Atlas Obscura's Iceland Week is in partnership with Icelandair, who will fly you to this unreal wonderland for surprisingly cheap...

Dagverðará situated on Snæfellsnes on the western part of Iceland (all images courtesy Eyðibýli)

Dwarfed by the powerful landscapes, the abandoned farm houses of Iceland are easy to overlook among the mountains and fjords. Eyðibýli — a project to document these abandoned homes — was started in 2011 to help save these ruins from obscurity. 

The nonprofit's mission is to "to research and register the magnitude and cultural importance of every abandoned farm and other deserted residences in the rural areas of Iceland." They started in the south of the county and most recently covered the northwest in a journey to photograph these abandoned houses and interview locals about the areas' heritage.

Thorstisenbraggi, situated in Ingólfsfjörður on the West Fjords

The results of this research are published in a series of publications called Eyðibýli á Íslandi. The fourth and fifth books in the series, which are rich with haunting photographs of the homes in the sweeping settings, were published in 2013. The main organizations behind Eyðibýli are R3-Consultancy, Gláma-Kím architects, and the Stapi Geology Consultancy, with collaborators including engineering, architecture, and archaeology students at the Icelandic Academy of the Arts, the University of Iceland, and Institute of Archaeology, as well as the Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland and the National Archives of Iceland. 

The register of Eyðibýli, which has now covered over 550 houses, isn't just to capture the desolate beauty of these abandoned farms. It's also to have a record of the architecture and culture of a place, where the structures represent the evolution of building styles, and the people who once lived in these isolated terrains. Around 60% of Iceland's population is consolidated in Reykjavík, but the history of the country's people extends beyond its capital into its rural communities. 

Ytri-Hjarðardalur, situated in Önundarfjörður on the West Fjords

Stapadalur, situated in Stapadalur on West Fjords

Hamrar, situated on Mýrar in the western part of Iceland

Grundarhóll, situated in Norðurþing, in the northeastern part of Iceland

Brimnes situated in Skagafjörður on Northwestern part of Iceland

Berlind situated in Skagafjörður on Northwestern part of Iceland

Arnarnes situated in Dýrafjörður on Vestfirðir (West Fjords)

Atlas Obscura's Iceland Week is in partnership with Icelandair, who will fly you to this unreal wonderland for surprisingly cheap...

Pits of fire that never go out, monumental skulls, an angel of death that cries black tears — these are some of the most "metal" places in the world. So if you're looking to shoot your next intense album cover for some heavy guitar driven aggression, or just want to experience a brush with darkness, get out to these 13 intense locales. 

GATES OF HELL
Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan 

The Turkmenistan Gates to Hell (photograph by Tormod Sandtorv)

In 1971, a Soviet drilling project went horribly wrong when it hit a natural gas cavern and collapsed. To keep from spawning an environmental catastrophe, the pit was set in flames. To this day the 328-foot-wide fiery chasm burns, earning it the nickname, "The Gates of Hell."

BLOOD FALLS
Antarctica

via United States Antarctic Program Photo Library

One of the world's most gruesome natural wonders is the five-story "Blood Falls." The slow ooze of crimson from Antarctica's Taylor Glacier is actually sourced from a trapped lake of ancient microbes, but it looks like the ice has a festering wound. 

THE CHAPEL OF SKULLS
Kudowa-Zdrój, Poland

The Chapel of Skulls (photograph by Merlin/Wikimedia)

The macabre Chapel of the Skulls has a ceiling of bones formed Jolly Rogers-style in a lattice of death, while alongside skulls gaze with vacant sockets at any visitors. And if that wasn't unsettling enough, open a trapdoor in this Polish church to reveal the packed skeletal remains of 21,000 people in the crypt. 

THE HASEROT ANGEL
Cleveland, Ohio

The Angel of Death Victorious (photograph by Ian MacQueen)

In Cleveland's Lakeview Cemetery, the angel of death weeps black tears. The monument for Francis Haserot — known as "The Haserot Angel" or "The Angel of Death Victorious" — is in reality a victim of the eroding elements, but the weathered cheeks stained with a silent cry are a harrowing memento mori. 

MOTHER MOTHERLAND
Kiev, Ukraine

Mother Motherland statue (photograph by Roland Geider)

As far as aggressive monuments go, it doesn't get better than the 340-foot-tall Mother Motherland in Ukraine. The silver lady with her sword held high is approached through a path soundtracked by ominous Soviet music. 

FIRE MOUNTAIN
Baku, Azerbaijan

Fire Mountain & the moon (photograph by Frokor/Wikimedia)

Similar to the Gates of Hell, this constantly burning hillside in Yanar Dağ, Azerbaijan is fueled by natural gas reserves. The 32-foot-long wall of fire is most impressive at night, when the flames put visitors in strange otherworldly silhouettes in the darkness. 

LISAKOVSK PENTAGRAM
Denisov District, Kazakhstan

via Google Earth

Viewed from above, this abandoned summer camp in Kazakhstan looks like a satanic symbol. However, the pentagram — long used across cultures for a variety of reasons — is actually the Soviet star, and is as far as the camp got in its failed construction out on a windswept peninsula. 

SERPENT D'OCÉAN
Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, France

Le Serpent d'Océan (photograph by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra)

Artist Huang Yong Ping created this fearsome metal snake that raises its fangs from the waters off the shore of the French town of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins. It's 400 feet long; and its rows of slithering silvery ribs cut right into the waves. 

CLERMONT-FERRAND CATHEDRAL
Clermont-Ferrand, France

Clermont-Ferrand Cathedral (photograph by Fabien1309/Wikimedia)

Up on a hill in the center of the French city of Clermont-Ferrand is this ominous black cathedral. Built from lava rocks, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption looms above a 10th century crypt hidden beneath its stark architecture. 

LAVA LAKE AT NYIRAGONGO VOLCANO 
Democratic Republic of the Congo

Lava Lake of the Nyiragongo Volcano (photograph by Cai Tjeenk Willink)

The world's largest fluid lava lake has a recorded depth of 10,700 feet. In 1977, it burst open, consuming everything in its path at 60 mph. Since 1882, it's erupted at least 34 times.

PARK OF THE SLEEPLESS
Estella, Spain

Skull in Estella, Spain (photograph by Lanpernas Dospuntozero)

From 1971 to 2009, artist Luis García Vidal filled this Estella, Spain, landscape with monumental skulls. It's as if some menacing giants are being uncovered from a mass grave, and is intended as a public art memento mori.

CURTAIN OF FIRE
Pāhoa, Hawaii

via geoinfo.amu.edu.pl

The most active volcano in the world — Kilauea in Hawaii — regularly creates what's known as the Curtain of Fire. Through fissure vents, magma shoots up in waves above the rolling ground of dried black lava.

RELAMPAGO DEL CATATUMBO
Venezuela

Catatumbo Lightning (via Wikimedia)

For as long as anyone can remember, Relámpago del Catatumbo in Venezuela has been swarmed with lightning storms. Between 140 and 160 nights of the years have lightning storms that can have as many as 280 strikes an hour, and last for up to 10 hours. 

1694 memento mori painting in the Augustiner Museum in Germany (photo by Wolfgang Sauber)

For some cultures, death is the beginning of a purification process that starts with decomposition and ends with skeletonization. These people believe that when a loved one takes his or her final breath, it is the beginning of a journey to the land of the ancestors, and the corpse must completely decay before a soul is considered purified and can ascend to the afterlife.

There are typically two burial phases in some of these societies: initial and secondary burial. During the first, or initial, burial, the body may be buried or exposed while it decays, and the funeral ceremony during this phase marks the beginning of the soul’s journey. Once the remains are completely skeletonized, the bones are collected, cleaned, and placed in a secondary burial, like an ossuary. At this point the deceased is considered truly dead and the soul is resurrected to join the rest of their ancestors in the Land of the Dead.

Secondary burials have been practiced by many cultures throughout history into the modern era. Below is a discussion of burials customs of Jews of the early Roman Empire; burial customs of Southern Italy that were practiced until the early 20th century; and the Malagasy famadihana, or turning of the bones, which is practiced today.

The Jews of the early Roman Empire practiced a burial custom called ossilegium between 30 BCE and 70 CE. Ossilegium, a Latin word that means the collection of the bones, was a two-part process. During the initial burial, the corpse was placed in a niche or on a bench in a tomb. Secondary burial occurred one year later, after the soft tissue had decayed. Family members collected the bones and placed them in an ossuary, a container that holds human bones, which was then placed in a niche in the family tomb. A single ossuary could be used for the bones of more than one individual.

A first century Jewish ossuary (via Walters Art Museum)

Jews of this era believed the deceased’s soul was purified during decomposition, which was essential for resurrection. Catholics in southern Italy had similar funerary customs based on the belief that death was as a slow process that started with decomposition and ended with the collection of the skeletal remains.

Some Catholic churches in southern Italy, like Santa Maria del Purgatorio in Naples, had architectural structures built into underground crypts beneath the church for initial and secondary burial. According to these Neapolitan funeral customs, the soul traveled to Purgatory immediately after death and stayed there during decomposition. It was believed that while the soul of a family member was in Purgatory, the living could atone for the sins of the deceased to ensure safe travel to the afterlife. They also believed that if they took good care of the decomposing remains the dead would look favorably on the living and reciprocate those good deeds.

Lay people of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy used structures called terresante and sitting colatoio to facilitate decomposition up until the early 20th century. Terresante were underground crypts that contained rows of loose dirt where bodies were placed for their initial burial, with only a few inches of loose dirt to cover them. On All Soul’s Day, people would visit the dead to put fresh clothes on the decaying bodies. The bodies were exhumed shortly before complete skeletonization and placed in niches along the walls, where they continued their decomposition. After the body had fully decomposed, the skulls were either placed on a long ledge above the niches or all of the skeletal remains were put in an ossuary.

Putridarium at the Cimitero delle Clarisse in Ischia, Italy (photograph by Orric/Wikimedia)

Sitting colatoio, or putridarium, were masonry structures built into underground chambers of Catholic churches. Sitting colatoi were a row of masonry seats within niches along walls, each colatoio had holes in the middle of wooden seats that were connected to drainage canals. Corpses were dressed in cassocks and placed in a seated position on the colatoio. During decomposition, fluids would pass through the hole, and the remaining bones were collected and placed on altars or in ossuaries.

Once the soul was purified and the body had skeletonized, thanks to the terresante or sitting colatoio, Italians believed the soul could ascend from purgatory into the afterlife — a very similar idea is at the center of a Malagasy funeral tradition practiced today.

Famadihana reburial in Madagascar (photograph by Hery Zo Rakotondramanana)

The famadihana (fa-ma-dee-an), or “turning of the bones,” is a funerary celebration practiced every seven years by the Malagasy people of the highlands of Madagascar. During this ritual, they remove bodies of their ancestors from family crypts and swathe them in fresh shrouds and spray expensive perfume over the remains. Once the bodies are rewrapped, the Malagasy play music and dance around the tomb with the bodies. When the dancing ends, the bundled corpses are placed on the ground, where family members touch the bodies. This is a tradition that strengthens family bonds between the living and the dead.

