A 26-foot shark sculpture—a statement about bombs—set off a municipal battle royale.

An extraordinary collection of scientific instruments - and Einstein's chalkboard - inside the world's oldest purpose built museum building.

Ancient Egyptian wigs, South American feather headdresses, a bounty of anthropological artifacts in Oxford.

Home to the most complete dodo remains known - one head, and one foot.

Oxford University's stateliest library seems designed to make students truly feel the weight of knowledge.

Used as an example in one of the first dictionary entries for "museum" in 1706.

One of Europe's oldest libraries.

Perfectly preserved ancient monastery in an impossibly dramatic location on a rocky island in the Atlantic.

The gorgeous library at Trinity College is home to remarkable treasures of Irish identity.

The most famous location in China was home to whole dynasties worth of imperial rulers.

This 14th-century temple is also known as the "Temple of the Golden Pavilion" for its gorgeous gilded reliquary hall.

This 700-year-old street food market features baby octopus and soy donuts.

The quintessential Japanese rock garden has existed for more than 500 years.

The 10,000 Torii shrine.

In Zanzibar, a historic 19th-century palace is a reminder of the world's shortest war.

This slowly crumbling mansion was home to one of East Africa's richest and most powerful slave traders.

This monument is a stark reminder of the horrors of the Zanzibar slave trade.

Freddie Mercury's childhood home is now a monument to the iconic Queen rockstar.

After sunset the heart of Zanzibar's historic Stone Town neighborhood transforms into a culinary playground.

Life and death are on parade at the most reliably perilous site of “the Great Migration.”

Get tall with nature's lankiest beasts and their warthog friends at this Kenyan preserve.

Just outside of Nairobi lies a large estate surrounded by endangered Rothschild giraffes, who have been fed from the window by Mick Jagger and Walter Cronkite.

Frida Kahlo's childhood home, now a museum of her life and works.

No telescopes, no power, no gift shop: The Observatory of Chichen Itza, one of the world's oldest observatories, takes astronomy back to basics.