The Natural Bridge

Often cited as having a place among the great wonders of the natural world, particularly by early visitors to the US, Virginia's Natural Bridge is an enormous natural limestone arch. Carved by Cedar Creek over thousands of years, the arch was created when an ancient cavern collapsed leaving only the bridge. It is the largest natural land bridge on the North American continent.

The 215-foot-long bridge was sacred to the Monocan, native American tribe, and was revered by the American colonists.

The site was surveyed in 1750 by a young George Washington, who allegedly carved his initials into the rock. Thomas Jefferson called Natural Bridge "the most sublime of nature's works" when he purchased 157 acres of land, including the bridge, from King George III of England in 1774.

William Cullen Bryant said that Natural Bridge, along with Niagara Falls, were the two most notable features of North America. The Natural Bridge is also alluded to in Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

Perhaps the oddest parts of this natural wonder is "The Drama of Creation," a Biblically-themed evening light show that has been projected onto the bridge every night since 1920. The show is the longest continuously running light show in the US.

The Natural Bridge Caverns, the deepest caves on the east coast are less than half a mile away from the Natural Bridge. Other attractions in the area include a wax museum and a living history Monocan Indian Village.

Marsh's Free Museum

Marsh's Free Museum is a roadside stop that lures you in with more than tacky seashell gifts (though they have plenty of those too). The walls and ceiling are lined with various knick knacks from snake skins to weapons to bee hives to soviet military metals.

The main attraction at Marsh's, however, is "Jake the Alligator Man," a mummified half-man half-alligator. Visitors can easily spend the better part of an hour browsing Marsh's taxidermy collection, which includes a two-headed calf, a cycloptic lamb, a two-headed pig, and a shark. A real (or so it is claimed) shrunken head is also on display.

From "mechanized antique gaming machines and peepshows, there is no end to the marvels one uncovers in every nook and cranny," according to Marsh's official website.

The Museum of the Weird

The dime or dime store museum is by all accounts an endangered species. The first dime museum, "The American Museum," was opened in 1841 by none other than P. T. Barnum himself. It represented a departure from high-class art and science museums, catering to a poorer crowd and offering items of a much more dubious nature.

Part of the appeal of the dime store museum lay in arguing about what was real and what was a "humbug," as P. T. Barnum called a hoax or fake display. Feejee mermaids (a type of fake or "gaff" taxidermy made from a monkey and a fish, sewn together to form an incredibly ugly "mermaid") mixed with real exotic animals, and scientific instruments sat next to a loom run by a dog. Unfortunately, Barnum's American Museum burned to the ground in 1865.

Though many dime museums had disappeared by the 1920s, dime museums such as New York City's Hubert's Museum would remain open until the late 1960s. One of the best recreation dime museums, Baltimore's American Dime Museum, opened in 1999 only to shutter its doors in 2007. So though it may not look like much at first, "Austin's Museum of the Weird" is in fact a rare beast.

Created by artist-entrepreneur Steve Busti, the museum lives in the back of his store, the "Lucky Lizard," and features many of the same types of curios you might have encountered in a turn-of-the-century dime museum, including a feejee mermaid. Among the other items shown are a a cyclops pig, a hand of glory (supposedly the dried and pickled hand of a man who has been hanged), live tarantulas, a two-headed chicken, shrunken heads, and mummies. Among the more recent additions are items from 1960s and 70s camp horror films, such as full-sized figures of Frankenstein and other classic monsters.

American Museum of Magic

Presto Change-o! Founded in 1978, the American Museum of Magic has been around for more than three decades, but that's only a blip in the history of the building in which it resides, an old Victorian building in Calhoun County, Michigan. Formerly a saloon, a clothing store, and a billiard parlor, the building was constructed in 1868.

Spread across three floors of the restored structured, the American Museum of Magic is filled from wall to wall, ceiling to floor, with props from all of the greatest magicians of the 19th and 20th centuries. It's the largest magic museum in the United States that is open to the public.

Half a million pieces of memorabilia are crammed inside of the museum. Among the pieces are more than 10,000 books, 24,000 magazines, 46,000 photographs, letters, more than 2,000 handbills. One of the highlights is an escape apparatus used by Houdini.

What makes the collection more impressive is that most of it was assembled by one man, the late Robert Lund. A Detroit-based writer, Lund was obsessed with magic, but learned early on that he didn't have what it takes. Instead of embarrassing himself as a failed magician, Lund decided he would become the foremost student of magic history and collect everything related to the art that he could get his hands on.