Famadihana is a centuries old custom that may have been adapted from pre-modern funeral customs of southeast Asia. The “turning of the bones” is related to the Malagasy belief that the soul of a deceased family member can only enter the Land of the Dead when the corpse completely skeletonizes. Until this happens, the Malagasy lovingly take care of the bodies of their ancestors until the body completely decomposes. 

If you’re interested on reading more on this subject, I highly recommend a couple of blogs:

The Order of the Good Death has more information and a more colorful discussion on the putridarium.

Katy Meyers at Bones Don’t Lie and Dr. Kristina Killgrove at Powered by Osteons both have great, in depth discussions about secondary burial practices.

For more fascinating stories of forensic anthropology visit Dolly Stolze's Strange Remains, where a version of this article also appeared. 

References:

Atonement for the Afterlife: The Jewish Practice of Ossilegium. (2014 January 31). Retrieved on April 19, 2014 from: http://maa.missouri.edu/exhibitions/finalfarewell/jewishpracticesintro.html

Madagascar’s dance with the dead. (2008 August 16). Retrieved on April 19, 2014 from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7562898.stm

Bearak, B. (2010 September 5). Dead Join the Living in a Family Celebration. The New York Times. Retrieved on April 19, 2014 from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/world/africa/06madagascar.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Fornaciari, A., Giuffra, V., and Pezzini, F. (2010 August 9). Secondary burial and mummification practices in the Kingdom of the two Sicilies. Retrieved on April 19, 2014 from: https://www.academia.edu/1178271/Secondary_burial_and_mummification_practices_in_the_Kingdom_of_the_two_Sicilies

A big part of any film’s budget concerns the set — finding and renting a location, altering its look, and sometimes building the whole thing from scratch. Usually the crew strikes everything after filming wraps, but sometimes they leave things in place for future films, or at the property owner’s request, or because they ran out of money for the demolition. Here’s what happened to 16 sets after filming folded. 

HOBBITON
Matamata, New Zealand 

Hobbiton, New Zealand (photograph by Anup Shah)

New Zealand sheep farmer Dean Alexander had never heard of Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy before 1998, when director Peter Jackson approached him about filming on part of his property. With Alexander’s blessing, Jackson turned 12 acres of the family ranch into Hobbiton, the idyllic village from which Frodo Baggins sets off on his quest.  

Inside Hobbiton (photograph by Rob Chandler)

The Lord of The Rings set was temporary, but tourist attention from fans brought Alexander to restore some of the “hobbit holes” for visitors, and when Jackson returned to reconstruct the set for The Hobbit trilogy, he built it to stay. Today the Alexanders offer tours of “the real Middle Earth” — the hobbit-holes and gardens of Hobbiton, topped off with lunch at the film’s Green Dragon Inn — in addition to maintaining their sheep farm. 

A "Hobbit Hole" (photograph by Anup Shah)

SPECTRE
North of Montgomery, Alabama 

Spectre in 2006 (photograph by sunsurfr/Flickr user)

In director Tim Burton’s grown-up fairy tale Big Fish, Ewan McGregor is a young traveler who discovers the town of Spectre hidden in the Alabama woods. It’s a tempting spot to settle — everyone is friendly, there are no roads, and the town sits on grass so lush that everyone goes barefoot — but McGregor’s character still decides to move on. 

Burton also moved on after filming wrapped in 2003, leaving the houses, stores, and chapel of Spectre in place for other wanderers to find (with permission from the property owner). Sadly, recent adventurers report that all but the chapel and a house or two have collapsed. 

POPEYE VILLAGE
Malta 

Popeye Village (photograph by Edwinb/Wikimedia)

Robert Altman’s 1980 film adaptation of the comic Popeye suffered at the box office, but the nation of Malta has done very well with the film’s set, turning it into the Popeye Village theme park. 

The park preserves the original 20 buildings constructed for Popeye’s“Sweethaven” setting, and adds a museum devoted to the movie’s history. It also stages shows featuring Popeye and Olive Oyl, and scenic boat tours of the village and its bay. 

Walking through Popeye Village (photograph by Ploync/Wikimedia)

NAMI AND JEJU ISLANDS
South Korea

Set for "The Legend" (photograph by Thddbwnd/Wikimedia)

In South Korea, fans of the 2002 Korean romantic television drama Winter Sonata flock to Nami Island, home to the bulk of the show's location shoots. Winter Sonata's creators used existing locations as-is, but the tourist attention caught the eye of several shows being filmed on nearby Jeju Island, who built their sets with an eye to leaving them behind as destinations after filming wrapped.

The biggest set was for a 2007 series called Taewangsasingi (The Legend), a period drama with a lavish city set including a king’s palace, inns, markets, and houses. Elsewhere on Jeju is a hotel set from Swallow the Sun, a splashy soap opera. Both sets drew an initial flood of tourists, but attendance soon fizzled. Now the sets are abandoned and residents consider them eyesores. Portions of the set for Taewangsasingi have been demolished, but Swallow the Sun's hotel remains intact — visitors report that many of its props are even still in place. 

Nami Island (photograph by whyyan/Flickr user)

FIELD OF DREAMS
Dubuque County, Iowa 

Field of Dreams in 2003 (photograph by Joel Dinda)

20th Century Fox built it; the tourists have come. The iconic baseball-diamond-in-a-cornfield from Field of Dreams was built astride two family’s farms. Most of it was on the Lansing family farm, but a chunk of the right field was on property belonging to their neighbors the Ameskamps. 

The Ameskamps turned their parcel back into farmland for a while, but the Lansings preserved their portion and opened it up to tours, set up a gift shop, and organized a baseball team to play demonstration games. The Ameskamps soon cleared their parcel back up and ran their own competing gift shop until 2007, when they sold the right field to the Lansings. The site is now celebrating its 25th anniversary of business in 2014, complete with weekly demonstration games featuring its team, “The Ghost Players.” 

Dual Field of Dreams gift shop signs (photograph by Madmaxmarchhare/Wikimedia)

THE AFRICAN QUEEN
Key Largo, Florida

The African Queen (photograph by Luke J. Spencer)

This famous boat was actually called the Livingstone when first built in 1912, and under that moniker spent 40 years as a charter and cargo boat in East Africa. Director John Huston later “cast” the boat in the title role of his 1951 film The African Queen, the story of a charter boat captained by Humphrey Bogart, co-starring Katherine Hepburn as a missionary. 

Under its more legendary name, The African Queen returned to work as a charter boat, passing through many hands and through many docks, ending up abandoned in the 1960s in Cairo before relocating to Key Largo, Florida, in the 1980s. There the boat now offers cruises through the Port Largo canals.

View to the African Queen (photograph by Luke J. Spencer)

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE STOREFRONT
New York City, New York

"Across the Universe" storefront (photograph by the author)

Director Julie Taymor couldn’t find a groovy enough location for a scene from her Beatles homage Across The Universe, so she made one. Taking over a block of Manhattan’s Rivington Street on the Lower East Side in 2005, the film crew gave all the buildings, light posts, shop windows, and even the street itself a psychedelic facelift.

Following production, everything was restored to its previous self, except one restaurant — Alias, a nouveau-American hotspot — asked to keep its new looks. Alias recently closed, but the new owner — a bar named Black Crescent — has retained the snaking dragon tails on its façade on the corner of Rivington and Clinton streets. 

ALAMO VILLAGE, GUNSMOKE VILLAGE, AND PIONEERTOWN
Southwest United States

Alamo replica in the Brackettville, Texas (photograph by Larry D. Moore)

Directors during the Golden Age of the Hollywood Westerns were spoiled for location choice, with the stunning vistas of the Rocky Mountains and three major deserts within only a day's drive. Some even trekked further into Texas. Several of their sets still dot the Southwest today. For example, there are the remains of the 1960 John Wayne film The Alamo, just north of Brackettville, Texas.  

Alamo Village in 2009 (photograph by AppleCrypt/Flickr user)

Contractor James T. “Happy” Shahan built the set on his ranch, and kept it up once filming wrapped to accommodate over a dozen subsequent films. Shahan also ran a theme park on the site until his death in 2010. 

Set of "Gunsmoke" (photograph by Jeremiah Roth)

Meanwhile, just north of Kanab, Utah, are the remains of the set for Gunsmoke, still a record-holder for the longest-running American television series. It has fallen into disrepair and is not open to the public, but travelers can see it from the side of the road. 

Shoot out in Pioneertown (photograph by Sandi Hemmerlein)

Closer to Hollywood, there is Pioneertown — a movie set created in part by Roy Rogers that was designed to double as a planned community for actors. Today Pioneertown offers tours of its stage sets and holds Wild West shows in its streets.  

SWEETWATER, FORT BRAVO, AND MORE
Desert of Tabernas, Almeria, Spain 

Remains of the Old West in Spain (photograph by Emilio del Prado)

Inspired by Hollywood cowboy movies, Italian director Sergio Leone was moved to make Westerns of his own. He didn’t have the budget to travel to the American Southwest, so he recreated the Old West in the Spanish desert of Tabernas, the only desert on the continent of Europe. His 1964 A Fistfull of Dollars and 1966 The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly were smash hits, launching the career of Clint Eastwood and inspiring other Italian directors to follow suit.

Three permanent “Western town” sets soon sprang up in Tabernas to accommodate this “Spaghetti Western” craze — Texas Hollywood, Mini Hollywood, and Western Leone, all bearing similar Western storefronts, recreations of Mexican pueblos, and frontier forts. All three sets are still open for tours today, and occasionally still see use. Texas Hollywood and Mini Hollywood recently hosted a 2012 episode of the show Doctor Who. 

Mini Hollywood in the Tabernas Desert (photograph by Fabio Alessandro Locati)

ATLAS FILM STUDIOS
Ouarzazate, Morocco 

Atlas Studios (photograph by Martijn.Munneke)

Director David Lean discovered this stunning spot near Morocco’s Atlas Mountains in 1963 while filming Lawrence Of Arabia. Future filmmakers took note and made enough visits that Moroccan entrepreneur Mohamed Belghmi built a permanent studio to accommodate them.

Atlas Studios has since hosted such films as Black Hawk Down, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Living Daylights, The Kingdom of Heaven, and The Mummy, as well as occasional scenes for the BBC program Atlantis and HBO’s Game of Thrones. The studio also welcomes tourists eager to explore the desert sets for films like Gladiator and Jewel Of The Nile among the myriad of locales inside the massive complex. 

