A plain-fronted church hiding a gilded interior, a chapel inside an oak tree, a Louvre gallery, art in an airport. The outside gives nothing away.
An eighteenth-century Cairo house, once home to the city's artists, now a museum of its own building tradition
→ egymonuments.gov.eg
A curiosity shop with a hidden magic theater, in Brooklyn Heights
→ artofplay.com
Mumbai's oldest museum keeps a stone elephant from Elephanta Island and maps of the city's seven original islands
→ atlasobscura.com
A working chapel hollowed into the oldest oak in Serbia
→ atlasobscura.com
A retired Seto Inland Sea ferry, rebuilt by Tadao Ando into a free floating library
→ honnomori-gou.com
A biker motel outside the Smokies where every room comes with its own motorcycle
→ motorcycleinn.com
A 1931 movie palace whose 8,000-bulb marquee went dark for 40 years, then came back on
→ erieevents.com
A plain fortress shell hiding wall-to-wall baroque gold — and a Caravaggio
→ stjohnscocathedral.com
A full-scale Parthenon — gilded 42-foot Athena and all — in Tennessee
→ nashvilleparthenon.com
A fiber-optic river of Kool-Aid in the drink's birthplace
→ atlasobscura.com
The Louvre's jewel gallery, reopened with every case emptied on purpose
→ afar.com
Menorca done in 1970s Romagna colours instead of the usual whitewash
→ wallpaper.com
A three-year restoration of a Roma Norte art nouveau house, down to the stained glass
→ wallpaper.com
Silver Lake's boutique hotel, built inside a 1931 church
→ hotellucile.com
Where Mexico's printmaking capital chose sculpture for its airport
→ atlasobscura.com
A three-foot 'Count' toured Europe's courts, then settled here
→ atlasobscura.com