Emir Kusturica's utopian village project in Serbia. The streets in the village bear the names of various individuals that Kusturica holds in high esteem or finds to be personally significant: Nikola Tesla, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Diego Maradona, Miodrag Petrović Čkalja, Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Joe Strummer, Novak Đoković and of course, Ivo Andrić, after whom the main street is named.
Dar Sebastian house in Hammamet, often considered the embodyment of the perfect Tunisian house. George Sebastian fell in love with the simple beauty of the quiet fishing port of Hammamet and was the first of the international set of the times to build his villa there. He started a trend that has never ceased. Frank Lloyd Wright is said to have claimed it to be ” the most beautiful house I have ever seen”, but as we see it today, it is elegant, but rather sad in its emptiness. One has to have a vivid imagination to recreate the era when Cocteau, Elsa Schiaparelli, Paul Klee, Andre Gide, the Sitwells, Cecil Beaton and others came to enjoy visiting, partying and undertaking what someone once described as indulging the opportunity to do “some rather elaborate sinning”. Perhaps the marble bathtubs for four are a clue. These are two and the other two face them. There is an emptiness of spirit that fills the house where such original individuals once partied, but the space is cool, elegant and reflective of the medina which was its inspiration. It was no wonder that Dar Sebastian was requisitioned by the “Desert Fox” the much decorated and (by both sides) highly respected German General, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel for his wartime Headquarters during the Tunisian campaign.
Kalyazin appeared in the 12th century as a sloboda, or the settlement for people relieved from paying taxes. The town's importance grew significantly with the foundation of the Makaryevsky monastery on the opposite bank of the Volga in the 15th century. This abbey used to be the most conspicuous landmark of Kalyazin and comprised numerous buildings of historic interest, including a refectory from 1525. In 1940 the monastery and most of the old town were flooded during the construction of the Uglich Reservoir. After that, the town was effectively relocated to a new, higher spot.
The theatre was the final design by the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio and was not completed until after his death. The trompe-l'œil onstage scenery, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, to give the appearance of long streets receding to a distant horizon, was installed in 1585 for the very first performance held in the theatre, and is the oldest surviving stage set still in existence.
Built in 1913, Grand Central Terminal, in New York City, is the largest train station in the world, in terms of number of platforms. Therefore, it’s only natural that there be various hidden nooks, corners and spaces, such as the network of underground tracks, storage areas and tunnels. Weaved amidst them all is an unlisted train platform, known as Track 61, with a secret entrance and passageway leading to an elevator going straight up to the world-famous Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
Capuchins' Catacombs located in Palermo, Italy, where there are thousands of corpses lined on the walls like paintings. The catacombs date back to the 1599 when the local priests mummified a holy monk for all to see. They wanted to pray to him after death.
Spiralling up from the ground, the remaining minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra is the most prominent of the remaining structures of a mosque that was once the largest in the world.
A World War I fighter plane sits on the roof of 77 Water Street, NYC. When the William Kaufman Organization built the 26-story office tower in 1970, the owner wanted to adorn its roof with something more interesting than air-conditioning machinery.
The 65-metre high minaret, surrounded by mountains that reach up to 2400m, was built in the 1190s, entirely of baked-bricks.
Derinkuyu Underground City is an ancient multi-level underground city in the Derinkuyu district in Nevşehir Province, Turkey. With its eleven floors extending to a depth of approximately 85 m, it was large enough to shelter tens of thousands of people together with their livestock and food stores. It is the largest excavated underground city in Turkey and is part of a network of several underground complexes found across Cappadocia.