The separate research center for aspiring magicians and historians of magic includes more than one million archived pieces, including a 50,000-volume library.

Adam-ondi-Ahman

Today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is associated with Utah, where they settled in 1847, before it officially became a state. But Joseph Smith founded Mormonism in 1830 in the “Burned-Over District” of upstate New York, and led his growing band of followers westward, through Ohio and Illinois. Independence, Missouri was declared by Smith to be the original Garden of Eden, or Zion, and he laid the ground for a Mormon temple.

Before it could be built, tensions mounted with the local settlers who were largely pro-slavery in this border state, and the “Saints,” as they called themselves, were forced to resettle in a small village north of Independence which Smith christened Adam-ondi-Ahman. Also the name of a classic Mormon hymn, the phrase is supposed to mean “Adam settled here,” in a secret language revealed to Smith by God.

Smith preached standing on a large, flat stone in a wooded area on the edge of a field, where he claimed Adam and Eve had made their first sacrifice upon settling in their new home. According to Smith, Adam and Eve lived long, peaceful lives and had many children. The Mormon settlers were not so fortunate: in 1838 the bloody Mormon War forced them into exile again.

Today the site, a peaceful expanse of forests and fields in the rolling hills of Missouri farmland, has been turned into a Church-owned park, where you can tour sites related to Smith. Due to some discrepancy over which stone was the one that Smith designated as Adam’s, there is no longer an official Church plaque singling out the stone, but if you follow an unofficial path downhill from one of the viewing areas, you will come to something that is rumored to be “preacher’s rock,” along with a number of other landmark stones.

It is said that because visiting Mormons will take small stones they find in Adam-ondi-Ahman’s fields home with them as souvenirs, local farmers bring their troublesome stones into the park to get rid of them. The park, including a picnic area, is open to the public during daylight hours, and cared for by a couple of young Mormon missionaries who live in a small house on site.

Leviathan of Parsonstown

The real measure of a telescope's power is not how greatly it can magnify a distant object, but what portion of that object's light the instrument actually collects.

It's easy if you think of the photons, or light particles, as raindrops, and the telescope as a bucket. The larger your bucket is, the more rain you will collect. Similarly, a telescope's "light gathering power" is a measure of how efficiently it collects photons, and this power depends on the diameter or "aperture" of the lens, or mirror.

For over a century, astronomers have raced to build telescopes with larger and larger apertures precisely so that they could gather more of the heavens' light. In essence, a large lens or mirror allows scientists to look deeper into space and see fainter objects. An early example of this thirst for photons is the Leviathan of Parsonstown, a six-foot-diameter telescope built in the 1840s by William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse.

For many years, Lord Rosse studied the night sky using his 36-inch telescope at Birr Castle in Ireland. The objects which interested him most were called "nebulae," a term that once referred to any fuzzy object in the sky. At that time, it was not known that these so-called nebulae were actually an assortment of different objects ranging from star clusters and galaxies to clouds of gas and dust. The telescopes of Parsons's day were simply not powerful enough to resolve the mysterious wisps of light.

Consequently, an outstanding question in astronomy arose: "Do nebulae contain stars?" Knowing that a larger instrument was needed to resolve this issue, Lord Rosse set out to build a six-foot telescope. All that stood in his way were a number of remarkable feats of engineering that would have to be performed to build such a device.

Today it is possible to create telescope mirrors in excess of 30 feet by coating a glass surface with a reflective metal. In the late 1800s, however, mirrors were made using the much heavier and more problematic speculum metal. This copper and tin alloy is not only difficult to cast and shape, but also quick to tarnish in humid climates such as Ireland's. However, after three attempts using large peat-fired furnaces, Lord Rosse and his men succeeded in creating the world's largest telescope mirror. In actuality, two mirrors were made: a backup was necessary because the speculum's sensitive nature required the mirror to be resurfaced every six months.

Dubbed the Leviathan of Parsonstown, Lord Rosse's reflecting telescope remained the largest in the world for over 75 years. However, the instrument was not without its drawbacks. To accommodate such a large telescope, a unique mounting system was employed which restricted motion in the east-west direction.

This mount was the first and last of its kind, and, with a fortress-like appearance, it remains quite impressive. The 58-foot telescope tube is suspended between two stone walls, 70-feet-long and 50-feet-high. At the top of these walls, which protect the instrument from high winds, is a movable observing platform. From here Lord Rosse spent many cold nights drawing the elaborate celestial structures revealed to him.

