More than 450 years ago, an Italian nun became the first woman to paint the iconic subject.

Overlooked amid the tourist bustle of Florence, this museum is dedicated to the craft of stone inlay.

Art and armour fill every inch of this rich kid's Italian villa.

Legend says this mysterious stone head belongs to a woman who was petrified by an alchemist.

The mummified relic of St. Antoninus.

This museum is rotten with a century of wax medical deformities.

Over 50 exquisite hand-painted Renaissance maps decorate a Medici storage room.

Drink wine handed out through a window as part of an age-old tradition.

The largest and most famous wax anatomical collection anywhere in the world.

The oldest operating pharmacy in the world features 800-year-old recipes.

The doodles of a genius line the walls of a secret room under the Medici Chapel, where they were hidden for nearly 500 years.

The middle finger of modernity.

In Rome’s Jewish ghetto, a 200-year-old bakery still makes the neighborhood’s historic sweets.

The first Russian Orthodox church in the Catholic city of Rome in almost a thousand years.

The mystic whose incorrupt corpse still attracts the faithful.

This ancient market is often referred to as the oldest shopping mall in the world.

A magnificent waterfall is also home to the remains of a Roman hydraulic engineering system.

More sculpture than building, this architecturally significant temple was built on the spot of Saint Peter's crucifixion.

This large, circular tomb is the final resting place of the first emperor of Rome.

One of several skulls claiming to belong to the beheaded St. John the Baptist is on display at this Roman church.

The Pope’s secret escape route.

The martyr's wax-enhanced skeletal remains lie preserved in a glass case in the Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.

The skull of the patron saint of lovers lies in the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin—maybe.