Atlas Obscura
Thousands pass through the United Nations Plaza, a pedestrian mall adjacent to San Francisco’s commanding Beaux-Arts City Hall, each day. It’s a gateway to the city’s Civic Center and an access point for multiple forms of public transportation. For over 40 years, it even hosted one of the city’s largest farmers markets. But beneath the paving stones...
In the first half of the 19th century, French naturalist (and contemporary of Charles Darwin) Alcide D'Orbigny traveled throughout South America collecting specimens. One of the places he stopped in was Cochabamba, Bolivia. In a quiet, walled-off compound on the city's arterial Avenida América stands the Natural History Museum Alcide D'Orbigny, which...
The Helsinki Metro's Kamppi metro station bears more than a passing resemblance to an enormous cave. This similarity is only bolstered by a prominent art installation that has been located on the station platform since 2013, featuring hundreds of signs pointing to the birthplaces of current Helsinki residents, which loom from above and form crystal-like...
The Kennedy Gold Mine is a reminder of how the discovery of this precious metal transformed the American Wet. It also happens to be one of the deepest mines in the world. There are surface tours, so visitors can see the old building, the big wheels from the tailings, and the huge head frame. Like so much of the area, the mine is allegedly haunted...
Approximately 40 kilometers north of the city of León, the course of the Torío River leads to Vegacervera, a small and beautiful village. At the exit of the village, we find Las Hoces, where fluvial erosion of the limestone rock has given rise to a gorge with large vertical walls, some of which are over 100 meters high. Las Hoces de Vegacervera makes...
"In Dietzenbach, a devil sits under a roof" is a local saying that stemmed from a carving of a devil in an old wooden house. After a bombing in 1941, the carving was destroyed, but the saying remained, which led to the creation of this controversial statue in its honor.
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