Located on a hill in the heart of Rome and featuring the only ceiling mural ever painted by the Italian Baroque old master Caravaggio, Villa Aurora is widely regarded as the world’s most expensive house.

The 30,000-square-foot, 16th-century villa is located a short walk from the famous Via Veneto, home to some of Rome’s best hotels, and close to the iconic Piazza di Spagna and the ancient Porta Pinciana. Originally a hunting lodge, the villa is all that remains of a 30-hectare complex owned by Italy’s Ludovisi noble family, who gave the country numerous diplomats, patrons of the arts, and even a Pope. Today, Villa Aurora finds itself at the heart of a legal battle and an Italian court has ruled that it should be sold at auction. Only the price set for the property is so high that no one seems interested in paying it.

Read More »

Het Brekkense Wiel, Dutch for “The Broken Wheel”, is a unique waterside residential area and tourist attraction in the Netherlands.

Located between the Frisian Lakes and IJsselmeer, the largest lake in the Netherlands, the aptly-named Het Brekkense Wiel is a suburb made up of several properties on small plots of land resembling broken wheels and surrounded by water. Every building consists of several homes, each accessible both by car and by both, which makes this place very popular with water sports enthusiasts. Because of its unique layout and visually-impressive design – especially when seen from above – Het Brekkense Wiel is often considered an example of ingenious waterside urban planning.

Read More »

After seeing its pork production decimated by African swine flu outbreaks, China has been investing heavily into so-called ‘pig hotels’, controversial multi-storey pig raising facilities.

Talk about elevating pig farming to new heights! For the last three years, farmers across China have been investing billions of dollars into massive high-rise hog-raising facilities popularly known as pig hotels. The trend started with two and three-storey facilities, but it quickly escalated into monolithic structures of over 10 levels, with tens of thousand of animals raised on each. At the end of this month, Zhongxin Kaiwei Modern Farming, a privately-owned company in Hubei, is set to complete a 26-storey pig hotel touted as the largest such structure in the world.

Read More »

Featuring 20 ramps intertwined over five levels and connecting three major expressways, the Huangjuewan Overpass in Chongqing is considered to be the world’s most complicated overpass.

When the first photos of Huangjuewan Overpass first hit the internet, a few years back, they cause a mix of shock, amazement and concern, especially among motorists. Many were wondering how on Earth less-experienced drivers were supposed to find their way with so many ramps and lanes to choose from. And, even if you consider yourself an experienced driver, Huangjuewan does look a little daunting, at least at first sight. Despite its designers’ claims that it looks much more complicated than it truly is, Huangjuewan has become known as the world’s most complicated overpass.

Read More »

Built according to the “Bagua”, or the Eight Trigrams used in Taoist cosmology, Tekesi County has a unique and eye-catching layout that allegedly renders traffic lights obsolete.

Bagua represents the fundamental principles of reality, seen as a range of eight interrelated concepts. It is a complex concept of Taoist cosmology which also has correspondences in astronomy, geography, anatomy, martial arts, medicine, and other disciplines. It’s also an essential tool in the majority of Feng Shui schools, used to map a room or location and see how the different sections correspond to different aspects in one’s life. But one thing the Bagua isn’t really used for is city planning; with one notable exception – Tekesi County, a city of 150,000 people in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Read More »

The “Inuden” (Dog Den), a $150,000 architectural wonder built exclusively by hand by a Japanese palace carpenter, is probably the ultimate dog house money can buy.

Cultural Property Structural Plan Co., Ltd. is an Osaka-based company that specializes in the preservation and repair of cultural property buildings and seismic reinforcement design. It employs experts in traditional architecture who use centuries-old shrine and temple-building techniques. Recently, the Japanese company announced a new project, codename ‘Inuden’, which involves building an exclusive dog house out of high-quality natural materials, using the same traditional techniques used on Japanese shrines, temples and castles.

Read More »

With a height-to-width ratio of 24:1, Steinway Tower, an 84-story luxury apartment building in Manhattan, is officially the world’s thinnest skyscraper.

Steinway Tower is an impressive architectural achievement. Not only is it the third-tallest building in the Western Hemisphere – after One World Trade Center (1,776 feet) and Central Park Tower (1,550 feet) – but it’s actually the most slender skyscraper in the world. Despite standing a dizzying 1,428-feet-tall, Steinway Tower is just 60 feet wide. It’s so thin that The Guardian newspaper has dubbed it “the coffee stirrer”. For comparison, Steinway Tower is as wide as a bowling alley is long.

Read More »

A unique house in London’s Richmond neighborhood has been dubbed “the invisible house” as the giant mirror walls reflect everything around it, making it very hard to notice.

