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Cabinet of Chic Curiosities
Category / Off-Beat & Little Known

The Ghost Bath Houses of Paris

I was researching old Parisian advertisements from the 19th century (as you do) when I came across this one for a palatial Turkish bath house near the opera house. Behind its vaulted arches, magnificent mosaics were lit by stars of coloured glass and according to a 19th century ‘Bather’s Guide’ to Paris, the establishment boasted Roman-Turkish hammams,…

Templar Secrets of Sintra’s Mysterious Initiation Well

Hidden behind a cluster of moss-covered boulders in a Portuguese garden lies a well. It’s no ordinary well, as you’ll see when you push the stone slab that leads you to the top of an inverted tower that plunges into an underworld. With curving arches flanked by ionic columns, lichen and moss-clad stone dripping with…

America’s Last Juke Joints

Before the Juke Box, there was the Juke Joint, a reverberating sanctum of the Mississippi Delta and the indefinable heartbeat of southern African American culture. The traditional Juke Joint seems to have grown out of the landscape more than it was constructed. A ramshackle collection of lost and found, partner to the barrel house and…

The Ruin and Revival of the City that Built America

Some American companies are such a part of our everyday lives, they’re taken for granted, the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Google for example. But there is another company that although it can be seen everywhere, no-one notices. Even more mysteriously, the company no longer exists. But walk through any American city, or picture its greatest…

A Brief Guide to Cocktail Hour in Cuba

Picture the scene back in 1937, during the heyday of American jaunts down to Cuba, when the first Pan Am seaplanes regularly took pleasure seekers from Key West to Havana: a group of hard drinking, ex-pat newspapermen are ensconced in the bar of Havana’s grandest hotel, the Nacional, discussing the finer point of sports and…

Secret Tourism: Travelling with Europe’s Nomadic Shepherds

It will probably sound out of character if we told you that to discover Europe’s most secret corners, you should follow the herd and keep to the beaten path, quite literally. But hear us out and grab your hiking boots because today we’re taking notes from a very small group of folks who actually plan…

The Wholesome Lost World of Competitive Barrel Jumping

Whilst exploring the abandoned Grossinger’s holiday resort in New York’s Catskill mountains one last time before it was torn down, something caught our eye in the crumbling ruins of what had once been the ice skate house. Propped up against the wall was a large wooden sign that had been left behind. Dusty like a…

100 Rooms and 70 Secret Doors: Washington DC’s Quirkiest Secret

When most people think of secrecy in Washington, DC, they probably think of the FBI, the CIA or the Pentagon. But just south of Embassy Row, nestled behind the façades of five row houses, there stands an icon of kitsch, African American history, and rock and roll: the Mansion on O Street. Is it a…

What’s Up With Death Valley’s Bespoke Coffin Workshop?

The Nevada desert is arguably home to some of the strangest attractions in North America. From Clown Motels and Ghost Towns to haunted dolls and Area 51 there is no shortage of places to satisfy your taste for weird America, but none like Coffinwood, a custom coffin factory, wedding chapel, hearse garage and pet cemetery…

The Azores: Secrets of Europe’s Hawaii

Lost in the Atlantic Ocean, nine islands thrust out of the depth of the sea in a fiery birth created by seismic activity. The archipelago of the Azores, said by some to have even been the fragments left behind from the lost continent of Atlantis – the sunken land said by Plato to have been…
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