The Ultimate Travel Guide for Armchair Explorers

The gardens of the Parco dei Mostri in Bomarzo, Italy, are full of sculptures straight out of a trippy nightmare. A giant rips another apart, a house is knocked askew. An ogre—mouth gaping, nostrils flaring, moss clumping on his fanned-out beard—invites visitors to clamber up a flight of stairs and into his toothy maw, which houses picnic tables.

The 16th-century garden, commissioned by a grief-stricken prince, is one of 700 delightfully weird sights cataloged in the new book Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders (Workman, $35). Each entry, written by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras, and Ella Morton, the team behind the website of the same name, includes a write-up and GPS coordinates—and sometimes, instructions for finagling your way in.