1900s.

   More about Swallow's Nest →

3. 03 Tarot Garden

   Giardino dei Tarocchi

   Italy42.426° N 11.466° E

   

   Saint Phalle, the French-American sculptor, had long dreamed of a garden of her own after seeing Gaudí's Park Güell in Barcelona, and she also admired the Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo and the Facteur Cheval's Palais Idéal. In the mid-1970s the brothers Carlo and Nicola Caracciolo, to whom she was introduced by Marella Caracciolo Agnelli, offered her land at Garavicchio, and work began in 1978.

   Did you know? The tallest figures stand about 12 to 15 metres high, and several are hollow enough for visitors to walk through.

   More about Tarot Garden →

4. 04 Palais Idéal

   France45.256° N 5.029° E

   

   He worked on it for thirty-three years, mostly at night after his rounds, hauling stones home in a wheelbarrow with no training in architecture, masonry or sculpture — by his own reckoning, something like 10,000 days and 93,000 hours of solitary labour.

   Did you know? The north façade is a stone menagerie, with an ostrich family, a camel, flamingos, octopuses, lions, dragons and even a polar bear.

   More about Palais Idéal →

5. 05 Mussenden Temple

   United Kingdom · 38.2 km from Londonderry/Derry55.168° N 6.811° W

   

   The building was never a place of worship. It was a library, with bookcases lining the walls and busts set in the dome, and a fire was kept burning in the basement so that the books would stay dry in one of the most exposed spots on the island.

   Did you know? The Earl-Bishop's art collection at Downhill included works attributed to Correggio, Dürer, Murillo, Rubens and Tintoretto, and the fire of 1851 destroyed the house's library.

   More about Mussenden Temple →

6. 06 Gardens of Bomarzo

   Parco dei Mostri

   Italy42.492° N 12.248° E

   

   Unlike the ordered symmetry of nearby Villa Lante or Villa Farnese, Bomarzo was meant to astonish rather than please. Giant figures, many carved straight out of the bedrock, appear among the trees without any obvious plan: an elephant crushing a Roman legionary, a dragon fighting lions, a whale, a giant tearing another figure apart, a tortoise with a winged woman on its back, a sleeping nymph, Pegasus, Cerberus.

   Did you know? The elephant grappling a Roman soldier is usually identified as one of Hannibal's war elephants.

   More about Gardens of Bomarzo →

7. 07 Buddha Park

   Laos · 4.7 km from Nong Khai17.912° N 102.765° E

   

   The cast of characters is wide: humans, gods, animals and demons, many images of the Buddha, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, and figures from Hindu mythology including Shiva, Vishnu and the hero Arjuna. The centrepiece is a reclining Buddha some 40 metres long, stretched out across the lawn. The most memorable structure is a huge round form often compared to a pumpkin, entered through the gaping mouth of a demon's head about three metres tall.

   Did you know? Bunleua was born in 1932 in Nong Khai province on the Thai side of the Mekong, the seventh of eight children.

   More about Buddha Park →

8. 08 Vigeland Sculpture Park

   Norway · 2.9 km from Oslo59.928° N 10.699° E

   

   The route runs east to west. A granite and wrought-iron Main Gate, erected in 1942, leads onto the Bridge, 100 metres long and lined with 58 bronzes of people of every age — the stamping, furious toddler known as Sinnataggen, the Angry Boy, is the one everybody photographs. The Bridge was the first part opened, in 1940.

   Did you know? Most of the park's granite sculptures were carved from Iddefjord granite, quarried in south-eastern Norway.

   More about Vigeland Sculpture Park →

9. 09 Inhotim

   Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim

   Brazil · 37.4 km from Itaúna20.124° S 44.219° W

   

   That one-artist, one-building principle is what makes a visit so memorable. Doug Aitken's Sonic Pavilion (2009) is a circular glass room, empty except for the sound of the earth itself, picked up by microphones placed deep underground. Chris Burden's Beam Drop (1984–2008) is a thicket of steel beams dropped from a crane some 45 metres up into wet concrete, frozen where they fell.