Egyptian set (photograph by Martijn.Munneke)

Set from Kundun (photograph by Martijn.Munneke)

CITY OF THE PHARAOHS
Guadalupe, California 

Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes (photograph by BriYYZ/Flickr user)

Cecil B. DeMille spent $750,000 building an elaborate set in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes for his 1923 film The Ten Commandments (not to be confused with his later remake starring Charlton Heston). But once filming wrapped, he buried it to prevent its re-use in a cheaper production. Stories of the “lost” set passed into Hollywood legend until 1990, when documentarian Peter Brosnan mounted an effort to excavate the site. Brosnan used ground-imaging radar to map out the location, but funding for the excavation was not complete until 2013. 

The site is an active archeological site, and is thus closed to visitors. However the visitor's center for the dunes showcases the growing collection of artifacts which have turned up. Brosnan is also at work on a documentary chronicling his efforts. 

MOS ESPA AND TATOOINE
Tunisia 

photograph by John Roberts

Although Star Wars Episode 7 may film desert scenes in Morocco, most of the earlier films used Northern Tunisia for Tatooine. Some locations, like the cave homes of Matmata or a grainary in Ksar Hadada, were pre-existing buildings adapted for film shoots, while other sets — like Mos Espa — were built afresh. But all locations were simply left standing once filming wrapped.

In some cases, savvy Tunisians have capitalized on the saga’s fame. The Matmata caves which stood in for Luke Skywalker’s home in some scenes are now a hotel, the Sidi Driss. 

Hotel Sidi Driss (photograph by Scott Roberts)

The Mos Espa set, however, was left abandoned to all but a handful of squatters, and is currently in danger of being buried by shifting sand dunes. An Indiegogo campaign has been launched to raise funds to save the set, following a similar fan campaign that saved the external location set for Luke’s family home in Nefta in 2012.

Mos Espa (photograph by John Roberts)

Discover the fates of more film locations after the cameras departed on Atlas Obscura >

Tombées du Camion (photograph by Matthias Biberon)

Tucked away in a forgotten passageway, between the upmarket fashion boutiques of Rue des Abbesses and the fall from grace to the seedy strip of Pigalle, you’ll stumble upon one of the most unusual and captivating spaces in Paris. The white whale of the Sacre Coeur is just a cobblestoned stroll away; the café where Audrey Tautou’s Amélie waitressed in the offbeat film is just around the corner on Rue Lepic. And it's easy to imagine Amélie being a frequent customer of the quirky boutique Tombées du Camion. (The name of the store, meaning items fallen from the back of a truck, cheekily hints at stolen goods.)

I myself stumbled upon this spot on my first trip to Paris. It never left my memory, and when I eventually moved to the city it was the only place I left my CV. I now pass hour after happy hour working there, steeped in anachronistically organized chaos, never knowing quite how to sum up what we sell. To step inside this bizarre bazaar is to step out of sync with the rest of the modern world. So don’t be surprised if it takes a moment to recalibrate as you contemplate a hoarder's paradise of vintage ephemera illuminated by industrial lamps and lined with old wooden boxes and crates — everything is in its right place. And it's a lot of things, with each item in excess.

The author in the store (photograph by Louise Carrasco)

The stock is salvaged from the cobwebbiest corners of factories and vide-greniers ("attic sales") in secret locations around France. There are French porno banners from the 1970s, rusted mortuary plaques (Je ne t’oublierai jamais, "I will never forget you," in gold lettering), unused flasks of Élixir Parégorique (that’s an opium cure for diarrhea, by the way). Most of these items are fabrication française (made in France), like the Gauloises issued to French troops in World War II; a cloud of nostalgia now that everyone in the smoking capital of the world puffs on electronic cigarettes. Every object has a story. And I’ve amassed a pretty interesting French vocab list to tell each story.

If you feel hundreds of eyes on you, don’t be alarmed. The eyes are an idée fixe: beady blue taxidermy eyes, disembodied dolls’ eyes that wink inscrutably from under thick lashes, round ones in delicate blown glass, perennially surprised. Once you’ve had you’re fill of eyes, you can move on to all manner of mismatched body parts: arms, legs, dolls with human hair, heads from the Bébé de Paris factory that closed circa 1917.

Charles Mas (photograph by Matthias Biberon)

You would have to conclude that Charles Mas — the curator of this vast array of bits, bobs, and bibelots — is a grown man who likes to play with dolls a little too much. “Je suis un peu maniac!” ("I'm a little bit fastidious"), he warned me at the beginning of my first shift. Looking around at the improbable combinations of knickknacks arranged in ornate patterns along the walls, it would be hard to disagree. It would be hard to settle on the weirdest object in the store, but according to Mas, it's the packets of 1930s toilet paper from Lyon. “It’s the missing link between the urinal of Marcel Duchamp and Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca,” he says loftily. But this isn’t high art, it’s the art of the everyday, as most of us never knew it. And it sells like crusty croissants. 

Where does his strange affinity for strange objects come from? “My parents were collectors,” Mas explains. “Consequentially I came to hate collectors and their obsessions. I wanted to show the other value of objects — the value of the material, the value without the rarity, the value without the value.”

Everything in its place (photograph by Matthias Biberon) 

Shop décor (photograph by Matthias Biberon) 

This is someone who will look you right in the eye and tell you that there’s poetry in a tub of ping-pong balls — a stretch even for a Frenchman. And the strange charm of the store is that it does actually put the poetry in the ping-pong balls, and other items that suddenly become special when amassed in this very unusual context.

Spending the weekend at the larger, recently reopened Tombées du Camion store in the Marché aux Puces de St Ouen, the atmosphere is completely different. But even in a shantytown of antique porcelain dishes and crystal chandeliers, this store stands out. One customer told me, only half-jokingly, that he had just come from the Surrealist Objects exhibition at the Pompidou and couldn’t tell the difference. 

Cigarette-shaped brooches (photograph by Matthias Biberon)

Fish-shaped business card (photograph by Matthias Biberon)

Working in this surrealist supermarket is an interesting experience, to be sure. A typical day might bring a woman who buys a brooch in the shape of a sexy stilettoed leg for her amputee friend. Or an artist who wants to inflate female condoms with our celluloid baby dolls inside. (BYO condoms.) Someone drops by looking for rubber chicken legs, and it’s not a silly question. The boss pulls up outside — either on his motorcycle or in the beat-up 1960s Citroën truck and store mascot — and rushes in to explain the function of an arcane item ("that metal rod is used to crush sugar cubes for absinthe"), show off his latest find ("hundreds of embroidery scissors in the shape of the Eiffel Tower"), or assign a task I’ve never been asked to perform anywhere else ("Go through these 1940s postcards and find all the photos of women in bathing suits." These are strictly not to be sold and must be handed directly to him for a "special project").

The locals are as astonished as the tourists. And it’s changed my view of Paris — not just because I find myself wanting everything in Paris to be orderly, color-coordinated, and symmetrical. I leave the little Montmartre hole-in-the-wall at the end of the day feeling that the whole city is full of stories and secrets. It’s opened my eyes to the beauty of tiny details and fleeting moments here. The dolls' eyes wink at me. And I wink back. 

photograph by Louise Carrasco

Tombées du Camion is at 17 Rue Joseph de Maistre (métro Abbesses) in Paris, France. And in the Marché aux Puces, Marché Vernaison, Allée 1, at Stand 29 (métro Porte de Clignancourt). 

Central Synagogue on Lexington Avenue (all photos courtesy Frances Lincoln Publishers)

Subways rumbling beneath the pavement and blaring their horns, taxis zooming down the avenues, pounding construction constantly morphing the skyline taller every year, the sounds of over eight million people moving through the streets and sidewalks — New York City is not a quiet place. People live close in clustered apartments and crowd into transportation for the daily commute. Sometimes you need an escape. 

Quiet New York by Siobhan Wall, released this month by Frances Lincoln Publishers, is a guide to finding some peace in the frenetic cityscape. With 150 places across the five boroughs, ranging from restaurants, to museums, to houses of worship, to hidden parks, the book aims to show what other guidebooks do not in providing an escape from one of the busiest cities in the world. Wall has previously published quiet guides to London, Amsterdam, and Paris, but New York may be the greatest challenge yet with its density of population and sleepless nature. 

New York Insight Meditation Center

New York Marble Cemetery

The recommendations in the compact, square-shaped book include the overlooked Hispanic Society of America up at Audubon Terrace with its gorgeous Spanish art collection, Buddhist shrines, the Nicholas Roerich Museum near Columbia University that houses the art of the Russian painter who inspired H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, and the George Way Collection on Staten Island cluttered with 17th century objects. Then there are ponderous spaces like the Poets House in Lower Manhattan dedicated to the art of verse, and zen zones such as the New York Insight Meditation Center in an industrial building on 10th Street that offers daylong retreats into internal awareness.

And of course, there are the parks. Even though Central Park certainly has its share of hidden corners, it's not the only greenspace you can escape to, with 19th century burial grounds like New York Marble Cemetery and "pocket parks" like Greenacre with its waterfall that drowns out the urban noise. "The city is full of surprises — in particular the many beautiful, hilly parks, with their secret meadows and unexpected vistas," Wall writes in her book introduction, citing Fort Tryon Park that feels like a world away with its view to the Cloisters built from medieval abbeys and the High Line that has repurposed an abandoned train line into a vertical garden. 

George Way Collection

At Atlas Obscura, we appreciate a city view that takes in all its wonders, both gargantuan monuments and more clandestine oases. (Our favorite NYC quiet zones include the wax saint shrine to Mother Cabrini in Washington Heights, the Museum housed in a freight elevator, and Walter de Maria's Earth Room that fills a Soho apartment with dirt.)  Quiet New York is a great resource to find some spots of stillness in the constant movement of NYC, but everyone should also spend time getting lost in the grid to find their own places to stake for some solitude.  

Poets House

Quiet New York by Siobhan Wall is available from Frances Lincoln Publishers.

On March 22, Obscura Society LA visited Allis Markham at her new taxidermy studio in the Spring Arts Tower, a vibrant community in the historic core of downtown Los Angeles. Climbing up to the fourth floor, we gathered for an evening of hands-on taxidermy and behind-the-scenes stories about death at the zoo, flesh eating beetles, and a secret diorama hall at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM).

Allis is a taxidermist at NHM and the owner of Prey: Ethical Taxidermy Designs and Classes. Scalpel in one hand, arctic fox in the other, Allis started with a skinning demonstration — the process of removing the pelt from the body. Delicately peeling the skin away, the muscular and digestive system were revealed in a surprisingly clinical fashion — not a drop of blood spilled! Allis explained that when an animal is dying, blood rushes into the organs in a final act of preservation.

Obscura LA observes a skinning demonstration on an arctic fox.

photo by David Iserson

The next step is tanning, a chemical process that transforms skin into leather by converting components that can rot, such as proteins, into a stable state. Allis uses a tried and true formula that’s been used at NHM for decades:

1) formic acid pickle down to two on the pH scale; 2) lutan F for a final tan; and 3) Knobloch's tanning oil. The tanning process takes about two to three weeks. Below, Allis pulls a baby warthog hide from its tanning bath.

