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Category / Editor’s Picks

Disappear inside the Secret “Sinners” Cave Temple

If you’re in need of the perfect spiritual hideaway, I think I might have found it. Like something out of a legend, nestled inside an ancient grotto carved out of steep limestone cliffs in a remote region of Italy, the clandestine Temple of Valadier is thought to symbolize the Virgin Mary’s Roman Catholic title, “Refugium eccatorum”, meaning “refuge of sinners“… (c) Luca…

The Little Bookshop that Takes in Homeless Cats

Cats and books. They just go hand in hand, don’t they? Like jam and toast. And at a small bookstore in Hong Kong, they only know it too well. The SAM KEE Book Company has become known as an unofficial sanctuary for stray cats after its owners began offering their cozy bookshelves and reading nooks as a home…

China’s First Stock Exchange is a now a Forgotten Dusty Apartment Building

Tucked away in an inconspicuous alley of one of the last functioning old-town neighborhoods in Beijing, hiding in the shadows of the historic city gate that once guarded the direct entry into the imperial city, lies the dusty forgotten shell of the first Beijing Stock Exchange. For a country that has one of the world’s largest stock markets, I couldn’t…

The Godfather Bar, Still Open.

Once upon a time, Michael Corleone sat on the shady terrace of a local Sicilian bar after a day of hunting with his bodyguards in the mountains. He began to enquire with the bar owner about a beautiful girl he had seen by the roadside. The man quickly realised that Michael was describing his own daughter and…

Saving Pie Town: The Last Pie-O-Neers of the American Dessert

As the legend goes, PieTown, New Mexico was founded in the early 1920s by a man called Norman, who had filed a mining claim in the area and opened a general store at the desert crossroads where he liked to bake pies made from scratch and serve them to his family or passing travellers. Word spread about…

Inside the Deserted Mansions of an American Heiress

She had three sprawling luxury homes at her disposal, but Huguette Clark chose to spend the last 20 years of her life holed up in a New York hospital room. Her father became as rich as Rockefeller from mining copper and founded the city of Las Vegas, but Huguette wasn’t your average American heiress. No one…

Cocktails in a Collector’s Museum: Lisbon’s Most Curious Bar

You know what museums are missing? Cocktails. Calling all collectors and oddity enthusiasts (that includes you), I’d like to present one of the world’s most eccentric bars, a veritable cabinet of curiosities if I’ve ever seen one, containing tens of thousands of fascinating objects housed in a former exotic grocery store-turned-drinking den. Antique soldiers, war memorabilia and…

The Rotting Underwater Ballroom of a Victorian Bernie Madoff

Beneath the lake of a once lavish Victorian estate built by a flamboyant mining tycoon, a secret awaits… (c) Forgotten Heritage At murkey water’s edge, a stone structure being overtaken by greenery hides a locked door. If you happen to have the right key, it will lead you down a spiral staircase and underneath the lake…

Borrow an East London Time Capsule House

At number 4 Princelet Street in East London, there is an 18th century yellow brick Georgian time capsule behind the Old Spitalfields Market. The double fronted merchant’s house, conserved in its original condition from top to bottom, is one of the last of the original houses to be built on the street where dozens of…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CXIII)

1. A French postcard with the tallest, shortest and fattest men of Europe playing cards in 1913 Found on So Bad So Good 2. This Paris Loft For Sale A factory-loft-turned-home in Paris in the 11th arrondissement … gabled glass roof rests on a early 20th-century steel structure created by famed French architect…

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