   Did you know? Dan Graham's glass pavilion Bisected Triangle, Interior Curve was first made for Madison Square Park in New York before it was resold to Inhotim.

   More about Inhotim →

10. 10 Palace of Fine Arts

    United States · 4.8 km from San Francisco37.803° N 122.448° W

    

    The exposition's palaces were built to be demolished, framed in wood and finished in staff, a mix of plaster and fibre. Almost all of them came down; this one was so loved that a preservation league, led by Phoebe Apperson Hearst, formed while the fair was still running. The flimsy materials crumbled all the same, and by the 1950s the imitation ruin had become a real one.

    Did you know? The curving pergola around the rotunda stretches for about 340 metres, framing the lagoon on one side.

    More about Palace of Fine Arts →

11. 11 Tivoli Gardens

    Tivoli

    Denmark · 0.9 km from Copenhagen55.674° N 12.568° E

    

    The rides span a century. The wooden roller coaster, Rutschebanen, has run here since 1914 and is one of very few old scenic railways left where a brakeman travels on every train and controls its speed by hand; it rolls along a track of roughly 720 metres at up to about 50 km/h.

    Did you know? In 1844 founder Georg Carstensen predicted Tivoli would never be finished, a sentiment Walt Disney echoed a century later about Disneyland.

    More about Tivoli Gardens →

12. 12 Broadway Tower

    United Kingdom52.024° N 1.836° W

    

    Capability Brown is credited with the idea, and James Wyatt designed it in 1794 for George Coventry, 6th Earl of Coventry; it was built in 1798–1799 for his wife Barbara. One story says that Lady Coventry wanted to know whether a beacon on the hill would be visible from their home at Croome Court, about fifteen miles to the north-west — it was. Over the nineteenth century the tower led a string of unlikely lives.

    Did you know? Before Cormell Price leased it in 1866, the tower was used for a time by local glove makers.

    More about Broadway Tower →

13. 13 Holyland Model of Jerusalem

    Israel · 0.7 km from Jerusalem31.773° N 35.202° E

    

    The centrepiece is Herod's Temple on its vast platform, a reconstruction so widely reproduced that for many people it has become the picture of the Second Temple.

    Did you know? From 1974 the archaeologist Yoram Tsafrir took charge of the model and oversaw its revisions as new excavations came to light.

    More about Holyland Model of Jerusalem →

14. 14 Wurstelprater

    Austria · 3.1 km from Vienna48.215° N 16.402° E

    

    Its landmark is the Wiener Riesenrad, the giant Ferris wheel built in 1897 by the British engineer Walter Bassett. About 65 metres tall, it was the tallest Ferris wheel still standing anywhere from 1920 until 1985. It was badly damaged in the Second World War and was rebuilt with only half of its original thirty cabins, and in 1949 it became a film location in The Third Man.

    Did you know? A permit to demolish the Riesenrad was issued in 1916, but there was no money to pull it down, so the wheel survived.

    More about Wurstelprater →

15. 15 Luna Park

    Australia · 2.7 km from Sydney33.848° S 151.210° E

    

    The park's history has been troubled. In June 1979 a fire in the Ghost Train killed seven people, and the park closed immediately. Some original structures survived all of this.

    Did you know? The current Big Dipper, opened in 2021, was the world's first launched single-rail roller coaster and the first single-rail coaster in Australia.

    More about Luna Park →

16. 16 Tibidabo Amusement Park

    Parque de Atracciones Tibidabo

    Spain · 6.5 km from Barcelona41.422° N 2.120° E

    

    The pleasure here lies as much in the antique rides as in the view. The Avió, installed in 1928, is a replica aeroplane that circles on an arm out over the edge of the hill, commemorating an early Madrid–Barcelona flight. The Talaia, opened in 1921, lifts its gondola on a tall mast to give a panorama of the city and the sea, and the Embruixabruixes, a suspended monorail dating from 1915, runs along the slope.

    Did you know? The Talaia, opened in December 1921, lifts riders to the park's highest point at about 551 metres above sea level.