While animals are the stars of the show, many other elements go into each natural history museum diorama, including plants. Because pre-made silk plants are flammable, they cannot be used. Instead, each leaf is made by hand with vacuum form plastic. For a single tree, Allis and her team create over 2,000 leaves from 200 different molds. Each leaf is then hand painted with up to 15 different colors (see an unfinished leaf below).

photo by Allis Markham

There is also the question of where the animals come from. Manny was a 350 pound, Sumatran tiger who lived at the Los Angeles Zoo. In January 2014, he began exhibiting some troubling symptoms that required an operation. Unfortunately, after being treated, he didn’t wake-up from the anesthesia. After 14 years of educating visitors at the zoo, Manny was donated to NHM where his skin and bones live on, furthering scientific knowledge and educating future audiences.

photo by Allis Markham

Arriving at NHM, Manny was delivered to the taxidermy department where Allis and her boss, Tim Bovard, took over 200 measurements of the body for reference and prepared the skin for tanning. To clean the bones, they traveled to an offsite location in Vernon, California: a storage container filled with thousands of black, hairy beetles known asDermestes maculatus. In a matter of days, the beetle larvae ate the protein off the bones, leaving a pristine, white skeleton for NHM’s collection of large land-mammal specimens, a library that helps scientists better understand each species and the challenges they face in the wild.

photo by Allis Markham

Museum taxidermy is a dying profession. From the top of her head, Allis could name only three taxidermists employed by museums in the United States: herself, her boss Tim Bovard, and Wendy Christensen from the Milwaukee Public Museum. Other museums maintain their collections with contractors.

We feel very lucky to have Allis and Tim working here at NHM in Los Angeles! One new project proposed is reopening the Exotics Hall. Forced to close to the public in the 1990s, the Exotics Hall is currently used as annex office space. Ringtail lemurs, the clouded leopard, and kangaroos, are waiting in the shadows to tell their story.

Peering into the windows of Allis’ taxidermy studio & classroom in the Spring Arts Tower

Allis’ studio and classroom. 

Allis’ studio and classroom. 

A shelf of taxidermy supplies including Stop Rot, a bacteria that stops rot during the skin prepping process. 

California quail mount and pelt at Allis’ studio.

Learn more about Allis' new space and her upcoming taxidermy classes!

All photos by the author unless otherwise noted.

The Obscura Society is the real-world exploration arm of Atlas Obscura We seek out secret histories, unusual access, and opportunities for our community to explore strange and overlooked places hidden all around us. Join us on our next adventure!

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Mummies in Museo de El Carmen (all photographs by the author)

Being in Mexico City for Holy Week has its advantages. If you’re interested in Catholic rites and rituals you’ll find plenty to do during the solemn holy days leading up to Easter. Some parishes sponsor reenactments of the crucifixion performed with varying degrees of historical accuracy and gore. Others hold funeral processions featuring life-sized effigies of Jesus in glass caskets. In a handful of places you can still find people who burn Judas in the form of papier-mâché devils.

But if you’re interested in traditional tourism or just looking for something to do in between services, you’ll find you’re mostly out of luck. The historic churches are in full mourning. Their best artwork and altarpieces are obscured by purple drapes to emphasize the sadness of these holidays. Many of the city’s excellent museums are closed. The locals are going to church, getting out of town or just enjoying some time off. I was the odd tourist out — wandering around the city on a day when everyone else had somewhere to be.

That’s how I wound up alone with twelve mummies. Looking for something to do in between Holy Week solemnities, I went to one of the only museums open during the later, more sacred days of Holy Week — the Museo de El Carmen. The museum, which primarily features Colonial era religious art, is housed in the old monastery school of San Ángel. Although it seems strange that a religious museum would be open on the holiest days of the year, the reasons for that are as much a testament to its colonial past as its Spanish-style architecture and cobblestone streets.

The monastery school and attached chapel were founded back when San Ángel was a rural town, separate from the massive sprawl of Mexico City. It was designed by Spanish Carmelite friar, Fray Andrés de San Miguel, and built between 1615 and 1628. Like many religious orders, the Carmelites raised money by selling space in their crypt under the school with the understanding that after a few years, the bones would be collected and stored in an ossuary so the space could be resold.

In 1857, the monastery school secularized under the Reform Laws designed to chip away at the Catholic Church’s hegemony in Mexico. This ultimately led to the school being abandoned by 1861. At that time, the crypt was simply sealed up with its current set of dead parishioners inside.

The crypt was forgotten about until 1917. That year, members of the Liberation Army of the South, a Revolutionary force dedicated to land redistribution for peasants and indigenous people, raided the monastery school. When they lifted the heavy cover off the crypt, they were surprised to find a cache of naturally mummified bodies instead of monastic wealth. The land in San Ángel was known for being ensconced in volcanic rock and the unique profile of this soil allowed many of the bodies to dehydrate quickly and discouraged the bacterial and fungal growth that would normally aid decomposition.

The soldiers left the mummies intact, but left the crypt uncovered. Within the next few years, the bodies were discovered yet again, this time by citizens of San Ángel secretly exploring the decrepit school. Word gradually got out and the mummies became well known around town. According to church lore, a Carmelite friar tried to convince the people of San Ángel to rebury the mummies but the town refused on the grounds that they had already adopted them as citizens. In 1929, the mummies were placed in their velvet-lined wood and glass caskets that are still in use today.

Though the chapel at El Carmen is still consecrated and owned by the Catholic Church, the monastery school and its crypt are still secular and have been run by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia since 1939, hence its unusual opening during Holy Week.

In 2012, the crypt was fully restored and opened to the public along side an exhibition featuring 30 large-format photographs of the mummies and a Day of the Dead altar that encouraged people, as cited in the Agencia EFE News Wire, to “contemplate these eminent people in detail: their expressions, the conditions of their skin, and the clothing with which they were dressed for death."

For those not scared off by their skeletal features, a closer look at the mummies allows a glimpse into their lives. In contrast to the more famous (and numerous) mummies of Guanajuato who were unceremoniously dug up for failing to pay a grave tax, these are clearly the bodies of well-to-do parishioners. They wear cravats, vests and jackets. One woman even wears a jaunty hat with a bow. Though dehydration has twisted their faces into grimaces, their bodies don’t show signs of trauma brought on by poverty and dangerous living conditions like those in Guanajuato do.

The inscription above the door to the crypt is from Job 5:26, appropriate for these comparatively serene mummies. “Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.”

All photographs by the author. 

Elizabeth Harper writes about saint relics at All the Saints You Should Know. You can also find more on the remains of the holy departed at the new All the Saints You Should Know Facebook page. 

Our fellow explorers over at Hendrick's Gin have been up to some very interesting things, including an expedition to Venezuela in search of a mysterious botanical with veteran explorer Charles Brewer Carias! Here is part one of their four part journey into the jungle: 

Hendrick’s Gin sent their Master Distiller, Lesley Gracie and Global Ambassador, David Piper to the Venezuelan rainforest last year on a Perilous Botanical Quest, guided by Charles Brewer Carias, the septuagenarian adventurer who has discovered an entire sunken fleet of ships, species of scorpions and the world’s largest quartzite cave, amongst many other wonderful things…. 



Born and brought up in the hills outside Caracas, Venezuela, Charles is a veteran of over 250 expeditions. A Victorian explorer born a century too late; Charles is a throwback to the age of Von Humboldt, Schomburgk, Spruce, Waterton, Im Thurn, Clementi and other Victorian men and women who poked around the far corners of the earth. Inspired by these exploring greats, Charles has followed in their footsteps with an impressive list of discoveries to his name. 

He’s discovered the oldest caves on Earth at Autana Tepui, the largest sinkholes in the world of Cerro Sarisariñama, and living silica organisms dated to over a million years old that he has named Biospeleothems, found inside the world’s largest known quartzite cave that he also discovered. Twenty-nine new species of plants, insects, snails and frogs have also been discovered by and named after Charles. 

All of Charles’ some 250 expeditions to discover and publish geographical, anthropological, ethnographic, genetic, botanical, geological, or speleological items have been made in the Guayana Highlands of Venezuela. This is the area of the high plateaus and Lost Worlds, south of the Orinoco River and north of the Amazon River. With his magnificent moustache and encyclopedic knowledge of the peoples, flora and fauna of the Amazon; Charles was the perfect leader for the ‘Hendrick’s Perilous Botanical Quest’. His knowledge of the largely unexplored and inaccessible Venezuelan interior and his ability to talk with the natives in this region, were an invaluable asset to the Hendrick’s expedition team, that and his 2.7 second world-record for starting fire with sticks... 

Intrigued to know more about the Hendrick’s Perilous Botanical Quest? Visit http://www.hendricksgin.com/ More to come in articles two through four!

Jigokudani Monkey Park (all photographs by the author)

It’s not easy to get to Jigokudani Monkey Park, which is probably why it still exists. The nearest town, Yamanouchi, is nestled deep in the Japanese Alps — the mountain range that forms the jagged spine of the island of Honshū. The town is a four hour train ride from Tokyo, and the park a further half-hour hike from its outskirts, along a narrow mountain path often covered in snow.

The distance affords Jigokudani some relief from the throngs of tourists who crowd into the attractions closer to Tokyo. Nevertheless, the park hosts a steady stream of visitors even in the most inclement of weather, all of whom have come to see a troop of Japanese macaques bathe in a natural hot spring.

The macaque is an exceptionally intelligent animal, and researchers have long been intrigued by its ability to both learn new skills and pass those skills down to subsequent generations. In 1954, for example, a female macaque named Imo learned to wash the sand off of her sweet potatoes by dunking them in the sea; later, she and her troop started dunking all their food in the ocean, sand or no sand, because they liked the salty taste. Japanese macaques have also been observed playing with snowballs and sticks, and there have been reports of macaques near Osaka stealing wallets and purses and using the coins inside to buy food from vending machines.

Then again, a macaque named Zoro once ruled his troop for almost 12 years because he stole a banana from the previous alpha male, so perhaps the reports of their intelligence are a trifle overstated.

Over the years that they’ve bathed at the hot springs, the macaques of Jigokudani have become fairly human-indifferent — as far as I could tell, they paid us no attention at all. Some of the human visitors weren’t very polite, ignoring the many signs imploring them to keep their distance, instead crowding around the macaques for photo ops.

To be fair, it was often difficult to avoid interacting with the monkeys. At one point, I was crouching down to photograph one macaque when I felt something brush my side; another macaque was using me as a sort of lean-to for protection from the falling snow.

Visiting Jigokudani is like activating a cheat code for wildlife photography: not only are the monkeys extremely cute, with their old-man-faces and their wide, expressive eyes, but you can also get as close to them as you like. I kept imagining a National Geographic photographer, fresh from a blind in the Serengeti or something, wandering around the park muttering “bullshit” under his breath.