At first, the majority of observations taken were of the Moon and several of the planets. While the instrument exposed our solar system in greater detail than ever, the most important discovery made at Parsonstown was that of the spiral nature of the M51 nebula. Now known as the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51 was the first categorized spiral object. While Lord Rosse correctly observed M51 to be "studded with stars," the debate over the true characteristics of nebulae lingered, and it was not until the 1920s that Edwin Hubble recognized some of the fuzzy objects to be galaxies like our Milky Way.

Nevertheless, the Leviathan is a testament to Parsons' skills in engineering, optics, and astronomy. In fact, for one galaxy, the Earl's hand-drawn illustrations contain more detail than a photograph taken with the 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory a century later. Continuing in his father's footsteps, the fourth Earl of Rosse, used the telescope for his own observations. The instrument fell into disuse in 1878, however, and was dismantled in 1908.

Thanks to the seventh and present Earl, the telescope was reconstructed in the late 1990s with a new mirror and motors to make pointing easier. Observations continue even today, as amateur astronomers often peer through the Leviathan. Ireland's Historic Science Centre also resides at the castle, where a large collection of astronomical instruments and artifacts are on display.

But to catch a glimpse of the original speculum mirror, you must travel to the London Science Museum.

Villa Demidoff

Globe > Europe > Italy >

The beauty and mystery of renaissance gardens seems only to grow once given over to centuries of abandonment. Such is the case of Villa Demidoff.

Commissioned by Francesco I de' Medici in the 16th century Villa Demidoff and the nearby Villa di Pratolino took over 12 years to complete. The end result was a stunning near-labyrinth of natural caves, lakes and massive sculptures. Of the statuary, the 16th century "Appennine Colossus," is the main focal point of the landscape. He sits atop a grotto in apparent anguish at his fate.

Although most of the park and villa was completed in the 16th century, it was all but abandoned in the early 1800s, and some of its delicate statues were actually removed and taken to another Italian garden. Slowly being consumed by nature, the gardens were finally rescued by Ferdinand III, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who was so struck by their natural beauty of the place, that he decided to destroy the ruins of the villa and focus completely on the gardens themselves.

After changing hands a few more times, the wild grounds eventually fell into the hands of the government of Florence, who operated the area as a public park during the spring and summer months.

Q Confucius Number 2

Globe > Asia > China

46-year-old Zhang Huan had already made waves across the international art world when he released Q Confucius Number 2 in 2011. Well-known for his works such as "Ash Jesus" and "Three Heads, Six Arms," Huan took his work to a new level when he debuted an animatronic sculpture of Confucius in the bathtub that actually breathes.

Reaching the height of the cavernous room that holds it, Confucius Number 2 perfectly resembles the philosopher down to the long beard and age spots that are present on his face. The sculpture, made out of steel, silicone, carbon fiber, and acrylic, attempts to captures every detail of the human body. The work even has wrinkles and pores around its sculpted features.

Although it is only being displayed until January 29, 2012 at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, Confucius will likely make the art rounds for some time before settling down in a permanent location.

Gun Totem

North America > United States > Rhode Island

Standing 12 feet high in front of Providence's Federal Courthouse is an unusual monument constructed out of steel, concrete and used handguns.

Dubbed the Gun Totem by its artist, Boris Bally, the imposing obelisk was constructed in 2001 with guns from a firearm buy-back program in Pittsburgh. Altogether, more than 1000 guns went into the construction of the pillar, which was commissioned by the Providence Parks Department. All of the guns included in the project were disabled and fossilized beneath concrete, and bits of the pillar were chipped away so people could see the deadly layer beneath the its exterior.

Bally has teamed up with the gun program in Pittsburgh again and has been working on a new project, a series of gun-arches, using disabled handguns in the area.

The Fantastic Umbrella Factory

North America > United States

Originally opened in 1760, the Fantastic Umbrella Factory is actually a small farm near the coast of Rhode Island and was opened as a plant nursery, petting zoo and gift-bazaar during the 1960s.

Today, the Umbrella Factory is a favorite among Rhode-Islanders who stop by the strange, tiny farm to check out the bizarre statuary and above all to go shopping. Comprised of a series of old barns, the Umbrella Factory bazaar sells international goods including blown glass, Halloween costumes and organic foods, all created locally by farmers and artists around the property.

Since opening, the Umbrella Factory has also gained renown in the area for its plant baskets that they nurse and then sell. Known for its DIY vibes, the farm has survived 40 years of a bumpy economy and even a fire on the property, and has remained one of the best-hidden gems of Rhode Island.