    More about Tibidabo Amusement Park →

17. 17 Tokyo DisneySea

    Japan · 14.2 km from Tokyo35.627° N 139.888° E

    

    The theme is the sea in myth, legend and history, and the park is organised into "ports" rather than lands. Visitors enter through Mediterranean Harbor, a waterside village in the style of Venice and the Italian coast, facing Mount Prometheus, a volcano that serves as the park's icon and periodically erupts.

    Did you know? Instead of a single main street leading to a central hub, the entrance at Mediterranean Harbor opens out in a V shape around the water.

    More about Tokyo DisneySea →

18. 18 Pripyat amusement park

    Парк розваг (Прип'ять)

    Ukraine51.408° N 30.057° E

    

    The equipment is modest by any standard: a Ferris wheel about 26 m tall, bumper cars, swing boats and a small paratrooper ride, all standard products of a Soviet manufacturer in Yeysk. What makes the place memorable is the setting.

    Did you know? Radiation is lowest on the concrete paving, which liquidators washed down after the accident, and highest in patches of moss.

    More about Pripyat amusement park →

19. 19 Efteling

    Kingdom of the Netherlands · 18.9 km from 's-Hertogenbosch51.650° N 5.048° E

    

    What makes Efteling different from most theme parks is that Pieck's taste set the rules. He insisted on real materials, weathered textures and a nostalgic, slightly melancholy romance — thatched roofs, mossy brick, crooked towers — rather than painted plywood, and the park never abandoned that standard. The Fairytale Forest has grown to around thirty tales, but it still reads as an enchanted wood, with figures half-hidden among old trees.

    Did you know? In 1997 Villa Volta won a Thea award as the world's first 'new style' madhouse ride, where the room rather than the visitor seems to turn.

    More about Efteling →

20. 20 Madurodam

    Kingdom of the Netherlands · 2.9 km from The Hague52.099° N 4.298° E

    

    Behind the charm lies a moving story. The park is named after George Maduro, a law student from Curaçao who fought the German invasion in 1940 as a young army lieutenant, then joined the resistance, and died in Dachau in 1945; he was posthumously awarded the Military William Order, the country's highest decoration for bravery.

    Did you know? Since 1993 the park has displayed a miniature of the house in Curaçao where George Maduro was born.

    More about Madurodam →

21. 21 Miniatur Wunderland

    Germany · 1.1 km from Hamburg53.544° N 9.989° E

    

    The idea came to Frederik Braun on holiday in Zurich in 2000; with his twin brother Gerrit and two partners he began building in December that year, and the first three sections opened in August 2001.

    Did you know? In the invented town of Knuffingen, more than 100 fire engines respond to a simulated emergency on average every 15 minutes.

    More about Miniatur Wunderland →

22. 22 Yorkshire Sculpture Park

    United Kingdom · 19.6 km from Leeds53.614° N 1.570° W

    

    Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth anchor the collection, and their large bronzes sit comfortably in the open landscape. Around them works by Lynn Chadwick, Eduardo Paolozzi, Phillip King, Kenneth Armitage, Nigel Hall and many others appear across the hillsides, alongside pieces by Andy Goldsworthy, Yinka Shonibare and Ursula von Rydingsvard, whose "Damski Czepek" of 2015 is cast in polyurethane resin.

    Did you know? Rather than a fixed display, the park runs a changing programme of mostly single-artist exhibitions, earning it the nickname 'gallery without walls'.

    More about Yorkshire Sculpture Park →

23. 23 Rock Garden of Chandigarh

    India · 4.3 km from Chandigarh30.752° N 76.807° E

    

    The work was illegal and could have been bulldozed. Instead, public enthusiasm won the day: the garden was formally opened on 24 January 1976, and Nek Chand was given a salary, an official title and a team of labourers to carry on full time.

    Did you know? Once the garden was legalised, Chand received the official title of Sub-Divisional Engineer, Rock Garden, along with a workforce of about fifty labourers.