At times the whole scene seemed a bit silly, all of us wandering among the monkeys, furiously snapping photographs. Our presence, and the lengths we had gone through to get to the park, was proof that someone else’s photographs weren’t wholly satisfying, and we hauled our DSLRs and tripods up the mountain nevertheless. There's just something innately compelling about these macaques and their curious habits, and we wanted to see them for ourselves, and capture them as best we could.

All photographs by the author. 

Discover more of the world's fascinating primates on Atlas Obscura > 

The clock tower on the U-Haul building in Flushing, Queens (all photos by the author)

The four-sided clock tower that presides over Queens, New York, from atop the U-Haul building on College Point Boulevard along Flushing Creek has long been frozen. For years the hands have been stuck at about 11 o'clock — those that hadn't fallen off, that is — but a restoration is underway to bring the historic timepiece back to life. 

"As part of U-Haul's sustainability efforts, we prefer to reuse existing buildings and preserve as many of the historical aspects of the building as possible," explained Will Wolff III, Marketing Company President of the U-Haul Company of Brooklyn/Queens/Staten Island. "While the clock doesn't necessarily serve a purpose at the location directly, our operation does serve the community. Having the clock running is a benefit to the community more than anything."

The W. J. Sloane Furniture Co. in 1927 & 1935 on the Flushing Creek (via NYPL)

The building, and its timepiece made by the Seth Thomas Clock Company in Connecticut, dates to 1925. It was constructed by W & J. Sloane Furniture Co. for their subsidiary, the Company of Master Craftsmen. Serval Zipper Company, which made, as its name suggests, fasteners, purchased the building in 1942. In 1979 it was taken over by U-Haul, which continues to operate a storage center in the space to this day. 

The restoration project started with an initial investigation of the space in December of last year. The journey up to the tower is a precarious one, with a winding staircase followed by a steep ladder. The long-abandoned clock tower was in a state of disarray in December (the photographs in this post are from Atlas Obscura's visit that month), but the scaffolding that extended up the high ceiling and the light filtering through the clock faces still hinted at a stately past.

Spiral staircase to the clock tower

One of the clock faces

Vertical view of the clock tower from beneath the center differential

NYC Clock Master Marvin Schneider examining the timepiece

The clock was in pieces, its gears and parts bent and scattered around the debris. Joining that initial inspection to give a technical assessment were Marvin Schneider — New York City's Clock Master — and Forrest Merkowitz, who have both worked on clocks around the boroughs, including the weekly winding of the timepiece on top of the New York City Municipal Offices on Broadway and Leonard Street in Manhattan.

"The first surprise was that we weren't missing as many parts as we thought," Wolff said. As workers with U-Haul, along with Peter Dispensa, a Project Manager at New York City Department of Environmental Protection, worked through the wreckage, they found that quite a few of the gears and other pieces were hidden in the grime. Some were warped and needed to be straightened, but a project that they'd anticipated costing between $25,000 to $100,000 was suddenly reduced to around $5,000.

Ceiling of the clock tower

Clock face behind an old wooden ladder

It's still quite an undertaking, as sometime during Serval's ownership of the clock it was changed from a pendulum-operated mechanical system to a motor. "After the motor, everything is still original," Wolff said. "We had some initial problems with the broken gears because at first glance they appeared aluminum which can't be repaired, but we later discovered that most of the parts are bronze, which allowed us to be able to repair the original gears rather than recreate them from scratch."

Some of the panes of milky glass in the clock faces still need to be replaced, but the motor is on its way to being rebuilt, and the center gear differential is being reassembled, ready to control the clock hands that will be remade and fixed on the exteriors of the faces. At the project's completion, they hope to have all original Seth Thomas Clock Company equipment with no reproductions in the clock tower.

View of a clock face

Original clock part

While not many may look to the clock to get the time these days, the clock tower is an icon of pride for many in the Flushing area, long a visible structure from the bleachers Shea Stadium and elsewhere in the Queens neighborhood. Included in U-Haul's project is a space that will tell the story of the clock, including its restoration, and they hope to have a way for visitors from the public to see the timepiece. As Dispensa, who is from the area emphasized, "I really like that this is doing something for my hometown." 

View of the interior scaffolding

Some clock debris in the space

Two of the clock faces

The center clock mechanism area that connects to the four faces

The U-Haul building

All photographs by the author.

Explore more astounding timepieces from around the world on Atlas Obscura >

Detail of a memento mori tableau by Josef Scheuplein, where death visits a doctor & scientist (via Wikimedia)

The mummified bodies, body parts, and bones of holy men and women have been preserved and revered all over the world. These human remains are venerated as reminders of the life and works of the deceased, but this isn’t exclusively a religious practice.

Scientists have long been celebrated for their genius, discoveries, and inventions long after they die. The preserved relics of some famous scientists are exhibited in museums with the same reverence as the bones of any saint or martyr shown in a church. The display of these relics is a means of venerating great people, but it's also sometimes been for research, or as a keepsake between friends. But one of the greatest scientists ever didn’t want this posthumous worship.

Photo by Thomas Harvey of Einstein's brain (via Wikimedia)

The brain of Nobel prize-winning physicist and all-around genius Albert Einstein (1879-1955) has been the subject of a lot of research and controversy. After Einstein died in Princeton Hospital, on April 17, 1955, Thomas Harvey, the pathologist on call, removed his brain, without the permission of Einstein or his family, within hours of his death. Harvey photographed Einstein’s brain from many angles, and sectioned it into 240 blocks, from which he made dozens of slides. He eventually lost his job because of this scandal, but Harvey was able to keep Einstein’s brain.

Brian Burrell in his book Postcards from the Brain Museum wrote that Einstein didn’t want his brain or body to be studied, because he was conscious of the public’s obsession with the celebrity of remains. But Einstein’s son, Hans Albert Einstein, reluctantly sanctioned the removal of his father’s brain, but stipulated that it should only be used for research.

In 2010, Harvey’s family gave the remains of Einstein’s brain to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, including 14 never-before-seen photographs of the brain. Recently, 46 small portions of Einstein’s brain were acquired by the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. In 2013, the thin slices, mounted on microscope slides, went on display at the museum.

Death head of Antonio Scarpa (via Wellcome Images)

Antonio Scarpa (1752 – 1832) was an Italian anatomist and professor recognized for his observations on structures of the ear and nose. He was also the first to accurately depict the heart’s nerves and to show cardiac innervation, and he described the cellular structure of bone, along with making notes on bone growth and diseases.

Scarpa was also an extremely wealthy, arrogant man who was infamous for spreading rumors about his rivals. He was so disliked that marble statues erected in his memory were defaced. After Scarpa’s death in 1832, his assistant performed an autopsy, during which his head, thumb, index finger, and urinary tract were removed. Scarpa’s head is now displayed in the Museo per la storia dell’Università di Pavia.

Galileo's finger (photograph by Marc Roberts)

In 1633, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was convicted of heresy for his support of heliocentrism (the observation that the Earth and planets revolve around the sun) and imprisoned for the rest of his life. After he died, Galileo was entombed in an obscure, small room at the end of a hallway at Basilica of Santa Croce in Tuscany.

In 1737, his remains were unearthed in a ceremony, during which three fingers from his right hand, a tooth, and a vertebra were removed. Galileo was then reburied in a prominent marble tomb in the chapel of the basilica. His middle finger is now displayed in an egg-shaped reliquary in the Galileo Museum in Florence.

Statue of Lazzaro Spallanzani (photograph by Sergio Barbieri)

Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729 –1799) was a biologist and physiologist who made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions, and animal reproduction. His research of biogenesis helped to disprove the concept of spontaneous generation — the belief that living organisms develop from nonliving matter — and paved the way for Louis Pasteur’s research.

Spallanzani died from bladder cancer on February 12, 1799, in Pavia, Italy. After his death, his bladder was removed by his colleagues so that it could be studied, and it was publicly displayed in a museum in Pavia — the same museum that has Scarpa’s head — where it remains today.

Edison's last breath (photograph by John Kannenberg)

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was one of the most prolific inventors in American history, famous for his work on the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the electric light bulb. Edison set up a laboratory complex in rural Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876, nicknamed “The Invention Factory,” where he employed a large staff of machinists, engineers, and physicists. Henry Ford (1863-1947) followed Edison’s career and worked for him as chief engineer, and Edison encouraged Ford’s work on the gas-powered automobile. Over the years the two developed a relationship founded on mutual respect and admiration.

As the story goes, Ford asked Thomas Edison’s son Charles to sit by the dying inventor’s bedside and hold test tubes next to his father’s mouth to catch his final breath so that he could reanimate Edison. (Charles didn't exactly carry out the request, but there were eight test tubes in the room where Edison died that were sealed.) One of the test tubes turned up in 1951, when the Henry Ford Museum received a lot of hundreds of items after Henry Ford’s wife, Clara, passed away. The museum staff found a letter from Charles Edison to a columnist where he states that the test tube just happened to be in the room where Edison died, and that it was given to Henry Ford as a memento of Edison’s life. It's now on display at the Henry Ford Museum. 

Urn holding Tesla's ashes (photograph by Martin Lopatka)

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was an inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and physicist famous for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. On January 7, 1943, Tesla, died alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel at the age of 86.

After his death, Tesla was cremated, and his remains were moved to Belgrade in 1957. The Nikola Tesla Museum was founded in 1952 in Belgrade, Serbia, to honor the life and work of the scientist. In the third room of the museum, Tesla’s ashes reside in a gold-plated spherical urn on a marble pedestal. Recently a dispute erupted between Serbian scientists and the Orthodox church after it was announced that Tesla’s ashes will be reburied in Belgrade’s St Sava church this July. Serbian scientists vehemently oppose this decision because Tesla was not religious.

For more fascinating stories of forensic anthropology visit Dolly Stolze's Strange Remains, where a version of this article also appeared. 

Morbid Mondays highlight macabre stories from around the world and through time, indulging in our morbid curiosity for stories from history's darkest corners. Read more Morbid Mondays>

Musical Road sign in Japan (photograph by Tzuhsun Hsu) 

While driving in Japan you may see a treble clef curiously gracing a road sign or painted right on the asphalt, and then hear a shaky tune resonating through the vehicle. These musical roads can also be found in the United States, South Korea, and Denmark, although Japan is really the hub for humming highways with over 20 musical roads in the country.

The most famous, however, is likely the "William Tell Overture" finale built into a road in Lancaster, California. The musical roads in Japan and South Korea were designed to keep drivers alert on treacherous turns and stretches of highway where accidents commonly occur, similar to the rumble strips that give a "tactile vibration" to warn fatigued motorists who are veering off the road or coming up to a hazardous area. The Lancaster road, on the other hand, was made for a Honda Civic commercial. But all of them require driving at the speed limit to hear the music, whether it's "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in South Korea or fragments of a Japanese pop song.