Located on the busy A316 road by the Richmond Circus roundabout, near Richmond Underground station, London’s Invisible House isn’t some fancy art installation, but an actual home. Redesigned by architect and artist Alex Haw in 2015, the property has been inhabited since 2019, and the family said that living there has been interesting, to say the least. Even though passers-by can’t see inside, the owners can see outside perfectly fine, and they sometimes spot people fixing their hair or clothes in their mirrored walls and windows.

Read More »

A successful businessman in Vietnam’s Thanh Hoa province has been getting a lot of attention because of the opulent mansion he built for himself and his family.

Looking at the architectural masterpiece built by Mr. Trinh Dinh Xuan, a businessman who operates in the construction sector, it’s easy to see why photos of the edifice have been going viral on social media ever since it was completed, in 2018. Featuring an imposing facade with giant stone columns flanking the entrance, three large domes topped with gilded statues, and a baroque architectural style inspired by European palaces, the so-called “Xuan Truong Mansion” is one of the most eye-catching buildings in all of Vietnam.

Read More »

A feline lover in California spent several decades and over $100,000 turning his home into the ultimate house for cats.

House of Nekko is a 3,000-square-foot home just north of Santa Barbara. It looks pretty ordinary from the outside, so few know that this is probably the world’s most amazing cat house. Featuring over 300 feet of catwalks, 15 feet of tunnels, 8 bridges, individual feeding spots suspended on the walls giant hamster wheels and giant scratching posts, among other feline attractions, House of Nekko is unlike any other house we’ve ever seen before.

Read More »

Chateau Erken, in the Russian Federation’s Kabardino-Balkaria autonomous republic, looks like an extremely well-preserved medieval castle, but in reality, this architectural wonder is just over a decade old.

Located in the vineyard-dominated countryside of Kabardino-Balkaria, Chateau Erken is a tourist attraction unlike any other in Russia. Not only does it mimic the fortress-like design of European medieval castles, but its location in the middle of a man-made lake full of fish and wild birds is just as impressive. People from all over the country come to this rural area in Southern Russia to see Chateau Erken in person. Photos and videos of this amazing castle have been doing the rounds on social media for years, but some people still can’t believe it exists and that it was built not by a king, but by a legendary businessman.

Read More »

Most people can only dream of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on their dream home, but some are paying the same amounts, if not more, on intricate, fully-furnished playhouses for their kids.

Charmed Playhouses, a family business based in Letherbridge, Canada, claims to build the world’s most fantastic, luxurious and quality playhouses, and looking at some of their creation, we’re inclined to agree. But before you start dreaming about your very own backyard fantasy playhouse, you should know that some of these can cost an arm and a leg. Even though prices start at a respectable $3,500 for a basic playhouse, if you’re looking for something special, the bill can easily go into the tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Read More »

An octagon-shaped Illinois home listed on Zillow for $250,000 went viral online a few days ago, not for its shape or asking price, but for its all-black exterior and interior.

The now-famous “goth house” of Illinois shot to internet fame after being featured on the Instagram account “Zillow Gone Wild” where people quickly noticed its unusual dark exterior. Upon closer inspection, they realized that the interior decor was not much different. There were some white floor and wall tiles and some grey furniture here and there, but everything else stuck to the black theme of the place, which isn’t something you see every day.

Read More »

In a unique gesture of appreciation and love, an Indian man built a scaled-down replica of the iconic Taj Mahal as a “monument of love” for his wife of 27 years.

The original Taj Mahal, the most famous building in all of India, was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died while giving birth to their 14th child. It’s one of the world’s most iconic symbols of love, so one businessman from Madhya Pradesh decided that it was the perfect inspiration for his own tribute to his spouse. He paid a reported 20 million rupees ($260,000) to have a construction team build a four-bedroom replica of the Taj Mahal, complete with intricate latticework, minarets, and a luxurious interior fit for a queen.

Read More »

To say the “Le Courage” restaurant in Sankt Petersburg, Russia, has a vintage look would be a gross understatement. The place looks to be in a state of severe disrepair, but it’s all by design, as the place just opened a couple of years ago.

Located in  Sankt Petersburg’s newly-built Russian House residential complex, Le Courage is a modern restaurant with a very unique look. It’s stylized as a 19th-century mansion in serious need of repairs, with deliberately worn walls, chipped stucco moldings, antique furniture, and deliberately worn floorboards. During the “renovation” phase, designers used a hammer to chip away at the stucco molds they had just glued onto the walls, they washed out the plaster to make it look like the ceiling had survived more than one serious water leak, and the 19th-century pattern wallpaper was left unfinished in places.

Read More »