    More about Rock Garden of Chandigarh →

24. 24 McCaig's Tower

    United Kingdom56.416° N 5.469° W

    

    It was the idea of John Stuart McCaig, a wealthy banker with the North of Scotland Bank and an admirer of classical architecture, who acted as his own architect. He began building in 1897, with two aims: a permanent monument to his family, and winter work for the town's stonemasons. The plan was ambitious — a museum and art gallery inside the ring, a central tower, and statues of himself, his parents and his siblings.

    Did you know? His will also set up prizes for young artists who submitted designs for new 'artistic towers' around Oban.

    More about McCaig's Tower →

25. 25 Hakone Open-Air Museum

    Japan35.245° N 139.052° E

    

    The outdoor collection reads like a short history of twentieth-century sculpture. Henry Moore's bronze Reclining Figure: Arched Leg lies in the grass, Aristide Maillol's Action Enchained twists on its plinth, and Joan Miró's Personnage stands nearby. Barbara Hepworth, Constantin Brâncuși and the Japanese masters Taro Okamoto, Kōtarō Takamura, Rokuzan Ogiwara and Churyo Sato are all represented.

    Did you know? The sculpture grounds cover about 70,000 square metres, roughly seven hectares of lawns and slopes in the Hakone hills.

    More about Hakone Open-Air Museum →

26. 26 Dunmore Pineapple

    United Kingdom56.077° N 3.787° W

    

    The joke is carried off with great craftsmanship. Each of the stone leaves of the fruit was individually shaped and drained so that rainwater would not collect and crack it in frost, and the chimneys of the heating system were disguised as Grecian urns.

    Did you know? The upper floor once held two small cottages, known as bothies, where the estate's gardeners lived beside their hothouses.

    More about Dunmore Pineapple →

27. 27 Villa Palagonia

    Italy · 15.3 km from Palermo38.080° N 13.511° E

    

    The villa was begun in 1715 for Ferdinando Francesco I Gravina, Prince of Palagonia, to designs by Tommaso Maria Napoli, a Dominican friar, assisted by Agatino Daidone; the main construction lasted until 1737. The plan joins two square blocks with a curved central section, and a double staircase with stone balustrades climbs to the main floor. It is one of the earliest examples of Sicilian Baroque villa architecture in the area around Palermo.

    Did you know? One bedroom was decorated with marble toads, frogs, serpents, lizards and scorpions, according to descriptions of the villa.

    More about Villa Palagonia →

28. 28 Bishop Castle

    United States38.062° N 105.094° W

    

    Everything about it feels improvised and grand at once. Walls are built from rocks gathered from the surrounding mountainside, arched windows open onto the forest, and ornamental ironwork — much of it forged by Bishop himself — runs up the towers as spiral stairs, catwalks and narrow bridges that sway out into the air between spires.

    Did you know? Bishop was a high-school dropout who ran an ornamental ironworks business in Pueblo, the skill behind the castle's metal stairs and bridges.

    More about Bishop Castle →

29. 29 Shell Grotto

    United Kingdom · 29 km from Dover51.388° N 1.390° E

    

    The grotto was rediscovered around 1835; the earliest known account, from a newspaper of 1838, describes workmen at a cottage digging into an extensive underground space studded with shells. The layout is a serpentine passage about 70 feet long and 8 feet high, a circular rotunda with a shaft rising to daylight beneath a dome, and a rectangular chamber of roughly 15 by 20 feet, often called the altar chamber.

    Did you know? A wall of the grotto was damaged by a bomb during the Second World War and had to be reconstructed.

    More about Shell Grotto →

30. 30 Grotto of the Redemption

    United States42.964° N 94.446° W

    

    It is the life's work of one man. Paul Matthias Dobberstein, born in Rosenfeld, Germany, in 1872, trained at St. Francis Seminary in Wisconsin, where he built a first small grotto to Our Lady of Lourdes, and was ordained in 1897. Local tradition holds that, falling gravely ill with pneumonia, he vowed to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary if he recovered.

    Did you know? The 'sky' of the Christmas Chapel is made largely of blue azurite and green malachite, two copper minerals that usually occur together.

    More about Grotto of the Redemption →