A melody road in Japan (photograph by kermiekitty/Flickr user)

The first of these roads on record — the pleasingly named Asphaltophone — was made in 1995 in Denmark by artists Steen Krarup Jensen and Jakob Freud-Magnus, who strategically spaced out raised markers to turn the road into an instrument. The principle for all the musical roads, even as they've gotten more elaborate, has stayed the same. As ABC News explained, the distance between the grooves, which has to be between 5.3 and 10.6 centimeters, creates the melody, and the rhythm is made by the length of those grooves, resonating in the car.

Not all musical roads are equal in their effectiveness; sometimes the melody is distorted into an off-key unpleasantness. You can listen to a few below, and we also recommend visiting the round up of musical roads on the sound tourism site of Trevor Cox, who we recently spoke to about his new book on the sonic wonders of the world.

Tune into more of the world's musical wonders on Atlas Obscura >

Enjoying the sunset on New York City's High Line (photograph by Filipp Solovev)

Many obsolete industrial areas are having their urban infrastructure adapted from a place of work into a place of play. The best known of these projects is New York City’s High Line — a section of elevated railroad tracks in Manhattan that was turned into a vibrant green space floating above the city.  

But the High Line is just one of many similar projects. Cities all over the United States have been transforming pieces of themselves into new green and recreational spaces for rock climbers, BASE jumpers, and even trapeze artists. 

Pier 40
New York City, New York

Pier 40 (photograph by Alexander Baxevanis)

Not far from the High Line is Pier 40, once a busy cargo and passenger ship facility. Built in 1962, the pier was used primarily by the Holland-America line to board transatlantic passenger ships and offload cargo directly into Manhattan. But these uses were already in rapid decline when the pier was built. By the 1970s, it was mostly used as a neighborhood parking lot. 

In 1998, the Hudson River Park Trust was established to manage and develop the area. What was once 15 acres of bare concrete is now home to two busy soccer fields, a boathouse, and the Trapeze School New York. 

Trapeze School at Pier 40 (photograph by Santos Gonzalez)

The Atlanta BeltLine
Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta BeltLine (photograph by ciambellina/Flickr user)

In its previous life, the Atlanta BeltLine was a 22-mile rail corridor encircling the city of Atlanta. Now, the former rail easement is being redeveloped into a connected network of parks and multi-use trails that will link many of the city's outlying areas. The first section of the project opened to the public in 2008, and work is continuing to complete the circuit.  

Historic Fourth Ward Park, a section of the Atlanta BeltLine (photograph by Timothy J. Carroll)

James River Park System
Richmond, Virginia

The author at Pipeline Park on the James River (photograph by Jill Fox)

The James River Park System includes numerous greenspaces on the banks of the James, at least two of which incorporate aging infrastructure into riverfront recreation.  

Pipeline Park (photograph by the author)

At Pipeline Park, a 1,500-foot drainage pipeline cuts across a section of the James River, with a catwalk on top for maintenance access. As more and more people began using the pipeline to get to the water, the city eventually added signage and made it an official part of the park system. Now, people can swim and fish from a large sandy beach, see kayakers tackling a popular section of whitewater, and watch a thriving population of Great Blue Herons hunt and raise their chicks — all just a few steps from downtown Richmond. 

At Manchester Wall, the remnants of an old railroad bridge have become one of the most popular sport climbing areas in central Virginia. Sixty feet high and built from rough-hewn blocks of granite, the wall and trestle towers have over 40 mapped climbing routes.

Climbing at Manchester Wall (photograph by Eli Christman)

Walkway Over the Hudson
Poughkeepsie, New York

Walkway Over the Hudson (photograph by Daniel Tobias)

The world’s longest elevated pedestrian bridge is built atop the remnants of an old railroad near Poughkeepsie, New York.

The Poughkeepsie-Highland railroad bridge was built in the late 1800s and carried passenger and freight traffic until 1974, when it was severely damaged in a fire. Today it forms the basis of a 1.3-mile long walkway that lets visitors stroll 200 feet above the Hudson River. The bridge brings together the two sections of Hudson State Historic Park, which are located on opposite banks. In June of this year, the bridge will try to add a second superlative, hosting an attempt to break the world record for the “longest handshake relay.”

The 1.3 mile long walkway over the Hudson (photograph by Adam Jones)

Parklets and Urban Air
Throughout the United States

Urban Air project (via Kickstarter)

Not all of these adaptations are permanent. Communities around the country are installing pop-up green spaces called “parklets” in areas as small as a single parking spot. San Francisco helped kick off this trend in 2010 with their “Pavement to Parks” program, which has built 38 of these temporary spaces around the city, and the program has spread all over the world.   

In Los Angeles, an artist has developed a toolkit to turn old billboards into floating bamboo forests. Called “Urban Air,” Stephen Glassman’s project is designed to be more aesthetically pleasing than the advertisements it replaces, and also benefits the environment by filtering pollution from the air. The artist and a group of collaborators raised $100,000 on Kickstarter to develop a standardized kit that can be used to transform any billboard into an Urban Air bamboo forest.

A temporary "parklet" in San Francisco (photograph by Mark Hogan)

New River Gorge Bridge
Fayetteville, West Virginia

The New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia (photograph by Jon Dawson)

While not technically an adaptive reuse, this last piece of infrastructure is too cool to leave out. For one day each year, the New River Gorge Bridge is transformed from a mundane highway into the epicenter of the American BASE jumping community.

When the 876-foot-high span opened in 1977, it was the highest automobile bridge in the world. This record has since been surpassed, but it is still an impressive sight. On “Bridge Day” each fall, hundreds of people come to jump from the bridge and parachute to the bottom of the gorge. Thousands more turn out to watch — from the bridge, from the shore, and from rafts, kayaks, and other boats on the New River below. See for yourself in this video from 2012:

Viaduc de Caramel, France (photograph by Jpmgir/Wikimedia)

Bridges to nowhere are international monuments of failure. Whether the highways meant to connect to them never got built, funding dried out, contracts got canceled, or they were hit by a disaster and left to ruin, these bridges are an overpass to nothing. Some like the isolated Viaduct Petrobras in the Brazilian jungle have found new life as destinations for bungee jumpers and rappellers, but most just wait idly for a purpose that may never arrive. In Germany there are so many of these bridges to nowhere due to a stunted Autobahn plan that they have their own term — "Soda-Brücke" — a pun roughly meaning "just there."

Here is a collection of some of the world's bridges to nowhere:

Castrop-Rauxel-Merklinde, Germany (photograph by DerHessi/Wikimedia)

Germany (photograph by Roehrensee/Wikimedia)

Euskirchen, Germany (photograph by Ketti2606/Wikimedia)

Vosges, France (photograph by Tangopaso/Wikimedia)

Viaduc du Carrei, Alpes-Maritimes, France (photograph by Tangopaso/Wikimedia)

Viaduc de Monti, Alpes-Maritimes, France (photograph by Tangopaso/Wikimedia)

Toulouse, France (photograph by Wojsyl/Wikimedia)

Maungaparua Stream, New Zealand (photograph by Joerg Mueller)

Dartmoor, UK (photograph by Gwyn Jones)

Dartmoor, UK (photograph by Guy Wareham)

East Midlands, UK (photograph by Alan Murray-Rust)

Lancaster Canal, UK (photograph by Geoff Kowalcyzk)

Guyhirn Wash, UK (photograph by Richard Humphrey)

East Wichel, UK (photograph by Brian Robert Marshall)

D & RG Narrow Gauge Trestle, Colorado (via Wikimedia)

Kinzua Viaduct, Pennsylvania, toppled by a 2003 tornado (photograph by Nicholas/Wikimedia)

South Platte River, Colorado (photograph by Fuzzy Gerdes)

San Gabriel Mountains, California (photograph by Jason Hickey)

photograph by Whewes

Belhaven, Scotland, which is only a bridge to nowhere in high tide (photograph by Martin Burns)

Monroe, Florida (photograph by Harald/Flickr user)

Chennai, India (photograph by Nagesh Jayaraman)

Taiwan (photograph by Alexander Synaptic)

North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (photograph by Ralf Peter Reimann)

British Columbia, Canada (photograph by Dave Bezaire & Susi Havens-Bezaire)

Somerset, Bermuda (photograph by Larry Lamb) 

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (photograph by A. Thompson)

 
photograph by Libor Krayzel

St. Louis, Missouri (photograph by Matthew Hurst)

Pacific Northwest (photograph by Senia L.)

Quebec, Canada (photograph by Jason Carter)

Cabarete, Dominican Republic (photograph by Brad Perkins)

Mindenville, New York (photograph by Russ Nelson)

Avignon, France (photograph by Johnny Andrew Sherwood)

Sealy, Texas (photograph by Patrick Feller)

Bryan, Texas (photograph by Patrick Feller)

Big Flats, New York (photograph by Russ Nelson)

Eisenbahn, Germany (photograph by Störfix/Wikimedia)

Strépy-Bracquegnies, Hainaut, Belgium (photograph by Friedrich Tellberg)

Miles Glacier Bridge, Alaska, damaged by a 1964 earthquake (photograph by Jet Lowe)

Birmingham, England (photograph by Elliott Brown)

photograph by Jarrod Lombardo

Maldonado, Uruguay (photograph by Jimmy Baikovicius)

London, England (photograph by Secret Pilgrim)

Green Elm, Texas (photograph by Nicolas Henderson) 

Venture to more incredible ruins on Atlas Obscura > 

Centralia today (all photographs by the author)

When you think of American ghost towns, it's likely that you picture a crumbling Wild West outpost. However, in the middle of Pennsylvania, there's a town that disappeared far more recently. In many ghost towns, it's the collapse of an industry that caused people to leave. In Centralia, it was the industry itself that resulted in this abandoned town.

Centralia was a quaint town of over 2,000 residents in Columbia County, Pennsylvania. The large coal deposits below the ground helped turn Centralia into a bustling business center in the early parts of the 20th century. All was well until 1962, when an exposed seam of coal caught on fire during a routine trash burning at the landfill.

Sign for Centralia

Over the next two decades, several attempts were made to put out the underground fire, but the its virtually unlimited source of fuel made the attempts futile. Citizens of Centralia knew of the fire, but it wasn't until 1979 that its extent was fully understood by residents and scientists. It was a local gas station owner who discovered the fire's true danger when he measured the temperature of his underground storage tanks at 172 degrees — 100 degrees higher than normal.

A few years later, a young boy was swallowed by a large sinkhole caused by the mine fire and was lucky to survive. That incident, the increasing number of sick residents, and the rising levels of carbon monoxide spelled the end for Centralia.

Over the next few decades, more and more local residents moved from Centralia. As the population decreased, buildings were torn down until almost nothing was left.

Today, only a handful of buildings and residents remain in Centralia. What was once a bustling town is now eerily quiet.