Oude Kerk

Europe > Netherlands > Amsterdam

Amsterdam is one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in Europe. It is also a self-proclaimed experiment in freedom, which has forced many of the city's beautiful buildings and districts into close proximity with its sordid and renowned underbelly of drugs and prostitution.

Oude Kerk (Old Church) is the oldest church in Amsterdam and was constructed in 1306. Its towering arches and floor constructed of gravestones makes it a unique and sacred site in the city. But as is so common in Amsterdam, the profane has made its way to the church doors.

Situated on Old Church Square, the church now shares real estate with the a heavily trafficked zone of the Red Light District. Although some raised eyebrows at the collision of the two worlds, the city seems to have eventually embraced the strange dichotomy.

Proudly standing in front of the church doors, a bronze statue entitled "Belle" was erected in 2007 as a monument to the prostitutes of the world. Old Church Square also boasts a metal relief in the cobblestones of a hand caressing a woman's breast, another reference to Amsterdam's lively participation in the world's oldest profession.

Portlandia

East Portland, Oregon, US

Portlandia is a sculpture by Raymond Kaskey located above the entrance of Michael Graves' Portland Building in downtown Portland, Oregon. It is the second-largest copper repoussé statue in the United States, after the Statue of Liberty.

Raymond Kaskey, Greg Pettengill and Michael LaSalle built sections of the statue in one of the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., and shipped the parts to Portland by rail. It was installed on October 6, 1985, after being floated up the Willamette River on a barge.

When it was installed, it was taken through the city streets, and a layer of copper was rubbed off of Portlandia's finger as people reached up to touch the statue on its way to its final destination.

The statue is based on the design of the city seal. It depicts a woman dressed in classical clothes, holding a trident in the left hand and reaching down with the right hand to greet visitors to the building. Crouched at 35 feet high, if standing, the woman would be about 50 feet tall.

Portlandia is a product of Portland's Public Art Program, dedicated to working with the public and private sectors to support art reflecting a wide range of perspectives

Alyosha Statue

Europe > Russia > Murmansk
In 1941, Soviet forces in Murmansk finally gained ground and pushed back against the invading Nazi army. A turning point in Hitler's arctic campaign, the Alyosha Statue was erected in 1974 as a monument to World War II fighters who protected the Arctic from the German invaders.

Considered a hero city, Murmansk is the largest populated city within the Arctic Circle, and the proud Alyosha statue is the second highest in all of Russia. Standing at 116 feet, the 5000-ton statue towers over the frosty lands around Murmansk, and keeps an eternal flame burning to commemorate the brave soldiers who kept Hitler from reaching deeper into the arctic.

Borobudur

Built in the late 8th century, Borobudur temple took an army of workers and 60,000 cubic meters of lava rock to construct. Yet despite its massive size and elaborate rows of Buddha statues, it was mysteriously abandoned during the 14th century and sat in the jungle, undiscovered until 1814.

In the style of a step-pyramid, the temple has six square bases, topped with three circular layers and a large main stupa. Pilgrims and visitors alike follow a guided path to the top of the complex, which leads them around the monument a number of times before reaching the peak. Along the way, the path is marked by 500 Buddha statues and thousands of reliefs that depict daily life in Buddhist Java.

At one point in time, Borobudur was the center of Buddhist life in Indonesia, but the adoption of Islam led to a complete abandonment in the 14th century. During the period of British administration in Java, the monument was rediscovered by a Governor-General, and he led the charge over the next 30 years to fully excavate the site and reveal the mysterious lost temple.

Since that time, restoration has become a priority and Borobudur is now protected as a UNESCO site. Despite efforts to protect the temple, a few stupas were nearly destroyed during a terrorist attack in 1985. Despite its beauty, Borobudur is still a Buddhist site in the midst of a country that is 86% Muslim, and thus a target of some tiny, but extreme right-wing groups that have historically opposed large Buddhist monuments.

Stonehenge Replica

In many ways, Stonehenge remains a complete mystery. Yet despite the lack of quality information on the megaliths, some estimates believe its erection took over 2000 years. But in 2004 in Odessa, Texas, tractor-trailers and modern science built a replica in just six weeks.

In front of the modern monument is a small plaque describing the efforts of the Stonehenge Replica team. The plaque remarks, in rather snarky fashion, that the advent of science allowed man to move these 30,000 pound stones in just six weeks, effectively creating a dustier and fairly accurate version of the English original.

Despite the hint of triumph in the plaque of the modern man, the replica also notes the impressiveness of such a structure being created millennia ago without mechanical assistance. Just a hair shorter than England's Stonehenge, the Odessa copy reaches a height of 19 feet and can be accessed for free at any time by visitors to the town.

