A model village fit for an emperor.

Home of Vissarion, the "Jesus of Siberia."

A homemade anatomical collection of medical anomalies and accidental catastrophes.

Social outcasts and cannibalism in Stalin's Soviet Union.

An abandoned 14th-century castle and prison complex on a small island in the Neva River.

Some Moscow residents once claimed the bizarre, contorted mass of metal on top of the building was used to manipulate minds.

One of the world's tallest statues is also one of its most hated.

Ukrainian defense contractor's center for studying "pyramid energy."

Volcanic irregularity? Odd erosion? Alien eggs? Local legends compete to explain these strange orbs.

Russia's own leaning tower was built on a tragic historical fable.

A monument to the defenders of the Arctic in Murmansk, Russia.

300-year-old villagers houses and traditional churches preserve a nearly lost piece of Russian history.

An unusual abandoned church damaged in World War II sits in a small village outside Moscow.

A former military outpost of Ivan the Terrible, the 16th-century church contains some of the rarest examples of Eastern Orthodox mural paintings.

This 15th-century cave complex is one of the very few monasteries to stay open throughout World War II and the Soviet regime.

Monastery complex at the location where bodies of the executed Romanov royal family were discovered.

Thanks to a spelling mistake this bizarre beaver-tiger hybrid became the symbol of a Siberian town.

This newly renovated Soviet-era outdoor exhibition center is bigger than the principality of Monaco.

Site of the world's largest nuclear explosion.

The mummified remains of Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, Russia's most important Buddhist.

The California secessionist movement has its own foreign embassy, in Russia of all places.

Perhaps the tiniest sculpture in Saint Petersburg is a little bronze finch inspired by a song.

Europe's highest peak is a key pillar of the Seven Summits mountaineering challenge.

Gargantuan home of Russian science.