Empty streets

A stop sign for no traffic

As you drive along the streets, it becomes harder and harder to tell that a town once stood there: forests have reclaimed the land, remnants of sidewalks buckle beneath expanding roots, stairs lead nowhere, and sidewalks have crumbled. At a few intersections, lonely stop signs feel out of place without traffic.

No visit to Centralia is complete without a stroll down the abandoned Route 61. Stretching about three quarters of a mile, this destroyed section of road has been given the nickname “The Graffiti Highway,” because it is covered in tags and drawings. Some of it is insightful, and some is art, but a significant amount is less than family-friendly.

"Welcome to the Graffiti Highway"

Remains of Route 61

Roughly mid-way along the abandoned road is the best evidence of the destructive forces of the fire burning below. Like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, a large crack has torn its way through the highway. It was this crack that necessitated the entire highway be rerouted to avoid massive repair bills. Today, having been left untouched for many years, it's a great place to understand the power of the forces below Centralia.

Amidst all the destruction, evidence of the town's past still remains on the outskirts of town. At Centralia's three cemeteries, grass is still mowed and some graves show signs of visitors. A small park in town still holds Centralia's time capsule. Buried just a few short years after the mine fire was started, it's due to be opened in 2016, perhaps giving the town one last hurrah.

Abandoned trash can

The last remaining church in Centralia

The future of Centralia is unfortunately no brighter than its present. Scientists estimate that there may be enough coal underground to burn for 250 more years, ensuring that no one will return to rebuild Centralia in the short term. However, a sliver of hope can be found along the hillsides above Centralia. In an area destroyed by mining there are now wind turbines producing clean energy for the surrounding community. Maybe it will be clean energy that becomes the legacy of this forgotten coal town.

Jim Cheney is a freelance travel writer and photographer based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. You can find more of his work at UncoveringPA.com and Tripologist.com.

Our fellow explorers over at Hendrick's Gin have been up to some very interesting things, taking an expedition to Venezuela in search of a mysterious botanical with veteran explorer Charles Brewer Carias! Here is part two of the article series documenting the 'Hendrick’s Perilous Botanical Quest': 

Watch as the ‘Hendrick’s Perilous Botanical Quest’ adventurers put on a brave face and search for botanicals that taste sublime and will not likely kill them…

Since Hendrick’s broke new ground with its most peculiar cucumber and rose petal infused gin, Master Distiller, Lesley Gracie, has continued to tinker away, experimenting with all manner of wondrous spirits and natural ingredients to seek out unusual and interesting flavours for imbibing.

Her continuous curiosity and devoted pursuit of the extraordinary saw her and Global Ambassador, David Piper embark on a marvelous endeavour last year – an intrepid expedition to the depths of the Venezuelan rainforest. They ventured to the home of some of the most diverse flora and fauna in the world in pursuit of a remarkable and decidedly delectable botanical with which to create an incredibly limited batch of Hendrick’s Gin.

Under the stewardship of Mr. Charles Brewer Carias, one of the world’s most distinguished mustachioed explorers, and renowned expert botanist, Francisco Delascio, Lesley and David trekked through the remote wilderness of the rainforest on a search for a most extraordinary botanical. Over the course of the expedition, the team covered several different terrains of the Guayana Highlands, from savannahs and mountain foots to riverbanks and the deep rainforest. Drenched from the frequent torrential downpours and usually exhausted from the previous day of trekking, the expedition team needed to keep a weary eye out for any potentially dangerous rainforest ‘friends’.

Find out more about the Hendrick’s Perilous Botanical Quest at http://www.hendricksgin.com/ More to come in articles three and four!

On Mackinac Island, old-fashioned fudge shops abound and visitors ride around its rocky shoreline in buggies or on bikes — motor vehicles are mostly prohibited to maintain its quaint charm. This popular Michigan vacation spot is deeply rooted in a history as a fur-trading outpost in the early 19th century. One building, though, was the unlikely spot of a important, and unsettling, ongoing science experiment.

The old general store on Mackinac Island, just off of the tip of Michigan's Lower Penninsula, is lined with dark, lacquered shelves. Dried herbs and meat hang from the walls and large glass jars sit atop the front counter. It’s here where the accident occurred.

A period re-enactor stands before the general store display which has been recreated to look as it did in the early 1800s.  (courtesy Mackinac State Historic Parks)

In the summer of 1822, a customer at the store accidentally fired a carelessly loaded shotgun. The bullet sank deep into the abdomen of Alexis St. Martin, a 19-year-old trapper who worked for the American Fur Company. Dr. William Beaumont, posted to the fort which still looms just above the store, hurried to St. Martin’s side, but feared the worst. The man’s left lung was singed and exposed, several ribs were broken, and bits of muscle were blown off. 

In a few weeks, however, the wound began to heal and a year later, St. Martin was in good health — with one notable peculiarity. His skin had fused to the gunshot wound through the wall of his stomach, leaving an opening into his body. At first, the fistula was source of awe to Beaumont who could peer through it to the inner workings of a living man. Over the better part of the next decade, the doctor made this medical oddity the source of 238 experiments, which contributed previously unknown insights into the process of digestion.  

Alexis St. Martin

Beaumont, an army doctor with only a few years of medical training as an apprentice, was an eager student of physiology. He began his experiments by pushing bits of food into St. Martin’s fistula on a spoon and monitoring the various lengths of time it took to break them down. Then he tried tying these morsels to string and withdrawing them at various intervals to monitor their decomposition within the gut. It was in this way that he discovered that the stomach uses hydrochloric acid to break down food.

He also collected samples of digestive “juice” from inside of St. Martin to mimic digestion in a cup. This showed him that digestion is mainly a chemical process, and not reliant on stomach muscles. His research also forged the basis for dietetics because of his study of the digestibility of different foods and the impact of stimulants like coffee or alcohol, as well as the impact of mood, temperature, and physical activity on digestion. 

Engraving from Dr. William Beaumont's book based on his experiments on Alexis St. Martin. (via connectictuhistory.org)

These experiments would often leave St. Martin feeling ill — nauseous or constipated — but it seems Beaumont had little regard for his patient as anything other than a test subject. Beaumont even called St. Martin a “villian” and “ungrateful” in his correspondence. The doctor took great strides to keep his human lab on hand, and hired him to help around his house for a time, and later got him a post in the U.S. Army so he could move along with Beaumont as he was posted to different military outposts across the country. This allowed the doctor to keep peering into St. Martin's belly.

A French Canadian, St. Martin longed to stay in Quebec with his family, especially after he lost two children to sickness, but he may have felt he owed the doctor for saving his life. So he allowed the experiments to continue for eight years, refusing to do so only after the doctor published his book, Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion in 1833.

A portrait of Dr. William Beaumont (via Wikimedia)

In 1833, the two parted ways for good. It is Mackinac Island on Lake Michigan — the site of the gunshot wound and Beaumont's first experiments — where much of this unusual experiment's history is preserved and even honored. 

The general store where St. Martin was shot looks almost as it did on that June day in 1822, with its shelves stocked with items that would have been for sale at the time. The building was refurbished and made open to visitors to the island in 2000. 

The retail store where Alexis St. Martin was shot (via Wikimedia)

 
A child plays with the interactive display about Dr. Beaumont's experiment on St. Martin (courtesy Mackinac State Historic Parks)

Inside the old American Fur Company Store, an interactive display and informational panels outline the doctor’s experiments. A mannequin of St. Martin, with a macabre hole in its side, invites visitors to get a sense of his influential wound.  

Dissect more medical history destinations on Atlas Obscura >

Australians, it seems, have a penchant for oversized things. From the Big Boxing Crocodile in Humpty Doo, Northern Territory (not to be confused with the plain old Big Crocodile in Wyndham, Western Australia, or, in fact, any of the other three Big Crocodiles), to the Big Penguin, in Penguin, Tasmania, oversized roadside statuary is all the rage. There are over 150 examples of these gargantuan creatures, and here is a look at some of the highlights of things that are big in Australia. 

Queensland

Big Ned Kelly, Maryborough (photograph by Stuart Edwards)

While New South Wales is the indisputable capital of "Big Things" in Australia, I wanted to start in Queensland, not only because I live here, but also because it’s a primary destination for both international and interstate visitors. Especially the state’s tropical north.

Cairns is a hotspot for backpackers, and is home to (or nearby to) eight Big Things, including two of the Big Crocodiles. In Cairns itself, there is the Big Captain Cook who looms 14 meters (46 feet) over the road leading to and from Cairns International Airport, as well as the Big Marlin, at Earlville Shopping Centre,  which stands at 10 meters (38 feet) tall. In nearby Mission Beach stands the Big Cassowary, at four meters (13 feet) tall, and is apparently seen as a threat by the local cassowaries, which allegedly attack it at night.

Big Mango, Bowen (photograph by Amos T Fairchild)

At Hartley’s Creek, a crocodile farm and zoo, is an eight meter (26 feet) long Big Crocodile. Also in the Cairns region are the Big Mud Crab (four meters, 31 feet, across), at Cardwell; the Big Mango (10 meters, or 33 feet, high), in Bowen; another Big Crocodile (two meters, seven feet, long), at Daintree; and the Big Gum Boot (eight meters, or 26 feet, high) in Tully.

On the Sunshine Coast, near Brisbane, are the Big Pineapple which, at 16 meters (52 feet) tall is the world’s largest pineapple, apparently, and is not only the scene of more than a few of my childhood memories, but also of a royal visit, as Prince Charles and Princess Diana visited in 1983.

The Sunshine Coast also features the Big Macadamia Nut (also 16 meters/52 feet tall), the Big Ned Kelly (an Australian bushranger and folk hero, standing at seven meters, or 23 feet), the Big Orange, the Big Lawn Mower, and the Big Shell.

Big Captain Cook (photograph by Fosnez/Wikimedia)

Big Cassowary, Misison Beach (photograph by SimonTFL/Wikimedia)

Big Macadamia Nut, Nambor (photograph by Fishieman15/Wikimedia)

Big Pineapple, Gympie (photograph by berichard/Wikimedia)

New South Wales

Big Merino, Goulburn (photograph by Bidgee/Wikimedia)

New South Wales is home to 50 of Australia’s Big Things – a third of the national total. These Big Things range from the (by now) ubiquitous "Big Fruits," to a Big Poo, from the border with Queensland to the southern tip of the state. There’s a Big Banana, and a Big Bunch of Bananas, both in Coffs Harbour, along with the Big Windmill. On the highway that runs southward down the coast, you can see a Big Bull Ant (designed by artist Pro Hart), a Big Avocado, Big Axe, a Big Ayers Rock (which isn’t as big as the real Uluru), a 15 meter (49 foot) tall Big Merino (by the name of Rambo), a Big Oyster, and a Big Prawn.