Statue of José Maria Morelos

Approaching the tiny island of Janitizio by boat, there is no way to miss the towering Statue of José Maria Morelos. Standing 130-feet high over Lake Patzcuaro, the spiraling stairway that leads to the top of the statue tells the hero's story through sweeping murals the entire way up to the top.

José Maria Morelos was a revolutionary leader during Mexico's quest for independence and was executed by the Spanish government. Embraced across the country, this statue was erected in 1933 to honor his memory. Standing with one proud fist in the air, the statue is set on the hill in the center of the island, making it the most prominent part of the central-Mexican landscape.

Almost resembling the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio, the Statue of José Maria Morelos takes heroic imagery one step further by doling out a history lesson on the way to the spectacular views at the top.

Tiger & Turtle Magic Mountain

The first impression given by this 69 ft. sculpture is that it's like any other roller coaster, with twists and turns and the ever-thrilling loop-the-loop. A closer look reveals that this is no free ride-to take on the curves of this metal giant, you'll have to start walking.

German artists Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth created “Tiger & Turtle-Magic Mountain” out of zinc and steel left over from local mining operations, and it's main purpose is to exist as an unusual venue to view the gorgeous German countryside around it. While a little disappointing that physics don't allow for passage around the loop, you can still work off that amusement park lunch at the speed of a turtle, on a structure that represents the speed of a tiger. With 249 steps making up the walkway, and LED lights so that the climb can be appreciated after dark, this twisted metal track gives you a chance to see this classic ride from an entirely new perspective day or night.

New Town Tree Sculptures

Michelangelo looked at a massive block of marble and saw the statue David. Edward Leedskalnin looked at South Florida's coral bedrock and saw a castle. Graffiti artists looked at the Berlin Wall and saw the world's highest-profile blank canvas. Whether by a classically trained oil painter or a prisoner scratching figures into a concrete wall – whatever the medium, art, to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park, finds a way. In Marrakech, Morroco, a group of artists saw a tree-lined street and thought, while it was a nice touch for a city planner, it wasn't art. Not yet.

A man by the name of Moulayhafid Taqouraite and his fellow artists decided to carve, paint, and burn a series of widely varying but utterly riveting designs into the tall Eucalyptus trees lining a street in the New Town section of Marrakech, making their mark on the city in a bold but endearing way.

Anything less enchanting than what they created might be considered an unfortunate defacement of public beauty, but their work tends to silence potential critics. Deep etchings, bold contrasts and intricate detail prove that the work was done out of love, not mischief (though you need a bit of the latter for a project like this).

The trees-turned-art are often referred to as dead tree sculptures, which some of them definitely are, but many are living and growing today – perhaps as a tribute to the resiliency of the trees, but far nicer to think of as an affecting metaphor for the symbiotic nature of life and art. Either way, the trees aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and neither, one hopes, are the artists.

Dylan

Hi, this is Dylan Thuras here. I, along with Josh Foer, am the proud co-creator of this site, the Atlas Obscura. I recently spent a year living in Budapest and traveling throughout Eastern Europe in search of the obscure and wondrous. Much of those places are documented right here on this Atlas. I also run and write the site curiousexpeditions.org along with my wonderful co-author Michelle Enemark. Josh, Michelle and I will be continually traveling the world to find more wonderful, obscure, curious things for the Atlas Obscura! Thank you so much for coming to our Atlas, and please feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions regarding the Atlas. Good exploring! Dylan

Titanic Memorial

The Titanic Memorial lighthouse has stood at the entrance to the South Street Seaport since 1976. Before it moved to its current home, the memorial was erected on top of the Seamen's Church Institute in 1913 after the Unsinkable Molly Brown insisted that a monument to those lost in the Titanic be erected.

Margaret Brown, better known as Molly, was as stubborn after coming back to dry land as she was during her alleged rescue of fellow passengers during the Titanic's sinking. Always larger than life, Brown insisted that a 60-foot-high lighthouse be erected in Lower Manhattan. When it was first built, just a year after the Titanic sunk, a time ball was installed above the lighthouse, and dropped at noon every day in remembrance of those who perished.

After the ball ceased to keep time in 1967, the lighthouse was moved off the roof of the Seamen's Church Institute and became a part of the South Street Seaport Museum at the corner of Fulton and Pearl. As conspicuous as Molly Brown would have wanted it, the monument greets visitors to the Seaport with a reminder of the tragedy of April 15, 1912.