Big Prawn (via Wikimedia)

Other themes in "Big Things in New South Wales" include alcohol (the Big Wine Bottle at Pokolbin, the Big Beer Can in Cobar, and the now-painted-over Big Wine Cask in Mourquong), guitars (the world-famous-among-country-music-fans Big Golden Guitar at Tamworth, and the World’s Largest Playable Guitar, in Narrandera) and fish (two Big Trouts and a Big Murray Cod).

The best would be the Big Poo, constructed in 2002 in the town of Kiama, in protest of Sydney Water’s plan to recycle waste-water in the region, although a special mention must go to the World’s Biggest Sundial, in Singleton, which is no longer the world’s biggest.

Big Ayers Rock, North Arm Cove (photograph by Stuart Edwards)

Big Axe, Kew (photograph by Stuart Edwards)

Big Oyster, Taree (photograph by Stuart Edwards)

Singleton Sundial (photograph by Bandworthy/Wikimedia)

Big Murray Cod, Swan Hill (photograph by Whinging Pom/Wikimedia)

Big Trout, Adaminaby (photograph by Robert Merkel)

Big Wine Cask, Mourquong (photograph by Mattinbgn/Wikimedia)

The Australian Capital Territory

Giant Mushroom, Belconnen (photograph by Stuart Edwards)

The Australian Capital Territory, which is located halfway between Sydney, New South Wales, and Melbourne, has only one Big Thing — the Giant Mushroom, which stands at eight meters (26 feet) tall. And it was built in 1998. Most Big Things, on the contrary, were built in the more aesthetically excusable 1970s and 80s.

Victoria

Giant Koala, Dadswells Bridge (photograph by Mattinbgn/Wikimedia)

Continuing south down the eastern seaboard into Victoria, we come across 29 more Big Things, including Fish Creek’s the Big Dead Fish, and two Big Koalas — one in Cowes, one in Dadswells Bridge. Cowes has the Big Tap (faucet) as well as the smaller Big Koala.

There are two Big Tobacco Products, one in the town of Churchill, after the cigars Winston Churchill smoked, and the other in Myrtleford, which is no longer painted as the Big Smoke. A special mention must go to one of the two Big Apples in Victoria (there are eight Big Apples in Australia), which Wikipedia sadly lists as having been “removed from display at the road side when the adjacent fruit shop closed down. It now sits behind a fence next to a dumpster.”

Big Tap, Cowes (photograph by Bilby/Wikimedia)

Big Apple (photograph by Stuart Edwards)

Big Koala, Cowes (photograph by Bilby/Wikimedia)

Big Dead Fish, Fish Creek (photograph by Bilby/Wikimedia)

Tasmania

Big Penguin at Penguin (photograph by Stuart Edwards)

Tasmania, or Tassie, as it is known among Australians and fans of Amanda Palmer, is an island-state, and has only ten Big Things. Only the Australian Capital Territory has less, with one.

Of the ten Tasmanian Big Things, perhaps the most famous is Penguin’s Big Penguin, which stands at a paltry three meters (10 feet) tall. The town itself is named for the rookeries of penguins common on its coast. In Latrobe, Tasmania’s home of Big Things, are the Big Cherry and the Big Platypus. Hobart, the state’s capital, has the Big Slide Rule, at the University of Tasmania’s School of Mathematics and Physics.

Big Platypus, Latrobe (photograph by Stuart Edwards)

Western Australia

Big Crocodile, Wyndham (photograph by Christopher Rosser)

Western Australia  is home to the Principality of Hutt River, an independent micro-nation (which features an almost-Big Thing, a bust of Prince Leonard) and of one of the Big Crocodiles (a whopper, in Wyndham, in the state’s north, at 18 meters, 59 feet, long).

Western Australia also has the Big Magic Mushroom, at Balingup, where, to again quote trusty Wikipedia, “are found mushroom varieties of interest to both drug users and law enforcement agencies.” In Kalamunda, Perth, is Big Bobtail, a nine meter long blue-tongued lizard made of rammed earth and named after a lizard that once lived locally, and the World’s Tallest Bin — an eight meter tall bin that can be found on Hannan Street in Kalgoorlie. Denmark, a town in the far south of the state, has probably the world’s most useful Big Thing — the Bert Bolle Barometer, a working barometer 12 and a half meters tall.

Northern Territory

The Northern Territory has four Big Things, and has the second smallest population of an Australian state or territory. Of those four Big Things, it probably has one of Australia’s most impressive, not for its size, but for its style: the Big Boxing Crocodile, in Humpty Doo, which stands eight metres high.

Big Boxing Crocodile, Humpty Doo (photograph by Stuart Edwards)

The Northern Territory also has the Big Stockwhip in Acacia, which is seven meters tall and ten meters long, the Big Stubbie (Australian slang for a bottle of beer), and the Big Aboriginal Hunter at the Anmatjere Community, a small community 150 kilometers north of Alice Springs. 

While Australia might not have a huge number of the world’s largest or tallest sites, it could compete anywhere for Big Things. And if you do manage to come down on vacation, or if you’re an Australian who hasn’t seen many of these Big Things, do yourself and the local communities a favor and have a sticky beak (Australian slang for have a look). They’ll thank you for it, and you’ll definitely see something unexpected.

Lantern slide of the New York Public Library (via NYPL)

As the debate continues over the renovation of the main branch of the New York Public Library — a design by Norman Foster that would radically overhaul the stacks and other features of the historic Beaux-Arts building — we are looking at some of the city's less visible libraries. The NYPL has an incredible branch system across the five boroughs, but it's only a part of New York City's literary resources. From private clubs, to nonprofit societies, to pop up places right out in the streets, here are some of our favorite secret libraries of the city.

General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York
20 West 44th Street, Midtown, Manhattan

photograph by the author

Started in 1785, the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York has over 10,000 volumes that focus on trade and technical material. But even if you aren't looking to study up on your skills, the reading room in their 1820 home on 44th Street is a stunning space, where shelves of wood and iron climb up to a broad skylight. Be sure not to miss the incredible bank vault lock collection on the second floor. 

Grolier Club
47 E 60th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan

photograph by the author

No bibliophile should spend time in New York City without visiting the Grolier Club. The private club on the Upper East Side started in 1884 and has a research library with tomes on all things book related, including book selling, bookbinding, the history of printing, and book auction catalogs. It also hosts public exhibitions in its elegant spaces, with recent exhibitions focusing on the history of representing microscopic objects in books, and Czech pop up art. 

Conjuring Arts Research Center
11 West 30th Street, 5th Floor, Midtown, Manhattan

via conjuringarts.org

With over 12,000 books and artifacts, the Conjuring Arts Research Center invites visitors to learn the tricks of the secret trade. Manuscripts of magic methods dating back to the 15th century are available in the small library on 30th Street, as are magic props and ephemera of illusions from around the world. 

The Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library
71 West 23rd Street, 14th Floor, Midtown, Manhattan

photograph by the author

Located inside the Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons of the State of New York, the Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library has one of the largest collections on Freemasonry in the world. There are more than 60,000 volumes related to Masonic history, from its symbolism to biographies on its prominent members, and artifacts and other ephemera line the space in a very open secret society museum. 

New York Society Library
53 East 79th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan

via New York Society Library

New York City's oldest cultural institution may also be its most stately library. Started in 1754, the New York Society Library has a staggering 300,000 volumes, and adds another 4,000 annually. Only members can borrow or use its beautiful top floors, however. 

Center for Fiction
17 East 47th Street, Midtown, Manhattan

via centerforfiction.org

The only nonprofit organization in the United States dedicated to fiction is over on 47th Street. The Center for Fiction, with its roots in the Mercantile Library started in 1820, has a circulating collection of 85,000 volumes. The collections are rich in examples of mystery and detective fiction, and also include the books of the Marcel Proust Society. Only members can check out the books, but there are frequent public literary events.

Hispanic Society of America
613 West 155th Street, Washington Heights, Manhattan

photograph by the author

The Hispanic Society of America up at Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights is one of the city's most beautiful overlooked museums, with its Spanish art holdings including work by El Greco, Goya, and Velázquez. Even more overlooked is its library. With over 15,000 books dating prior to 1700, it has one of the most significant collections of such rare editions outside of Spain. There are also sailing charts, medieval charters, illuminated books, and contemporary texts on Hispanic culture, history, and geography. 

American Kennel Club Library
260 Madison Avenue, 4th Floor, Midtown, Manhattan

photograph by soggydan/Flickr user

Sadly, we don't think your dachshund can sprawl across texts at the American Kennel Club Library on Madison Avenue, but there are plenty of canines on the pages of its 18,000 tomes. The resource is one of the best libraries in the world dedicated to dogs, and includes works on dogs in history, art, literature, and the AKC history. 

Harvard Club of New York City
35 West 44th Street, Midtown, Manhattan

via Harvard Club

Up on the second floor of the McKim, Mead, & White-designed Harvard Club is a beautiful library with over 30,000 books. It's only available to members and their guests, and you have to heed the dress code, so if you get in, just bask in the exclusive glory of this Midtown reading space and consider yourself privileged. 

Horticultural Society
148 W 37th Street, Floor 13, Midtown, Manhattan

via Horticultural Society

All things plants are the focus of the Horticutural Society of New York. The Midtown space also includes the Barbara A. Margolis Library with over 12,000 books on gardening, botanical illustrations, American landscape history, and American agriculture going back to the 19th century. Anyone can peruse, although borrowing is just for "Hort members." It's also worth a visit for the exhibitions out in the main space, with the current show celebrating the mushroom obsessions of composer John Cage. 

Interference Archive
131 8th Street, #4, Gowanus, Brooklyn

photograph by the author

Opened in December of 2011, the Interference Archive in Gowanus is a small, but dense, library of activism history. The resource is run by volunteers and is heavy on the activist and punk rock movements of the 1980s and 90s, but on the shelves are zines, posters, books, protest ephemera, and audio and visual material from around the world.

Explorers Club
46 East 70th Street, Upper East Side, Manhattan

photograph by the author

Along with its taxidermy polar bear and other beasts and relics of expeditions, the Explorers Club on the Upper East Side has a library. It is, as you may guess, all about exploration, with over 13,000 volumes and 5,000 maps. Their archives also have photographs and newspaper clippings all related to exploration from the Arctic to the Amazon.

Brooklyn Art Library
103A North 3rd Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

photograph by Michael Voelker

Anyone can have a book in the Brooklyn Art Library if they participate in the Sketchbook Project. The Williamsburg library is the home of the collaborative initiative, where artists and amateurs can create their own books around different themes. These volumes are then available to be checked out in the library with a free library card. 

Little Free Library
Around NYC

Little Free Library on Rivington Street in 2013 (photograph by The All-Nite Images)

The Little Free Library has no permanent collection or card catalogues, you just have to keep an eye out for its little DIY shelves. The project started in 2009 and now has thousands of stations around the world, where anyone can take or leave a book. They range from a simple box to more elaborate designs, like one patrons can walk inside designed by Stereotank outside St. Patrick's Old Cathedral School on Prince Street. You can find them all on this map.